State personnel bill would overhaul supported-work program and create customized-employment pathway; bill laid over

House File 27,13, a package of technical and programmatic updates to state personnel statutes in Chapter 43A, was presented on March 27 by Chair Cleavorn with technical overview from Blake Chaffee, Deputy Commissioner at Minnesota Management and Budget. The bill contains more than 30 sections that range from statutory cleanups to a substantive proposal converting the current supported-work program into a customized-employment pathway.

Deputy Commissioner Chaffee said the supported-work program has been infrequently used (in 2024 there were two employees in service-worker classifications and two in supported-employment worker classifications, with the most recent hire in 2011). Following a multi-stakeholder advisory committee that included vocational rehabilitation and disability advocates, MMB proposes enabling a customized-employment approach to place Minnesotans with significant disabilities into state jobs. Customized employment is a person-centered process that identifies an individual’s skills through vocational providers and matches those skills to employer tasks and projects; the bill would create a statutory pathway to allow the state to employ people under that model and make related classification changes obsolete over time.

Chaffee and Chair Cleavorn described the other changes as technical cleanups, including removing obsolete references and updating plan names. No public testimony was offered. Chair Cleavorn moved that House File 27,13 as amended be laid over for possible inclusion and the committee adopted that motion.