Enabling legislation was not updated to eliminate different and conflicting provisions.

For example, HBX's enabling legislation prohibits actions that have a quote foreseeable material financial effect, end of quote, on an individual or their immediate family.

The code of conduct, on the other hand, prohibits actions that have a quote, direct and predictable effect on a person closely affiliated with the employee, end of quote.

This is just one example of different standards.

Bill 26-809 strikes the older provisions in the Establishment Act and makes clear that the code of conduct applies to HBX staff and board members.

The bill makes important clarifications to other conflict of interest standards, and these changes are consistent with the recommendations of our HBX Standing Advisory Board.

Whose members include consumer advocates, insurers, brokers, clinicians, and DC Health Link customers.

The bill clarifies that prohibited affiliations are financial affiliations.

It also clarifies the types of professional memberships that are prohibited for board members and staff.

Right now, interpreting the plain language of the statute, no physician who is a member of the American Medical Association is allowed to serve on the executive board or join our staff.

Note that we don't believe that mere membership was intended to disqualify an expert from serving on our board or being hired by us.

A simple statutory clarification addresses the risk of us being wrong.

The proposed legislation clarifies that the prohibition applies to those who are senior members rather than just members of a professional association.

The bill also clarifies purposes section.

HBX's responsibilities have changed since 2013 and include our partnership with Massachusetts, Health Care for Childcare, and Healthy DC plan.

The bill qualifies that HBX's purposes include any authority in the ACA or district law.

The bill also enables IT experts to serve on the HBX executive board.

HBX is governed by an executive board.

Our enabling legislation requires board members to have expertise in two specified areas, but none are IT.

At our core, we're an IT entity, building and operating an online health insurance marketplace.

In the past, HBX has benefited from having a board member with significant technical expertise in enterprise-wide IT systems design and security.

The HBX board supports the proposed the proposed legislation's requirement that one board member have expertise in information technology, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and systems architecture.

Independent personnel authority.

Relying on that report, the council included independent procurement and personnel authority in the establishment act, but the establishment act's language consistent with clause in both the procurement and personnel sections created ambiguity.

Just like then, we support eliminating this ambiguous phrase from HBX's independent personnel authority.

Plain language will remove risk in the executive board and staff decisions, keep HBX competitive in recruiting and retaining top talent, and guarantee that HBX can move quickly to respond to changes in federal law.

And I see my time is running short, so I'm happy to take well I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you this afternoon, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Great.

Thank you so much, uh director and your team.

I just have some uh clarifying questions that we want to get on the record.

Okay.

So you noted in your testimony that the last time that um the code language for HBX was modified.

Um

was

in 2019 when we did the Health Benefit Exchange Authority, independent procurement authority, amendment act of 2019 to remove consistent with language.

Um this was with regard to amendments and procurement practices.

Um this is more of a check-in question.

But since that time, um how has this modification enabled HBX to be able to do what you need to do from a procurement standpoint without let's see, the limitations of

government.

Uh uh well, it was always our position that uh you, the council intended HBX to have independent procurement authority.

Yeah.

Um the phrase consistent with language um uh uh made it somewhat ambiguous, and we were not comfortable um exercising our full authority uh without getting clarification exactly um um uh what we needed to do to um to comply with um any applicable standards.

And so the council clarified the procurement authority and made it clear um essentially our board adopts uh policies for our procurement.

It's uh it's based on best practices, and um our board looked at not only DC government procurement practices but federal procurement practices in other states and and has updated our procurement uh policies a number of times.

Um you made it clear that contracts on uh over a million dollars need council approval, and so the rules are very clear, and what that does for us is we make sure, um, given clear rules that we know what we can do and what we're not allowed to do.

And it's worked very well for us.

Uh we engage in competitive uh uh process for contracts.

Uh we spend more than our minimum requirements on CBEs.

As I mentioned, we even use local CBEs to support our Massachusetts partnership work.

Um and having clear authority um helps us be more efficient and frankly helps us stay out of trouble.

We don't want to um uh make decisions that puts us uh put us at risk and with clear authority on procurement, we've been able to uh uh make uh good decisions.

Okay.

So I would say what we're looking to do here is comparable, but um in some cases it's the we're dealing with the not in some cases, in a provision, we're talking about the Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act.

Um talk to me a little bit about now your existing relationship with um DC Department of Human Resources.

When you're doing hiring now, are you all going through the DCHR process and using their software systems, et cetera, to do so?

Uh so yes and no.

We have an MOU, which we've um had for many years with DCHR.

Uh we do rely on um their expertise and uh we use PeopleSoft, for example.

Um we uh we pay them for providing us with services, but when uh we hire, for example, um we get the resumes directly.

We do not um rely on DCHR to look at the resumes or they