Mass. disability employment subcommittee agrees to invite SEED to brief on state-as-model-employer work

Members of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Persons with Disabilities— employment subcommittee agreed to invite representatives from SEED (State Exchange on Employment and Disability), a technical assistance initiative tied to the U.S. Department of Labor—s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), for a short briefing in January or February.

Rachel Stanton summarized the proposed scope: SEED could assist with policy framing for Massachusetts as a model state employer, benefit-cliff modeling, cross-state benchmarking and stakeholder engagement. The subcommittee already has preliminary analytical work from the Department of Economic Research (DER) that SEED could build on. Stanton said the group would prepare a one-page scope outlining the mandate, prior work, and specific data requests for SEED.

Commissioners emphasized the need to coordinate with Commonwealth human resources, DEI offices and relevant agencies. A commissioner noted potential connections with UMass Chan—s Department of Psychiatry and the CAPE Youth (Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth) program for youth employment alignment.

During the SEED discussion, a commissioner repeated a claim that the president—s proposed budget would cut ODEP by "21%" and eliminate a program that manages Section 503 compliance; the claim was raised for monitoring but not resolved in the meeting. The subcommittee asked staff to share materials received from SEED with members and agreed to pursue scheduling and development of a scope of work.

The subcommittee recorded consensus support for inviting SEED; members who spoke in favor said January or February would work for scheduling. No formal contract or funding decision was recorded in this meeting.