Infusing Equity into Hamilton County Operations

Whenever we have a long hiatus in our podcast, we return with a new season of jam-packed government content for our one listener! We jest (but do appreciate our one fan). In our season opener, we talked with Robert Bell and Gabrielle Woehler with the Hamilton County Economic Inclusion and Equity Department.  Robert and Gabrielle discuss the evolution of DEI efforts baked into the County's purchasing, spending, and hiring efforts. 

Under Mr. Bell's leadership, Hamilton County has an overall MBE/WBE spending goal of $14 million per year and $70 million in five years. This is a direct result of implementing the County's first disparity study. We get into the details and discuss the equity framework that guides the department to provide opportunities for all Hamilton County residents!

To learn more about Hamilton County, Ohio, our services and job openings, visit hamiltoncountyohio.gov.

Transcript

Jeff Aluotto: 0:10

Hello and welcome to hearten hustle in Hamilton County a podcast entirely dedicated to the people and policies that form Hamilton county government. Why the name hard and hustle? Well, it best describes the public servants who make our local government work. Each episode focuses on creative solutions to the challenges our 49 communities face, as well as how our different county departments tackle those challenges. Head of a local government 101 For listeners who are curious and want to learn more and we know at least one fan out there. I'm your host, Jeff Ludo. I'm the County Administrator with and with me as always is our communications manager Bridget Doherty.

Bridget Doherty: 0:49

So happy to be here.

Jeff Aluotto: 0:51

Bridgette, this is our first episode of the year in our first episode of season four of heart and hustle.

Bridget Doherty: 0:57

Yeah, I feel like our last episode of last year, electrocuting fish was wildly popular, and gained us at least that one list. Exactly.

Jeff Aluotto: 1:07

We know there's at least one which is fantastic. And we're gonna pick up another one this year. That's our that's our goal for 2024. I can't believe it's been four seasons.

Bridget Doherty: 1:18

We started this in 2020. And it began with the man behind the mask. Greg Testerman.

Jeff Aluotto: 1:26

That's right. It was during COVID. For I remember correctly, obviously, it was during COVID. And we followed it up with followed it up with some great episodes. I think we've had episodes on housing. We've had Board of Elections in here. One

Bridget Doherty: 1:42

of my favorites was the illegal dumping that we had with the sheriff's deputy that helped us kind of understand tires and who to call and what to do if you see an illegal dump.

Jeff Aluotto: 1:54

That's exactly right. We've had if you are a local government walk, this is the podcast for you. And I do want to do some type of montage at some point. I want the way we were playing in the background or something just to this, it's gonna be great. We're gonna figure that out before the end of the year. Yeah, okay. All right.

Bridget Doherty: 2:13

I'm on it. Okay. Well,

Jeff Aluotto: 2:15

I am actually super excited about this first episode that we're doing. And it's been one that I've wanted to do for a while. Today, we wanted to focus on the efforts of our department of economic equity and inclusion. And so today, we are thrilled to have two of the representatives from that office in with us today. We have Robert Bell, who is the director of that office. And we have Gabrielle whaler in with us today. Robert Gabrielle. Welcome.

Robert Bell: 2:45

Thank you for having us. Yeah, it's a pleasure.

Jeff Aluotto: 2:48

So just to get right into it, because this is a an aspect of county government that Hamilton County is really starting to put its foot forward on. And we have for several years here, in terms of embedding equity and inclusion into the operations of the county. Robert, and you've been a while you've been in the trenches on that you've been leading this since since the get go. So if you could just take a minute or two and tell the public how this office began and how the efforts or how the efforts of your office were initiated here in Hamilton County.

Robert Bell: 3:22

Well, it all started in 2017 by Commissioner Driehaus and Commissioner Todd poor tune that needs to be half an opportune and, and and they came up with an idea that they have been thinking about for a while and got it passed by the commissioners to establish an office of economic inclusion. And the first thing they did it was in 2017, was to put together a an advisory group put together an advisory group in order to give the direction and goals and also the structure that the department should take on. And they did a fabulous job with that with with the Economic Advisory Council. They my position came in and 2018 and I and I started on January 2018. With the work that we do now, I

Jeff Aluotto: 4:14

remember at the the office of economic, or the I'm sorry, the economic inclusion Advisory Council. And I just want to give a special shout out to them, Robert, because like you said they they actually preceded your work here in helping to set the stage for what would happen from an inclusion perspective in the county and he gave some great advice and we'll get to some of that a little bit later in terms of some of their some of their initial vision coming to fruition here in the county. But Bridget I know you've This is a specially rewarding episode for you. So I'm gonna turn it over to you to introduce our the our CO guest today. Well,

Bridget Doherty: 4:51

it's something that I love about Hamilton County is we've really been able to attract some top talent to the county and Gabriel whaler. Who is the small business utilization coordinator is kind of an is an academic. And so I was hoping Gabrielle could tell us like her story about how, you know, what did she study? How did she come to work for Robert? And who was her favorite Intern Supervisor?

Gabrielle Woehler: 5:17

You're so funny. Bridgette, you really flatter me. So I actually started as an intern under Bridgette, doing communications when I was getting my Master's at the University of Cincinnati. I was doing some research with them and economic inclusion and had the opportunity to do my senior capstone project with Robert Bell. And that was all about how to implement the government Alliance on race and equities strategies within Hamilton County. So when the opportunity to join economic inclusion popped up, obviously, I applied and I was very, very grateful to be able to continue to work for Hamilton County under Robert,

Jeff Aluotto: 5:54

can I can I just jump in here for a second and highlight a couple of things, how Gabrielle indicated, she immediately took the opportunity to jump to Robert. She did not answer the question. Who was your favorite? Supervisor? I

Bridget Doherty: 6:09

know it's really strategic. Yeah,

Gabrielle Woehler: 6:12

I'm kidding. Obviously. It was a pleasure. No,

Bridget Doherty: 6:15

it was rewarding to see you go into actually, like an area of your study. I, I saw, you know, Gabrielle, and I stole her because I just knew how smart she was. And I needed the help and communications but her heart always lived with, you know, making Hamilton County a more equitable place. So

Jeff Aluotto: 6:32

in all seriousness, I remember when Gabrielle started here, and we immediately started talking in the administration about what do we do to keep her here? Yes. And fortunately, this opportunity came along in a area of county operations, which is going to be incredibly importantly, incredibly important, incredibly important to the future of Hamilton County. And it's in its role in the community. So Gabrielle, thanks so much for for being a part of this. Robert, you talked a little bit about the, how the office got started. Talk a little bit about the role of the office in in the county, what what do you do on a daily basis?

Robert Bell: 7:14

Well, the role and the purpose from the beginning was to ensure economic inclusion success for Hamilton County, in both purchasing and procurement, but also operations, recruitment, staffing, retention, promotions, and that kind of thing. It began to grow as we took a look at both of those areas. And working with gap, one of the one of the reasons I got gap on that project, and we could work together, because I went through a training called groundwater my first year here that the Greater Cincinnati Foundation did with I think it's called race forward, a national organization. And, and it struck me that I was I was going to say, after that I decided to do this thing a little differently. And, and I was and I really went and learned gares and got best to be a member of gear and began to learn the theories and strategies that gear promotes across the country. And it has been invaluable in our work, because it changed the way that I've been in economic equation for years, 15 more years. But it changed the way I looked at it a little bit. And it changed the objectives that I that I decided that we needed to have, and that and that trend. So I started a training here with with the theories from Ghana from gare called equity framework. And I also began to train all my staff in it, but also the different departments around what we were looking for with the equity framework. And I'll give you a couple of examples of what the theories entail. equity framework from gare means freedom from bias and favoritism and focus on fair and equal treatment for all that works to overcome potential organizational and systemic barriers and obstacles to true equity. It ensures equity policies, strategies, practices, and expectations are in place utilizes culturally relevant services and community engagement approaches. And we do that in all our work now. But that was that that worked mainly for me, and really deciding how I was going to approach economic inclusion with with small minority and women owned businesses. But it also we use it to empower residents and businesses to help develop solutions to the problems that that we're seeking to address, and fully participate in our economic opportunities. Those are some of the basic strategies and principles that I started to apply to everything I did. And the whole reason within it all falls into systemic change. And I think we've been very successful with that, especially after we found out we were going to be able to do a disparity study. And I utilized all those principles as as I began to put this thing together.

Bridget Doherty: 9:57

I feel like you've been very popular recent And I think that's a testament to all the hard work you've put in over the past few years. But recently, you've been on Michael Patton's Podcast coming up, you're going to be honored by the city of Cincinnati. I mean, there's just been some hardcore results that have come out of your team. Can Can we talk about what you are most proud of? When all of your accomplishments? Well, there's

Robert Bell: 10:23

not one thing. There's a there's a lot of things. But I tell you, I was so glad. And I was really appreciative after we looked at it when Jefferson asked me to do a trend line of our spending for the last couple of years. And I and I knew from just doing the quarterly economic inclusion reports that I started in 2018, that it was going up. I mean, it was it was, but it was up and down and up and down a lot. I did not, could not see the real trend or curve until we put it we we plotted, Gabriel plotted all of our expenditures for each quarter from 2020 20 to 2023. And we plotted them on an Excel spreadsheet. And then we ran the trend line quick query. And I don't know about Jeff, but when I saw it almost got off my chair.

Bridget Doherty: 11:09

Well, I had to put that on this podcast as a as an additional image so people can see it. It's really impressive. But what

Robert Bell: 11:16

happened was right, right, as a town, we were doing that we were doing the quarterly economic inclusion, e newsletter that highlighted a lot of our what we considered successes. And first, the first things that happened in Hamilton County, that went viral, I sent it to my community partners, I sent this trendline to my community partners. Next thing I know, I'm getting a call from the Ohio Department of Development, who somebody sent it up to them. They like whatever you're doing, keep doing it. If there's anything we can help help us and all that kind of thing. And then I got calls from the mayor's office from council people. City Manager, I just had a meeting with city manager last week, just around. And basically I ended up talking about the equity

Jeff Aluotto: 12:03

in we're going to get into the disparity study here in a second. But before we go there, I just want to congratulate Gabrielle and Robert, on this accomplishment and what you have done because the disparity study, again, we'll talk here in a moment about it is kind of a dividing dividing line in time, which is gonna give us some new tools and new opportunities to do some things to to advance these efforts much further. But everything up until now, when we started this when the commissioner started this, this department back in 2017 2018, I remember the conversations and we said you know if we're going to do this, and we're going to, if we are going to publicly come out and and make equity and inclusion a formal part of this organization, then we're going to do it right. And we're going to get the people on the ship who can who can do this and do it professionally, and who know what they're doing and can drive results in this area. So we got Robert Bell, who comes with so much experience in this area. And Robert then pulled in Gabrielle, who from an academic and they in a data perspective is just lights out, and they're pushing this but the point I want to make is that all of this progress in this trendline I hope we can put it as an attachment. All these results were done before the formal tool of a disparity study was put into place. So all these results are the result of Robert and his team and Gabrielle pushing. This was departments based upon he going out and sitting down with departments and helping them understand why this is important. And it's not just about we want our numbers up. It's not just about putting numbers on a page. It's about wanting everyone in this community to know that every person in this county, every vendor, every business, every organization, every stakeholder in this county has the right to be have access to their county government and to be adequately and well served by their county government. And it's that message not we need to get your numbers up. It is the message, Robert, that you have been so incredibly successful in embedding with our departments, which is driving this and not only driving it now but it's going to drive it 510 1520 years into the future. So now that we've talked about where you've been, we do have a disparity study. So could you guys take a moment here and talk a little bit about what the disparity study is for someone who's sitting at home for our for our listener who is in will which will thanks Ashley, for Ashley will continue to rise. Talk a little bit about what that is and how it's going to help us drive improvement in the future and

Robert Bell: 14:42

I'll start it off but but a disparity study was a necessary tool because affirmative action was outlawed, you know was was outlawed years ago. Organizations like ours had to look for ways because intuitively and through just everyday you know living and and knowledge they got that it was generally known that small minority women owned businesses weren't participating, and a lot of the economic opportunities of cities and counties and throughout the United States, but you just couldn't just change, you know, change all that without having some what we call statistically significant difference that that showed some real disparities. And that's what a disparity study is about. Some people call it the Bronson study. But what it does, it takes a look at your utilization is it takes a year to do because you they're reviewing 1000s of contracts, and the utilization piece, and what they do is they go through, they went through the security study company went through all of our contracts over I think, $1,000, over five and a half year period, and to see who spent it with how much totals, demographics of it, and that kind of thing. And it's plotted that out. But at the same time, during that same year, they had part of their organization doing an availability study. And that is where you take a look at who are the small minority women owned businesses in your relevant market area, which is for us is like a seven county area around Hamilton County. Who are they and what they're capable, what are they capable of? And you have to compare the two. And that's what makes up the disparity study ratio. You know, utilization versus availability. Now, availability is not just demographics, because the Supreme Court has thrown that out of go courts have thrown that out just to go on with demographics, what availability really means is availability, capability and willingness. Not all companies want to do business with us. So we had to look at our market area to see okay, what was the most what what was the best number of companies in which companies really felt comfortable with doing work and capable and available, so that and Lord the number of demographic numbers is a lot harder a lot more than that, but it but it gave us what that what we call the compelling governmental interest, and a proof that we were looking at companies that could actually, and wanted to actually do business with us. And so that was very important to that. And that's why because my job also with the study, Jeff was to was to mitigate risk for Hamilton County. I saw that as my as my as my role here, too. And so we had we had to federal rules and legal rules around compelling government interest, and that strict scrutiny, and and, and, and narrowly tailored remedies. So all of that had to come in consideration with, with what we came, we came up with our recommendations, and our strategies and all that kind of

Jeff Aluotto: 17:38

and so the the study ultimately wound up producing a set of goals for the county. But there are goals and metrics that are based not on just randomness, but on the actual availability defined, as you indicated earlier, of vendors in the community compared to how statistically they should have been used in the past. If things were in a vacuum, if things had been equitable in the in across the across the board. Absolutely. So I'm interested though, Gabrielle, you come out of school. And so you intern for the county and then you jump into the mix with with Robert in the department. Talk a little bit about the disparity study from your perspective, because I have to think this is an incredible project to not to say cut your teeth because you were experienced in a lot of ways when you when you came on with us. But as a first real project in Hamilton County, what were your thoughts and reactions to how Robert free thanks,

Gabrielle Woehler: 18:37

I would say that cutting your teeth is still an accurate characterization of what happened. So I was brought in kind of in the at the tail end of the disparity study implementation meetings where we were still kind of deciding elements of the policy that we wanted to include or different approaches that we wanted to have. And that was really great for me because I had the experience of really like learning from the experts. So you know, the disparity study consultants, Robert himself, everybody's cumulative experience was all together in one place. So it was really good for getting me up to pace. And then by the time that we had our policies together, it was time for myself and Robert to really learn how to implement the tools that were generated from that disparity study. So much of what I've been doing, in terms of implementing the disparity study has been teaching people how to use these tools, you know, learning how to use them ourselves working in partnership with you know, our purchasing department, which has been very critical for the success of the implementation of everything that we're doing as a result of the disparity study, and then to just really working with project managers to who are also responsible for doing a lot of the goal setting that we have. So it's really just been like a very collaborative effort in terms of getting this thing off the ground.

Bridget Doherty: 19:56

That is really interesting, because I know that it A lot has happened in a short period of time, and then bringing everybody along with you on this journey to do things differently as a government as a whole. I mean, I'm sure that you know that a lot has gone into that. And I know it has. And even from a communication standpoint, I think we, you know, I definitely know that my goal is to communicate a lot more about these new ways of doing business with the county to let everybody now I was wondering, incorporating equity and inclusion has really has really bled into our entire county, can you talk a little bit about how to incorporate how the journey you've been on to incorporate equity inclusion into the different departments, by,

Robert Bell: 20:46

by what I said before, by changing changing policies, strategies, practices, and expectations, because when Jeff mentioned that trendline before, the reason it began to really move around that time was when the expectations changed, not when the disparity study is, but it started back then. And that's why it's so important. And that's all the equity framework, I mean, that to me, that's the whole thing. As a matter of fact, I just had a meeting with the city of Cincinnati, about the equity framework and our strategies to do it. And one big success for me has been our contract specific goal setting tool, because we knew we needed to give people tools to get to get involved, you know, to get them embedded in the system, rather than us making the goals ourselves and sending it to them. The project manager and the a&e firms take this sheet that we that the disparity study company developed based on our availability data, and they populated it all, we got all the data behind the actual sheet, that auto calculates all all the all the project manager and add people need to do is take the list of services that they want to you list the main services, and then put in the dollar estimated dollar amount for that service. Once they do that the the worksheet auto calculates the percentage that are now the availability which we use as goals for minorities and women. And it's so simple, and then a tally them all at the bottom. So we know the exact percentage and also the exact amount that each each minority firm and women firm should get. And so they're embedded in it. And it's going, it's going very well.

Gabrielle Woehler: 22:29

The added benefit to this too is that we have very tailored goal setting for each specific contract. And it is directly related to the work types of that specific contract. So I do think it's been helpful for project managers and folks in other departments who are responsible for collaborating with us in meeting these goals, to really understand where they're coming from. That too, you know, we're always trying to kind of sit down with folks talk them through the process, showing them where there is room for flexibility and teaching people about, you know, how to make adjustments if those are necessary to and I think just generally approaching it with an attitude that we are here to help everybody get on the same page has been really beneficial. And I

Jeff Aluotto: 23:09

think that's really important because as we've watched this department grow, and we've watched its influence grow throughout the county, it's been really cool to see you even at our department staff meetings, we will see departments that, again, procurement numbers, hiring numbers, all incredibly important in their own right. But we will have people coming out and saying and I think this is again, a testament to how you guys have approached this while people coming out saying hey, we are now looking at the services that we provide overlain with a with population demographic data in the county so that we can see are we hitting the different areas in this county, the different populations in this county that can benefit from our services. And it's been eye opening for people. So again, back to your question, Bridgette, I think what we've seen from your office, Robert, is that departments are now really trying to figure out how do we make sure that our operations are equitably serving residents in this county. And it is now you've had so much success that it's not just about equity and inclusion at its its base definition. But we've added things into your department now. So talk a little bit, if you will about some of the other areas of your department, some of the other divisions of your department because we're taking a much broader definition of equity and inclusion.

Robert Bell: 24:37

Well 513 Relief is the epitome of the equity framework. And we saw that from the beginning. And we continue to make sure that it applies there. So there are there are a poster child for economic inclusion. What it did was it took us out of our offices, it made us go to the community and residents and say what do you need instead of coming up with what they need in our conference? has rooms and meetings and then telling them. And that's what we're trying to do with every all of our services now is really because because what happens is a key piece of gares economic framework is community engagement and engage. And the root word of engagement is engaged, which means to induce to participate. You can't just sit in your office and say, We're here and expect people to come. So what what and Commissioner reasons saw that from the beginning, we needed to take it out to them. But it was a strong philosophy of our economic of our equity framework. So we're doing it we're doing it all with every program we do now. I've had trainings and meetings with the staff to really have them lay out how are you going? That the whole idea hot? Well, how are you going to make sure that we're utilizing equity framework in your, in our individual services? And the way you measure that is, is, you know, we're bringing, because our clients and our businesses are more partners, and customers and clients, if you make them partners, what does that do? It makes you make sure you understand and know them, but also allow them to have input into the services we're trying to give them. And that's true equity.

Jeff Aluotto: 26:12

And so we have also now two, we have five, one through leaf, which is a part of the department, the operations. So again, for you local government walks out there, we have the Office of Women and Girls commission Commission on Women and Girls, which is under the Office of Equity and Inclusion, we have the Office of Family voice, which is a a division that's going to that's just getting up and running now designed to help people going through the children's services system, to equip them with mentors and people who've been through that themselves to help them with that process. We have the Inspire program is well, that's why, Robert, if you want to talk a little bit about the Inspire program,

Robert Bell: 26:55

well, because one of the things that struck me while ago and Stephanie Dumas was the brainchild of this, but it made a lot of sense to me when I heard it because, you know, our equity SETT Framework says we really need to know, how do we reach everyone in the community. And you know, we do real good with nonprofits, but community groups and grassroots groups we're still struggling with. And one of the things, because we found that out when we were doing the PPC, you know, the COVID stuff with what PPP distribution, we found out that if we reached out to them, we could serve, you know, twice or three times as many people, and that worked for emergency services and their supplies. But, you know, we wanted to make sure that my goal was to establish more of a relationship with these folks, especially when we began to find out how much they were, they were working to contribute to the welfare of our children and Hamilton County. And and some of them were paying their own money to do this stuff. So we, you know, we ran with Commissioner Dubis is idea and came up with$5,000 grants that that we would give them and you know, Commissioner Duma says in our public statements about it, they would act like it's a million dollars up to them, but we wouldn't not given them. We don't give them the money itself. But we pay for whatever they want. So they submit an application for materials, uniforms, dance shoes, football cleats, I mean, we had we had some football teams, community football teams that the kids had to come off. When they came off, they gave their cleats to the ones that was going in, to replace and, and, you know, we said we need to do something about that. We also had to, we also have community groups that have bands, and they are teaching the kids of music. So they're taking his college scholarships to college. And I didn't know that you could get scholarships being in the band like that, but and they're being very successful with it. So we bought we bought equipment and xylophone xylophones and all kinds of drums and you know, bugles, whatever they need it to teach these kids these kinds of things. And they go through parades in the community with this, but and it's just $5,000. But but but they're so grateful for it, because it really helps them really achieve their goals and it keeps children off the streets, give them the chance to learn different skills activities, they go on trips, field trips, and all kinds of things. And we fund that.

Gabrielle Woehler: 29:23

I also think it's important to add to the design of the program is intended to reduce barriers for these small organizations as well. Typically, the procurement requirements for using federal funding because this is funded through the American rescue plan Act are exceedingly burdensome for some of these small organizations that are just trying to kind of get their programming together for their students and just manage the day to day operations. So Alice Bledsoe, the inspire youth initiative, program manager, she is the one who is responsible for navigating all of those purchasing restrictions. And it's designed this way on purpose because we want people to have access to this funding without having to To navigate the difficulties of using federal funding. So just another note, that's

Jeff Aluotto: 30:05

a, that's a great point, Gabrielle, because this federal money is out there. But without the county and the office of inclusion, stepping into the middle to serve as the funnel, these groups would never have access to it you. You would never be able to figure these rules out know how to apply them, without the experts in your office helping with that. So. And that's really at the end of the day. I think what this department does is it, it takes a framework, which people sometimes have a tough time understanding how to operationalize, and you guys help them, you're there for them, to help work through this with them as partners to help make progress towards things that everybody knows should happen. But sometimes it's just hard to figure out how do we change to get it to happen, you guys are have been brilliant about doing that.

Robert Bell: 30:59

One of the things I'm most proud of is I had a chance to work with Nick, and emergency management, or EMA director Nick cross when He calls when they're doing their five year plan for disaster relief. And they came to me and said, you know, we really want to make sure that because one of the tenants of the equity framework training, and I did training for the department a year before that we finished disparity study, and that got them ready. But but they came to me and said, you know, we want to make sure we're reaching all segments of the community and understand them. And that's when we use the equity framework map as well, to look and see what they were they were doing it. And then once they got the equity framework and their services overtop of that they realized they weren't getting the surveys out and getting the feedback from certain communities. So they changed the way that they started changing the way that they did it to make sure that they're reaching the most vulnerable communities, because we all know if there is a natural or some kind of disaster who suffers the most those kinds of communities. Sure. So it made a lot of sense to do it. And they were they were helping, you know, helpful with me to try to figure out how do we get this thing done, and then they ran with it?

Jeff Aluotto: 32:06

Well, and I'll just wrap up by saying that you don't get a greater compliment than I remember Nick Crossley, calling me up out during COVID. After you had partnered with him on the distribution of PPP out into some of these communities, and Nix, Nix, and I'm calling this guy all the time. I mean, he gets his stuff out there. He knows what he's doing. So, again, just another way that your expertise has helped this county succeed. So Gabrielle Robert, thanks for being here today. Thanks for coming on the show. Bridget. I feel bad because I took an unsolicited shot at you before. You are everybody's favorite Intern Supervisor. So I just want

Gabrielle Woehler: 32:43

to say yes to that, personally. Thank

Bridget Doherty: 32:44

you. I'm currently looking for interns there, Ashley who's listening. Let's spread the word.

Jeff Aluotto: 32:50

So until all of you that are out there in the community listening and, and we know it's more than that one. Thanks for listening to episode one of season four of heart and hustle in Hamilton County. Just a reminder discret subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify and other providers. You can find this podcast on our website at Hamilton County ohio.gov on the Hamilton County administrator's webpage and on behalf of Bridget Doherty, everyone's favorite intern and supervisor and myself Jeff voluto. We will see you next time on the next episode of Heartless