QUESTION: What's the purpose of that department?

HOGAN: It covers almost everything having to do with people.  It would be social welfare, public health, mental health, disabilities, aging, child protection, child support and prisons.

QUESTION: That first meeting, he's obviously coming in under very difficult circumstances.

HOGAN: It was a remarkable time because I was in emotional shock.  I mean Dick Snelling was an old friend and a mentor of mine.  I remember it vividly, and if I could just quickly tell you, he wanted to know everything I could possibly pass on in those few minutes just so he could begin to really try to grab the reins of everything that was going on.  And instead of me trying to give him a long report, I wroted down 50 key words as I drove over in the care.  It was: welfare, Brandon, disabled, Medicare, children's health and whatever they would be and we just kind of talked..  I was  just kind of laying this material out to him and I had the foresight to ask a third party, director of administration for the agency that I run, just to join me and sit there and try to understand what was happening. 

And after it was over, after that 45 minutes was done and the governor listened patiently and seemed to absorb everything, I asked mr. Profera, either one of two things happened.  Either the governor didn't understand a word I said or he understood everything I said.  And Pete said he understood every word.  And that was the beginnning of a long relationship that we had.  It was a tough time. 

QUESTION: What is Dr. Dynasaur?

HOGAN: Dr. Dynasaur is a marketing name of a pudgy little dinosaur with a stethoscope that basically provides health care for children.  And Vermont has been very generous in that effort so in effect almost all children in Vermont have access to health care coverage.  In Dr. Dynasaur, instead of calling it a welfare program or a public program, we tried to find an image that the general public could relate to and feel comfortable in signing up for that kind of help for the kids.  So Dr. Dynasaur is a marketing device to try to have people comfortable to enroll their children in the public health care system.

QUESTION: What are other states doing?  Is this a unique thing?

HOGAN: It was certainly unique in those days.  I actually later became president of the American Public Welfare Association, which was the association of all those people from around the entire country.  And you know we all steal from each other.  You take the best ideas you can from other people.  And as time moved on more and more states came up with ways to identify their children's health program that wasn't really identified with welfare or poor people or that didn't have a stigma attached, that it was really viewed as a broad-based health care program.  And of course with Medicaid and particularly with Dr. Dynasaur the range of incomes that are coverd are much beyond welfare; it's much bigger than welfare--it really in Vermont, it's pretty generous, it goes up to something like $55,000 for a family of four for that kind of coverage.  So it was an idea to try to make sure all the kids got coverage and the way you do that is to present a bigger idea than just a government program. 

QUESTION: You mention that everyone borrows ideas from everyone else. 

HOGAN: Well we stole another idea from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

QUESTION: Succes by Six?

HOGAN: We actually stole the name; it was a United Way program they had out there...  We felt we needed to find a way to have people out in our communities begin to work together--both educators and people in human services and community collaboratives--to begin to work together on behalf of kids before they got to school, and those words [Success by Six] everybody believes they know what it means, which means that everybody believes they know how to contribute to it.  And those words began a real change in the way we were organized in Vermont on behalf of children.

QUESTION: It's very localized?

Yes, exactly.  What we wanted to do was move it out of the central agencies and engage people who've never been involved in that kind of a process before.  So as a result over time we created local teams, and they all look different in different places, depending on who wants to play, and then we would begin to systematically offer them some generic resources that they could apply in their own strategic ways around some of the outcomes that we established, and the outcomes were very straightforward: All babies are born healthy; all children are ready for school; children succeed in school.  And we worked our way right up the developmental ladder over the years and created a set of outcomes that people could understand.  They weren't these fancily named programs with two-page mission statements; they were: all babies are born healthy--, and when you are able to use that kind of language and community, that's what the Success by Six led us to.  It was the creation of the collaboratives, it was the beginning of spreading some of the resources out, it was the beginning of getting people in the same room, who each had pots of money, to work together on behalf of the families...

But it wasn't the process and the structure that really took root; it was the results.  As a result of that work, we ended up with over 90 percent of all newborns receiving early baby visits from those Success by Six local collaboratives.  We were able to lower  the lead levels in babies' brains in one half as a result of those visits.  We were able to reduce teen pregnancies, we were always low, but they plunged at a rate much quicker than the in the rest of the nation, to the lowest in the nation.  And we were able to reduce child sexual abuses, the worst kind, in 0 to 3, by 60 percent.  I mean these were the results of that way of thinking.  Because if you're abused, you're not going to make it in school.  So that way of thinking and then engage in the local communities, that work is really what the excitement of those years was all about, and Howard Dean saw it, promoted it, pushed us, and really made it possible for a bureaucracy as big as the one I was running to be able to change in those kinds of directions.

QUESTION: What kind of a governing style does he have?

HOGAN: He finds people he can trust and he lets them do their jobs, and he provides strong large view leadership.  He's not a micromanager although he has a remarkable memory of a physician.  I mean physicians are chosen because of their abilty to memorize and in effect regurgitate what they memorize on demand.  He has a remarkable mind in that regard.  But people he would put around him, he gave them free reign. 

Of course my job was to make sure he always knew what was going on and why and then we would constantly promote that work through short press conferences all over the state.  I'll give you an example.  I'd do a weekly report to him...and it wasn't an analytical report, it was just an activity report.  One week I can remember writing, hey gov the people in St. Johnsbury have now achieved 100 percent immunization rate.  And then I'd say something stupid like, And there's nobody else that's beaten that.  Do you want to recognize all those folks at you next press conference, you know put your arms around them?  So we would invite that whole Success by Six team down to a press conference and just show Vermont: 100 percent.  All the kids have immunizations.  That's how we began to do that work and that's his style.

QUESTION: Would he make a good president in your view?

HOGAN: I think he would be extremely refreshing.  Yes Vermont's a small state and there are huge leaps that would have to be undertaken...  But you know in the early '70s I never heard of Jimmy Carter, and I never heard of Bill Clinton...  I think governors have a particular understanding of what the needs of the folks are out there and have a way to relate to them much better than let's say a congressional personage for that type of thing. 

He also has a couple of real strong advantages.  He is a youthful man.  He is a very open-faced guy.  What you see is what you get.  How that translates into being a good president I'd be the first one to tell you humbly, I'm not sure I know.  But he has been an excellent governor here and for a long time...

QUESTION: What about character?

HOGAN: You're never going to find a stronger family man.  He would never have a meeting before 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning because he personally took his kids to school all these years...

QUESTION: What about this "thin-skinned" charge?

HOGAN: He's open faced.  That's what I meant by open faced.  He tells you what's on his mind.  I've watched him on "Crossfire," I've watched him and John Engler go at it, and I think he has the capacity to adjust to the level of focus that needs to be done.  Being president is not the same as being a governor...  I think that being a president has something to do with growth, personal growth and development and do people have the capacity to grow into those jobs and I would say Howard Dean has the capacity to do anything he really puts his mind to.  But yes none of us are perfect. 

QUESTION: But he doesn't irrationally fly off the handle?

HOGAN: We had some beautiful arguments, and that's one of the neat things about this guy; he could push you to the wall behind closed doors, absolutely, and I had the privilege of being able to do the same.  But the neat thing was that once that was over you never look back; neither party ever looked back.  It was always looking forward.  And it wasn't like keeping score about who had arguments about what.

QUESTION: He has his mind made up.  Is he willing to change that if he see that the gut instinct is wrong; is he ever willing to reverse?

HOGAN: Yes I've had the privilege of being on both sides of that.  I've had the privilege of him making his mind up about something I didn't agree on and as governor that is his decision to make.  But I've also had the privilege of a couple of occasions arm-wrestling pretty seriously with him and bringing in the evidence and having him change his mind.  I think a president or any political leader has to have a base of belief of what they believe in and what they think is right and wrong but they also have to have a mind that can change as data and information changes and I think he's shown both sides of that to me.