Executive Committee

Present: Celeste Branham, Ed Barrett, Jenni Tilton-Flood

The Executive Committee gathered virtually for its monthly work session at 3pm.

-- Officers and members. Jonathan Barczyk was promoted at Togus VA and is unable to continue on the Commission. As vice-chair, he was in line to move to chair-elect.  The end result is there are two openings for officers. Executive Committee discussed these and the impact on the Grant committee. It was noted that Jonathan can continue to serve on Grants as a volunteer if he would like. Officer and member vacancies will become a focus as soon as the legislative hearings are over.

-- Update on legislative items. Celeste testified on March 22 at the Environment and Natural Resource Committee during the hearing on LD722, the resolve assigning the commission a study on climate corps. There were several additional speakers besides the sponsor, Representative Rielly. It seems the bill generally has support. Coming next (4/7) is the hearing on Rep. Rielly’s bill to establish the Maine Service Fellows under the Commission’s statute. He has organized a press conference before the hearing and Celeste will represent the Commission there. He has put an enormous amount of effort into this bill including an op ed last weekend and enlisting two students to organize grassroots support.

-- OIG final report issued. The final OIG report was sent the evening of March 30. As might be expected, there was no change. The process now goes to resolution. This phase gives both the Commission and LearningWorks an opportunity to work directly with CNCS which will review work papers, among other things. It was noted that LearningWorks’ board is strongly leaning towards ending the AmeriCorps grant after this experience. Exec committee members understand their sentiment but hope they can be dissuaded from taking that step. They discussed how to support the agency through the process.

-- Update on DEI training for board. This was delayed by the need to address requests from Rep Rielly and prepare for the hearings.

-- Annual Report.  (it’s posted 3 ways so here is the link to the press release: https://volunteermaine.gov/media/news/volunteer-maine-publishes-2020-annual-report) Hard copies arrived much later than the digital copy was posted. The hard copies will be mailed to legislators, other key officials, and Commission members.

-- Task Force updates. Communications is still deep into the PSA campaign development and Grants is gearing up for the formula grant competitions. Ed has taken it on himself to edit the RFP for future use. He is focused on repeated information and references to federal requirements that might be explained better.

There being no other items to discuss, the committee members dispersed at 4:01 pm.