[Calm piano music]

(Narrator)
2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, 
the state's largest consumer protection and business regulatory agency. Often referred to

as DCBS, the department administers state laws and rules to protect workers and consumers in

the area as of workers' compensation, occupational safety and health, building codes, insurance, and financial services.

(Worksite Modification Consultant Bob Williams)
My job is the best job in state government. It is a very meaningful job. It results

in substantial tangible benefits. It gets workers back to work who were so desperately injured on

the job that they couldn't do their regular work anymore. They had lost their jobs typically. It used to

be when I started that if you weren't 100 percent, your employer didn't want you back, and so you were

out looking for a job, now, with a great disability. Our program, the Preferred Worker Program, has turned

that on its head. We've reversed that by providing incentives to employers to overcome exactly those

things, address exactly their worries, and overcome the resources that lacked for getting an injured worker back to work.

(Narrator)
The department is currently made up of the Building Codes Division,

Division of Financial Regulation, Oregon OSHA, the Workers' Compensation Division, the Workers' Compensation Board,

two ombuds offices, and shared services. The functions of the department date back to 1887

when the Secretary of State was given ex officio powers as the insurance commissioner. Over the

years, many of the current department's functions were renamed, changed structure, and moved locations.

In 1987, the Department of Insurance and Finance took on many roles of the Department of Commerce.

(Insurance Commissioner, 1987-1992, and Former Governor, 2003-2011, Ted Kulongoski)
What we needed to do was change structure and merge all these commissioners into one entity

and we chose the insurance commissioners to be the focal point. And first, the

department was created was called the Department of Insurance and Finance, eventually morphed into

DCBS; was that, the consumer — that's what this is all — that's why the regulations are there is to protect the consumer.

(DCBS Director, 1993, Gary Weeks)
In 1987, when we were making DIF, and Governor Goldschmidt's one

of his principal focuses was on that challenge. We had the Department of Commerce, which was

at that time more of a licensing oversight agency for banking and securities and so on, and we had

an insurance office, and we had a separate department of workers' comp, which included

OSHA. And, the legislation in 1987 abolished the Department of Commerce and brought the Department

of Workers' Comp, OSHA, the Insurance Division, the banking and securities all together to create

what was then DIF. Again, with the idea that you could manage insurance costs, particularly in

workers comp, better, if you had control over why those costs and insurance went up.

(Narrator)
In August 1993, the Department of Insurance and Finance – also known as DIF – was disbanded and DCBS was created to

serve as an integrated umbrella agency over most state functions affecting businesses.

Several agencies and boards were rolled into DCBS. The largest of these was the Department of Insurance and Finance,

which contained the Division of Finance and Corporate Securities, the Insurance Division, 

Oregon OSHA, the Workers' Compensation Division, and the Workers' Compensation Board.

Another entity placed into DCBS at the time was the Building Codes Agency, now known as the Building Codes Division.

The roots of creating DCBS went back to 1991 when then-Gov. Barbara Roberts created a

task force to look for more efficient ways to deliver state government services and clearer lines of accountability.

(1991 recording of Gov. Barbara Roberts addressing the news media)
The task force will take a look at government structure and it

will ask some tough questions. Are all of these government agencies necessary? Can we eliminate or

restructure the program or the service? Could we merge programs to streamline our agencies? Could we eliminate a board or a commission?

(Narrator)
Gov. Roberts asked DIF Director Gary Weeks and Deputy Director Geoff Guilfoy

to create a reorganization team, which reviewed 32 agencies with related

functions and recommended which ones should join the newly designed DCBS.

(Gary Weeks)
The transition was pretty smooth because DCBS was a change in the name, of DIF, but the responsibilities didn't

change at all really. I mean we still had all the responsibilities that were DIF were in DCBS.

And when I was appointed the director, having been the deputy director of DIF, I had certain ideas

about how the department should behave, and what we should represent, and so on. And I thought it was

far more than just a department of insurance and finance, it was a department of really services.

(Standards and Technical Manager Dave McLaughlin)
So, the best part of working at DCBS is always the mission. With Oregon OSHA, our mission is

hoping to ensure that everyone goes home at night with the same number of body parts they went to work with.

And that has not changed, even predating the Oregon Safe Employment Act, we have always

been essentially that final line in the sand for a lot of employees who had no one else to turn to.

(Narrator)
Senate Bill 167, which ultimately established DCBS, was “trimmed, bounced, 

battered, and left for dead,” according to Weeks. On Aug. 4, 1993, DIF management went home

thinking all their reorganization work was for naught. But 11th-hour maneuvers by the governor

and her staff revived the measure and sometime between 1:30 and 2 a.m. on Aug. 5, 1993, the

upper chamber passed SB167 by a vote of 27 to 3 and DCBS was born.

Currently, DCBS employs more than 900 employees from various backgrounds and fields. From economists to consumer advocates,

administrative assistants to inspectors, DCBS employees strive to provide the highest

quality service to Oregon’s consumers, workers, and businesses.

(Ted Kulongoski)
It's always about the consumer. And I think that's what I like about DCBS and the pivot that they took from DIF is that they

focused on the consumer as the primary purpose of the agency. It's to protect the workplace safety.

(Budget Policy Manager Anita Mendiola)
What I'm most proud of at DCBS, the reason that we're here. You know, when you hear

"regulatory," people tend to think negatively, but when you explain what DCBS does

all the things that we're involved in, whether it be in the banking institution, whether it be

in insurance, whether it be in building codes, you know, or workers' comp, it's all about the people of Oregon.

And helping them, protecting them. What we stand for and what we do is, is I think something to be very proud of here.

(DCBS Director, 2003-2011, Cory Streisinger)
You know, it's hard to say what I'm proudest of because we did a lot.

This agency really accomplished a great deal. I would say we really made sure the agency

focused on protecting Oregon in their consumer needs. So, we had always been very strong I think

in working with businesses and making sure that we were appropriate with our regulatory structures.

We had done a great job in worker protection but we hadn't really focused as heavily on consumer

protection and in the financial sector, in the insurance sector, we added that onto our other accomplishments in a way that I think we had not been able to do before.

(Dave McLaughlin)
When I first started as a compliance officer, we had a Wang Terminal and a typewriter. There were two Windows PCs in

the office and we went by a progression of doing mostly hard copy for things to now almost

everything is computer generated. Even within, after I moved to the technical section,

most of the communication we had with our stakeholders and external folks was by telephone

or written letter so they would, we would get people asked, requesting interpretations on

 various rules or various issues with a letter. And then we would send a letter response.

Transition to now. That's all done by email.

(Financial Operations Manager Andrea Simmons)
The biggest change that I've seen over the years is, really has

been in communication and how we get things done. We've worked pretty siloed to begin with within the

different sections within the division, and over time, we've learned that we can be more effective

if we all pull together and put teams together based on skill set.

(DCBS Director, 2020-present, Andrew Stolfi)
There have been a lot of great things

that we've been able to do together from resolving long-standing third-party

building official issues, to passing nation-leading wildfire smoke and heat illness prevention

rules, to responding to the COVID pandemic, both as a regulator and as an employer, including

the financial crisis that came up during the pandemic.

We've implemented great new programs like the Oregon Reinsurance Program,

the Drug Price Transparency Program, Workers' Comp Modernization is

going to fundamentally change how that division performs all the great duties that it does.

And, all the time, we've done this by leading the state enterprise in operational excellence.

Consistently being at the top of the list across a whole series of operational measures.

(Bob Williams)
When I began, Oregon was at the very top of the cost in the United States

for workers' comp insurance; it was a very bad business place

to do business because of the cost of workers' comp. Today, we are at the bottom 10 states in the nation

for the cost of workers' comp. We've saved a great deal and created a very business-positive environment in Oregon.

(Andrew Stolfi)
I'd say I will not be surprised in any way if we continue to grow, and not in leaps and

bounds, but in small ways that add up over time. And I think there's a really big important reason

for that, and it's that this agency and all of our teams and all of our people do what they do

really well. And that gets noticed by everyone, by our partners and stakeholders, by legislators and

others. So that when new ideas, when new programs are being invented and they're looking for

a place for those programs, they tend to not look a lot further than DCBS. One thing I'd say that

I'm not expecting to change is not only how well we do our job but what a great

place DCBS is to work. And that's of course driven not only by this great shared mission that we have

across all of our divisions, but by the excellent people that work here and their

dedication to that mission, which makes this a great place to work and to be.

And I don't see that changing in any way.

(Anita Mendiola) 
I've stayed so long with DCBS because it feels like home. It feels, it's welcoming.

I really enjoy getting up every day and coming here and just doing the work that we do.

We make a difference.

(Cory Streisinger)
I was actually pretty pleased to see that the agency is still committed to protecting

consumers and workers while promoting a positive business climate.

(Narrator)
As we look to the future, we don’t know what is next for DCBS. But, what we do know is that,

undoubtedly, the dedicated professionals of DCBS will continue to serve the people of Oregon

with honesty, integrity, and dependability.