Assembly Standing Committee on Budget

Good morning. We're going to call the Assembly Budget Committee to order. Thank you for coming today. Again, we are here to present the State Budget. This is a reflection of our legislative agreement that we continue to discuss with the Governor's Office. We appreciate LAO Department of Finance, our Assembly Budget staff for being here today. We are taking public comment. We'll take public comment at the end, 1 minute each, and we also allow public comment over the phone.

The call-in number is 877-692-8957 and the access code is 18501100. Any issues, please call the Budget Office at 916-319-2099. As you can see, with the budget presented in front of you, continues to fully invest in education, has a historic rate increase for childcare, which is long overdue. We also continue to move closer towards universal health care and making sure that we are increasing health care access.

We also, since the last version of our budget that we discussed, allowed more flexibility for transit funding and transit operators, especially those facing fiscal cliffs around the state. And we also added an additional year of HHAP funding, along with adding accountability measures to make sure that we can continue to do our part and help support all the local jurisdictions really working on homelessness. We are continuing to discuss this budget with the Governor's Office.

We hope in the coming days to be able to have an agreement which, again, we will be presenting back to this Committee. Today we have panelists Amy Jarvis from Department of Finance. We have Anthony Simbol and Carolyn Chu from LAO and Christian Griffith in our Assembly Budget team. I'm just going to look at Ms. Jarvis, see if you have any opening comments.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, Chair, Team, Vice Chair Fong and Members of the Committee. Amy Jarvis with the Department of Finance. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Legislature's budget. While the Legislature's budget includes different proposals and approaches to addressing the budget problem than the Governor's May revision, we do recognize that like the May revision, the Legislature's budget protects many of the state's core programs, including in healthcare, human services, education, homelessness, and climate, all while addressing a budget shortfall of more than $30 billion.

We also note that, like the May revision, the Legislature's budget recognizes the potential risks to our fiscal outlook that lie ahead, such as high interest rates, continued financial institution uncertainty, the delay of more than $40 billion in personal and corporate tax receipts until October. It does so by maintaining the balance in the rainy day Fund, a key budget tool, and an important insurance policy. The May revision, unlike the Legislature's budget, does not include significant new discretionary spending and holds the line on new ongoing spending.

The Administration looks forward to having continued conversations with the Legislature to reach a budget agreement that protects vital programs, maintains budget resiliency, and advances our shared priorities. Thank you again for the opportunity to comment. I am joined by my colleagues today, and we are happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. LAO, any comments? Great. Assembly Budget, do you have any comments for us? No? Okay. Just going to the Members to see if they have any questions for any of the folks, we'll go to Vice Chair Fong.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my first question, and maybe it's to Christian or maybe it's the Department of Finance, have the revenue estimates changed enough to allow this budget framework to spend about $3 billion more than the governor's proposal in 2023, 2024. Help me understand how the May revision was 307,000,000,000. This one, I think, scores at 310/ 311,000,000,000. Have the revenue estimates changed?

Mr. Fong, there is a slight difference in the revenue estimates between this version, which is actually was in our Assembly version, and the May revision in the way that it treats property tax revenue. So we're using LAO property taxes, but overall we have the same revenues as the May revision.

I think since we're pretty close to the May revision reserve levels and also basically at the same level we were with the budget that we presented in full Committee last time, I think what you see is expenditures moving around between years to achieve that outcome. So I think kind of what you're comparing apples to apples isn't quite the same because I think we essentially have more savings in current year to make the budget year work.

And that's why it looks like there's more spending even though the reserve level is the same and the revenue levels are essentially the same.

So maybe I can go to the Department of Finance. Do you see the revenue numbers changing at all? Or, how do you, have the revenue numbers changed enough to justify a $3 billion difference between the May revision, between the legislative proposal and the May revision?

We typically do not update our revenue estimates after the May revision. And as Christian mentioned, the only difference is this plan uses the LAO's property tax revenue estimates.

Okay. Maybe I'll go to the LAO since it was mentioned. You wrote in the analysis of the May revision that--I'll use the phrase--there's risky revenue estimates. That wasn't what you said, but that you wrote that there's a roughly two thirds chance revenues will come in lower than what the Governor estimates and that adopting them would present considerable downside risk.

So since this proposal mirrors the Governor's May revision, what analysis do you have in terms of the assumption that the Legislature's proposal makes in terms of using the governor's revenue numbers?

Carolyn Chu from the LAO. So yes, the Legislature's budget package does use the administration's estimate as of May. There are some differences between years, as you noted, in terms of the expenditures, but overall the level of resources is the same in terms of our revenue estimates that we put together a little bit after the Department of Finance in May. They are lower, about $11 billion lower, which increases the budget problem by about $6 billion.

We did say at the time that we do think the administration's estimates are plausible in the context of the State General Fund Budget. $11 billion is not enormous in terms of a difference, but it is a difference. We do still think there is downside risk, given the uncertainty in the economy and the continued high interest rate environment. And we can't predict with certainty whether or not there will be a recession or not. But it does appear that California is in a revenue downturn.

So following that line of analysis, your charts in your most recent report indicated that the budgets create ongoing deficits in future years. Does this legislative framework solve any of those future deficits, whether it's this one or in the May revision?

The May revision did not address the multi year deficits. And you are correct that our analysis, particularly in the out years, found that the level of expenditures would be less likely to be supported. One of the things that we noted at that time was that there remains in this budget package and in future years planned spending, significant one time spending. That could be sort of the first line to consider addressing those potential future budget problems.

I'll note that revenue estimates three years from now are particularly uncertain, but it's the best we have at this time. As far as we're aware, the Legislature's budget package maintains generally the framework that was in the May revision in terms of the multi-year spending.

But in the same analysis, the LAO, in your recommendation, you advise that should revenues come in lower than expected, then there will be more budget solutions, cuts, however you want to phrase it, that will have to be done in the future,.

At least in the May revision. There was about $11 billion in one-time spending that was maintained in the budget year. And generally speaking, the Legislature's package maintains a lot of that one-time spending. So should revenues come in lower than anticipated by this package, the Legislature would have the option to look at the extent to which those expenditures have been made yet as one of the opportunities to solve the budget problem.

Let me just simplify. I think what you're trying to say is that if the revenues come in lower, we've got budget problems.

If revenues come in would be there would be a budget problem, yes.

So the Department of Finance, when you score this proposal, and of course, even in your May revision, are there deficits in the out years? And if so, what are they?

I'm sorry, I don't have that information in front of me. But we're not expecting revenue increases necessarily in the future.

So in the May revision, do you have deficits in the out years? You don't know that? Or do you haven't done it? Because I believe you have done it. I can read it to you, but I would like you to say it to me at least.

Good morning. The Department of Finance? Yes, you are correct. There are deficits that are in the current out year plan.

Okay, and what are those numbers?

I did not bring the exact numbers with me for the multi-year, but I believe the largest of which is in the final of the five year forecast, and it's about $14 billion.

Okay, so you didn't bring your analysis with you to a Budget Committee hearing.

I was planning to discuss your plan, so I apologize.

Well, this one mirrors your plan, right?

Yes, for the out years. For this, we usually just do the budget window at finance. We don't do the multi year until the final agreement.

So in terms of your analysis of the May revision, what is the out year deficits in the May revision?

I believe the highest point is $14 billion.

$14 billion next year?

No, in the final year. 20, 627.

Okay, so what is the deficit next year?

Yeah, I did not bring the multi-year, so I apologize.

Can you have someone go get it for me?

Throughout the administration's May revision proposal, the deficits in the out years hover around $14 billion.

Okay, so they have around $14 billion. Okay. I'm glad the LAO has it. In terms of this proposal, my analysis says that there's probably more borrowing and cost shifts to try to address the deficit. Is that analysis correct? Made to the LAO.

Under the Legislature's budget package, there is some infrastructure spending that the Administration proposed to pay for with cash that the Legislature's package shifts to lease revenue bonds. So there is slightly more borrowing, but very reasonable to shift in the context of a budget problem to borrowing in that case.

So then if there is new debt from borrowing, I read it there was some new debt from borrowing from special funds. How does this plan pay back that debt?

Typically when the state makes loans from the special funds, in times of budget problems, there is a multi-year plan to repay them over the next few years. And so my expectation is that the Legislature's plan would mirror that from the Administration to make those repayments over the next three or four years.

But we'd have to figure that out in the future years.

Yes, that would be scheduled into the future years.

So the way that they address this shortfall at this very moment with the revenue shortfall that we currently have is that there are shifts out to the future. They're shifting some of the spending out to the future and there's more debt.

So I can address that question I think. So our May revision included a balanced plan to close the gap, which included, as you mentioned, revenue and borrowing, fund shifts, spending, reductions in pullbacks, delayed spending, and then the safety net reserve withdrawal.

Okay, so, yes, there is. You do shift out to the future, you borrow, you try to move things around, and then you also have some revenue from the MCO tax, correct? Is that correct?

Yes, correct.

Mr. Fong, I would also point out that typically the way we finance things like, for example, building courts or building state buildings, was to use bonds. So this was sort of an extraordinary thing that we were using cash in the first place, which was kind of asynchronous with the way the state usually does business. So essentially this is returning to the norm in terms of how we do business in these different infrastructure packages.

Sure. I think there's a conversation I know that you and I had about some of the things that aren't in here that might get moved to a bond on climate and other things. Certainly not part of this discussion. But I just want the Committee to understand that things that aren't here that end up being in a bond end up creating debt right. That we have to end up paying back in the future.

In terms of I guess one of the big questions and elephant in the room is the revenue estimates. And of course, with the tax deadline being pushed to October at this very moment, I mean, do we have kind of an updated projection in terms of what we're looking at in the fall, either with Department Finance or Lao? I know you don't do a big analysis, but I'm just trying to note the trends coming since April.

I think it's really the delay that I mentioned earlier, and we're expecting that delay to be about $40 billion in personal and corporate tax receipts that will be delayed until October.

$40 billion? Yes. There's that level of uncertainty of whether that will materialize or do you anticipate?

Colby White, Department of Finance so, yeah, as Ms. Jarvis mentioned, we are expecting $42 billion in corporate and personal income tax receipts to shift from earlier months to October. It reflects a combination of estimated January, April, June, and September estimated payments, as well as final payments and extension payments made in April.

How do I evaluate that $42 billion? Is that within the realm of what normally comes in?

It's a reflection. As I mentioned, it's a reflection of both payments related to tax year 2022 and tax year 2023. If you want to think of it in terms trying to contextualize it, the $42 billion figure reflects, it's in the 20% range of total fiscal year revenues.

Okay, so if the $42 billion materializes, then the deficit that you guys are projecting is roughly the same. It's 31, 32 billion.

If revenue forecasts come in as projected then that would be the same.

And if revenue comes lower, then the deficit will be larger and we'd have to do a little bit more yeah.

From the revenue side alone, holding everything else constant. I mean, you have expenditure issues, expenditures. And things like that.

That's just the revenue conversation that we're trying to I guess wrap our heads around is just what the revenue numbers are. Right? Because if the revenue numbers come under and I think this is the conversation we're having, is that the LAO number is a little bit more, I wouldn't even say conservative, I think there's more indicators going in, and I think you guys are more status quo if I can provide that my own personal view of that.

And so if the revenue numbers come in less, then we've got a larger budget problem in the future.

Yeah, I mean, you talked a bit about the multi-year as well. So the revenue forecast, as Ms. Chu mentioned, the LAO, is 11 billion lower than us through the budget window, through '23, '24. And the Department of Finance actually has lower growth rates in the out years versus LAO.

Okay. Delving into at least some of the specifics within this framework. There is, this legislative proposal reduces funding to the Strategic Energy Reserve. I think last year it was $937,000,000 into it. I guess maybe, Christian, you can kind of outline why cut the Strategic Energy Reserve if we're going into when we talk about energy reliability and just the need for additional power?

Our reasoning for cutting that was that the Administration had not allocated the funds yet. They had not been encumbered. Recent estimates of the energy sort of system are saying that we're actually okay for this summer. So given that that was sort of a short term investment, we felt that this wasn't necessary for this summer for energy reliability, given the rains and hydro increases.

Okay. I mean, this is one of those areas where I probably may align more with the Administration, but maybe I can talk to the Department of Finance. Is this an area where you would agree or disagree with that type of decision?

Sorry, that was not on. Let me start that over. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Mr. Vice Chair. Jeff Bell, Department of Finance. Obviously, we designed a budget that included those resources, and we're not in a position to support that at this time.

Okay. And then it wouldn't be a budget hearing without me asking about water. So this proposal doesn't have, it's the same as the previous years. But I just wanted to state for the record that there isn't above ground storage funding in this legislative package, nor in the May revision. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Okay. Yes, it's correct.

And then I guess my last question, at least when it comes to transportation, as the Vice Chair of Transportation, does this budget framework and as well as the May revision both assume revenue from the increase in the gas tax in the summer? Is this proposal assuming that the gas tax will increase under SB 1?

Frankie Mendez from the Legislative Analyst Office. Yes. Under the legislative package and the administration's May provision proposal, the gas tax would increase in the summer of July as indicated in statute?

Certainly appreciate that. I think that's certainly an area of concern for many Members. And then my last question, I know there's a lot of attention on transit operations, certainly a priority for the chair. I'm just trying to understand, in terms of the funding that's associated or has been restored, has any of that funding tied to an increase of ridership, or how are we evaluating the success of this transit infusion? Do you anticipate a need for another infusion in the future?

Genevieve Morelos, Assembly Budget Committee we are working right now on accountability language that would be tied to these dollars, both the TRRCP dollars and the ZEB dollars that would include provisions that would be related to increasing ridership and helping transit operators move forward. We believe these dollars are one-time funding to fill the gap.

Okay, and then one quick question. I know some other Members may ask about the MCO, but can someone give me an update on the MCO tax conversation?

I believe that conversation. I mean, we have the MCO revenue assumed here, but there's discussions going on about how that would actually work, and those are still ongoing.

Ongoing. I guess that's the phrase of the day, right? Everything's ongoing. I guess maybe my question to the Department of Finance, my last question is, what concerns you about this proposal? Are there any big sticking points that you feel that this proposal has wrong.

Overall budget, not just the MCO techs? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Overall.

Okay, sorry, just wanted to clarify. I think that it's just generally we have a lot of shared priorities, but we need to continue working together to reach a three party agreement. But I think we have a lot of shared goals throughout the Legislature's plan.

Okay, well, I want to thank the Chair for allowing me to ask questions. Certainly the budget process at this point is ongoing, and it's not complete yet. I do have concerns that this budget proposal does assume and is based on risky revenue estimates. And I think that while revenues are going to decrease, I think the amount of spending that continues is unsustainable, which will create multi year budgets, create deficits in the future. And I think that's not fiscally responsible. So. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Other questions, comments from the dais? Ms. Bonta, Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you. Appreciate it. I have some questions for DOF about in the area of early childcare and TK. So one is that we certainly in our legislative budget did not shift to a 10-to-one ratio for TK in this budget year as outlined in statute. I know that that's absolutely critical as we bring on four year olds to actually have a ratio that is going to ensure the highest quality of care. And I'm concerned that we are not moving forward with what is in statute right now.

Erin Gabel, Assembly Budget Committee. Yes. Want to confirm that the legislative budget would shift the timeline for moving from a 12-to-one adult to child ratio to 10-to-one in the '25, '26 school year. In recognition of the workforce shortages that we're facing across the entire education sector, there was a belief that we needed to provide a little bit more time, but to also guarantee an implementation timeline for our local education agencies.

So for them to be able to know now that the state is committed to the funding necessary and to the ratios necessary for those younger four year olds to be served appropriately in a universal TK classroom.

It's absolutely critical, and I know that we have Majority Leader Reyes Hill here who has brought forward legislation, and it is a legislative priority, certainly of the Women's Caucus as well, to ensure that we have the rate increases.

So I'd love to hear from DOF what the commitment is to ensuring that we provide rate increases for childcare and also how we in the legislative and how DOF really estimates in the legislative package how we are able to provide more support to families and providers through lower family fees and streamline eligibility.

Chris Ferguson with Finance. Certainly the conversations around childcare reimbursement rates, preschool reimbursement rates, associated family fees continues to occur between the representatives for the Legislature and the Administration. That said, within the legislative package, it's certainly assumed that there is a level of available resources within the existing appropriations to support the increases that have been put forward. And certainly the collective bargaining discussions between Childcare Providers United and the state is underway and continuing at this time.

Can you also address the issue of lower family fees and ensuring that we have the kind of flexibility that we need around reimbursement policies and eligibility?

Sure. In the legislative package, there are provisions around reducing family fees to, I believe it's, 1% of income as a cap. The conversations around what that will look like between the Administration and the Legislature continue. I will say that the early action package that the Legislature adopted earlier in May extended the family fee waivers through, I believe it's September 30 of 2023, which helps provide time for those conversations to continue.

So is your sense that we're going to be able to ensure that we have increased eligibility opportunities for families in this moment now flexible reimbursement policies and an opportunity to ensure that providers are paid the reimbursements that they deserve?

I can't make that commitment today. What I can say is that the conversations are occurring between representatives for the Legislature and the Administration.

I appreciate that given that this is continuing to be a top priority for the Women's Caucus, and we have several pieces of legislation, one that Majority Leader Reyes is carrying, another that Senator Limón is carrying, and one and several that I'm actually carrying related to these issues and continues to be a top priority for us.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for your testimony here today. I wanted to start off by a question related to revenue regarding capital gains, and anybody can provide some feedback on that given sort of recent trends. And of course, you don't want to put all your eggs into the basket of capital gains, but can anybody provide a reassessment that's been done about what that means for us next year? I'd like to hear from DOF and from LAO on that.

Colby White, Department of Finance. Thank you for that question. So the capital gains revenue forecast that was included in the May revision was done in early April, and so it reflected stock market performance up until that time. It follows we received tax data related to tax year 2021 that showed capital gains was very high at the realizations were at 341,000,000,000. And so the May revision forecast assumes, but roughly a 30% year over year decline in tax year 2022, reflecting lower stock market and at 240,000,000,000, which translates to roughly 24 billion in capital gains revenue for tax year 2022. Over the longer horizon, we continue to believe that cap gains will decline and eventually reach around 170,000,000,000 by 2025.

When was that last reassessment done?

So the May revision forecast was done.

That's for May revision. Okay.

Yeah. So right around towards the end of April was when we locked down that forecast and looked at the stock market performance to date. At that point, the SMP was in the range of 4100. And so today it's a bit above 4300.

Thank you. Any additional comments?

Carolyn Chu, LAO. So, as Mr. White noted, we don't have any really new information per se since our May revision estimates were put together, given that the tax filing deadline has been pushed to October. That said, our office's lower revenue estimates reflect the fact that we can see and observe a relationship between withholding payments, so the money taken out of folks checks every week or month, and capital gains or generally speaking, estimated payments, the payments made by higher income individuals.

And our estimates reflect that historical relationship between those two types of payments and that with the declines in withholding that we have seen this year to date, we would anticipate somewhat lower estimated payments and capital gains revenue as compared to what the administration put together. As Mr. White noted, the market is slightly higher than it was, but with sustained higher interest rates, California has some sectors that are particularly sensitive to that environment, and we would anticipate to continue to see estimated payments to be somewhat lower than they have been in recent years when interest rates were considerably lower.

I asked that question just trying to find a glimmer of hope going forward on revenues being meeting the projected revenues, which I still think, given all the information data to date, we definitely have a shortfall of revenues and I would also note that I believe the only estimated payment was for the first quarter of the year. June 30 will be the second quarter, and perhaps there's more information there. But I asked that because I do believe that we will have to be very cautious and not be optimistic with our revenue projection going forward. So the following questions are related to that. In our, let me ask the Department of Finance on the governor's proposed expenditures, especially the one time, the 11,000,000,000 one time. How are you anticipating to make decisions on the expenditures of those? Because the last thing I like to see is those funds start to be expended and we don't have those funds available. So what is the decision making process for those expenditures? And then I'll ask our budget team how our proposed budget addresses that.

I'm not sure I can provide you a detailed list. There are a number of items that make up that one time spending. But generally speaking, we're interested in maintaining those core programs that are really important to us, which include healthcare, human services, education, homelessness and climate. So I think that we have done some pullbacks even in this budget which require some current year adjustments. And so that is an option that we can consider if things come in lower. But at this time, I think we're anticipating that we'll be able to meet all of the obligations we put forward in our May revision.

You believe that we will be able to make those $11 billion expenditures.

At this time, yes.

We will not have to make mid year reductions to those program expenditures.

At this time, yes, based on our May revision forecast.

I'll ask the LAO to comment on that and then I'll ask our budget team.

Under the Legislature's budget package, the revenue estimates that are included here do assume that all of those commitments can be made and can be expended. There are a number of significant one time expenditures in the budget year which follow on a few years of pretty significant one time expenditures. So I think, as you may be referencing, there is the possibility that come mid year there would be appropriations that had not yet been dispersed or sent out, and so those could prove to be potential solutions should the revenues come in lower.

So let me ask what our language says about when those decisions get made and by whom, and are these trigger expenditures based on revenue that's actual or how are we going to be able to make that decision mid year, first quarter, whenever it is that we should not move forward with some of these expenditures?

Christian Griffith with Assembly Budget. I think I would look to this budget plan and see the fact that we were able to put priorities on the table within the May revision by making offsetting reductions. Some of those reductions were funds that were first allocated in 21, 22, so prior year. So we were able to find savings in prior year, find savings in current year, find savings in budget year to make it work within this framework that the governor had proposed, and to be able to put priorities like an additional year of HHAP funding and put priorities like the transit funding back into this, into the overall structure. And I think we've shown that we can do that.

And I feel very confident, especially the fact that we did maintain the entire amounts of reserves, we did left those untouched. We have 37 billion in reserves. So if we are in a position where revenues are underperforming, we get back in January, I think there'll be a lot of the funds are not going to go out particularly fast. We're seeing the rates of expenditure to these programs are not particularly quick.

There is a lot of encumbrances and there was a lot of discussion about can we disencumber things and kind of replan mid year. But I think we're very confident that we can get back in January and come up with a plan. Because what the reserves essentially give you is they give you time to act when we have more certainty. Because right now you can pick any revenue number because we don't have any revenue collections that are reliable. And you can kind of make a story about we're going to have a great year next year, we have a terrible year next year. And the other challenge we're going to have next year is we're going to have the legacy of this 2022 collection period, which were based on taxes people earned in 2021. That will have to come due when everyone pays their taxes in October.

And on top of that, what's going on with the economy now and what's going to go on the economy next year. And I think the way I look at it is that I'm definitely nervous about the 2021 number. I'm more optimistic about the 2024 number, but we'll be looking at three different years of data all at the same time. And so that story will all come together. And if we do need to adjust our expenditure plan, I think what we've seen here is that especially in the Assembly, we are ready to have difficult conversations about reprioritizing, especially in sub three. We had a very difficult conversation about that and was successful about being able to take priorities off the table, move priorities around, and we're prepared to do it again.

I appreciate that. That helps me understand the thinking long term because there are a lot of Californians and certainly I think a lot of us who are thinking if the revenue isn't realized and we do need to make decisions, how are we going to make those decisions? And I think it's important to put that on the record. Now, I'd asked Department of Finance if they're in agreement that if revenue doesn't materialize and we need to make these decisions, is there a thinking on a prioritization? Is it dollars that haven't been encumbered? Is that would be sort of tier one? Could you share your thinking of what that could look like?

I think consistent with this year's governor's budget and we will have the opportunity to reassess, as Mr. Griffith stated in January, we'll reprioritize based on our revenue estimates at that time, and we haven't identified priorities yet. But yes, one of the factors that we considered this year was unencumbered balances. So that was definitely a consideration that we made. And then, of course, priority setting as well.

Okay, appreciate that. I want to acknowledge the budget staff and the committee's work on protecting some of the loans and shifts from particularly the safety net. I know that's in our version of the budget, I'd like to get clarification from finance. I think that was still in the May revise. Do you have a different opinion at the moment on the utilization of that und?

No, I think we continue to think that that's the best way to address the shortfall is the revenue and the borrowing. The fund shifts, the spending reductions, and pullbacks delayed spending and then of course, the safety net reserve withdrawal.

Okay, let me focus just a tiny bit my next few questions on education, and so I'd ask the staff to come forward on that. It'd be along the same lines if revenue projections are different. In education, it's so much driven by Prop 98 and it is what the funding, what the formula says it is. But that could change the budgeted amounts to education in a way that could sort of throw something into the path of growth that education has seen over the last couple of years. Given the questions I just asked about the potentials, what is the thinking about the funded programs if numbers are reduced and then in the out years, that also means a reduction in education funding?

Erin Gabel, Assembly Budget Committee. We actually have taken a very concerted effort over the last few years of surplus and growth within the Proposition 98 guarantee to adopt budgets that were very cognizant, that some of the increase in the guarantee was potentially going to fluctuate in the out years. And so you saw, for example, in the current year, a significant amount of money, about $3 billion in guarantee funds scored towards one time purposes. And you continue to see us doing that in the budget year as well in the proposal. So as the surplus has needed to be right sized within the guarantee, we've had more flexibility to be able to reevaluate those priorities, reconsider those one time expenditures, and then reduce them accordingly without touching any of the funding that we see on our LEA's spreadsheets over the multi year. So we're very optimistic.

You'll see, we have not touched the rainy day fund in the legislative budget with the adoption of the property tax revenues from the LAO. We're also providing a little bit more of a secure base within the guarantee for funding and I think we're very optimistic. For example, despite the historic COLA of 8.22% across the board and last year's historic increase of approximately 15%, that can be protected over the multi year without having to make any kinds of midterm reductions even if we see some volatility. The rainy day fund is a historic amount of over $10 billion, and that's going to provide quite a bit of protection for ongoing investments in the budget.

Thank you for the response. One priority is also related to childcare and I just wanted to create some certainty about that funding being one time versus ongoing. Can you talk about what the legislative proposal is on childcare and rates in particular for families that are looking and desperately needing childcare?

Yes. On the sub two side, childcare is probably one of the largest areas of difference between the May revision and the Legislative budget package. So we are looking at a total of $1.2 billion in increases between general fund and Proposition 98 for rate increases in the budget year that would be ongoing. So we are looking at a 25% COLA to the regional market rate which funds our preschool and childcare programs, and a 5% increase to the standard reimbursement rate for those counties that's reimbursements in the private market are so low that they are not yet on the regional market rate. So it's a significant difference.

And again, that's not one time that's ongoing.

We have ongoing commitments in the legislative budget package.

Lastly, thank you all for answering those questions. I think my last question is on what the Legislature is being asked with this vote and the vote tomorrow. There's a lot of talk about multiple trailer bills. What bills would we be seeing? Do you know what we'd be seeing tomorrow in terms of trailer bills or are we only going to be moving forward with the budget framework?

It's just the SB 101 for the assembly. That's the only bill before us at this point. The other bills, no other bills are in print on the assembly side.

Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate the time.

Thank you. We're going to assemble Member Revis and then Assembly Member Friedman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start just making comments on some of the budget items. First on know. While I'm thankful that we're looking at providing an additional year of HAPP funding, I would like to say that I've been working with a number of advocates, including the League of Cities, CSAC and the Bring California Home Coalition, which is a number of organizations across the state. But I've been disappointed in the lack of communication from the administration on this issue.

It's the number one issue that Californians want to see addressed and yet we have had very little communication with the administration on our efforts to not only create ongoing funding but to ensure strict accountability which many of my colleagues have also expressed that they want to see when we're providing funding for homelessness. While today we're providing a Band Aid in today's budget of providing one more year of HAPP funding, we're not really taking the aggressive steps needed to address homelessness.

I think we could be doing better, and I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and our budget chair, who I know is as equally committed to addressing homelessness. Next, as a member of the Los Angeles County Delegation, I want to note that the 39 members of the LA County Delegation voted not to support new budget requests this year that add additional pressures on the state.

Instead, our delegation voted to request that specific budget commitments that were agreed in the 2021 and 2022 budget fiscal year be honored in this budget. And one of the issues that we held meetings on was the film tax credit, and I'd like to say that I'm excited to see that the tax credit is in the budget. I also want to thank both our Senate and Assembly Budget Chairs for meeting with the delegation on these priorities and hearing from our members. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember Friedman. And then we'll go back to Assemblymember Bonta and then Assemblymember Lee.

Thank you very much for the presentations and I very much appreciate all the work that's been done in the budget and I also appreciate that it's a tough budget year and there's no getting around that. There's going to be things in this budget that people don't like for sure. And I think overall administration has done a good job of balancing a lot of that.

I do have a question though, about the impact on our climate goals from this budget and whether you've done any sort of thumbnail analysis. Last year we worked on a climate package. We were very proud to be able to increase our goals and have very lofty ambitions through the climate package.

The assembly work with the Senate and the administration on doing that and I'm wondering how much the impact on those goals are reflected in this budget and what impact you think that some of this will have on those goals. For instance, I'll just throw one item out putting off increases to the active transportation budget, a program that's already oversubscribed and that we know has very direct greenhouse gas benefits.

And while I haven't been able to go necessarily line by line through this, I do wonder, given the Governor's ambitions with regard to climate, what impact you see on our ability to meet our goals from the budget. And I would also just throw in air quality and things like that along with that.

Good morning. Crystal Sherta, Department of Finance I'll just say we haven't done a specific analysis on the bills that you're discussing today. I will say, generally speaking, there's a lot of climate investments in both the May revision and Governor's budget that protected a lot of the climate investments. And I think the legislative plan also protects a lot of areas in the climate investments. Obviously there are modifications and there are reductions that are necessary in order to meet kind of the broader general fund framework.

But to answer your more direct question, we have not done an analysis in terms of those specific impacts, in terms of meeting those goals, but continue to prioritize those goals that have been laid out in various administration plans.

Anthony Simbol from the Analyst Office we haven't done such an analysis as well, but I will say even for the last couple of years, the impact of the investments that we have made, we really don't know how they've achieved meeting our various goals because a lot of those projects are still in the works. The money is still going out.

So even on the money we have invested, it's still something the leisure needs to provide continued oversight to make sure those investments are meeting your priorities and advancing the various goals.

Christian Griffith from Assembly Budget I'll say that we prioritized AB 617 and we also prioritized active transportation restoration for the reasons you articulated. One of the ways I think we need to think about this, though, is that there is this climate pond conversation that's going on parallel to the budget conversation, and sort of our investment has to be a combination of those two packages together. So looking at just the budget in isolation isn't enough.

We kind of have to look at what we're funding in a cash basis in the budget versus what we're funding through a bond measure.

Ms. Bonta.

Thank you. This is in the area of public safety primarily, so I just want to offer some comments about what is in this package right now, which is an essentially set of modest investments around rehabilitative programming in prisons and resources for family justice centers and survivors of human trafficking. And our budget bill certainly also requires us to be and includes a very fiscally responsible plan to address the growing number of empty prison beds that are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

So right now, we have between 18 to 20,000 empty beds, which to me is an obscene number of beds that essentially costs us between $750,000,000 to $1.0 billion a year and also has ongoing capital expenses associated with that.

So wanted to get a sense from DOF regarding this legislative package that we've moved forward or that we will with regard to future trailer TBLs, what the response is to ensuring that we are actually cost-saving in the amount of anywhere between $600 to $700 million a year by ensuring that we are acting in a responsible way associated with the number of empty beds that we have.

I think, as we've said several times, I think it's a complicated issue. We recognize the legislature's priorities.

We're not ready to commit to any one specific path. We recognize the legislature's goals related to closing more prisons, investing more in our reentry programs, our rehabilitative efforts. Those are things that are definitely shared priorities with the administration. San Quentin, of course, remains a top priority for us as well. And so we just look forward to ongoing discussions about all of those pieces and anticipate we'll be able to reach agreement hopefully soon.

Certainly it's a shared priority to save $700 million a year.

I think any specific dollar amount I'm not ready to speak to, but recognize that in our prison closures to date, we've saved roughly $150,000,000 for each of those prisons.

So we have an opportunity for sure to be able to save additional funds in addition to the closures that we've already made by closing additional well, ensuring that we have a healthy cushion for prison beds, but also to be able to ensure that we are acting fiscally responsible. So I'm very much hoping that we can continue to come to agreement around that issue.

I understand. And that we will also have to balance the needs of our incarcerated population, the mental health needs, the educational goals, the space and the programming opportunities at each of those prisons.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a question about TK to 12 education in our budget, but I also had some comments about transit and I think in the legislative proposal for transit, $5 billion is a fantastic start. I think as much as important it is to our transportation goals, our VMT goals, our mission goals and our economic goals, as heart and pivotal transit is that it's also part of, as much as it is in La, a strong cultural staple of the Bay Area.

And I really want to thank our budget chair, Ting, for really fighting to make sure we got those investments in there. And I hope that the administration will recognize how important it is for all the stated things above, not just for our transportation, but for our economic and cultural aspects. Especially in the Bay Area, where all our transit agencies serve so many people and is like a staple of our culture.

It's really, really important to ensure that those transit agencies survive, especially as what I represent district, which is the current terminus of BART, where we hope to continue to expand the line further into downtown San Jose. So I really want to thank our budget staff and our budget chair for fighting for all those investments. Without that fight, I really do shudder to think what would happen to our transit agencies and the transit service and the so many families that depend on it.

So I really want to thank the $5 billion to start. I think it's going to get our transit agencies a long way. I did have a question about TK to 12 education because it was brought up by my colleague from San Diego County, is that we did fight very hard and when I sat on budget sub two as well for the COLA, the 8.22 historic COLAs for educators.

But I am hearing from my own district and many other districts that that is not being translated to educators. So how are we able to ensure that when we put billions of dollars from Prop. 98 in order to compensate our educators better, that those dollars actually reach the people we intend? Because that's not what we're seeing on the ground right now. So what kind of accountability measures and how do we ensure that that money actually gets to the educators we intended it to go to?

Erin Gable Assembly Budget Committee. Yes. So we this year have an 8.22% COLA for the Local Control Funding Formula as well as a number of statutory categorical programs throughout our budget. And this is on top of last year's 15% increases. It is correct. There are not protections within the Local Control Funding Formula or other provisions in the state budget around how those funds then are locally bargained and locally planned for.

So consistent with the policy changes around the Local Control Funding Formula that were adopted now 10 years ago, there's a local process for their local accountability plans, their local control accountability plans that show how they're going to spend the funds. But there is no requirement, for example, that those translate into staff COLAs or raises or other kinds of costs in terms of benefit packages and pension.

So to clarify, when we put that money into the budget several years in a row now it's just stating legislative intent but it basically lets all the implementation into the LEAs.

I think that the important distinction is that the legislature and the administration that the state has made a commitment to stable ongoing increases within the Local Control Funding Formula and these other core programs that do fund staff, that fund the caring adults that are on campuses working with our students day in and day out.

You also saw that in our one time Learning Recovery Grant that we adopted last year to address all of the impacts to mental health and to learning that were a result of COVID. You see that commitment in the state's architecture. There continues to be concern, we understand at many local bargaining tables that consistency and stability and commitment from the state is not necessarily as strong as we assert.

And so that is why it is important that we continue to assert that with the kind of prudent growth within the guarantee that we are showing.

Yeah, and I would just flag for us, I think, as a body to think about this is the money, we intended very strongly that it would translate for a certain result and it's not getting there in that way. And look, if we kind of generally just wanted to give more Prop 98 money in general to LEAs, that's fine.

But we kind of designed this for a specific reason and I don't want our constituents, our educators be let down in the thing that we fought really hard to do. So I think this is something we should continue to look at and make sure we have accountability. Because I know that one of our big frustrations as a body, too, is when we give money to certain people, we intend that it's spent on a certain purpose.

And I would not like to see that disappointment continue any further, especially as so many educators find it very hard to live in the districts they teach. So I want to continue to work on that and make sure that money is held accountable too. So thank you.

Thank you. We'll now go to Mrs. Reyes and to Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to echo some of the comments made by my colleague from Oakland regarding childcare and early education. The 1.2 billion I think is extremely important and we've talked a lot about COLAs. These are childcare workers who've received no COLA for years and we're finally going to provide something for them. Recognizing that there are ongoing collective bargaining discussions, the family fee waiver. You are correct.

It was federal funds extended through the end of September, and that is absolutely appreciated, especially by our families who qualify for the subsidized care and then are being asked to pay family fees even after being a from the Department of Finance. And I know the questions were asked, but is there a thought on how much is going to be put in specifically or a general idea on childcare or regarding the ongoing collective bargaining, something regarding that? Are there thoughts on that specifically?

Chris Ferguson with finance. Again, unfortunately, I can't speak to specific amounts, and what I can speak to is those conversations with representatives for the Senate and Assembly continue to occur in the background. But at this time, we can't make a specific commitment on amounts on what is occurring in collective bargaining. But those discussions are occurring in the background

Very well. So commitment cannot be made for a specific dollar amount. Is there a commitment to be sure that we do include something that as noted earlier, this is the Women's Caucus priority, is making sure that child care is included in the budget. Are you able to give a commitment that child care without regard to the dollar amount, but child care will be included in the administration's discussions?

Yeah, I can certainly say that the discussion is occurring and that we've committed to that discussion with your staff. I can't say what the outcome of those discussions will be. I will say that there are examples in the May revision where we did have, pursuant to law, the cost of living adjustments. We did account for those types of statutory requirements, which are increases to, say, the standard reimbursement rate.

We also recently had the conversation around the Early Action Package, which was providing additional flexibility to provide stipends to providers. So those conversations continue. I just can't today say that there's a specific dollar amount, a specific percentage, specific parameters that we're looking at in those conversations. But I can very much say we're committed to the conversation with your staff. I just can't say what the outcome of those conversations will be.

And clearly, this is part of a larger conversation regarding long term reform on rate increases for our providers. It isn't just a one time, as was noted earlier, this is ongoing. Another area is our Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program. Program that we had for a number of years. Lapsed was not refunded, but it is included in this year's budget. And with the teacher shortage, it's something that I think is extremely important and should remain there.

Another area is in the area of health, making sure that we're providing the health care to those who not just in the clinics, but specifically for our Promotoras de Salud, the program being provided, $10 million. We know that they provide such a critical role in our communities and their support is important for us as we provide health care to the community. But the last one is the CalHome program. There was $100 million that was supposed to be allocated for this year.

The May revise, it was no longer there in the legislative proposal. We do retain 50 million of that 100 million for this year. I'm glad to see that there is a plan to retain this. As we know, CalHomes is the only state program that actually allocates funding toward affordable home building for first-time home buyers and in recent years has been oversubscribed. So making sure that we do provide some funding in there is extremely important. Keeping our promises from what we said we would do. Thank you.

Thank you, madam. We're going to go to Mr. Patterson for 1 second, but I do want to make an announcement just in case. To clarify, this is an informational hearing. We're not taking a vote on the budget as presented today. The vote will be on the floor tomorrow. So with that, we'll go to Mr. Patterson.

Great, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. And just wanted to make a couple of comments just so as this process plays out. These two items continue to have a fan over here of them being included. One is I commend both. Can you believe I'm going to say this? Nobody here can't. I commend the administration and the legislature for funding fentanyl prevention programs and funding, at least in part, a piece of legislation that I've introduced to have Naloxone on school campuses. I think it's really important.

It is very fast growing. As you know, there are also more deaths as a result of opioids than gun violence in California. And while I think this is sort of a Band Aid approach to a growing problem, we have to address the root issue. I think providing treatment for overdoses is really important in this state. And I appreciate the commitment to funding that both from the administration and the legislature and also the May revise.

I sit on the budget sub that discussed CASA programs, court appointed special advocates, and I was really dismayed in the January budget proposed cutting the $40 million that was added. Well, the 60 million last budget, but 20 million was spent, obviously, and then 20 million for the next year, this coming year and the year after. I was disappointed. Obviously, kids in foster care are the state has responsibility to care for them. And so I was disappointed by that cut.

I was appreciated the May revise included it after my colleagues on the budget subcommitee advocated for putting that back in there. So I think that's a great thing and hope that continues to stay in there as this budget plays out. And I'll definitely keep advocating for that. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Patterson. We're going to go to Mr. McCarty.

Thank you, Chair Ting. I just wanted to give a high level perspective on this budget. This is our 9th year overseeing the education piece and we've had fairly ups since 2015 when we started. And I know there's buzz about the economy, softening the budget cuts and so forth, but make no mistake, this is an A minus budget. We were at A plus for the past couple of years.

Probably a little bit unrealistic to get an A plus on all your grades as A student. So now we're going back to A minus. And it's not like, oh, the sky is falling, we're having budget cuts. This is still an amazing state budget. Invests in our priorities, continues the transformational investments we made the past few years and the overall issue that we've worked on in sub two.

And thank you to the Subcommitee Members and the staff, Mr. Martin, Ms. Garvey I mean, Gable for working on these issues. This is an A budget for education. The winners in this budget are our kids, our schools, from our youngest kids to TK through 12 to higher ed and we'll get to the youngest, youngest kids in a few seconds. So I know that members, when you ran for office, Republicans or Democrats, I guarantee your top priority was focusing on education and our future.

And this is a budget that I think we can be proud of. As Mr. Ali noted, 8% plus for COLA for our public schools is not normal. And by far the winner of this state budget. There are a lot of issue areas in Mr. Arambula's subcommitee that did not get an 8% COLA, a 5% COLA, even a 0% COLA.

So some of those school districts who are asking for more, I would say check that at the door and look as far as where the numbers are for investing in public education. For higher ed, still a very positive 5% increase. Again, more than a lot of other folks got in the state budget allowing us to really invest in the future in UC and CSU access, enrollment.

Some major, major wins for expanding access to the University of California, which you all hear about in your communities, that students have amazing GPAs, great engagement in their public high school, and can't get into their taxpayer funded university. No more. We are greatly expanding access to the University of California and we're even capping enrollment for non-resident students and giving those slots back to rightfully so. You know, that's a major, major win in this budget.

Forward some of the financial aid reforms that we focused on the past few years, not able to do full expansion, but that's something that we're working on for another day. Appreciate the student housing investment here. Knowing that we looked at the issues, for example, at UC Berkeley and kind of a little bit of a scare there at enrolling additional students and the issue was housing.

And so this really innovative revolving loan fund allows us to address student enrollment through housing and deal with acute housing problems at the local level at some of these cities as well. So two kind of unfinished business things that I wanted to address is I know that we heard from Ms. Reyes and Ms. Bonta earlier. I heard you literally on the way over here. So I know that you were making some comments about this, about early education.

It's in our priority here, this two party deal. It's not only the Women's Caucus priority, as Ms. Reyes said, it was the Assembly's top priority to make sure we conclude with know it's not it's not going to know the budget I was talking about if we leave this segment behind. And so one thing I'm just perplexed on, and maybe you can help me, Mr. Ferguson.

I know that you mentioned there's a dollar amount we haven't settled on for our investments in childcare, and that's just in rates to make sure that that's a thriving and viable industry and serves families, most importantly, and kids. You mentioned that there's ongoing negotiations for collective bargaining, but correct me if I'm wrong. I think, like, only a third of the workforce is unionized part of this collective bargaining. So two thirds of the folks, we wish they were all represented.

You can fight for their wages, but the increases wouldn't impact them. So, in other words, we're trying to settle something for a third and two-thirds of the people are like, hey, you can just take care of us right about now. And so I just don't know if that's fair.

How do you justify that you're trying to finalize the contract for the roughly a third of the population and then two-thirds of the workforce who are childcare workers and or state preschool program which would benefit from these rate increases are not even part of that conversation, and we're being held up.

Certainly, you know, we recognize and we appreciate the workforce here, and we appreciate the efforts of Child Care Providers United in negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the state. What I can say to your comment, though, is the last time an agreement was reached in 21-22, the increases that were reached in that agreement applied to all providers, not just those that were represented. The unrepresented providers saw those rate increases as well.

And we would anticipate that whatever comes out of that collective bargaining agreement would ultimately apply universally to all of the providers in the system, whether that's preschool providers or our childcare providers, that it would apply universally. And certainly, we recognize, as you heard earlier, we recognize that there are conversations ongoing with Representatives for your House as well as the Senate on what that package could ultimately look like. So those conversations continue, but ultimately, we understand that there's a process for collective bargaining.

We understand that that labor union currently only represents somewhere around that one third of the workforce, but we do recognize that the outcomes of those conversations ultimately apply universally to the system.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I don't necessarily agree because the two thirds, they would benefit from whatever deal it was, but in the meantime they're getting held up. And so I just don't think that's fair, especially when we see so many of these programs on the edge anyway. On the edge. And so just to reiterate, we have robust funding for TK through 12 education and that is the T in there and the K. So we stand by that.

That is a program being implemented throughout California, making a difference, changing lives and helping families, not having to pay the roughly two grand a month. Sometimes it costs more to go to state preschool for private preschool for a four-year-old than it does to UC Berkeley. And so, you know, that's a big win for families across California. But we do realize that there are impacts of the other part of the childcare field as well.

And so part of the remedy is making sure we adequately reimburse for the rates. And so it would be a failure on our budget if we don't finalize this piece as well. Just maybe if I can shift to another topic that's not in our area in sub two, but area that we all hear about throughout California, that's the housing and homelessness. And so I know all know we've been hearing the desire for ongoing money for that. And so we have a two year solution.

And I think that's probably about as good as, you know, every year is pretty much the opportunity to take a look and pull back if the revenues don't transpire. So can you walk through, Mr. Cook, the changes that we're looking at to focus on increased accountability in addition to just the increased revenue or not increased revenues, the commitment of revenues for two years?

Thank you. Chris Cook with Department of Finance. So conversations are currently ongoing as to the language in reference for the accountability for the HAPP program. So I can't get into the details right now. So those are still being discussed. But what I can say is that the legislature and the administration have common goals and a framework which essentially revolves around regional plans for local jurisdictions to come together and develop homelessness plans.

That include goals and outcome measures for those local jurisdictions to meet as conditions have receded those homelessness dollars.

So that's what the administration wants going forward, or is that what part I know we're our two party deal on this, but are you embracing the provisions we have here for each app?

No language has been finalized yet, but I would say that the conversations are ongoing and that the administration and the administration share those common goals.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. We're going to go to

Genevieve Morelos, Assembly Budget Committee. Just wanted to add in there that the two-party deal looks at some of the provisions that are included in bills that are currently running through the legislature, including Ms. Rivas's bill, as well as Mr. Ting's bill that have elements of the regional accountability, as Mr. Cook said, and some of the streamlining of just the departments that oversee the homelessness funding. So there's pieces there.

And also discussion about moving bonus pots to have more funding now rather than in the out years. That's what's included in the assembly version, I mean the legislative version. Sorry.

Thank you, Genevieve. Thank you. We'll go to Mr. Muratsuchi, then Mr. Ramos.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow our Budget Subcommitee Chair in thanking the Governor's office, the Governor, for his ongoing strong support to protect classroom funding. As Chair of the Education Committee, I also share my appreciation for education Tk through 12 in this tough, challenging budget year to receive a 8.22% cost of living increase.

Not only that, but to continue our state's efforts to lead the country in our efforts to address the crisis of pandemic learning loss through the state's ongoing strong leadership and support for programs like the ELA program to support after school, to support summer schools. We know, we're hearing from districts, especially our large urban districts like Los Angeles Unified, that they have succeeded in making significant recoveries in our learning loss that we saw during the pandemic through our ongoing support for those programs.

And so I am also very pleased to see that these funding programs are going to benefit each and every one of our districts throughout the State of California. And so I want to thank the Governor, as well as our budget leadership, for protecting the classroom funding.

I do want to tie back to earlier question or comment made by my colleague from San Jose, which know again, as Chair of the Education Committee, one of the biggest challenges that I hear in the State of California is our workforce shortage or workforce crisis. And we know from years of surveys that the number one reason why we can't attract more young people into the teaching profession in order to become educators is because of the low pay.

And my colleague from San Jose asked earlier, how do we ensure that our ongoing commitment to support classroom funding is translated into supporting our teachers and our essential school staff that are essential to keep our schools running? To address this workforce shortage, I did want to remind this committee that I do have a bill, Assembly Bill 938, that was proposing, is proposing local control funding formula funding targets.

The funding targets an approach that we have successfully pursued back in 2013 when Governor Brown established LCFF funding targets to reach our goal then of restoring all of our budget cuts suffered during the Great Recession. Now, in order to address one of the biggest challenges facing our K through 12 schools, our workforce crisis, I want to ask the Department of Finance what is your position in terms of adopting LCFF funding targets going forward? In order to close the wage gap for our teachers and our essential school staff.

So certainly we don't have an official position on AB 938 which is the bill that would establish those long term targets. But what I can speak to is just assuming the cost of living projections that we had as of the Governor's Budget, which are pretty similar to the May provision, depending upon whether you include or exclude the cost of living adjustments and meeting those targets. The range of cost of that Bill long term could be somewhere in the neighborhood of over $9 billion to upwards of 30 plus $1.0 billion, depending on whether you include or exclude that cost of living adjustment. So certainly there are significant fiscal ramifications associated with that Bill or fiscal pressures created for the state in that Bill. So I can't say what our position is officially, because we don't have one, but I can speak to what we think those costs would be long term. So certainly that's something that the Legislature and the committees would need to consider.

All right, thank you. I would just ask the governor's office to consider that funding targets, they are not only real, but they have actually been successful in the past and that I hope the governor's office will consider them as we move forward to address one of the biggest challenges facing our schools. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramos.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, it's more of a comment. I want to thank the Budget Committee chairs and Subcommitee chairs for bringing all of this hard work together, as well as the Assembly Budget Committee and consultants that are there, as well as Administration. We know the hard work that has come in to get us to this point, and we know that there's hard work still ahead of us to work on some of the issues. But an area that I wanted to point out is the fentanyl issue, the fentanyl that continues to poison our youth and those in our community. And working with the Administration and with the legislative body here today, we've moved pieces of legislation forward in prior years that the Governor has signed. So we know that it's something that he continues to be aware of and adding support to. There is the youth that have came and pushed a Bill, AB 461, that deals with test strips within our educational institutions, community colleges, and Cal State Universities that continues to move forward. And I'm happy to see that there is allocation in the budget to further that dialogue, to make sure that we're moving forward on preventative measures, to make sure that we're preventing those that succumb to fentanyl overdoses, and making sure that that's not getting to the hands of those moving forward in the State of California. So being more preventive with those measures and making sure that those dollars are there is something that we deeply appreciate. We know that there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but this is more of a comment saying that we're all working together to ensure that we're protecting bringing preventive measures against this poison that is affecting all of our children and all of those in the State of California. And I wanted to bring that to light and to share that we all are currently working on those problems together. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Just looking back at the Committee, any other questions before I maybe I'll go to a few of my own. Just going back to finance. Going along the lines of our subchair Bonta's questions regarding the necessary buffer within our prison system. In years past, it was presented to us that the Department needed 1000 or 2000 bed buffer with a typical prison being 3000 to 4000 beds. We have about 14,000 empty beds in our system, I believe. So what's the reasoning behind continue to operate those 14,000 beds as if they're occupied, meaning keeping staffing levels at the same level and continuing to spend money on the Department in that way rather than shutting down yards as you've proposed in other facilities in this budget?

I will speak to a couple of issues and I'm certainly not the expert because I'm not the Department that operates these facilities on a daily basis, but I think it does get complicated. We're measuring against a court ordered population cap of 137.5. So when you calculate that 14,000 empty beds, it is based on that population cap. So we have much fewer actual beds in our prison system at any given time. There are a number of beds offline. I think our recent count was roughly about 1300 beds offline for various reasons for construction, various changes, I think, that are happening in the prison system. We were actually during COVID we were very grateful for having that flexibility because we were able to isolate our incarcerated population to address those health care needs. And then even in January, when Sacramento County faced issues in one of their facilities, we were able to accommodate about 750 inmates in our prison system. So I'm not suggesting that 14,000 beds is a reasonable number to be kept open, but I think that there are a lot of conversations that need to take place before we can commit to any specific number. When we were talking about the 1000 and 2000 thousand, from a historical perspective, that was well before or much a long time ago when we really had demands on our beds and the population cap was before us. So it was a complicated decision making process then.

I would disagree with that characterization. I mean, that 1000 to 2000 bed cushion was probably discussed the last two years prior and during COVID So it's not an old figure like in a previous lifetime. It's during my tenure here. What percent are we at now in terms of you mentioned the 137.5 cap, how close are we? Because by my math, we've been releasing more people. We've only closed two facilities, so that 2000 bed cushion should be even smaller. I have LALO coming up here wanting to answer that. Thank you.

Drew Soderborg, Legislative Analyst Office so I don't have the exact number that we are below 137.5. But it is important to note that the 14,000 empty beds number that has been calculated, that puts us well below the limit that factors in the 137.5 cap. So this is far, far away from what the typical buffer was, which was around 1000 or 2500.

Like, when you're talking far, far away, are we talking like Peter Pan far away? Are we talking like well, what are we talking? How many thousands of beds are we far away?

We're about 14,000 beds away from the cap. When we calculate the number of empty beds, we take into account the cap.

And I think from an ADP perspective, looking at the number, sorry, adult average daily population. I appreciate that, thank you. 110% in this current fiscal year is what we expect to be. But that is system wide. It's not measured by prison, so it's system wide.

Right, but that's just doing some simple math for thousands and thousands of beds away from the cap. So we appreciate the progress the Governor's made. It's historic, the closing of the two facilities plus the yard closures. And we applaud the Governor for picking measures to really re envision how we should be really looking at our rehabilitative services. But it's odd that we're not doing further consolidation so we could actually pay for those rehabilitative services. It seems odd to continue to operate facilities with so many empty beds and to be paying all that money to watch empty units or empty beds. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

I understand your position, and this is relatively new for us, closing prisons. And so we have a commitment to close Chuckawalla City in the next couple of years. And so we have a commitment and we continue to support that.

Absolutely. And we appreciate the Governor's leadership for absolutely doing it and really appreciate all the Department and all the staffs really working together to make that reality as well. Before I go to public comment, I'm looking to see if there's any other questions. If not, then we will go to public comment. If you could line up, we'll give everybody a minute each, and if you are under a minute, even better. And then we'll go to the phone lines. Feel free to begin.

Good morning, Mr. Chair Chris McKayley on behalf of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and we thank you and your colleagues for the funding in the TIRCP and for working with the transportation agencies of the state and obviously tough fiscal times for us as well as the state. And we would just encourage you also to consider the Governor's streamlining package as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Chair and Members, Roman Vogelsang with the APREA & MICHELI on behalf of the California Workforce Association, wishing to thank Members of this Committee, especially Assuming Garcia on the $5 million to the Breaking Barriers to Employment initiative. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair and Members, Beth Olhasso on behalf of water reuse California appreciate the inclusion of water recycling funding. Very important to complete water supply reliability for our next drought that we know is coming. Would strongly encourage the Assembly to make it a priority when negotiating with the Governor. Thank you very much.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members Maddie Munson on behalf of the Agricultural Energy Consumers Association in support of the preservation of the funding at CEC for the Food processor investment program and as it relates to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund spending plan in support of the interic emission reduction incentive program at CDFA and the Farmer AG engine replacement program at CARB. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Michael Pimentel with the California Transit Association. Of course I'm here to show thanks and support for the transit investments included in this budget. Do want to acknowledge and show appreciation for the flexibility that is being provided in those capital funds to address our operating needs. I do want to say that as the budget moves forward, we understand that accountability is central to the conversation. You can continue to lean on us as an industry to provide perspective and guidance on how that accountability framework can be shaped up. And again, just want to thank you for the heavy lift in what we know is a difficult budget year. And to you, Mr. Chair and to your Subcommitee chairs, thank you for engaging with us in good faith throughout this year. Thank you.

Danica Rodarmel on behalf of the Transformative In-Prison Work Group, very grateful for the Legislature and staff's work on supporting community-based organizations providing rehabilitative programs in the prison system, particularly our champion Assembly Member Bonta but also Members Ting, Lackey and Hart for supporting the right grant's inclusion in this year's budget. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, Members Oracle Gonzalez on behalf of the Salton Sea Authority. We are a joint powers authority consisting of the County of Riverside, the County of Imperial, the Coachella Valley Water District, the Imperial Irrigation District and the Torres Martinez Desert Kawea a tribal people that has inhabited the Salton Sea region for hundreds of years. We want to thank the Committee for restoring 50 of the originally proposed 169,000,000 that were going to be shifted to a revenue bond. But that certainly still leaves us 119,000,000 that are now subject to uncertainty. Voters may or may not approve that bond. We certainly hope they do, but would urge you to please consider reinstating those dollars in your three party conversations and on behalf of the California Alliance for Digital Equity at NextGen California, we're concerned with the 500 $1.0 million reduction to the Middle Mile infrastructure account and 600 $1.0 million reduction to the Loan Loss Reserve Program. Such dramatic divestments are only going to delay the time it takes for us to really bridge the digital divide in California. Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Members, Raquel Yaffe here on behalf of the California Alternative Payment Program Association, or CAPPA. We'd like to thank the Legislature for including childcare in your budget priorities. Increasing reimbursement rates remains our top priority as we are aligned with the ECE coalition. We also ask that we make the single voucher type that expires on June 23, 2023 permanent. It is fair and equitable to families, keeps children in stable childcare settings, and provides guaranteed funding to any childcare provider that accepts such a voucher. Thank you.

Good morning, Linda Way with Western Center on Law and Poverty. Firstly, I want to appreciate the Legislature and your staff for all your work and inclusion of investments that benefit low-income Californians, particularly on the human services side. Along with grace in child poverty, we support funding to implement the first phase of reimagined Cowworks, which moves Cowworks from a punitive compliance-oriented system to a trauma-informed model that centers family well being. We also support making permanent Calworks grant increases, initiating the Cal Fresh Minimum Pilot program and food assistance to individuals who lost their benefits due to federal time limits. On the health side, we support rejecting the General Fund sweep of Healthcare Affordability Reserve Fund Fund funding to extend the Comprehensive Perinatal Services program benefit and the approval of the MCO tax, including a Shorter spending timeline and removing triggers. Thank you.

Good morning, chair Members. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME California. Just want to thank you, chair Members and Committee staff, for your work to protect core programs, services and the workforce in the public sector as we attempt to weather the budget downturn and hoping that the following is included in the final budget and Health and Human Services the allocation of one and a half million dollars to convene a working group to determine the best approach to implementing statewide collective bargaining for the IHSS program. Funding healthcare for striking workers, restoring funds to eliminate deductibles and lower premiums for Cover California. Look forward to ongoing conversations on the MCO attacks and hopefully consider 911 ground emergency transportation in that wanted to recognize the restoration of the transit funding to ensure that the state's transit agencies do not fail during this time of massive transition. Thank you for the $33 million for the VLF to address revenue shortfalls in San Mateo County. Lastly, the retention and recruitment of the workforce in state hospitals is at a crisis level and to support the Governor's concept of true rehabilitative services to the injustice involved, we need a committed workforce. And so thank you for the considerations on the reporting language and just really appreciate all your efforts.

Good morning, chair and Members, Adrian Mohammed with UDW, AFSCME local 3930, representing over 165,000 IHSS and childcare providers. We want to sincerely thank you all for the tremendous work you've done and including all of these great legislative ideas in this budget. First and foremost, we want to thank you for the $531,000 that was allocated for the Advisory Council on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and how they interact with law enforcement pursuant to SB 882 from Senator Eggman. We also want to thank you for rejecting the Governor's delay of releasing the childcare slots, and we really appreciate your support in having those slots released, the 20,000 slots released in July of 2024. We also applaud the inclusion of the 1.2 billion in the budget specific for rate increases for childcare providers, as well as the allocation of funds for the family fee reform. Additionally, we'd like to express our support for the decision to extend the Home and Community based Services Plan by one year. There's been a lot of great work done with the IHSS Career Pathway program, and we are really appreciative that this is going to be able to continue to go on and demonstrate great results as it has already. And finally, we would like to express sincere and deep appreciation and thanks for including the $1.5 million to convene this work group to transition towards IHSS statewide collective bargaining. It's been a huge undertaking, and we are looking forward to creating this roadmap and working with the Legislature, the Administration, on how we can best make this transition to a statewide or regional approach. Thank you.

Honorable Chair Ting and esteemed Members, Amy Hindsheich with Wildcat Consulting, representing the California Community Land Trust Network, thank you sincerely for championing the people's budget regarding the item on the Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program or the FIP. First of all, we would like to thank you deeply and sincerely for the $82.5 million in the 23-24 budget. Full stop, really, thank you. But we respectfully request that you reconsider cutting $30 million from the total amount, which reduced it to a $470,000,000 program from the FIP, and we ask that you bring the funding amount back to the full 500 $1.0 million investment. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Mr. Chair Members. Sarah Flocks, California Labor Federation thank you for a budget that has a lot of great things for workers in it. I'll touch on a couple issues, but echo a lot of our affiliates. One, we are very appreciative of the investment in labor law enforcement that includes enhanced funding for hiring at the labor Commissioner and also the grant program for local law enforcement. We think that is a great project and we'll do a lot for workers. Of course. Many thanks to the chair, to Dr. Rambula and Dr. Wood for the healthcare subsidies for striking workers to Fund the Bill from last year, and for the reinstatement of the Healthcare Affordability Fund. And then we will also echo Ms. Rivas' comments on our support for the film Tax Credit to create good middle class jobs. And of course, IHSS statewide bargaining. Thank you.

Good morning. Becky Silva with the California Association of Food Banks. First, most importantly, thank you, Chair Ting and Committee Members for your leadership and commitment to centering the lives of people experiencing hunger and poverty in this budget. Communities across the state just faced the biggest CalFresh Benefit cliff we have ever seen. In April, food banks reported that they are serving up to 50% more people than they were at the beginning of the year. And actually the Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services just reported that they had just had the busiest month they've ever had in their history. In particular, we're incredibly grateful for the continued investment in Cal Food, which is absolutely essential for our food banks in continuing to meet the need in their communities. But as we often say and is especially true now, food banks alone cannot end hunger and we need robust investments in programs like CalFresh. Thank you for prioritizing an increase to the CalFresh minimum benefits to $50 per month and protecting CalFresh recipients from the cruel and failed federal Abod time limit rules. And also for investments towards food for all. Thank you also for continued investments for school meals for all, which will ensure that California's landmark policy can continue to serve all children across the state, as well as funding to ensure that California can fully maximize the potential of summer EBT starting next year. And finally, thank you for taking bold steps to reimagining Cal Works so that it can be the family centered program our communities deserve. Thank you.

Morning chair and Members, Jared Call with Nourish California here to echo the comments of my partner Becky from the California Association of Food Banks and thanking you in particular you, Dr. Arambula and subcommittee. One for all. You did to address the unprecedented hunger cliff that families are facing due to those drastic CalFresh cuts, particularly accelerating the implementation timeline for the food for all expansion to immigrants, regardless of their status. And continuing those CalFresh pilots, those innovative pilots that are getting dollars out the door to families where they are right now. The safe drinking water pilot and the fruit and vegetable pilot that will be able to continue if fully funded. So we're going to call the Governor right away about those as well. And also raising the CalFresh minimum Benefit so no one receives less than at least $50 and finally removing that three month time limit. We got no business doing that in California. So thank you so much. And like I said, we'll go call the Governor.

Mr. Chair, Members, Beverly Yu on behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, thank you to the Committee, Committee staff, both houses of the Legislature and the Administration for your hard work on the budget. We would just like to uplift the Women Construction Unit, the restoration from the January budget. Thank you very much for this restoration. This is very important to bring more women, nonbinary individuals and underserved communities into the trades. We'd also like to express our support for the $50 million, the Fresno Public Infrastructure Project. This would create thousands of jobs for our Members. Ultimately, we look forward to working with you all to Fund the full 250,000,000 for what is needed for Fresno. We also like to support the 15 million to the Exposition Park Project. This would also create hundreds of very important jobs in the community. Forum Members, thank you very much for your work.

Mr. Chair Members, Josefina Ramirez Notsinneh with Children Now want to echo the comments of some colleagues from the ECE Coalition. Thank you so much appreciative of your work on childcare rate reform and finding an equitable family fee schedule for families so that families can send their kids to care and that people can go back to work. So thank you so much for your work and look forward to working with you all to get this across the finish line.

Good afternoon, Chairman Ting and Members of the Committee. We'd like to thank all of you for crafting such a robust budget, especially with regard to childcare. I'm Laurie Furstenfeld, on behalf of the Childcare Law Center and proud Member of the ECE Coalition, we support the two party agreement to Fund the increase in childcare subsidy rates and rate and family fee reform. With affordable childcare, families can pay down debt, put their kids in nourishing activities, get some relief from toxic stress, and pay for necessities such as groceries and utilities. The rate increases and long term rate reforms allow providers to support their own families, help end systemic racism, and provide immediate relief to families in a time of inflation and economic turmoil. We're in strong support of SB 101, and we urge you for your aye vote. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members Abby Alvarez with the California Medicine Scholars program. I want to thank the Legislature for including the Medicine Scholars in the two party agreement. The small allocation of $2.8 million per year will allow CMSP to continue addressing California's physician shortage crisis and support students of color matriculating from community college all the way to medical school. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Members, Megan Subers, on behalf of the California Professional Firefighters here to say thank you and express our support for including an initial $5 million to start the California Firefighter Cancer Prevention and Research Program. Cancer is the number one cause of death for firefighters in California. We believe this is a tremendous opportunity for California to leverage our Department of Public Health, the UC system and fire scope and really dig into this research and study the biomarkers of exposure and biomarkers of effect impacting firefighters on the front lines and produce real research we can use to change the way we train, change our PPE, and catch this disease on the front end and hopefully prevent this from happening going forward. And so we really just wanted to say thank you. Special shout out to Assembly Member Grayson, who has been leading this effort for us in your house and really wanted to express support for that and additionally express support on the education side for the improvements and adjustments on the apprenticeship funding. We were able to get some training hours that were previously not funded funded, so we really wanted to express our appreciation for that as well. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair Members. Alyssa Yun. On behalf of the California State University Employee's Union, first and foremost, we'd like to thank you for your commitment to the 5% Compact for the CSU. We also want to express our strong support for the transparency language that directs the CSU to report back next year on how it spends its appropriated funds. We think that will be an incredibly useful tool. Looking ahead, we'll continue to work with the Legislature and the CSU on implementing merit salary steps to ensure an equitable wage structure for the non faculty staff at the CSU, which will be part of the solution to solving the staffing crisis at the CSU as well. Thank you.

Hello, Chair Ting and Committee Members. My name is Allison with the Microgrid resources coalition. We appreciate the continued focus on clean energy in the budget and working with stakeholders to ensure that clean energy reliability continues to be prioritized. Thank you so much.

Good morning. Christina Salazar with Californians together. I want to thank you for the inclusion of the 20 million for the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Grant program and also encourage you to further revise our language for the panel for reading difficulties and ensure that English Learners are protected. Thank you.

Good morning. Kim Lewis, representing Aspearnet serving a foster youth in 35 counties and greatly appreciative of the Legislature's deal to include 8,000,000 one time for the Foster Family Agency Bridge, and hope we can get to the CCR rates, permanent rates next year. On behalf of the California Coalition for Youth, really appreciate the budget year and budget year, plus one inclusion of 1 billion for the HAPP program. And we'll look forward to working with you on accountability measures that really ensure that we protect our young people and are serving them best. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you, chair, Committee and staff, for all your work. Ryan Morimune with the California State Association of Counties, representing all 58 counties. As part of our continuing advocacy for ongoing homelessness funding, we are grateful for the additional year of the HAPP funding for homelessness accountability. The identified elements of required regional collaboration and additional accountability mechanisms are consistent with CSAC's at Home Plan, and we look forward to continuing conversations as the language is finalized. In regards to the Care Act, we appreciate the additional funding for implementation. However, counties continue to express concerns with the adequate levels of support for behavioral health as well as county council costs. Further as it relates to behavioral health. CSAC continues to support the administration's $375,000,000 to support county behavioral health payment reform activities, which take effect this July. And then for broadband, we're disappointed to see that the deferral of broadband funding used funding used to bridge the digital divide. And then lastly, we're grateful for the Administration's unwavering support to prevent the $50 million cut to the Public Defense Pilot Program. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Good afternoon. Jennifer Baker, representing the California Association for Bilingual Education, would like to thank you very much for your inclusion of $20 million for the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development grant program. I'd like to encourage you also, as you finalize your negotiations and deliberations to include protections for English Learners in the budget trailer Bill Language regarding the program that the Governor recommended regarding reading screeners and the reading challenges that kids have. We also want to ensure that English Learners are protected and that we don't do undo harm and we appreciate the collaboration we've had on these discussions.

Good morning, Chairman, Members, Derek Lennox, on behalf of the 58 County Superintendents of Schools, I want to start by acknowledging the really tremendous tk through 12 education budget that our Subcommitee and the full Committee have put forward. It's really impressive in light of all of the circumstances this year. I also want to call out an appreciation for the $80 million that's going towards juvenile court and community schools. These are some of our most vulnerable students in the state. And so we're so proud to see our Legislature putting forward that money, and we thank you for that. We know that the conversations around TBL are ongoing on that issue. So I just want to call out one final issue right here, which is the unintended inadvertent impact that the 80 million, which is an otherwise tremendous proposal would have on Santa Clara County, Mendocino County, Contra Costa County and Stanislaus County. We've submitted trailer Bill Language proposals to the staff of the Committee and to others involved, and we really hope that some consideration is given there, so we don't have any unintended consequences due to the complexity of county office funding formulas. Thank you again.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members, Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. First of all, I'd like to align my comments with the advocate from the California County Superintendent of Schools, Lake, who is a co sponsor of the request. And we would also like to thank Assemblymember Gibson for championing this item for us. In addition, I'd like to thank you for including funding for the diverse Education Leaders Pipeline initiative. We have a broad coalition of folks who supported that effort and look forward to working with you on trailer Bill Language going forward. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Chris Reefe, on behalf of the California School Boards Association. Just want to echo many of the comments I made by my educational colleagues just. Want to really praise the Legislature on preserving the cuts or at least reducing the cuts to the Arts and Learning Recovery Block grants as well as fully funding the 8.22% COLA. Those are big wins. Also preserving a lot of the investments have been made over recent years. Home school transportation, universal school meals, rebenching for Tk growth, all critical investments that need to be maintained. I'll just want to emphasize also the appreciate the Legislature putting in the $80 million for the Juvenile Court and County Community Schools and putting that money out in the budget year. Appreciate the work of the Subcommitee. Subcommitee number two, Mr. Muratsuchi and his staff understand there's future conversations to be had, but again, this was much needed money that needed to come out in the budget year. So thank you very much.

Good morning. Barrett Snider, on behalf of several county offices of education, including Sacramento, San Mateo, Fresno, San Benito and San Diego counties, want to align my comments with my colleagues previously county Superintendents Association and specifically call out. Hopefully there's room to find a solution for those four counties that were mentioned. Thank you.

Elizabeth Esquivel on behalf of the Yellow County Board of Education. Also very much in great appreciation of the $80 million that is going to be going towards our community and Juvenile Court schools. Thank you for your work on this.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Committee Members and Committee staff, thank you so much for all your work on this budget this year. Michelle Gill, on behalf of California Association of School Business Officials and 24,000 of our school business leaders, we want to thank you. And also CASBO supports the 8.22% COLA for the LCFF and categoricals outside of the LCFF such as special Education and nutrition and appreciate the Legislature's continuous efforts to maintain it. We want to thank you for reducing the proposed amount of mid year cuts to both of the block grants. We support the extension of expanded Learning Opportunity Programs funding as well. School meals are a crucial part of students well being. So we really appreciate and support the $300 million to cover full cost of California's Universal meal programs. We support the $80 million towards the County Office of Education and we look forward to working with the Legislature and the Administration to work on proposals that are good for our students and best for our education. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Michael Jarred, on behalf of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, we would like to thank your Committee's continued support for small and underserved farmers. We really appreciate the reversal of the cuts to the Community Food hubs program, the Urban agricultural program, and the beginning farm worker training program. We also really want to thank the Committee for its Inclusion of funding for CUSP, the California Underserved Small Producer Program for flood Relief. CUSP is a program at CDFA that can get relief to small and underserved family farmers quickly and in order to get them back on their feet from the flooding. In addition, on behalf of the California Institute for Biodiversity, we'd like to thank you for the funding to do the important intertidal science work necessary to truly understand that region of California and to support coastal resiliency work. Thank you.

Chair and Members. Thank you so much for all your hard work and also to your staff and all those who worked on the budget. My name is Tiffany Mock, and I'm proud to represent CFT, a union of educators and classified professionals. We'd be remiss if we didn't thank you for the 8.22% COLA this year that really helps recruit and retain our staff in a staffing crisis. And we would like to thank you for rejecting the proposed one time cuts that echo many of the education advocates I work with. We wanted to thank the Assembly especially for their proposal to eliminate CalBright, and we look forward to continuing future years in this conversation to make sure all our students benefit from our funding to community college students and all our students in the state. Finally, we hope the final budget will include a master plan for climate resilient schools. This would really create cost savings in the long run and also utilize our federal infrastructure dollars that are coming down. Thank you so much and appreciate all your work.

Hi. Greetings, Chair Ting and Chair Members. I'm Dr. LaWanda Wesley, and I just want to say thank you for your investment in childcare rates. I was a former childcare worker who was earning poverty wages and also a mom who raised five kids on subsidy and Tanna, and so I was able to work my way through it. I'm representing today the ECE Coalition and also in child poverty. So you see, this is very deep and personal to me, but I want to make sure that I also let you know that the equitable fee schedule that you have for parents do make a difference. And paying for childcare was always a challenge for me as a single mom with five children. So you can see today, as I stand before you, it makes a difference. I have earned my doctorate. We want to make sure that we have skilled and competent workforce, and we need to pay them what they're worth. Just because you pay as a Low wage doesn't mean that's the value of the work. I'm very skilled and competent, and so are other childcare workers. So we ask you to continue to make that investment, and we thank you from the bottom of our heart. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Mari Castaldi. On behalf of Housing California just wanted to express real appreciation to the Legislature for continuing to move the ball forward on the kind of sustained investments that we need to address our affordable housing and homelessness crisis. In particular for adopting sustained investments multi year in the HAPP program, as well as an additional $100 million in the multifamily housing program. Also appreciate the careful thought and leadership of the Legislature around thoughtful equitable, collaborative accountability measures around homelessness and just want to emphasize that accountability and sustained funding really go hand in hand. It'll be hard for us to create long term accountability without long term investments. So thanks for really taking that seriously and just urge us all in future years to think about the kind of investment strategy that we need to address our housing crisis long term. With a shortage of 1.1 million units, almost 200,000 folks sleeping on our streets and in shelters, we're really going to need more significant and long term investments in affordable housing and homelessness for years to come to make up for decades of disinvestment. Thank you so much.

Good morning Members. My name is Faith Lee, I'm with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California here to express our deep, deep gratitude for the legislatures, specifically Assemblymember Philip Ting, Assemblymember Muratsuchi, and the Caucus for your unwavering commitment in a reinvestment in supporting survivors and families of hate crimes and preventative measures that go along with it. We really appreciate it because a lot language needs in the Asian American communities are often overlooked. So I appreciate the reinvestment this year as we anticipate a recession and especially a huge, huge thank you for your staff as Member of Philip Ting for always listening to organizations like ours and making sure that limited English proficient Californians are not left behind. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members. Sierra Cook with the San Diego Unified School District here to express appreciation for a two party budget that prioritizes funding the 8.22% COLA as well as significantly reducing the cuts to the block grants. Also wanted to express appreciation for upholding commitments to programs like Universal School Meals, Special Education as well as importantly to San Diego Unified Transitional Kindergarten Investments. Finally, related to the accountability proposals in the education budget as the trailer Bill is being finalized, for those we do want to urge all three parties to consider delaying the deadline for the mid year LCAP update to be aligned with school district's second interim budget update in mid March instead of the end of February. This short delay would allow us to more meaningfully analyze our mid year expenditures and have more meaningful engagement with our communities. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair and Members, Stephen Stenzler with Brown Scene on behalf of Infinera, an advanced semiconductor chip manufacturer based in San Jose. Just want to respectfully urge the Committee to consider restoring the Calcompetes Grant program to the funding level proposed by the Governor. The grant program is one of the most important tools the state has to provide the incentives that must be offered in order for companies to qualify for funding under the federal chip. That and so with billions of dollars of federal funding on the line, we just urge California to expand the investment so we can remain competitive. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chair?

Yes. Let's go to public comment on the phone.

For those of you on the phone lines who wish to make a public comment, please press one, then zero. Press one, then zero only one time, as pressing one then zero a second time, will remove you from the queue. We have over 50 people in queue right now for comments and we're going to go to line 19. Your line is now open.

Yes, good morning. This is Chris Chavez with Coalition for Clean Air, also with the Charger Head California Invest in Clean Air Campaigns. Just first want to thank you for your hard work during this tough budget year. We continue to urge the legislature and the governor to do everything it can to continue investing in clean air. Air pollution is a threat to all Californians, especially those living in the frontline communities. We support the legislators proposed additional funding for clean cars for all and other equity programs. And we support increased funding for transit in AB 617 communities. Going forward, we need to see additional funding for getting more medium and heavy clean, medium and heavy-duty trucks on the road, which are a major source of health-harming, smog and carcinogenic diesel particulate matter. We also support reauthorization of AB 118 clean transportation programs with language directing more funds to disadvantaged communities. While we are concerned about carve outs for special interests and prefer technology-neutral approach, we are open to a proposal which includes guardrails and support for the medium and heavy-duty sectors. Lastly, we need to align our limited resources with our climate and air quality commitments by not subsidizing fossil fuels to tax breaks and continued state support for highway expansion projects. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Just a reminder, one minute per speaker. 60 seconds per speaker. Thank you.

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Good afternoon. This is Tiffany Fan on behalf of California Court Appointed Special Advocate Association or Cal CASAA. We would like to thank the legislature and administration for restoring the budget agreement made last year that will allocate $20 million to help cost to improve the lives of foster youth. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Committee Chair and members. My name is Jessica Magdaleno. I am the director of advocacy at the Diversity and Leadership Institute. And on behalf of the Diversity and Leadership Institute, along with hundreds of educators, parents, students, labor associations and advocates across the state, I would like to thank the legislature for its $10 million investment in the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative. I would also like to thank our sponsors on the initiative, Senator Stephen Bradford and Assembly Member Mia Bonta for making diverse and culturally responsive TK three through12 educators a priority investment. And this initiative will ensure that California public school leaders reflect the rich diversity of our schools, students and families. And it will also help close the long-standing equity gaps, especially for students who have been historically underserved. And for this reason, we are grateful for the support of the legislature and ask that you vote in favor of the Diversity Education Leaders Pipeline initiative. Thank you so much for your consideration.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and members. Jose Torres with Health Access California. Wanted to note that we appreciate the assembly's continued prioritization of healthcare affordability. We strongly support the legislature's proposal to safeguard the revenue generated from our state's individual mandate penalty and to quickly extend affordability assistance in 2024. Health Access is also supportive of the proposal for a larger and more immediate MCO tax to be spent over a three to four-year period, with a focus on programs that will have the biggest impact on access, quality and equitable care. And finally, we truly are appreciative of the legislature and the administration's continued commitment to fully implement our Medi-Cal expansions to undocumented individuals in 2024. I thank you for this time. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Nicole Wordelman on behalf of the Children's Partnership. The Children's Partnership is extremely grateful and supportive of many of the investments contained in the legislature's budget, in particular, removing trigger language associated with continuous Medi-Cal coverage for children zero to five, and including funding for the expansion of the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program, among others. Additionally, we would suggest including a thriving wage for community health workers as part of the MCO tax, expanding the California Food Assistance Program to include children, youth and all ages, expanding unemployment benefits to include all people and reconsidering delays in broadband funding as digital equity is a social determinant of health for kids. Thank you for your consideration.

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Thank you, Vanessa Cajina with KP Public Affairs. On behalf of Cal PACE, we appreciate the Budget Committee's oversight of programs of all-inclusive care for the elderly and your approval of additional support to DHCS to expand these critical inclusive health care programs. Then, on behalf of Compromiso, we want to express our deep gratitude for the legislature's inclusion of funding to work with community-based organizations that employ so they can become truly integrated into the state's efforts to improve health equity and underserved communities. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Laura Lane, on behalf of the California Association of Port Authorities. Just want to thank you for your continued support of California's ports. We appreciate your maintaining many of the investments in our ports, specifically the Port and Freight Infrastructure Program and other critical funding. However, we respectfully request restoration of the 400 million for zero-emission vehicles, or ZEV funding for the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission. California ports have made aggressive commitments to reach zero emissions, specifically as it relates to cargo-handling vehicles. We request the restoration of or at least a portion of this funding to ensure our ports can meet aggressive climate goals, access federal funding, and ensure California remains at the global forefront of port decarbonization. We recognize the budget constraints in this year's budget. However, this is an investment in the future, and we urge you to reconsider reinstating funding for the ZEV Ports Program. Thank you.

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Good afternoon. My name is Aaron Dover. I'm the project director for Educational Leadership Programs at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. We provide induction programs for educational leaders seeking preliminary and clear administrative credentials. I'm calling in support for including the funding for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative. These dollars will help organizations such as mine recruit, train and promote a more diverse educational leadership workforce. This initiative will help provide access for prospective school leaders who may not otherwise consider administration. Due to the cost of obtaining a preliminary and clear administrative credential, this budget initiative would remove that barrier. As we know, cost is a barrier, especially for educators of color in our country, our county. I've spoken to several teachers interested in moving into a leadership position, but simply can't due to the cost constraints. As we all know, when we foster a more diverse administrative workforce, our kids benefit. Students of color see school leaders that not only look like themselves, but feel they are seen and heard. Research is very clear that one of the top drivers of student achievement well-being is a strong administrator. Thank you very much for your consideration.

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This is Natalie, on behalf of Leadership Council, we support funding going to DWR for ongoing Sigma implementation. However, we continue to strongly impose investments to develop groundwater trading. We were surprised to see an appropriation to Dwarf and State Water Board regarding proposed judgments and Sigma. However, we look forward to engaging the state legislature on this. We were extremely disappointed to see the budget bill is completely defunding TCC and Community Resilience Center programs in fiscal years 23-24 and reverting TCC funding from fiscal year 22-23. These are crucial climate equity programs and defunding both of these programs will severely impact the managed communities, undermine California's climate commitments and hamper California's emergency response capabilities during acute climate events. We were disappointed to see 35 million for Livestock-Related Methane Reduction Program and urged that there be language to ensure that the money does not go to the Dairy Digester Research and Development Program. We were grateful that the budget bill reversed proposed $97 million in cuts to the Equitable Building Decarbonization program. This is a crucial program to meet California's climate goals while providing direct installation for low and moderate-income households. We are grateful to see the $20 million allocation each for flood recovery in disadvantaged communities of Unava and Bajaro. And last, we are concerned that the proposed appropriation to the city of Fresno includes no guarantees that the funding will support development of affordable housing units, despite increasing unaffordable rents in the city, and no guarantee that residents of Fresno will have a voice in how the money is spent. Thank you.

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Thank you, Mr. Chair Members, Jean Hurst calling in today on behalf of several clients. On behalf of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, we want to extend our appreciation for the $150 million for the Rapid Response Program, to assist the services for asylum seekers and border communities. On behalf of the Urban Counties of California and the Rural County Representatives of California, we want to support the restoration of $50 million for the third and final year of the Public Defense Pilot Program, as well as support the $36 million included for reimbursement of insufficient errap amounts for Alpine, Mono and San Mateo counties, also for UCC and RCRC. We do want to raise concerns about the lack of adequate funding for the Care Act, in particular for costs associated with legal representation for counties. And finally, on behalf of the Urban Counties, we want to extend our appreciation for the restoration of the health and human services workforce investments, and certainly appreciate your consideration of these issues.

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Good afternoon, Chairman and members. This is Andrew Shane from Grace and Child Poverty, California. Thank you, Chairman Ting, Dr. Rumba and others for your leadership want to specifically call out Reimagined, Cal Works, the Childcare Investments, the CalFresh $50 minimum and the Care benefit medical postpartum, as well as preventing trigger cuts to continuous coverage, the SILP investment thank you, Chairman Ting. And the safety net for all investments. The budget should fully fund food for all and eliminate government-owned child support debt. And I'll associate myself with the California Association of Food Banks in the Western Center. Thank you.

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Hello, this is Vanessa. I'm calling on behalf of the California Domestic Workers Coalition, and I want to thank Chair Ting, Subcommitee Chair Carrillo and appreciate all of the assembly budget leaders for including and funding domestic worker health and safety in the budget this year. We hope the assembly will continue prioritizing this proposal and ensure it's included in the final budget. Thank you.

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Thank you, Chair and members. My name is Jasmine Munoz with United Ways of California, part of the In Child Poverty Coalition. We'd like to thank the legislature for a number of items, including Assemblymember Arambula's leadership on their reimagined package that makes Cal Works more family-centered. We support funding that makes childcare more affordable and provides higher wages for childcare providers. We like to thank Senator Menjivar and the legislature for creating a CalFresh $50 minimum pilot. We're supportive of protection for continuous Medi-Cal coverage for children ages zero to five. We also show support for the housing supplement for youth and foster care placed in supervised independent living placements that prevents youth homelessness. We'd also like to thank the legislature for including funding for the Working Group, which will lay the foundation that makes the Safety Net For All a reality, also showing appreciation for the ongoing continuous hat funding. And finally, we just ask that the legislature eliminate government-owed child support debt, which will make a big impact for low-income parents. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting, honorable members, this is Edgar Ortiz calling in on behalf of the California Immigrant Policy Center to express our deep gratitude for legislative leaders, including funding for the working group for Safety Net For All, as well as the California Domestic Workers Coalition budget proposals in the California State budget. We urge you to continue to honor and uplift the work of immigrant workers across the state and prioritize these proposals and work to ensure that they get included in the final budget. Thank you for your time.

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Good afternoon, Kyle Hyland, on behalf of the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education, and it's more than 120 Members, we thank the egislature for rejecting trailer bill language to obstruct the relationship between school districts and their special education local plan area labeled the SELPA Administration Fee Cap. This proposal will not result in any better services for our students with disabilities and will cause confusion and conflict for SELPAs and LEAs. For these reasons, we respectfully ask the Legislature to continue to reject this proposal and stand firm in negotiations with the Newsom Administration. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and members, Alex Walker on behalf of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, where we saw our second-highest radish of day yesterday since the Pandemic. Thank you. A's fans want to call in with our support of SB 101. And thanks for the work on restoring money to Terraceip as well as for this new transit capital program. Looking forward to continuing to work with the legislature and stakeholders on details, accountability and so forth moving forward. And thank you again for your work.

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Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Joe Phillips and I'm an attorney with Bethsettek Legal Services in Los Angeles. Here as a part of the Safety Net For All Coalition. We want to thank the assembly leadership and members of the committee for including the working group funding for a working group on Safety Net For All in the California state budget. And we urge the assembly to continue prioritizing this proposal and working to ensure that it makes it into the final budget.

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Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. Kim Delfino speaking on the behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, California Native Plant Society, Audubon California, Sonoma Land Trust and Mojave Desert Land Trust. We thank the legislature for working so hard to preserve core funding for climate, environment and equity programs, particularly the addition of funds for fine-scale vegetation mapping, coastal protection, wildlife conservation board and Salton sea. Finally, we urge you to reject the administration's infrastructure trailer bills, especially the ones related to the CEQA administrative record, judicial streamlining, fully protected species and the Delta conveyance. Thank you.

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This is Katie Duberg with the California Work and Family Coalition calling regarding the proposal to borrow money from the Disability Insurance Fund to pay the interest on the Unemployment Insurance Loan Balance. We're really happy to see that necessary guardrails to monitor the adequacy and health of the DI Fund have been included in the budget bill. It's important that these guardrails are also included in the final budget. Disability Insurance, unlike employment insurance, is 100% funded by California workers. We need to ensure that we can continue to pay workers benefits to improve access to DI PFL and address barriers low wage workers face in obtaining paid family leave and disability insurance. We also support funding for the working group on Safety Net For All on the California State budget. Thank you.

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Mario Valadez with Transform, we are grateful to our legislative leadership and the Newsom Administration for providing transit with significant funding, support and flexibility to start California on a path to averting the fiscal cliff and restoring transit. Although the amount committed in the state budget will be very helpful over the next three years, it is not yet sufficient to meet the magnitude of the financial challenge confronting transit agencies, let alone provide the necessary investments to encourage people to return to transit over the long run. The shortfall will force our tradeoffs between sustaining vital transit operations and transit capital investments, including jeopardizing over $6 billion in federal matching dollars to the Bay Area. We need to fund a frequent, affordable, accessible and reliable transit system that benefits all California. We call on the legislation to pass the budget proposal, and we will continue to work with the state to identify additional funding, including flexing state highway funds, so that transit in California can survive and thrive. Without additional investment, in the coming years, California's goals for climate, housing, equity and economic development, all of which are predicated on a larger and growing transit system, will slip out of reach. Thank you.

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Julia Tuer with the San Diego Metropolitan Transit system. We'd like to thank the Legislature for responding to the calls of California transit agencies by restoring funding for the TRCP, providing new and flexible funding to address near-term operating deficits, and extending critical statutory relief for transit agencies. MTS and the California Transit Association, among the other transit agencies in the state, are committed to continuing to work with the legislature to address the full balance of our funding needs in the months ahead and to finalize the accountability and reform requirements. Thank you.

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Hello, I'm Sarah Greenwald. We need to get our carbon emissions down sharply right now to avert climate chaos. And the good news is we've got some solutions. And one of the best is public transit, which has already developed, works many years. It's very popular for millions of people. So I'm grateful that you've provided some transit funds. And please also let the recent influx of federal highway funds be flexible to use for transit operations. I'm always delighted to hear legislators say they're pro-environment, pro-climate. Of course, they love their children and our children, and they want to help us pull back from the climate cliff. So when it comes to a clear solution like public transit, I hope there will be no looking down at shoes and coming up with excuses. And I hope you do allow some highway funds to go to transit. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Darryl Little, on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, we like to thank the legislature for working hard to preserve core funding for climate, environment and equity programs. We support funding for public transit as a key climate and equity solution. We thank you for your funding commitments to the community, food hubs and organic transition programs. However, we request that you reconsider the reversion of the $60 million for farm-to-school funds, which is essential to the success of those programs, as well as for advancing equity and climate resilience in our food system. We support reauthorizing the vehicle restoration and license fees to advance clean transportation and charging infrastructure. Finally, we urge you to reject the administration's infrastructure trailer bills, especially the ones related to sequel, emission record, judicial streamlining, and fully protected species. Thank you for your time.

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Good afternoon. My name is Cyrus Hall, a transit rider in San Francisco. I want to thank Chair Ting and the committee for all your work and voice my support for the $1.1 billion allocation of flexible cap and trade funds for transit operations, allowing agencies to continue to work towards recovery and delaying the transit fiscal cliff. I also urge you to work with the governor to seek a shift in excess state highway funds to transit operations, giving agencies more time to recover and local and regional funding sources to come online. This will allow transit to survive and thrive. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and members. My name is Abby Helper, and with the Center for Go Literacy thank you for your steadfast leadership in fully funding school meals for all. With $1.65 billion in the legislature's budget for child nutrition programs, California is truly leading the nation and increasing access to school meals. We respectfully request your support for maintaining the $60 million in funding for CDFA's Farm to School Incubator Grant program that was allocated last year. The Center for GO Literacy works with a network of over 100 public school districts across the state. We've heard wonderful examples of the impact that farm-to-school has on students and communities, such as new salad bars, hands-on gardening program and connections with local farmers. Please reconsider cutting this valuable program. Farm-to-school complements school meals for all to help realize the full potential of school meals to nourish our students, support local farmers, and benefit the planet. Thank you.

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Hello. My name is Catherine Sullivan. My husband and I are calling in today from Castro Valley, California. We ask you to please reject the proposed solar tax to fund the Energy Commission. Subcommitee two already rejected the solar tax and we ask you respectfully, please do the same. We solar users are helping power California with clean energy, reducing the cost of the electrical grid and adding power to the grid to help prevent power outages in our community. Please do not penalize those of us and please reject the proposed tax. Thank you.

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My name is Arthur Pannette, solar homeowner in the city of Lakewood. Please reject the proposed solar tax. I know, just mentioned just a minute ago. Anyway, I'm against it. Please.

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Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members. Elliot Baltz, CEO of the Downtown Fresno Partnership with 346 Contributing Properties. We work every day with our wonderfully diverse community of business owners, workers, residents and visitors. And everybody wants more downtown housing. It's a downtown Fresno need as well as a regional and statewide need. And that need and opportunity that exists is at the scale of the $250 million previously proposed for infrastructure. So we respectfully urge the funding for the city of Fresno public infrastructure to be restored to the $250 million proposed bubble. Thank you.

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Thank you. My name is Jeff Tardigia and I would like to encourage the things for transportation, representing Sac True and also would like to improve from the California Fisher Coalition the restoration of some funds and the pilot programs for the CalFresh. Indeed, in California it needs to be more like $50 after this many years. Thank you.

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Hi. My name is Michael Dawson from Merced. I want to thank you very much for a budget that invests in coastal resilience and entitled biodiversity. Thank you for all your work.

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Hi, good afternoon. My name is Yvette DiCarlo and I live in Sacramento. And I urge you to please reject the proposed solar tax that would fund the Energy Commission. Solar users like myself are helping power California with clean energy and in fact, are reducing the cost of the electrical grid and the need for more energy for all ratepayers. So it makes no sense to penalize, especially since we already who have rooftop solar pay grid delivery fees. Thank you very much.

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Hello. My name is Dean Penchef and I'm the program manager of the Diversity Initiative for the Southern California Ocean at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I want to thank you for your budget investment in coastal resilience and in particular for the Intertidal Biodiversity Initiative. And thank you for your diligence working on this budget and for your patience and listening to all of us.

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Hi, good afternoon. My name is Carlos Amador with the Safety Net for All Coalition. Thank you assemblymembers and assembly leaders for including the funding for the working group on the Safety Net for All in the California state budget and we urge that the assembly continues to prioritize this in conversations and negotiations to make sure that it makes into the final budget. Thank you.

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Hi, my name is Tom Bettis and I'm a blind veteran who lives in San Diego. I too urge you to reject the proposed solar tax. Subcommitee two has already rejected the solar tax and I urge you to do the same. Thank you very much, take care.

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Hi, my name is Morgan Doyzaki and my family has owned Central Fish in Fresno's, Chinatown for 73 years. I'm a third generation business owner and hope to make it to a fourth. Currently my business is surrounded by blight and flatland while being in our most historic neighborhood. The demand to live in our downtown in Chinatown is overwhelming and more housing is what our area needs, but we cannot build unless the infrastructure is ready. I'm calling in support of the City of Fresno's public infrastructure plan for the full $250 million and request its removal in the budget. My goal of being part of the revitalization in downtown in Chinatown, Fresno holds dear to my heart. I believe that Fresno is the heart of California and the center of Central Valley is undoubtedly Fresno. Past politicians throughout governments have ignored Chinatown Fresno. I hope the state to prioritize Fresno after decades of disinvestment. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Elise Mondrick from Tratton Price Consulting, here on behalf of a number of clients. First, on behalf of Coalition for Community Solar Access, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Green New Deal Coalition and California Environmental Justice Alliance, we're here to urge the assembly to adopt the senate's proposal to allocate $400 million for Equitable community solar and storage in the clean energy reliability investment plan. This funding is critically needed to provide equitable reliable and affordable renewable energy for vulnerable communities. And we ask that this house adopt the senate's proposal in the final budget and then on behalf of SEJA, APEN and the Greeny Deal Coalition, we want to note opposition to the removal of funding for community resilience centers and transformative climate communities programs. Waiting for these items to be funded through a bond which may or may not pass, leaves communities already disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis even more vulnerable. Projects already underway or nearly complete with their planning processes will inevitably be delayed at best and at worst may not be completed if this funding is not included in the budget. So we ask that funding for these critical programs be restored. Thank you.

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My name is Ron Booker, I live in Petaluma. I appreciate the proposal of more than $1 billion for mass transit for the next three years and the restoration of $2 billion in what would have been budget cuts. But I gather we will need $5 billion over five years to avoid a shortfall. I understand that the state has access to federal highway funds and I would like to see some of those funds help our transit situation. Responding to the climate crisis in this way seems worth it. Even with revenue shortfalls, we can invest in preserving and improving mass transit now, or we can spend much more cleaning up after climate-related disasters yet to come. Thank you very much.

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My name is Nora Monaco and I'm a property owner in downtown Fresno. I respectfully urge the committee to reconsider and restore Fresno's original infrastructure budget of $250 million for our downtown. The current version of the budget reduced that amount by 80 percent. Fresno is the fifth largest city in the state of California. Unfortunately, we have historically old and dilapidated infrastructure in areas throughout our downtown which impedes development. The full $250 million investment would facilitate increased residential and other development that can transform the heart of our city. With only 20 percent of the infrastructure funding in the budget for Fresno's downtown, I believe we will continue to have transformational setbacks for years to come. Please reconsider increasing the funding for Fresno's infrastructure back to the original amount. Thank you for your time and consideration. Each of us makes the difference. Thank you for your votes.

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Hello, this is Dave Reinerson, I live in Huntington Beach. Like callers before me, I'm asking you to reject the proposed solar tax to fund the Energy Commission. Solar users have helped avoid over $2.6 billion in infrastructure investment that benefits all ratepayers. We should not be penalized for doing the right thing. Thank you.

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Hi. This is Rob Holly from San Jose. Please reject the proposed solar tax to fund the Energy Commission, and I ditto the previous caller's comments.

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Good afternoon. This is Lisa Herlocker. I'm with the Lutheran Office of Public Policy, which is part of the End Child Poverty Coalition. I want to thank you for your leadership on things like reimagining Cal Works, affordable childcare, Cal Fresh minimums of $50 care benefits, Medi-Cal postpartum, SILP, Safety Net for All investments, and we want to encourage that the budget continues to fully fund food for all and eliminates any government owed child support debt. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Stephen Jones from AC Transit in Oakland, echoing previous comments in support of the proposed transportation funding flexibility and accountability measures. We sincerely appreciate the Committee's hard work in this challenging budget year, but there's more work to be done because unfortunately, these steps don't fully address the five-year funding need. We're committed to working with the legislature, the administration and our transit partners to keep transit running in our communities. This includes finalizing the accountability measures and transit reform requirements and securing the funding that will address the full balance of public transit's funding need. Thank you once again for your work.

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Thank you, Chair and members. My name is Noah Whitley, speaking on behalf of the California Association of Local Conservation Corps. We want to express our appreciation to the assembly for storing $11 million of the local Tribal Core Nature Based Solutions Fund for fiscal year 2023 to 24. This funding will provide life-changing opportunities to underserved young adults and disadvantaged communities across the state. With this funding, thousands of young adults will be able to access job training opportunities on fuels reduction, reforestation, recycling, litter abatement and other conservation projects. We look forward to continuing to work with legislature to ensure that Cal Prays at promised youth continue to be a priority for state climate investments. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. My name is Tasia Stevens. I'm a legislative advocate with Catalyst California and I'd like to align my comments in support with Dr. Lawanda Wesley, the Childcare Resource Center and the ECE Coalition in support of the inclusion of childcare rates, as well as Jessica Magdaleno with the Diversity Leadership Institute in support of the $10 million investment in the Diversity Education Leadership Pipeline initiative. Thank you again.

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Name is Mina Layba. I'm the legislative affairs manager representing Thousand Oaks Transit as well as the City of Thousand Oaks. We want to thank you for your commitment to public transit and appreciate the restoration of transit funds as well as flexibility in its use. We also want to thank you for your commitment to homeless funding as well as wildfire mitigation funding. Thank you so much for your good work.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and budget committee members. I'm Patrick McGrew, assistant superintendent for the Yellow County SELPA. Thank you for rejecting the problematic trailer bill Language labeled SELPA Administrative Fee Cap that does nothing to help students and nullifies the thoughtful work that our parents, staff and superintendents have put into our local plan to address the unique needs of our students in Yellow County. We already had to change next year's local allocation plan due to the mental health funding shift put in motion by the current year's budget. And our newly designed local allocation plan for next year won't work. With this proposal, SELPA's work in a transparent manner and local plans, including the administrative budget, are posted on every SELPA and LEA website. For those reasons, we respectfully ask the legislature to continue to reject the trailer bill language labeled SELPA Administrative Fee Cap and ask that you stand firm in negotiation with the Newsom Administration on this point. Thank you.

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Izzy Swindler on behalf of Specialty Equipment Market Association SEMA in opposition to the reversion of the remaining CVRP funding, this funding is critical to supporting California's consumers transition to ZEV, and we hope you'll consider maintaining the funding in your final negotiations. Thank you.

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Hi, there. This is Jared Sanchez with the California Bicycle Coalition. Just wanted to thank the legislature for the restoration of the active transportation program. Moving forward, hope you often consider diverting highway funds that are going to expansion and giving them to complete streets infrastructure that we so they need. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Cody Laird with the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation calling in today to urge the Committee to restore the full $250 million infrastructure funding allocated to the City of Fresno. In previous revisions, this infrastructure funding will begin to address decades-long disinvestment in Fresno's downtown core. The city and its community are committed to reviving Downtown Fresno and making a walkable neighborhood with access to community amenities and transit, including a California high-speed rail station. These investments are essential to ensuring the success of projects in downtown Fresno. Thank you for your time.

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Good afternoon. My name is Sally Fox, and I'm a member of the California Association for Bilingual Education, or CABE in San Diego County. Thank you for your support of the BTPD, which will help end the bilingual teacher shortage. Please ensure English learners are protected in the education budget Bill by supporting CABE's proposed language regarding screeners for reading difficulties. Thank you.

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My name is Jeff Collins, and I live in Santa Rosa, and I'm calling in to oppose the proposed solar tax. It makes no sense to penalize residential solar users like us who provide power in California instead of large polluting power plants. Thank you for doing the right thing.

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Hi, this is Bill Bay, and thank you, Members, for taking my call. I'm retired, moved to El Dorado Hills from the Bay Area in 2019, and I'm asking that you also reject the proposed solar tax. I installed my first solar array 10 years ago, and since that time, I dragged my family into this little chaotic project as well. So my daughters and I have now purchased four additional solar systems.

It has helped lower the cost of electric grid and decreased carbon emissions and contributes to energy independence. So I'm just asking, please don't penalize solar users like us for doing the right thing. Thanks for your attention.

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Thank you, Mr. Chair. Matt Robinson with Shaw Yoder Antwih Schmelzer & Lange. Just a couple of points on behalf of Caltrain, very much want to thank the Legislature for the work they've done this year on transit with the California Transit Association.

With the recent proposal, we are trying to learn a bit more about some of the impacts on the redirection of the zero emission rail funding and how that might impact projects that were in development with the state. And then on behalf of the California Green Business Program, I know it didn't make the current budget proposal, but we're hoping that the Legislature will consider continuing to work to provide the continuing funding for that program to be maintained at Cal EPA for another couple of years.

Thank you for listening to me and appreciate the time.

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Hi, good afternoon. My name is Brian Sanchez calling in from San Bernardino with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, part of the Safety Net for All Coalition. I'd like to thank the Assembly leaders for including funding for the Working Group on Safety Net for All in the California State budget. I urge the Assembly to continue prioritizing this proposal and work to ensure that it gets in the final budget. Thank you.

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Hello? Can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Rick Hodgkins. I'm calling from Citrus Heights, California and I'm speaking on my own behalf, but I am a member of Capitol People First, an organization run by and for the IDD community in the city and county of Sacramento. I'm also a member of the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal, Cal Duals Managed Long Term Services and Support Stakeholders working group.

And I'm also a member of the Lanterman Coalition, the Arc of California UCP Collaborative, as well as the Lanterman Housing Alliance. I don't know if the Managed Care Organization tax was brought up because I just entered the hearing, but I support the Managed Care Organization tax. Besides, with raising Medi-Cal rates, what we can do is we could allow people like me, with Denti-Cal, to see their dentist twice a year over 21 people over 21, as well as provide for braces because braces help keep teeth clean.

It's not just a cosmetic issue. The Managed Care Organization tax could also help to provide funding for AB 649 by Lori Wilson to allow Regional Centers to pay for things when Medi-Cal denies them and insurance. And AB 1031. Actually, that's AB 1031 by Lori Wilson.

AB 649 by Assembly Member Rubio to give independent living instructors and other direct support professionals allow them to take breaks, rest periods even when they're working with clients and also Assembly Bill 1672 by Assembly Member Matt Haney of San Francisco, your counterpart Mr Ting, to discuss to bring bargaining for IHSS to the table at the county. To bargain for higher wages. Thank you.

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Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair and Members of the Committee.

My name is Claudia Castaneda, calling on behalf of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, calling to share that our food bank is now serving over 900,000 people a month in the greater Los Angeles region and we're rapidly utilizing our food purchasing budget to meet the increasing demand. I want to take this time to say thank you to Assemblymember Ting and Dr. Arambula for prioritizing the needs and lived experiences of people experiencing hunger and poverty in our budget.

In particular, we are incredibly grateful to the Governor and the Legislature for the continued investment in Cal Food which is absolutely essential for our food bank to continue meeting the need in our community. Thank you for prioritizing and increasing the CalFresh minimum benefit to $50 a month and protecting CalFresh recipients from failed federal ABAWD time limit rules. Thank you also for your continued investments in school meals for all, ensuring that California's landmark policy can continue to serve all children across the state. Thank you.

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Chair Ting and Committee Members, Nate Solov on behalf of the Port of LA, thank you for your continued support of California's Port. We appreciate you maintaining many investments in our port, specifically the Port and Freight Infrastructure program and other critical funding. However, we respectfully request restoration of Zero emission vehicle funding.

Last year's budget included for the first time, $400 million for the Zero Emission Vehicle package for programs at the Air Resources Board and the Energy Commission to promote investment in zero emission cargo-handling equipment, locomotives and harbor craft at California's ports. We've made commitments to reach zero mission, specifically as it relates to cargo-handling equipment. In addition, CARB has requirements in place that we are required to meet.

So it's imperative that in addition to our own funding, the state also provide funding to help meet those mandates. We request restoration of at least a portion of this funding to ensure that our ports can meet aggressive climate goals, access federal funding, and ensure California remains at the global forefront of port decarbonization. Thank you so much for your consideration of this request.

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Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Hi, Chair Ting and Members of the Committee.

I'm Igor Tregub, Chair of the Alameda County Democratic Party, calling on its behalf. We have been advocating, along with many coalition partners around equitable funding for Bay Area transit and transit statewide. We would like to applaud you for adding back into the state budget $2 billion that were previously announced as cuts to transit capital funding. This will stave off the immediate threat of service cuts. However, it still falls short of the total $5 billion needed over the next five years.

So given the recent influx of federal state highway funds, we think that it can and should be allocated towards preventing transit cuts and regrowing ridership. That said, I know, having spoken with the Chair about this and with many of you, thank you for all of your work to restore these immediate funding cuts to transit so that Bay Area and statewide transit can not just survive, but thrive. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members of the Budget Committee.

This is Michelle Teran-Woolfork with the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. We'd like to first thank the Legislature for the $1 million investment in the Women's Recovery Response Program. We would still like to see an additional and future investment for our full budget ask to support 50% of our state's population. Thank you.

Line 118, your line is now open.

Hello, my name is Eddie Gonzalez. I'm with the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, here as part of the Safety Net for All coalition. Thank you, Assembly leaders, for including funding for the working group on Safety Net for All in the California State budget. I urge the Assembly to continue prioritizing this proposal and work to ensure that it gets to the final budget. Thank you.

Line 123, your line is now open.

Yes, it's Jane Affonso and I'm with Lutheran Office of Public Policy, part of the End Child Poverty Coalition. Thank you so much, Chair Ting and Members, especially Assembly Member Arambula and others, for reimagined CalWORKs Child Care, CalFresh $50 minimum and care benefits, Medi-Cal postpartum, SILP, Safety Net for All investments. The budget should fully fund food for all and eliminate government-owned child support debt.

And as an individual, I'm very thankful for the funding of Flexible Transit, and I hope that you will work with the Governor to allow for the transfer of federal highway funds to public transit to address our climate change and create a more equitable state. Thank you.

Line 122, your line is now open.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I'm Amarantha Silva with Parent Voices California. I want to thank you for supporting children, parents and providers by funding childcare.

Also here, as a part of the Safety Net for All Coalition, I want to thank you for including funding for the working group on Safety Net for All in the California State budget. I also want to urge the Assembly to continue prioritizing these proposals and to work to ensure that they get into the final budget. Thank you.

Line 125, your line is now open.

Hi, my name is Leanne Chang. I'm a transit rider in San Francisco. By choice, I don't own a car or have a driver's license. I want to thank Chair Ting and the Committee for partially funding transit, particularly the 1.1 billion allocation of flexible cap and trade funds for transit operations. But this money is not enough. I'm asking you to work with the Governor to shift excess state highway funds to transit operations so that service doesn't have to be cut and federal matching dollars can still flow into California. Thank you.

Line 126, your line is now open.

Good afternoon. My name is Erin Woolley calling on behalf of Sierra Club California. First, I'd like to thank you for partially restoring critical funding for 30 by 30 and HR-based solutions, including for coastal resiliency, urban greening in the Salton Sea. And second, I urge you to continue to reject the Governor's infrastructure trailer Bill package, which poses several rollbacks to CEQA as well as other important environmental laws. Thank you.

Line 127, your line is now open.

Thank you, Chair Ting and Members. And this is Jordan Penland from Golden State Opportunity, part of the End Child Poverty Coalition. Thank you for your leadership, Assemblymember Arambula and others for reimagined CalWorks Child Care, CalFresh, $50 minimum and care benefits, Medi-Cal postpartum, SILP, Safety Net for All investments. The budget should fully fund food for all and eliminate government-owned child support debt. Thank you.

Line 131, your line is now open.

This is Pastor Sylvia Mueller from Lutheran Office of Public Policy, part of End Child Poverty Coalition. The budget should fully fund food for all and eliminate government-owned child support debt. Thank you.

Line 132, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members of the Budget Committee. I'm Susan Collins, President of the Container Recycling Institute. I'm concerned about the chronic misreporting that has occurred over the last 15 years in the Governor's budget with regard to the Beverage Container Recycling Fund. This year, the Fund balance was incorrectly understated by $189,000,000, and there were more than $1.5 billion worth of errors across 28 line items. These errors have been acknowledged by the Department of Finance in an email to me.

I have sent a detailed letter with spreadsheets and sourcing to the Budget Committee. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Line 136, your line is now open.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you. My name is Pam Rood and I live in San Diego. We're calling to thank you for rejecting the solar tax. We appreciate that, and we ask you to please continue to recognize the benefits solar provides for California and reject any future proposed solar taxes. Solar users are helping power California with clean energy and reducing the cost of the electrical grid. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, this is a final call. For those who wish to comment at this time, please press one, then zero. Press one, then zero. And Mr. Chair, we have one more person who signaled that they wish to speak. Just a moment. We're now going to go to line 128. 128, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Assembly Member Ting and Budget Committee Members. I'm Liz Guillen with Public Advocates. We appreciate your and your staff's hard work getting to this point, particularly in the Ed budget.

As you continue discussions, please do not cut the National Board certified teacher incentive program. It's helped support retaining expert teachers in high-need schools with especially strong uptake by teachers of color. Also, please do not cut funding for the Golden State Pathways Grant Program. Low-income and students of color need the pathways, and they should not be penalized for the state's failure to push these funds out to LEAs.

We believe the equity multiplier can be strengthened by requiring that Focus Goal funds be used on new or modified actions to ensure effectiveness, and funding school sites based on the number of students in Focus Goal subgroups not already receiving state aid. Finally, we urge you to delay funding the county offices of Ed for their court and community schools where our most vulnerable students are served. Or consider requiring more outcome data and inclusion of impacted youth and families in creating accountability mechanisms in the trailer Bill.

Also, since we're in a deficit, please consider rescinding or delaying the cap of school districts reserves this year. Thank you.

Line 137, your line is now open.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. I'm Tony Gonzalez and I represent the Sickle Cell Disease Foundation of California. We respectfully request restoration of $11 million in one time and last time funding to sustain the network of clinics for adults with sickle cell disease. We've documented, we've submitted paperwork that relies heavily on CDC data that substantiates savings of $152 million annually to Medi-Cal by virtue of the operation of these clinics. We are in discussions with the Department of Healthcare Services to integrate the clinics into CalAIM.

And with this one-time funding, we can save the state at least 100 million and closer to $150 million annually by reduced hospitalizations and ER visits for a population was primarily a medical population. And we respectfully request the reinstatement of this funding. And with that, I thank you for your time.

Mr. Chair, there is no one else who has signaled that they wish to speak.

Thank you. Operator. Just going back to the room. Any more public comment in the room? Wonderful. This will conclude the Assembly Committee hearing on Budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are adjourned.