Assembly Standing Committee on Budget

Good afternoon. We are going to call the Assembly Committee on Budget to order. We are starting as a Subcommitee to hear the presentations of our five subchairs. Today we're going to adopt the Assembly version of the budget. We are also going to be hearing from the five Subcommitee chairs. We're going to start with subcommittees 1 and 2. I'm going to then ask for a motion to approve the budget package as presented.

We have Mr. Ferguson from Finance, Mr. Pettic and his Lao colleagues, as well as Christian Griffith in our Budget Subcommitee or Budget Subcommitee staff here today. To answer any questions for anybody who wishes to make public comment, they can do so over the phone. They can call into 877-692-8957. The access code is 1850-1100. I also want to just mention we know that the Governor recently introduced about 10 trailer bills on streamlining infrastructure. We are going to be having policy committees having hearings on those bills.

So we will not be hearing those bills or taking any public comment on those bills today. Also, we are having an MCO tax hearing between Budget Subcommitee One and Health Committee next Tuesday. So I also won't be taking any Subcommitee questions on that. Having said that, I know that if Members do have any questions or have any clarifications, they can definitely ask those questions. We are here today because we've had over 58 hearings.

We've talked about every aspect of the budget that was presented by the Governor in January in great, great detail. We appreciate the Governor's May revise, and what I would say is while California's revenues are lower than we projected last year, the budget that we propose today would still be the second largest in state history. It continues to Fund key, key priorities, which is health care for all Tk, universal Tk. Also funding record funding for our K through 12 classrooms.

We also restore our transit funding that was cut in the January proposal as well as in the May revise. We're proposing an increase of 25% for childcare providers, a COLA of sorts because there has been no increase since 2016. We're also providing an additional year of funding for HAPP, which is our flexible funding for homelessness for our cities, our counties, and continuous of care, which is $1.0 billion for next year. We're also doing additional funding for affordable housing and higher education housing.

In addition, we have a number of climate priorities that are being restored from the January and the May revised proposal around water recycling, agricultural funding, zero emission vehicles. But as with any budget, whether you have a lot of money or a little bit of money, we're always making very, very difficult choices as we go into more uncertain budget times. And as we wait to actually get a real revenue projection in November, we know that we have to ensure that we stay focused on our budget.

We learned from the lessons of 2008 2009 2010 what you can do when you focus on ongoing spending with one time revenue, it resulted in one of the greatest recessions and also one of the greatest deficits in our state's history. The fiscal State of California has not been stronger. We have over a $30 billion deficit. We have available cash of over $80 billion. We're in an extremely strong fiscal situation.

We really appreciate the Lao's recent report on the State of our budget, and we completely agree with the office. And that's why this budget is still in terms of spending. A significant part of the newer spending in this budget is, again, one time spending.

And the whole point of one time spending is if we don't have the money the following year or the year after, it's something that is very, very important, but not as important as our ongoing spending, which is Medi Cal Works, CalFresh Key Core programs that unfortunately had to be cut because of a misbalanced budget in years past.

At this point, let me just turn it over before we have our subcommittees present to see if Mr. Fong or Mr. Fong or any of the Committee Members want to start by making any opening comments. Mr. Fong.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just be very brief. I know we are crunched for time. I know right now we're dealing with a really difficult situation. We have deficits colliding with spending growth that I've said that is unsustainable juxtaposing with conflicting budget priorities that now we have to deal with. And my perspective is that California has extended itself beyond its means. And so now we have tough choices to make. And I think that we need to look at the major vision. We have to look at this proposal.

We have to look at the recent report from the Lao as a real wake up call that we have to really get our financial and fiscal house in order. So look forward to the presentations and look forward to the answers to our questions.

Thank you. Any other comment from the Dais seeing? None. We're going to go to our first two presentations, which is from Dr. Arambula in sub one, as well as Mr. Mccarty in sub two.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Before I share some of the key components of the Health and Human Services actions for today, I want to begin by thanking the other Members who serve on the Subcommitee. Number one from Assemblymember Alanis to Assemblymember Patterson, assemblymember Ramos, assemblymember Rubio as well as Dr. Wood and Dr. Jackson.

This spring, we heard about the most important issues facing our state in the health and human services arena, including family poverty, foster care, senior homelessness, hunger needs, access to care in the Medi Cal program, affordability of care through Covered California, and the behavioral health needs of our state. We held a series of hearings and we heard valuable testimony from stakeholders and the public which have led us to our actions. I will highlight a few of them for each area.

In health, we are living up to our commitment to use the individual healthcare coverage mandate penalty revenue to take care of to make healthcare more affordable by requiring that this revenue go directly to Covered California to be used to reduced cost sharing for Covered California enrollees. We are protecting the significant investments made last year in the healthcare workforce by providing the necessary funding to not have to delay these investments as proposed in the Governor's Budget.

With an eye towards balancing the budget as well as improving access to care in the medical program, we are approving the proposed managed care organization tax, which represents approximately 19 billion in revenue for the state. We look forward to the conversations with the Administration and the stakeholders on the specific expenditures that will most improve the Medi Cal program. We are restoring ongoing funding to the Indian Health Program, which has not been in place since it was cut during the Great Recession.

We are funding healthcare coverage for our striking workers. And finally, we are providing funding to support the operational costs of harm reduction organizations, which are responsible for over two thirds of the overdose reversals in our state. In human services, we are making a profound and critical investment of 100 million General Fund one time to reimagine our CalWORKS program serving our state's neediest families with children. These families live in deep poverty and struggle with barriers.

This investment and the associated trailer Bill are intended to move the needle and force the culture shift that is so sorely needed. We invest in a housing supplement for older foster youth who are struggling to pay rent and stay housed as they transition into adulthood. We provide funds for the CalFresh, Fruit and Vegetable Pilot Program as these dollars are leveraged in the community to provide access to healthy nutrition for families that are food insecure.

We provide bridge funding for the foster family agencies, which is critical until there is a new permanent rate structure for these and other providers. We accept the Governor's new timeline for the California Food Assistance Program expansion 15 months earlier than what was proposed in the January budget. We create the Employment First office at the California Health and Human Services Agency.

We extend remote meetings and fee suspensions for the IDD community, and we invest in the supportive services for victims and survivors of hate crime and hate crime prevention. In closing, I'm proud that while the budget situation is not as fruitful in years past, our actions reflect the principles that the Administration, Legislature and stakeholders share for strengthening our health and human services programs.

Notably, this budget sustains the significant investments that we have made in the past years, including expanding healthcare access to undocumented Californians, providing significant investments into mental and behavioral health, especially for our youth, combating the opioid epidemic, and strengthening our safety net supports and services. I'm proud to have made such progress on our California values. While there are many investments that were not made at this time, we are still continuing to make progress towards our values and protecting California's most vulnerable individuals.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to present.

Thank you, Dr. Arambula. We're going to go to Mr. Mccarty.

Okay, thank you. Just want to again recognize folks who got to this point. Clearly our team before us here today. We have our chief consultant and our Committee staff. But thank you to the sub two staff with Aaron Gable and Mark Martin. And thank you, Phil, for I know you're a budget chair, but you lean into all the committees, but sub two is the one that you served on and appreciate your engagement. And our Subcommitee Members were on here.

Selena Was, Fong, Marzuchi Alvarez, Cervantes Sanchez, and Dahle. As you said, Phil, we've had an amazing run in the state. Know know you some folks like, zero, the sky's falling decline. Let's keep in mind that this budget is an A minus budget. After two years of an A plus budget and probably five years of A, roughly a budget. I'm not sure if you have those same rankings, Mr. Fong, but that's how I see it.

And this is after many years of AB minus and B and C budget. So this is a tremendous budget for public education from our youngest kids all the way through Tk, through 12 schools and higher education. And the big picture here is we are maintaining the significant and transformative investments that we made the past few years with the help of our Governor and the Legislature on so many fronts.

So I'll get to that here, starting with our youngest kids in California, as you noted earlier, Mr. Chair, early ed and childcare, this is so key to our economy to make sure that we help our workforce and our families thrive, but also the next generation. So we value this piece and Fund true reform to reimbursement rates, which we know is the key of the triangle of the stool to Prop up these early ed programs in California.

I know we're continuing to work with the Administration to have a longer term solution on that through our Tk through 12 schools. Yes, that's right. We do have a new letter in there. The T for Universal Pre K in California. Record COLA north of 8%. We do have a higher property tax allocation than the May revise, allowing us to further invest in public education, protect the LCFF investments, restoring money for Arts and Music Instructional Materials block grant as well.

We launch and fully Fund with the implementation of Transitional Kindergarten Universal, adopting new one to 10 ratios starting in 25 26, and maintain the state's goal for 20 25 26 full implementation. A couple of our notable efforts here are increasing one time money to implement ethnic studies in California. Our bilingual Teacher professional program as well as restorative Justice Best practices and streamline the Strong Workforce Program, which I know we had support from Republicans and Democrats to unify that into one simplified effort on higher education.

Our mantra has always been simple expand access and affordability to higher ed UC, CSU and our community colleges. We're doing just that, focusing on the cost of college as well as just overall access. We're expanding enrollment for UC and CSU over 12,000 new slots for those segments.

We're continuing an issue that's been a priority of all of us to decrease the number of nonresident Californians at Berkeley, San Diego and UCLA and increase the number of hardworking and qualified and too often rejected California high school graduates for our community colleges as well. We will have the record COLA north of 8% to focus on some of the basics there. And lastly, we know that we have a housing crisis in California as well as a higher education access.

So we're putting those two things with one solution and funding the Student Housing Revolving Fund, as well as the one time money for grants for student housing, which would Fund 5000 more beds across the state for UC CSU, as well as some UC community college combo sites, as well as two community college locations. So again, solid budget, not perfect, but a minus to continue on our priorities. And with that, certainly ask for the Committee's endorsement of this Sub two plan.

Thank you, Mr. Mccarty. Next we'll go to Ms. Bonta with sub five.

Thank you, Chair. This is my first term as Sub Chair of the Public Safety Budget Subcommitee, which was an incredible opportunity to dive deeper into the programs, departments and policies that support public safety, the justice system, and disaster relief and recovery. I want to first thank all of my colleagues on the Subcommitee, Assembly Member Joan Sawyer, Hart Lackey and Joe Patterson, for their time, their thoughtful discussion and critiques, and often a lot of agreement and alignment.

The level of agreement in our Subcommitee may be surprising to some, but it's in line with our shared values of being fiscally responsible, asking all of the questions, inspiring and requiring transparency, and supporting investments that improve the safety and well being of Californians. We don't always get the answers that we want, but we collectively try.

I also want to thank our Chair, Assemblymember Ting, for his leadership, particularly in the area of public safety, and for pushing for investments and policies that get us to a fairer, more just society. Finally, I want to thank the budget support staff, Marco, Irene and Juan, that helped behind the scenes. To the It staff and the Sergeants Christian Griffith and Jason Sisney, the Legislative Analyst Office. Drew, Caitlin, Anita, Orlando and Jared.

And Lindsay Mitchell, Republican staff consultant for all of their hard work in getting us to this point in the budget process, as well as the Department of Finance, the Governor and his team as well. I also want to give special thanks and recognition to Ms. Jennifer Kim, who has worked tirelessly in the Subcommitee for several years as our consultant for her diligence and for being a great partner this year, asking tough questions.

Making sure to get the responses that we needed to be able to move forward and uplifting our priorities and the priorities of my priorities and the priorities of the Subcommitee. Considering the fiscal challenges the state is facing, I am very proud of the budget plan we are putting forward from Budget sub Five.

It includes legislative priorities like funding the implementation of the Care Act and ensuring sufficient trial court funding levels strengthening the state's infrastructure to improve disaster prevention, response and recovery efforts, including supporting the communities of Planada and Pajaro that were recently devastated by flooding making critical investments to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes of justice system involved people including funding community based organizations that provide in prison programming correcting the injustices of our justice system by implementing the racial justice act to address the impact of racism in the criminal justice system, ensuring the previous commitments that the Legislature made are not left behind, including funding Casa Public Defenders and the Earthquake Seismic Safety Grant, and finally, adjusting resources for our community reentry providers so that they can continue to provide critical services to improve outcomes of people living in prison.

We also include a plan to identify additional prisons foreclosure by 2027 to account for the fact that even after closing the prisons, the Governor announced foreclosure, we are looking at in excess of 17,000 empty beds in the future. We simply cannot afford to continue paying for what is essentially a six empty prisons and the billions of dollars in capital needs. Finally, we include a prohibition on the use of correctional and detention facilities for the housing of children in foster care system.

There is a plausible argument as to why such an environment would be appropriate for the care of a foster child. I can't think of it. It's shocking that we would even need to pass such a Bill, but we will simply must do better. I look forward to the process ahead in working with the Senate and the Administration in passing a budget that reflects our values and commitment to the people of California in building a more just, equitable and safe state.

With that, I encourage our recommendations be adopted.

Thank you, Ms. Bonta. We're going to go Mr. Bennett with sub three.

Thank you very much. Mr. Chair. We had 10 hearings this year and heard hundreds of proposals. First, I'd like to recognize the great conversations and input from my Committee Members. Mr. Conley, Mr. SA Lee, Ms. Friedman, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Jim Patterson and Ms. Rivas. Key elements of the Subcommitee actions. Unfortunately, due to the General Fund conditions, our Subcommitee bore the majority of the cuts to the historic climate spending that we engaged in last year.

Even with these cuts, we are still investing at higher levels than ever before to protect our environment, reduce emissions and more reduce emissions and make Californians, especially Low income Californians, more resilient to the changing environment. Water resilience and sustainable agriculture are a focus of our spending. While we quickly move from drought to flood, this year, we need to prepare for a drier future and help our farmers, especially small farmers, with drastically changing conditions.

We restored funding for recycled water, dam safety, and removing PFAS from water supplies. We also added funding for fresh fruits and vegetables for CalFresh recipients, created a tool sharing program for small farmers, and provided $5 million to help farmers transition to organics. We also restored funding for community food hubs and urban agriculture. All of those things we believe are sustainable programs that we need to keep investing in year in and year out. We also prioritized equity and community resilience.

We restored cuts to the AB 6117 program that reduces emissions in the most polluted communities. We restored $50 million for projects in the Salton Sea and restored $75 million for extreme heat mitigation, restoring 204,000,000 for communities lacking parks, and added 125,000,000 to help Low income Californians get into electric vehicles.

Transit and Transportation those were a key focus of our Committee, and that was the transit fiscal cliff and what role the state would play in protecting transit and transit riders as well as moving transit into the future. In order to address that, our budget had to restore the previously negotiated transportation dollars, including the funding for the transit and inner city rail capital program and active transportation dollars.

The budget envisions that a portion of this capital funding could be flexed to assist operations of financially distressed local transit agencies with strong accountability measures to ensure that these state operating subsidies are limited and temporary in nature. The budget plan includes placeholder trailer Bill Language to continue COVID-19 relief programs previously authorized by the Legislature and incorporates the provisions of AB 761 to create a task force to examine the ways to improve and increase ridership in the long run for transportation.

Our plan approves the delay of $600 million for the port and freight infrastructure program scheduled for 2023 2024 and the May revision proposal to reduce a portion of the General Fund in 2023 2024 by $150,000,000 and finally to backfill decrease with an equal amount from the state highway Sha account. The plan also approves the proposed Fund shifts for active transportation and climate adaption programs, approves the proposed delay to the Grade Separators program, and rejects the proposed reduction to the active transportation program. Thank you again.

And thank you again to the Members and my staff in particular for a very busy and full year in sub three. I look forward to working with everybody in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Now we'll go to Ms. Carrillo in sub four.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it is on. Yes, it's on again. I also want to give my acknowledgment to all of the hard work that we've done throughout this year. We've had 11 hearings, very long, several hours. And I want to give a very special recognition to the Members that participated in the great conversations and input Mr. Lee, Mr. Joe Patterson, our majority leader Ms. Reyes and Ms. Wicks.

And a special recognition and thank you to all the staff whose incredible hard work allows for us to be able to move forward. We have some key elements in the Subcommitee that I'd like to present. We'll start off with housing and homelessness was a key focus of our work. We held two public hearings last fall in both San Francisco and Los Angeles which framed our conversation on homelessness this year.

Based upon feedback, we provided 1 billion of HAPP funding in 2023 and 2024 to provide certainty with our local partners as they continue to tackle homelessness. This will be paired with tough accountability measures that many of my colleagues have worked to create. We have also moved on some remaining 2022 HAPP Bonus Round funding to the budget year to deploy all homelessness resources as efficiently as possible in housing. We included 150,000,000 in multifamily housing investments. Given the historic demand for funding in the last round.

We also restored Adu funding proposed for reduction and the Dream for all program using an innovative funding mechanism on labor enforcement. It remained a priority. As many as you know. We all care about the well being of Californians that have had the toughest jobs, but are key to making our economy move forward. Our budget plan includes funding for additional labor enforcement activities.

It funds the Domestic Worker Safety Plan and provides key workforce support to Californians, leaving the justice system and detention facilities those that have been impacted. Related to the Film Tax Credit another key focus of the Committee was improving the proposed California Film and Television Tax Credit 4.0, which is a part of this budget plan.

Unlike some other states that wish to compete with California, California values creative work, diversity and free expression, and we value all of these very good union jobs across our state, but particularly for Los Angeles County. Our plan contains a tax that will attract more production to California over the next five years, increases the focus on workforce diversity, and requires the industry to make important career pathways investments that are reflective of the people of our state.

There are additional conversations that are taking place related to set safety and refundability methods that we will continue to discuss. And the result will be that we will have more good jobs and union jobs across the state. That celebrate the workforce of our state as well as to continue to allow California to be competitive against other states that wish to take this industry away. Additionally, we reduced broadband funding. We had to make some really tough choices to include the additional investments mentioned earlier.

We reduced several items proposed by the Governor in our plan because we needed savings for other priorities. The largest is to assume the 800 million of the new Federal Bead Funding for Broadband Offset plan state investments. Last year, we adopted a five year plan for 6.5 billion in total broadband investments, including 3.6 billion to the General Fund. We have not yet appropriated 2 billion of that General Fund amount and should let the Federals be used in lieu of that future investment.

While reductions like these are not pleasant, we think Californians want us to focus on available resources toward housing and homelessness investments. Given the persistent crisis that we face and what we've prioritized as the biggest issue across the State of California. Amid pandemic, we saw how the safety net really did not support the majority of Californians. And so we continue our oversight on Edd, and we are still continuing to monitor EDD's reform and It modernization efforts.

We approved the Governor's proposal to continue the It system redesign and discuss the department's required recession planned in Committee. We intend to keep the pressure up on Edd so we learn from the mistakes of 2020 and are ready if another economic downturn occurs. Thank you again and again. Thank you to all of our Subcommitee Members as well as all of our staff as we continue to do this work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Carrillo. Let me again just thank all the sub chairs and all the subcommittees for enormous amount of work. It takes hundreds of hours to compile and to analyze and to assess this information and to put it forward. So really appreciate all the participation from all the Subcommitee Members. Appreciate Department of Finance, Lao and of course, our Budget Committee staff who've put in tireless number of hours to get to this conclusion.

I'm going to open it up to comments and questions and then go to public comment. And then at a later time, we'll be calling the rest of the Committee Members up for further questions and comments. Mr. Lackey?

Yeah, just real briefly, when it comes to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, I just hope that the Governor takes this change very seriously and that he actually values our legislative input. Any future item to reimagine San Quentin must include real details, allow us to have an honest debate about the merits of this proposal. We're not here to rubber stamp that proposal, and I hope he understands that.

Secondly, the consideration to close five additional prisons while the prison population has clearly been declining due in large part due to the early release credits, CDCR and the Administration have really not been that transparent about their prison selection process to date. Four of the prisons already slated for closure, three are located in Republican districts. I hope that's not intentional. Anyways, we have many questions about the selection process, and I think we're due answers.

And I want everybody to know that I have strong interest in trying to get those answers. Finally, it's highly problematic about the dealer's record of sales funding for non related firearms proposals. This particular fee was increased in 2019 to support the Firearm Modernization project, not to turn firearm and ammunition purchasers into the state's personal piggy bank. If this special account has too much money, it's only because the legal gun and ammunition purchasers are being overcharged, and I hope that we can ask some questions about that. That's all I have.

Thank you. We're going to go. Mr. Fong.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just run through my questions and we'll go from report to report. I think that's probably the most efficient. I think there's a lot of conflicting dynamics that we're hearing and seeing in this budget. My colleague from Sacramento is a very generous grader, I've just realized, especially in light of reading the recent Lao report.

But whether you look at this proposal, whether you look at the Senate Democratic proposal or the major vision, we have more spending, we have bigger deficits, I would argue that we have misplaced priorities, especially when we look at the lack of water storage funding and flood protection funding. And then we have all this talk of the need for fiscal responsibility. So I guess my first question is maybe to the Lao from a broad perspective is how do I juxtapose all those things together?

So you've got calls for fiscal responsibility, but we have structural deficits. This proposal, I think, outlined today before us pretty much is 98% of the governor's plan. So how do we go in January with a $297,000,000,000 budget to now a $307,000,000,000 budget, plus or minus, with bigger deficits, more spending? And how do you juxtapose it with that this is fiscally responsible?

Well, so Mr. Fong, thank you. Gabe Petek, Legislative Analyst I think I would start with just noting that when you refer to sustainability of the budget, a big portion of the spending that has been committed to is one time and temporary. And so our office hasn't concluded at this point that the underlying ongoing part of the state spending base is unsustainable relative to the revenues.

So a lot of what we have recognized as contributing to the budget problems in the budget year and in the multi year period really relate to some of the higher ...

Really relate to high levels of one time and temporary spending committed to in recent years. And so that's one sort of semantic, to some extent, difference. But also, I think, speaks to a fundamental part of our assessment. When you think about the assemblies package, it's true that it does use the May revision as sort of a starting off point.

I would note that it does make some modest increases to the overall level of budget reserves by adding back the safety net Reserve and the budget deficit Reserve account. And. So there's about 670,000,000 of higher reserves when you add up all of the reserves. And I did note in the language that it does hold out some openness to taking some additional resilience steps throughout, not just in the coming years, but within the upcoming budget year if revenues do underperform, which we think is really important.

Because, to your point, we do believe that the revenue estimates in the May revision are too high. And in the budget year, we think they're too high by around 11 billion, which adds about 6 billion to the estimated budget problem for the budget year and then contributes to, over the course of the multi year period, an aggregate amount of budget problems that sum to around 52 billion.

Again, I wouldn't necessarily describe those as structural because they aren't all from ongoing spending, but some of these changes that I've described in the Assembly package do at least help in the kind of.

But you've outlined. I guess this is clarification. In the report that you've recently released, there are deficits in the multi year window.

Because some of the temporary spending is scheduled to go out over those years. So that's a big part of it.

I guess the crux of my question is that when I compare the January proposal at the beginning of the year to these proposals now, there is more spending along with a higher deficit.

In the total funds? Yes.

How do I wrap my head around that notion that we have a deficit, but that the spending is going up?

Well, my understanding I might have to get back to you on this specific response to that.

Maybe that's a question for the Department of Finance, but I would just say I think part of it is shifting. You are shifting in these packages, there is a shift of some General Fund spending to special funds, and I think the aggregate amount that you're referencing does reflect an increase in total Fund spending, which includes federal funds and special funds. The General Fund, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, is basically flat.

With Finance. I'd have to defer to my colleague behind me for the specifics, but certainly I think that's accurate. I do believe it's roughly the same amount of General Fund at this point. And we'd have to get back to you on specifics of what that might be. But if my colleague would like to add any comments sure, absolutely.

If your colleague has something to add, I would certainly like that information.

Sorry for the tight space.

Good afternoon. Lisa Mierczynski with the Department of Finance. And Mr. Pettic's comments are correct. The General Fund is actually slightly even or lower over the multi-year period or for the budget window, but special funds and federal funds are higher. So total funds look are higher.

So in this budget--Maybe I was asking the May revision just since we're starting off from there, and I know that the Assembly Democratic proposal kind of mirrors it. The solutions are more so delayed spending along with reductions in fund shifts. So my understanding is that you've taken kind of funds that were supposed to be expended in the out years and halted them, per se, and then you've kind of moved everything into this budget year. Is that a correct assessment?

Well, it's a combination of a variety of different actions that have been taken. But the shifting of the out years really is an acknowledgment that we don't know what the exact resources will be in the out years. So instead of just canceling the spending or reducing all of the spending, it's just a shift and then to reassess resources at that point in time.

Okay. I think, from my perspective, I think that's the crux of the philosophical difference is that if we are facing a multi-year deficits in the future with uncertain revenue, with a volatile revenue streams, you would think that instead of whether they're coming from special funds or the General Fund, you would think that we would want to kind of rein in both to try to even out the volatility that we have. So I think that's my broader point.

I guess from that perspective. If I could just jump into the reports--and I'm trying to kind of understand that this is coming from the Assembly, the majority side on the Assembly, but to the Department of Finance. When you look at this report, is there any changes or differences between what the Governor's proposed when it comes to the MCO proposal and the proposal that is being proposed here? Sorry. We could just bring up all the chairs. You can come on up. We're rotating Members in and out too, so I guess who rotates.

And then we can feel free to ask the Budget Committee staff.

Of course, Christian, feel free to jump in too. Maybe that question was better directed to you. Is there differences in what's in this report and what the Governor has proposed in the May revision on the MCO?

Christian Griffith, Assembly Budget. From a scoring perspective, we assume the same level as the Governor. But as you know, there is a hearing on Monday--on Tuesday--about that because there was a lot of details about how the MCO revenues would be used. And so that's still something that we're talking about. But from a architecture of the budget perspective, we were at the same place as the Governor.

Okay, so there isn't, that's I guess I certainly want to stipulate that there will be a hearing on the MCO more in depth. I'm just trying to understand the basic delineations or differences, if there are any, between the proposal before us now and the Governor's May revision on the MCO. Go ahead.

Mr. Fong, I could just--it occurs to me that to the, comparing the January spending levels to the May revision, the MCO proposal was more fleshed out and is larger since then. And so that does add resources and probably adds to the size of total spending that you were asking about.

I appreciate that and I think with the larger revenue, there is a little bit more desire from the Legislature to have more say or to see more specifics. I think that was probably in your analysis too, from your office, on that if we are going to look at a larger revenue amount that we probably want to have more of a say or to see more specifics. I think this is going to be the conversation we have on Tuesday, of where those allocations go.

My understanding right now. And that's why I guess, going to this very point, is that the May revision doesn't, kind of gives the Administration kind of a lot of leeway in terms of determining what those allocations are, where I think we would probably want more specifics when it comes to providers and what those revenues would be used for. Is that correct assessment, Christian?

I think there's a lot of discussion the Assembly needs to have about it. That's why we have the extra hearing. But also remember that we're also adopting an Assembly version that'll allow us to negotiate with the Senate so there's more stakeholders and more discussion to move forward. So it'd be helpful to have an articulation of what Members expect as we move forward in that process.

Absolutely. And let me just say for the record, and I won't speak for the Chair, my understanding of when these things happen is that we have a Budget Conference Committee.

So I want to say on the record that we should probably have a Budget Conference Committee to iron out the differences between the Assembly and the Senate, though I don't believe that there is one that's going to happen. In terms of the loan program, the distressed loan program, is there anything in this report that puts any additional money into the financially distressed hospital loan program? I know that in the early action there was a creation of it with 150,000,000.

I think there was a clear understanding that that's probably not enough. Does this proposal?

This proposal just is at the same level as the mid year package we adopted.

Okay, so there's no additional money going into the financial distress loan program.

Correct.

Okay. And I know we're going to probably talk a lot about MCO moving forward. I just wanted from the, from your perspective, Christian, in terms of what was discussed in Sub 1, is there going to be more focus that you see in terms of determining how those funds are used, what the allocations are. Certainly the fear is a General Fund sweep and more money going to the General Fund and not into staying in the healthcare space. So I just kind of want to get a sense of what this proposal is looking to do broadly.

Again, Mr. Fong, we do assume that there is a General Fund savings from the MCO that's consistent with what the Governor did because that's part of the arrangement. But then there's a portion that is used for rates as well and I think that's a conversation that's still moving forward.

So at this point I don't think we have much more specifics beyond that because we're sort of waiting for this hearing that's going to happen and then also we got to confer with our partners in the Senate too.

One specific item I think that is in this report and then you can tell me if I'm inaccurate is that it's a policy area that's kind of, I think been rolled into in regards to a benefit mandate regarding hearing aids.

Certainly this is something that probably should be of discussed in the policy realm, but my understanding is that the benefit exceeds the essential health benefits and so this is something that normally is determined in policy. So is there a reason why it's been put into a budget proposal versus policy wise?

Yes. So Mr. Fong, I apologize on that. That was mistakenly included and you'll notice that in the packet we sent out earlier this morning, it is no longer in the packet.

So it's?

Not going to be part of the plan.

Not part of the plan. Okay, just want to make sure I'm sure your staff always is going to roll their eyes when I ask this question. But there is, when it comes to water storage, do this proposal add any additional surface storage money?

It does not. However, one of the priorities in our climate package was to maintain and restore the recycled water funding, which sort of isn't the same thing, but a similar attempt to try to reuse water and capture it.

Okay, I think the Subcommitee Chair for Sub three had mentioned we are now going from a drought environment to a flood environment. And certainly I see that firsthand in my community along with other communities that have seen the devastation of levees breaking and the need for flood protection.

So I just want to state that water storage is actually part of flood protection. We have reservoirs that are full and we need more facilities to store the water that is going to be coming from the snowpack. And of course we need facilities and conveyance facilities to move that water to those storage projects.

So when we talk about Frankfurt Canal and the Delta-Mendota canals and we talk about sites and we talk about all these water storage projects, they're not mutually exclusive to what I think is being discussed. So we do need recycled water. We do need floodwater collection. But we also do need water storage facility as well. So I know it's something that the Chair and I and you have talked about extensively.

I just feel like we are constantly missing an opportunity to do something because at a time when we're in deficits, we still have to make the investments into these critical infrastructure needs. Let me just go in terms of Sub 4, I know there was a lot of conversations about trying to do something on paying down the UI debt. This is obviously an area of philosophical difference, but there has to be something there. There was some funding that was going to go to pay down the UI debt. My understanding is that that was not restored.

I think you have LAO and our staff here to answer questions.

Because of all the moving, the individuals moving around. I'll throw that to whoever wants to answer that question.

Andrew March, Department of Finance. So at the May revision and Governor's Budget proposal, we propose to withdraw the $750,000,000 UI debt payment in budget year. And that's been adopted in the Assembly's plan.

And is that put into any out years or is that just gone completely?

No, it's a pure reduction in both what the Governor proposed in and the Assembly's plan.

Okay, I understand in the Assembly plan--the Assembly Democratic plan--that a lot of these projects are going to get rolled or a lot of things are rolled into bonds or borrowing. So, is there concern that there's going to be added costs in the future because of that, those decisions?

Again, it's Christian Griffith with the Assembly Budget. I think our view is that traditionally that's how we funded these types of projects.

It's only because of the amazing largesse of the last two years that we've even had the option to fund some of these things with cash. So I think we're sort of going back to what the world looked like before the Pandemic, where if we wanted to do large capital projects in areas, especially in an area like water natural resources, that you would use bond financing.

And one of the big conversations, and frankly, the crux of this whole budget in a lot of ways is trying to determine what things should be cash financed, what things have to happen immediately, and what things can be delayed and put on a bond because there is so much pent up demand and need for so many different infrastructure types in a lot of our different areas. And so that's kind of what you see in our plan. It's frankly what you also see in the Senate's plan and in the Governor's plan.

Go ahead.

Sorry, Mr. Fong, if I may, I would just add to Christian's comment that our office does recognize that switching from General Fund to bonds can be beneficial, especially in the budget year. It provides near term savings.

But we agree with the kind of the point you're alluding to, which is that over the long term the project does cost more because now you're adding in the interest costs and so over the life of the financing in the project, it does add that cost. But as Christian said, some of these capital projects are appropriately long-term financed, particularly if they are long lived assets, because then there's intergenerational equity that users are paying over time, so, I mean there's trade offs, as we would say about that.

And I think that's the key point, which is the investment world now in terms of when these projects are going out are completely different now than it was pre-pandemic with interest rates being higher and economic recession potentially down the line, which I think is the elephant in the room when we talk about this, is that we don't know what's going to happen. So it may be worth looking at a General Fund investment versus going out to debt.

Jumping back to Sub 4, and I apologize, is that there seems to be a dramatic cut to the Youth Jobs Corps. Can someone talk to me about that specific item?

Yes. The Youth Jobs Corps is a Cal Volunteer program. And one of the biggest sort of additions in the budget for new expenditures was the two Cal Volunteer items.

So essentially, as a proportionate reduction of some of the other things we were doing, we made a $50 million net cut to the Cal Volunteer new items, which are new ongoing spending to sort of make it reduce them out to about 40% of the proposed funding by the Governor.

Okay. Any one from LAO--Department of Finance have anything to add to that? No. Okay. I think, certainly I think it is a priority of the big city mayors, and that's why I wanted to get that on the record.

And then in terms of the trailer bills that are not part of this proposal, my guess is that the central procurement proposal is not part of this. The proposal in regards to Joshua Tree is not part of this proposal. And I know that I think the Chair said that the infrastructure trailer bills will be taken up at a different time. Is that correct?

Shy Forbes, Assembly Budget staff. Both of those were rejected in this plan. However, there are policy bills moving in the Assembly on both of those.

Okay. And is there a reason why they were rejected, if I may ask?

I believe the policy chairs have some amendments that they want to the administration's proposal, and so that's working through the legislative process.

Okay. And then in this plan there is, and I think this probably coincides with the Governor's proposal. There's a $3.8 million General Fund request for this Committee, I guess oil severance, oil penalty to create this Committee, Windfall Profits Committee, is that correct?

$3.8 million is escaping me. You might be correct. I think there were sort of three tiers on that proposal. But there is funding in the Governor's may revision for implementing SBX 12, which was the oil gouging penalty issues. So we approve the proposal. However, I believe $5.9 million of it that was ongoing for the Energy Commission was from IRPA, which is a special fund. We rejected that and fund it with General Fund, but we fund the proposal.

Okay, I appreciate that. I probably could save you $3.8 million and tell you how it's done. But I'll defer to another topic. I think those are the broad areas that I have questions on. I think the MCO discussion, I think we need to have a lot more specifics, which I think we're going to hear next week. But I do believe that looking at this budget holistically my grade is significantly different than my colleague from Sacramento. I probably would give this an incomplete at this moment.

And I think that this budget does have structural, I won't put the words in. I think there's multi-year problems. You call it structural or not, but I think they're structural. I think this budget is unsustainable. I think we make some questionable decisions in terms of moving things in the out years and borrowing things that will increase costs in the future. And I do believe that the projections are a little rosy when it comes to the economic outlook.

And all of those things are clouds in the horizon that I don't believe is adequately addressed in this budget. And on top of that, I don't believe that we adequately make the proper investments in the things that we need to, especially when it comes to WiFi protection and to flood protection and to water storage. So with that, I'll turn it back over to the Chair. Go ahead.

Thank you. Any other questions from the dais from Members who are here? Okay, then I know we will have Members coming up later. So in the interim, we're going to move to public comment. We're going to go to public comment in the room first. So those of you who are interested in making public comment, please line up. We'll be taking public comment. 1 minute for public comment, then we will go to the phone lines. Feel free to start. Go ahead.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, Members, Beth Olaso on behalf of WateReuse California, want to thank you for restoring the 310,000,000 for water recycling. Very, very important investment in our drought infrastructure, and we hope it stays in at the final push. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Raquel Yaffe with the California Alternative Payment Program Association, or CAPPA. We want to appreciate the work the Assembly is doing to support childcare and community partners.

CAPPA represents the community partners doing the work in the field to enroll families and family support services. And we ask to be included in these conversations as we can provide information and data to support you in this process. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Members. Missy Johnson on behalf of the Directors Guild of America here in support of the Assembly Sub 5 Committee's work on the reauthorization of the production tax credit. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. This is Derek Lennox representing the 58 County Superintendents of Schools. We're deeply appreciative of the 80 million approved by or about to be approved by this Committee. We are concerned, however, that the Assembly's version does delay this funding by one year in a climate where we have a worsening budget situation. So we would love to see that money go out this year.

We embrace accountability and transparency as proposed in the comments in that section, but we don't think it'll take a year to do that. We have been working with Assembly staff this year to do that, and we look forward to continuing that process. Thank you,

Mr. Chair, Members. Nick Romley here on behalf of the San Diego County Office of Education, would really just like to align my comments with those of Mr. Lennox from the California County Superintendents, regarding the Juvenile Court community schools funding.

Also here on behalf of the Small School Districts Association. Really want to say thank you for your work here to try to reduce those cuts to those block grants. Really would amount as a mid-year cut for a lot of our schools. So thanks for your work on that.

Justin Garrett, the California State Association of County, speaking on several issues. First, on homelessness, we appreciate as part of our ongoing efforts to advocate for ongoing homelessness funding, the additional year of HAPP funding provided at $1 billion.

We also support the placeholder TBL and homelessness accountability as we continue to advocate for our at-home plan and the accountability framework within that. We're also grateful for the Assembly's action to provide $33 million to reimburse local jurisdictions for VLF revenue shortfalls. We do, however, oppose the Assembly action that denies $375,000,000 in General Fund, including the May revision for counties to implement behavioral health payment reform and instead directs counties to utilize county MHSA funds.

And finally, we also oppose the adoption of the deferral of $550,000,000 in Last Mile and 400 million in Loan Loss Reserve proposed by the Governor. This funding is important for the expansion of broadband to all across all the state. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Gracyna Mohabir with Californians Against Waste. We would like to comment on three items. First, we ask you to reject the proposed retroactive cut to last year's funding from methane satellites and CARB's budget. These satellites allow the state to directly find and mitigate methane emissions in a timely manner that can't be done with current methods. In the case of one landfill, for example, a methane plume was identified and the data was used by operators to quickly locate and repair the leak.

This plume might have gone unnoticed for months using existing monitoring tech. Reverting funding for this invaluable technology would undermine the state's commitment to addressing the climate crisis. For Cal Recycle's items, we'd like to express our support for the $40 million augmentation of the Plastic Market Development Program and we also appreciate the approval of Cal Recycle Zero Waste Plan BCP. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members, Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. We'd first of all like to align our comments with the California County Superintendent's Advocate, who spoke in support of the $80 million for the Juvenile Court and county community school programs. We know that right now is the perfect time to get this done as there is a DJJ alignment and this would help support the transition of students and also support the stabilization of the youth who are at Promise and being served in those systems.

Second, we urge your support for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative that was also funded in the Senate budget and we urge your vote to be consistent with that. This program will help us to provide additional supports to education leaders of color. We know studies have shown that teachers of color help students to improve, but educators who are leaders also help support those teachers and help them to be retained in their school system. So for those reasons, we urge your support for those two items. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Andrea Ball, here on two issues in the Sub 2 report. First on behalf of the Orange County Department of Education, the Central Valley Education Coalition, which represents six county superintendents in the Central valley and the Marin County Superintendent.

We appreciate the work you've done to approve the funding for the court and community, juvenile court, and community schools, align ourselves with the comments from the County Superintendents Association and look forward to working with you to make sure those funds are not delayed another year. The funds are needed now. Second, we appreciate all the work on the entire Prop. 98 package and continue to point out that mid-year cuts to the two block grants will be very disruptive to LEAs, as they've already planned and budgeted. Some have proposed to use those funds for staffing. It would be very hard to adopt those changes now. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME, California. Just wanted to express our appreciation for all your hard work to continue to make the investments in the public sector workforce and the services that the citizens in the state need to provide for themselves and their families.

Also wanted to highlight our appreciation for Doctors Wood and Abrambula for their work in ensuring that striking workers have access to healthcare along with the additional funds used to lower the cost of subsidies and cover California. Lastly, thank you so much Assemblymember Bonta, for asking the tough questions in Sub 5. The retention and recruitment of the workforce in state hospitals and in our state prisons is at a crisis level.

To support the Governor's concept of true rehabilitative services to the justice involved, we need a committed and supported workforce in these facilities. The DSH Enhanced Treatment pilot program was established to provide clinical treatment for individuals too violent or dangerous to be treated in a standard treatment environment. This program will increase the physical safety of DSH staff and other patients.

While one unit came online in 2021, two others have been delayed indefinitely, and we urge you to reconsider the delays and protect the physical safety of inmates and staff in Atascadero. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. Ryan Sousa on behalf of Roots of Change, a project by the Public Health Institute. We just want to thank the Committee for Including money for the California Nutrition Incentive Program. This program and funding will not only go to help support low-income Californians, but also California farmers. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Ken Hartman, Director of Advocacy of the Transformative InPrison Workgroup. On behalf of the 85 Member organizations and the tens of thousands of men and women who will take programs, we'd like to thank Assemblymember Bonta for your continued championing and support for the right grant. And thank you as well, Mr. Chair and Assemblymember Hart for your championing of our additional funding. I'd also like to say that the TPW agrees that we should not support the Governor's San Quentin proposal as it's currently written, and we strongly agree that more prisons should be closed. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, Members Sara Flocks of the California Labor Federation, on two items. We support the work of the budget Sub 4, to reauthorize the California Film Tax Credit to retain good union jobs in the entertainment industry in California. We also are very appreciative to see funding for subsidies, financial subsidies for healthcare for striking workers as part of the budget. Many thanks to the Budget Chair, Dr. Arambula and Dr. Wood, for championing that issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Megan Subbers, on behalf first of the Writers Guild of America West, would also like to express our support and appreciation for proposed funding for healthcare for striking workers. And thank Dr. Arambula and Dr. Wood for their leadership, and the Members of this Committee. And then on behalf of the California Professional Firefighters, would like to express our support for the administration's trailer Bill related to modifications to the Director at EMSA and the creation of a Chief Medical Officer. We're supportive of that proposal.

We look forward to working with this Committee on modifications that they would like to see to that trailer Bill. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Linda Nguy with Western Center on Law and Poverty, related to Sub 1. We appreciate Dr. Arambula's staff as well as the Department and the county's, work on reimagining CalWORKS, moving away from a punitive to more of a family, support-centered approach.

We also appreciate making permanent CalWORKS grants increases and support rejection of the Covered California Affordability Sweep cleanup language to eliminate the medical asset test that was done in the 2021 budget. Thanks to the Chair's leadership and hearing aid coverage for children. We were disappointed that Medi-Cal Housing Support Service was not included, considering the rise in homelessness and leaving significant federal dollars on the table, but overall, very appreciative of the investment in the safety net. Thank you.

Afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Alissa Yum on behalf of the California State University Employees Union, we want to thank you for your thoughtful conversations around the budget. And specifically, we'd like to thank Budget Sub 2 Education Finance for Row 181 of their actions taken, which is the approval of the CSU based increase with placeholder Budget Bill language to require reporting and legislative attempt to prioritize spending on represented employees. As you all may know, our Members have been fighting for a fair living wage for years.

And the Mercer aalary study released last spring showed that CSU staff salaries are an average 12% behind the market. So we're hopeful that this directive to prioritize representative employees will help move the needle in implementing a merit salary step system. And we look forward to working with you on the Budget Bill language. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. Jed Hampton with California Association of Health Plans. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comment on today's hearing and recently Democrat's budget plan. Just three quick things. Regarding the MCO Tax, we're very appreciative of all the work that's gone on with the Administration, the Legislature, in our discussions in renewing the MCO Tax.

As the payers of the tax, we would like to make sure and maintain our position that the tax dollars are going to directly benefit the Medi-Cal program, that the program is affordable, stable and equitable moving forward. On the covered California premium subsidies, we are pleased to see the Legislature's recommendation to require the individual mandate penalty revenue be annually deposited into the Healthcare Affordability Reserve Fund to lower costs for healthcare purchasers through the exchange.

We believe this proposal moves in the right direction. And lastly, regarding hearing aids, it sounds like that there may have been some confusion about that benefit. But if included in the plan, we are concerned about potentially moving forward with the benefit mandate on health plans through the budget process, not through the Policy Committee process as it's usually done through. We are also very concerned about the fact that this benefit mandate in particular does violate the state's essential health benefits.

So the state would be on the hook for the costs moving forward. So, again, looking forward to getting a bit more clarification around that. But if that is included, we would recommend that the Committee reject that proposal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Vanessa Cajina with KP Public Affairs under Sub 1, on behalf of Vision y Compromiso, we greatly appreciate the Assembly's inclusion of funding for training, capacity building for community based organizations and employee Promotores De Salud and community health workers. On behalf of CalPACE, thank you for approving the DHCS BCP for pace monitoring and oversight.

And then on Sub 3, on behalf of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, we very much appreciate the Assembly's expansion of the deadline for the California Water and Wastewater Arrearage Payment Program. Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Members, Betsy Armstrong, on behalf of the County Health Executives Association on three items in the Sub 1 report. First, CHEAC, as part of the California Can't Wait Coalition, thanks the Administration for withdrawing the cuts proposed in January to public health workforce development and training.

We also want to acknowledge the leadership of the Legislature in prioritizing these investments in public health and would ask for the restoration of these funds to be approved in the budget. Also, CHEAC appreciates the May revision proposal to increase funding for the California Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. However, we know that the scope of the activities requested of local health departments exceed the total funding, including this augmentation, and hope that we can right size that funding.

And finally, in terms of an issue with the EMS authority and on behalf of the EMS administrators of California, we would like to thank the Assembly for the comments on clarifying the role of the Chief Medical Officer overseeing the EMS authority and would ask that as the trailer Bill gets finalized, that it ensures the CMO is given appropriate oversight of the medical aspects of the authority. Thank you.

Becky Silva with the California Association of Food Banks. California is in the midst of an unprecedented hunger crisis with the end of CalFresh emergency allotments. And I can confirm that food banks right now are seeing a huge increase in demand in their communities as people face the consequences of the end of those emergency allotments. Thank you very much for the adoption of 60,000,000 one-time towards the Cal Food program, which is critical for assisting food banks in helping their communities.

We also want to thank you for the many investments towards CalFresh, but none of these address the core benefit adequacy issues that is causing CalFresh recipients to come to food banks in the first place. We urge you to invest in raising the CalFresh minimum benefit to $50 per month and establish the CalFresh ABOD care benefits to protect hungry Californians from the cruel federal ABOD time limit rules. Thank you also for rejecting the proposed safety net withdrawal.

And finally, just in partnership with the Reimagined CalWORKS Coalition, we offer extraordinary thanks for including the Reimagined CalWORKS proposal in your budget plan and we stand ready to help ensure that this is included in the final budget. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair Ting and Members, Andrew Cheyne GRACE End Child Poverty, California. Want to thank the Chair and the Committee for Protecting the Safety Net Reserve as well as the Reimagined CalWORKS. We are just so thrilled. And Chair, I want to thank you for attending those hearings and your very strong comments and support about treating families in poverty with dignity as well as the permanent extension of the CalWORKS Grant increase and the Silk Housing supplement. On Sub 5, really appreciate Chairman Bonta, your very strong comments.

And we know, Mr. Ting, you've been extremely supportive about making strong direction in the budget on public safety. We are hopeful that the final budget will include the CalFresh minimum benefit, the ABOD cares benefit and the SNB/TNB true up. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Denise. I'm with Equitable Literacy For All. And I thank you for your service. We're here in support of the Governor's May revised proposal with regard to universal screening for children in K-2 for at-risk and dyslexia. This is a picture of my son in first grade. He's now 17 years old. His reading comprehension is fifth grade. He would have benefited from early screening.

And I highly encourage you to pass this proposal in support of all children in this state who will all benefit from early screening. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Kyle Jones with Community Water Center. And I just want to thank the Committee for a few things. First, approving 19 new positions at the State Water Resources Control Board to support SGMA work. That's being done there that's absolutely critical to get probationary basins with plans that are actually going to protect drinking water in a timely manner. Secondly, thank you for rejecting the proposed drought and flood trailer Bill at this time.

We do need to get floodwaters in the ground, not in people's homes, but we need to do it in a way that's smart and won't impact water quality in the future. And then finally, I want to thank you for extending the time period for the Water and Wastewater Arrearage Payment Program. Water debts are continuing to rise and it's critical we address these debts now while we wait to set up a permanent low-income water rate assistance program. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Lisa Coleman with the California Commission on Aging. I want to thank the Committee's work for protecting the investments that have been made in the last few years with regards to our older adult population, the fastest growing population in California. I'm specifically thanking you for the $50 million investment in older adult behavioral health prior to COVID. 2019, there was a report that said 30% of those over the age of 65 had diagnosis of depression, anxiety, or cognitive impairment. 30%. And that was prior to COVID. Your investment says that you recognize that COVID did great harm in behavioral health and we want to thank you for that.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Rosanna Carvacho Elliott here on behalf of the Early Care and Education Consortium. Unfortunately, we must respectfully oppose the proposed expansion to transitional kindergarten to allow for summer birthdays. As I think you all know, 2022/'23 school year was the first year of the TK expansion.

And this unfortunately has led to community based providers having to close their classrooms, or having vacant classrooms, increasing tuition, or having under enrollment. And we think that the acceleration of the transitional kindergarten program will only exacerbate this situation. We understand and appreciate the intent, but unfortunately, having seen firsthand the impacts of transitional kindergarten, this is not something that we can support, and we ask that the Assembly remove it from your proposal.

And lastly, on a more positive note, I want to thank the Assembly for their commitment to rates and the 25% COLA. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members, Anthony Sampson on behalf of the Learning Care Group. And I would like to align my comments with those of Rosanna Carvacho Elliot, on behalf of ECEC.

Mr. Chair and Members Brendan Tuig, on behalf of two separate clients. On behalf of Ed Voice, we urge your support of the trailer Bill language that requires screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia in kindergarten through grades two. We appreciate the Governor prioritizing screening and also recognizing the urgency of that and including it in the trailer Bill. And also thank Senator Portantino for being steadfast in his efforts to make universal screening a reality in California.

We provided your offices with a letter signed by 53 different organizations in support of the trailer Bill Language, and we urge your support. And then also on behalf of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association, we appreciate the $300 million in funding for the AB 617 Community Air Protection Program. And we also urge you, as negotiations continue, to provide, restore funding of $150,000,000 back to the Farmer program. Both of those programs are very cost effective at getting greenhouse gas reductions and criteria pollutants. So thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Members and staff. Rico Mastrodonato with the Trust for Public Land. We submitted a detailed letter commenting on the May revise. But I did want to thank the Assembly, particularly Sub 3, and Assemblymember Luz Rivas, for recognizing the vacuum in the May revise with respect to protecting our most vulnerable communities from extreme heat. The Governor had put the community resilience centers in urban greening in a bond that would not see money hit the ground for three years.

Our most vulnerable communities cannot wait three years to be protected from vulnerable heat. And I also want to thank Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, who stood up for the local parks program, which, Chair, has been oversubscribed by $7 billion. So when you understand the scope of opportunity, the great projects that are already there, and the vast amount of millions of people that don't have access to nature, this is an extremely important program. So thank you. Thank you, Committee, and good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members, Jennifer Fearing for Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, the National Wildlife Center, and the Nature Conservancy. Here today to give brief but grateful and memorable testimony as I thank you for the budget Bill language that would expand the ability of the Department of Fish and Wildlife to prevent lethal beaver take. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Graciela Castillo-Krings, here on behalf of KinderCare, also aligning my comments with those of my colleagues. Very concerned about including and expanding Tk when it's having such a dire impact on the infrastructure for childcare. And I hope that that language is removed from the trailer Bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members, Moira Topp on behalf of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, as well as the Big City Mayors Coalition, which is the coalition of the 13 largest cities in California.

And first really want to express our appreciation for the continuation of the HAPP program, the homeless program funds. Of course, the mayors were asking for a little more money, but there is definite recognition that this is a tough budget year and we're very appreciative of the continued funding. But we also would like to note there is some concern about the Youth Job Corps program. This is a program that's new to the state.

It provides funds directly to local governments and has been incredibly successful in its first year. Our cities have hired thousands of at-risk youth. This is youth who are formerly justice-involved, those transitioning out of foster care. These are exactly the youth that we want to help. The cut is, I assume, necessary for budget reasons, but certainly it's a small investment to keep people from getting homeless in the first place. And so we think it is a highly successful program and a good use of funds.

And we would request your reconsideration of that item. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other public comment in the Committee room. We're going to go to the phone line. Operator, do you want to start allowing public comment on the phone line?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And we do have many people who have already queued up signaling that they wish to speak. If you wish to speak and have not done so already, please press one than zero. And as a reminder, if you press one then zero a second time, this will remove you from the comment queue. We're going to first go to line 68. Your line is now open.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. John Winger, on behalf of the California Charter School Association. CCSA is disappointed to see the Assembly reject the 30 million appropriation for the Charter School Facility Grant Program. This funding was a two-year budget agreement that was approved in last year's budget.

Reneging on that agreement after one year is inappropriate and going to cause significant and unnecessary disruption for our public charter schools that have already developed and approved their budgets. This program specifically supports schools in low-income neighborhoods, and this cut will force schools to reduce staffing and services for the most vulnerable students to backfill losses in an already underfunded program. We would urge the Assembly to reconsider its rejection of this budget item. Thank you.

Line 64.

Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Committee Members. This is Adrienne Shilton with the California Alliance of Child and Family Services. We greatly appreciate the Assembly Subcommitee number 1's actions to extend the implementation of AB 1051, which makes changes to presumptive transfer, prohibiting adoption facilitators, rejecting the trailer bill language proposal for psychiatric residential treatment facilities, and supporting our sponsored budget requests for foster family agencies. So together, these are all critical programs that will improve services for vulnerable youth, including foster youth in California.

And we will continue to advocate with the Administration to improve the background check process through our guardian system. Thank you so much.

Line 76. Your line is now open.

Mr. Chair and Members, Caitlin Vega with the California Labor Federation. We want to thank Chairman Ting and Chairwoman Carrillo of Sub 4, as well as the incredible budget staff for the work that they've done around labor law enforcement. We face a labor law enforcement crisis today in California. It is essential that we fully fund both the Labor Commissioner's Office, as well as local public prosecutors who have the ability to help with enforcement of basic labor laws to protect the most vulnerable workers.

So very appreciative of all the work done by Sub 4 to ensure that we are putting new resources in, and we hope that the full Assembly will approve the budget as proposed. Thank you.

Line 80, your line is now open.

Lori DePole, Co-State Director of Decoding Dyslexia, California, a statewide grassroots advocacy group comprised of over 15,000 California parents and educators. DDCA is in strong support of the trailer bill language, proposing annual screening of all kindergarten through second grade children for reading difficulties, including risk of dyslexia. Providing schools and parents with screening information at a time when research shows reading interventions will provide the highest return on investment at a factor of four to 12 times in savings. Preventing reading failure cuts costs.

40 other states already have universal screening legislation. We thank the Governor and Senator Portantino for making this a priority in California. Thank you.

Beth Capell on behalf of the Teamsters and Yanite here. Here to thank the Chair, Mr. Ting, and the Assembly Sub One, Dr. Arambula, and Dr. Wood for funding benefits for health benefits for striking workers, and also to support the larger funding for Covered California affordability as well as the continuation of health for all. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Committee Chair and Members. My name is Jessica Manzanado. I am the Director of Advocacy with the Diversity and Leadership Institute. I'm here to urge this Committee's approval of the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, a new 2023-2024 state budget proposal to invest 18 million in the credentialing placement and retention of 300 diverse and culturally responsive TK-12 administrators across the state. This proposal is also sponsored by Senator Bradford and Assembly Member Bonta.

California is home to the nation's most ethno, racially diverse TK-12 student populations. 60% of students in California TK-12 are AAPI, Black, or Latinx and only 20% of public schools in 2018 reflected that population. As a proud graduate of Roosevelt High School and somebody that grew up with educators that look like her, I was one of the first people in my community to attend college.

And for this reason, I, along with hundreds of educators, parents, students, labor associations and advocates across the state, urge your support for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline. Thank you so much.

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Thank you. [Inaudible]. We want to thank the Assembly for their budget proposal. Just as we support the Senate majority's budget plan. The Assembly's version of the budget also has many laudable points, specifically appreciate the Assembly's approach to equity programs and light duty programs, as well as beginning the discussion on how to prevent transit agencies from falling off the fiscal cliff. Though we recognize that more needs to be done. Regarding the Senate proposal, we like their approach to medium and heavy-duty zero-emission vehicles and infrastructure.

We also support both houses approach to the Governor's streamlining proposal and thank the Legislature for suggesting that go through the policy route instead. As the Legislature moves forward, we want to emphasize the need to deliver benefits to our most vulnerable polluted communities and making sure that they reap the benefits of clean transportation. Lastly, for Just Coalition for Clean Air. We also want to thank the Assembly for including funding for AB 617, the community air protection program. Thank you very much for your time.

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Thank you, Chair and Members. Alex Leumer on a couple of items. On behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund, Civic Well, Self Help Enterprises, Audubon California, and Sequoia Riverlands Trust, we strongly urge you to restore the $20 million for the multivedit land repurposing program for the Department of Conservation. Also on behalf of Mojave Desert Land Trust, the California Plant Society, Sonoma Land Trust, Defenders of Wildlife in Audubon, California.

We greatly appreciate the Assembly Holding Policy Committee hearings on the administration's trailer Bill proposals as they reduce environmental protections and community engagement. The Golden State Salmon Association also echoes these comments. Further, we appreciate the restoration of funding to urban greening, access to outdoors, and extreme heat programs. However, we were not restore any funding to most of the key programs for 30 x 30 and climate resilience.

We urge restoration of funding for vegetation mapping and monitoring, as well as funding for land conservation and restoration, including funding for the Wildlife Conservation Board, the state Coastal Conservancy, and state conservancies. Finally, we urge restoration of funding for capacity-building programs such as the Department of Conservation's Climate current land program. Thank you.

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This is Gina Cuclis, President of the California County's Boards of Education and on the Sonoma County Board of Education. We are aligned with all the county superintendents' groups that have spoken today. Other superintendent, county superintendents, as well as the California County Superintendent. I want to speak firsthand to what I see about the need for the funding.

I'm speaking to you today on the heels of attending my community school's end-of-the-year awards assembly program, where I watched expelled students who had achieved what they needed to achieve to go back to their district next year. Yesterday, I attended our graduation and I watched numerous students graduate, receive their high school diploma from our program. The need for the funding is now. The urgency is now. Our most vulnerable and at-risk students cannot wait.

Please include the money for alternative schools in the budget this year with no strings attached. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members, Diana Douglas with Health Access California. We sincerely appreciate the leadership of Dr. Arambula and Subcommittee One in the Assembly's continued prioritization to safeguard the revenue generated from our state's individual mandate penalty to ensure it will be used for affordability assistance. California must make good on its commitment to keep coverage and care affordable in our marketplace, especially as we continue to collect hundreds of millions from our uninsured while deductibles and copays rise each year.

Health Access supports the Assembly proposal to ensure all future penalty revenue will also be deposited into the reserve and to quickly extend help to people in 2024. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Mary Creasy on behalf of The Children's Partnership, we appreciate your work and the work of staff. Children's Partnership supports many elements of the Assembly's budget. However, we are concerned about several items that are of great importance to children's long-term health and well-being, and we respectfully urge you and the Administration to include them in the final version of the budget.

We ask that you include 2.4 million annually to extensive comprehensive perinatal services program for up to 12 months post pregnancy, which will draw down 5.1 million in federal funding. We request that the trigger language for continuous medical coverage for children zero to five be deleted. And finally, we urge you to expand the California Food Assistance Program to include children, youth, and all ages, regardless of immigration status. Thank you.

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Hello. Good afternoon, Committee Chair and Members. I'm Jenny Perla, the Director of Research and Policy at Innovate Schools. I'm calling in from Los Angeles. I'm here to urge this Committee to approve the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, a new 2023-24 state budget proposal to invest 18 million in the credentialing, placement, and retention of 300 diverse and culturally responsive TK-12 administrators across the state.

I, along with hundreds of educators, Innovate parent leaders, students, labor associations, and advocates across the state urge your support for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative. Second, Innovate supports the Governor's May revision budget proposal to require universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia in grades K-2. Thank you.

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Thank you, Chair Ting and Members, Michael Pimentel with the California Transit Association. I want to start my brief remarks today by first thanking you for including in this Assembly budget plan one, the restoration of full funding for the transit and inner-city rail capital program, two, the authorization to flex a portion of this funding for operations and three, for the continuation of statutory relief for transit agencies.

As I offer this sincere thanks, I also do want to acknowledge that even this robust plan will not address the full balance of near term operating needs across the state. We've had a strong collaborative working relationship with this Committee and your staff will continue to engage with you as the budget advances on identifying additional funds for transit operations, including through cap and trade, and of course, supported by the strong accountability measures that we've discussed over these past few weeks. So thank you.

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Good afternoon, Assembly Members. My name is Steven King and I'm the Clean Energy Advocate with Environment California. While we're relieved that the Governor's May budget revision doesn't include additional cuts beyond what was proposed in January, we remain concerned about significant cuts to clean transportation and clean energy funding in the budget. California still needs to invest in clean air by funding important programs that promote clean transportation and clean energy.

Our state is home to the dirtiest air in the nation and transportation is our state's leading source of climate and health-harming air pollution. No Californian should be exposed to this dangerous pollution day in and day out. So we must embrace policies and programs that transition us to clean energy, zero-emission vehicles, and public transit.

We need a budget that to the greatest extent possible, supports zero-emission vehicles, prioritizes investment in clean mobility and transit, cuts programs that subsidize the fossil fuel industry and harm communities, and create stable funding for clean transportation in the future. We appreciate the Governor's suggestion of a climate bond and look forward to engaging in the process going forward. Thank you.

Line 85.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair Members. Three quick issues.

First, on behalf of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Machinist, we'd like to thank Dr. Wood, Dr. Arambla, and the Committee for Funding AB 2530 Healthcare for striking workers. On behalf of the Teamsters and SAGAFTRA, we'd like to thank the Committee for its commitment to continuation of the film incentive program for another five years. And in particular, we want to express appreciation and support for the work of the Subcommittee Chair to make sure we have the best program going forward.

Lastly, on behalf of the Teamsters and the Amalgamated Transit Union, we support the actions restoring transit funding and creating flexibility to help with operations it's desperately needed. We look forward to working with you and the Committee and staff to find additional resources to ensure that public transit survives and thrives. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. My name is Joanna French and I'm the Director of Statewide Strategy at Innovate Public Schools calling to express Innovate support for two priorities. First, I would like to urge this Committee to approve the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, which is a new 2023-24 state budget proposal to invest $18 million in the credentialing placement and retention of 300 diverse and culturally responsive PK-12 administrators across our state.

Second, Innovate would like to support the Governor's May revision budget proposal to require universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of Dyslexia in grades K through second. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon. This is Todd Collins for the California Reading Coalition. We'd like to thank the Governor for including universal screening for dyslexia and other reading difficulties in the trailer Bill, and we urge the Assembly Members to fully support it. This is a vital step to addressing the reading crisis in our state, where over half of all third-grade students are below grade level in reading, including 70% of low-income Latino and Black students.

In my own district in Palo Alto, where I'm a school board member, we already practice universal screening and have seen significant improvement in reading results for our most challenged and least resourced students. We look forward to seeing that happen for all California students. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members. My name is Meg Davidson with the San Francisco Marin Food Bank, just speaking to express gratitude for the $60 million investment in Cal Food which is critically needed for our food bank and for food banks across the state. Because hunger is still at record levels in our community, we're still serving nearly double the number of households we were before the Pandemic. And since the end of the CalFresh Emergency Allotments demand for our support has increased.

The waitlist for our pantries continue to grow every week as people continue to grapple with the tremendous loss of food benefits. So we urge you to invest in increasing the CalFresh Minimum benefit this year. The current minimum benefit of $23 is insultingly low, and it's completely out of touch with the reality that low-income people face every single day. So we thank you so much for your support and your leadership in keeping Californians fed and nourished.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members, Jared Call with Nourished California, want to thank you, Chair Ting, and Sub One Chair Arambula, for including so many anti-hunger priorities to help address the CalFresh hunger cliff, especially the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable Pilot extension and the accelerated timeline for the Food for All CFAP expansion. However, we do still urge the Legislature and Governor to fully fund the CFAP expansion for all ages, regardless of immigration status.

Also strongly support the Assembly package funding for summer EBT, EBT theft reimbursement, the California Nutrition Incentive Program, the Childcare Nutrition Program COLA. And given the scope of this hunger crisis, we also urge the Assembly to join the Senate in funding additional anti-hunger priorities, the CalFresh Safe Drinking Water Pilot extension, raising the CalFresh minimum benefit, and removing the CalFresh three month time limit. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Jamie Fanous on behalf of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers CAFF. We represent around 8000 small and historically underserved family farmers. We appreciate and really support the Committee's decision to reverse the roughly $25 million in cuts to essential programs which support California's smallest and most vulnerable farmers, specifically the Farm to Community Food Hubs Program, the Urban Agriculture Program, and the Beginning Farmer and Farm Worker Training Program.

However, we're disappointed to see the Assembly did not include in its flood relief package any funding for CDFA's, California Underserved and Small Producer Program, or CUSP. CUSP has a strong track record of directing resources to farmers who are typically left out and moves funds quickly. CUSP originally began during the pandemic to provide COVID relief funds and droughts and now is essential to provide winter storm relief to these farmers and is the only option to help those underserved family farmers.

So we hope you consider allocating resources to the CUSP program. Thank you very much.

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Thank you. Elizabeth Escovell with the California Association of School Business Officials, representing 24,000 school business leaders statewide. As a top budget priority, CASBO appreciates your support to fully fund the COLA for the LCFF and programs outside of the LCFF. However, we do want to express concern with the use of the one-time funding to support overall LCFF costs in 23-24.

As another budget priority, we appreciate your support in extending the expenditure deadline for funds received in 21 and 22 and 22-23, another year for the Expended Learning Opportunity Program. We are opposing the reductions to both block grants that were passed as part of the 2022 Budget Act. These mid-year cuts create concern at the local level because resources have been planned for and budgeted for specifically pertaining to the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant in which funds have already been allocated to school districts and LEAs.

We do recommend fully funding the committed grants before creating and funding new programs and or looking at reducing or shifting funding sources in the out years that have not been allocated. We also support the $80 million ongoing for County Offices of Education and want to align our concerns with the delay in funding with previous comments. Appreciate your support in fully funding the Universal Meals Program. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. My name is Zachariah Wooden. I'm the Vice President of Legislative Affairs for the Student Senate for California Community Colleges. We continue to be strongly appreciative of the Assembly and more specifically Subcommittee Two's support for an 8.2 22 percent COLA adjustment and for student housing.

We see both the grants and the revolving loan fund as tools to help encourage community colleges to serve the one in five housing insecure students in the system with affordable housing options. Moreover, we also appreciate the support for properly compensating Student Board of Governors members with the existing Student Success Completion Grant. Additionally, we'd also like to urge the Assembly to reject the flexibility for categorical program funding, especially for the critical student mental health resources, as proposed.

And we'd like to express support for the Governor's proposal to have UCLA adopt an ADT transfer pathway as a pathway for less time to transfer debt free college and more equitable transfer rates. We'd also like to see this expanded to the entire University of California System. Thank you.

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Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. This is Olivia Seidman with Leadership Council for justice and Accountability. First, I want to say that we're extremely disappointed to see the approval of the Governor's cuts of 160,000,000 to community resilience centers and 205,000,000 to the Transformative Climate Communities Program in the Assembly Budget Plan. These are critical climate equity programs that are imperative for California to meet its climate goals and build both community level resilience and emergency response capacity.

Communities are already experiencing the effects of the climate crisis now and need those funds now. Shifting these funds to the bond is not acceptable given both the uncertainty and timeline of the bond, so communities would not see these funds until 2025, if at all. Second, we remain opposed to the cuts and delays for the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program. The EBD's Direct Install Program is a critical initiative towards ensuring that households with most need for holistic energy efficiency improvements are prioritized.

The Direct Installation Program will lower energy bills and improve indoor air quality, home safety, and health while supporting California's climate goals. Finally, we do support and are grateful for the restoration of 50 million for Salton Sea Resilience and continue to ask for targeted funding for multi-benefit infrastructure around the sea to improve public health and support climate resilience. Thank you.

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Did you say 148?

Yes.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Rebecca Gonzalez with the National Association of Social Workers California Chapter, want to thank the Committee for so many great investments in the health and human services area. Especially thank you for the Foster Family Agency, social worker support, also self housing supplement, and also rejecting the delay of workforce investments.

We do want to ensure that hopefully the final budget includes the SMD, TND transitional benefits and Hold Harmless SSI consumers also hope the final budget has strong provisions for safety net for all Cali, ITC and YCTC and CalFresh $50 minimum benefits. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, my name is Cedric Nelms and I am a community organizer with Innovate Schools.

We hear you. You can continue, sir.

Pardon me, Mr. Chair. If that person wishes to queue up again, they can press one, then zero. We're going to move on to line 100.

Good afternoon, Kim Lewis, representing two clients and just wanted to lift up on behalf of the ASPIRANET in Sub One, issue 359 and 366. We are greatly appreciative of the investments for the Foster Family Agencies to allow us to support our family reunification work and the support and services we provide to our foster youth and relative caregivers and resource parents in the foster care system.

And then on behalf of the California Coalition for Youth in Sub Four, I greatly appreciate issue 2116, which continues additional funding for the HAPP for around five and around six. And look forward to working with you around the trailer Bill to ensure that our most vulnerable, unaccompanied homeless youth get the appropriate attention they need in the trailer Bill. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Amerika Nino-Rodriguez, representing the Dolores Huerta Foundation and the Central Valley Higher Education Equity Hub. The Governor's January budget proposal would require UCLA to offer associate degree for transfer or ADT pathways to transfer, seeking students as a condition of funding. The rationale to tie UCLA's funding to ADT alignment is equally valid for the entire UC system. California's ADT is considered a national model.

Students with an ADT graduate faster with fewer excess units and therefore less debt than their transfer counterpart. Yet the UC continues to offer only a web of uncoordinated transfer pathways with different requirements between campuses. This has significant equity implications and helps explain why transfer rates for first generation, low-income Black and Hispanic students are dramatically lower. On behalf of the nearly 2 million California Community College students, we are asking for a two-way agreement requiring the UC system to accept ADT as a system-wide guarantee. Thank you.

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Hi, my name is Melanie Lucas. I'm a Legislative Education Advocate with the California State PCA. We strongly support the trailer Bill Language requiring universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia in student Kinder through second grade. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon Chair Ting and Members. This is Sebastian Petty on behalf of SPUR. Thank you for including transit operations in your budget. Unfortunately, the proposal will not address the full scale of transit's operating crisis and would jeopardize local matches for billions of dollars in federal funding, resulting in a net loss for California.

Without significant new funding for the state, BART, Muni, and other systems are going to have to begin cutting service immediately, pushing them into a death spiral that will be impossible to climb out of. We share your desire to make transit better and ensure a transition to a financially stable business model, but there is simply no path to better transit without state funding. Now we urge you to provide $1.0 billion a year over a five-year period to put transit on the right path. Thank you.

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Good afternoon Chair and Members, this is Claudia. I'm calling on behalf of Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in support of investments in food security. Hunger is still at record labels in our community in LA. I've seen a 200% increase in demand. Specifically at our food bank, we're continuing to serve approximately 800,000 people each month. Want to take this time to say we're very grateful for the $6 million investment in Cal Food, which is critically needed.

People in our communities continue to experience the devastating impact the CalFresh benefits cliffs today and we urge you to invest in increasing the CalFresh minimum benefits this year. Our recipients cannot wait. We must also invest in setting up the CalFresh ABAWAD care benefits this year to protect people from cruel federal ABAWAD time limit rules if California loses its statewide waiver. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Committee Chair and same to Assembly Members. My name is Michael Mcdaniel Jr., I am calling in representing Families in Action for quality education in Oakland, California. And we have to call in to state that we are definitely in support of the Governor's May revision proposal to require universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia in K-2, as well as the Diverse Education Leaders Network Pipeline.

As a Black father myself, I know that our children learn much better when they are in the classroom with people that speak like them, come from where they come from, and understand the life experiences that they're going through. We need that level of intentionality to start to repair some of the years of damage that has been done to our communities.

And in addition to that, we also know that a lot of our grown Black and brown men in this world don't find out that they're dyslexic and have been thrown off of their life path until they already ended up in prison. It's a status quo. It is our jobs to interrupt at every turn that we possibly can. Thank you.

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Hi, this is Jennifer Baker with the California Association for Bilingual Education. We'd like to thank the Assembly Sub Two Committee for the inclusion and recommendation of $20 million that was proposed for the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Grant program. We'd also like to note that Cabbage, as well as our colleagues with Californians together do have concerns with the language that's included on the Panel for Reading Difficulty screeners that's in the Governor's Omnibus Budget May revision letter.

We do look forward to having continued conversations and we ask that the Assembly incorporate protections for English learners in the final language that you wish to move forward. Thank you very much.

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Good afternoon. My name is Zack Deutsch-Gross. I'm with TransForm as part of the Survive and Thrive Coalition. We want to thank the Senate, Chair Ting, and Subchair Five Durazo for their leadership to address the transit fiscal cliff in their latest budget proposal by increasing and flexing TIRCP funds and supporting increased accountability for riders and workers. However, unfortunately, the proposal does not go far enough to fully meet and sustain the transit operations need in the coming years.

It would require further service cuts and force agencies to make hard trade-offs between preserving existing service and supporting important capital priorities like fleet maintenance, bus, and train electrification. In the Bay Area, this would only put off the fiscal cliff for another two years and would leave an additional $6 billion in federal matching money on the table. There is no path to transit recovery our climate, economic, and equity goals without additional funding for transit operations.

We look forward to working with you all to fully address this crisis in the coming weeks, including identifying additional funds from historically abundant and flexible federal highway dollars and discretionary cap and trade money. Thank you for your time.

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Good afternoon, Chair. This is Danielle Bautista with United Ways of California. We want to thank the Committee for prioritizing a permanent CalWORKS grant increase, critical investments in childcare, strengthening CalFresh benefits against the hunger cliff, and protecting the Safety Net Reserve.

Additionally, we know that California still has the highest poverty rate of any state, and we hope the Legislature's final budget will include reimagined CalWORKS Safety Net For All, improving the Cal EITC and YCTC it takes a village grant, Cal Fresh $50 minimum benefit, and more to lift all children and families out of poverty. Thank you.

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Thank you, Chair and Members. This is Jennifer Greppi with Parent Voices California. First, we'd like to you for prioritizing critical investments in childcare, including a family fee schedule that keeps fees affordable for families and a 25% COLA for provider payments. Also a permanent CalWORKS grant increase, strengthening CalWORKS benefits against a hunger cliff and protecting the safety net reserve. California still has the highest rate of poverty of all the states.

And so we also would like to see you lift the pause on the 20,000 childcare slots, reimagine CalWORKS, include the safety net for all funding, improve the Cal EITC and YCTC, and the "It Takes a Village" grants as well as CalFresh $50 minimum benefit, and so much more to make sure that our children and families have what they need. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, this is Rachel Del Carlo calling on behalf of the Community Advisory Committee of the Mount Diablo Unified School District. We are in support of the Governor's May revision proposal to require universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia K-2. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. And thank you to Subcommitee Chair Dr. Arambula. This is Anna Johnson from John Burton Advocates for Youth, speaking on behalf of a statewide coalition of 75 and more organizations seeking to prevent and end homelessness among California's foster youth and extended foster care.

We are so grateful for your support and including the proposal in the Assembly Sub One budget investing in foster youth housing and housing security, and we appreciate your fight to house foster youth and make sure that we address California's housing crisis as California's foster youth parents. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Members of the Committee. This is Sherry Doreen from Equitable Advocacy. We are calling in today in support of the Governor's May revised trailer Bill in support of universal screening from K-2 for children. Seven out of 10 children in our state cannot read, and it is proven by scientific evidence-based studies that children suffering from illiteracy and perceived illiteracy are five times more likely to have mental health conditions that impact them forever in their lives. Our children are not failing.

We are failing our children. And we ask the Committee to support universal screening. And thanks Senator Portantino and Governor Newsom for your diligence towards this topic. Thank you.

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Afternoon Chair Ting and Members, Cyrus Hall, resident and transit rider in San Francisco. With respect to transit funding, thank you for restoring the 2 billion in TIRCP funding and allowing for flexible use of these funds for transit operations. However, even if all this funding was used for operations, it is insufficient to fill budget shortfall, particularly in the Bay Area. This means significant service cuts are still in our future as riders.

Use of this money for operations would also put the Bay Area at serious risk of losing 6 billion in federal matching money. We do not need more platitudes about the importance of public transit. What we need is concrete plans. There are sources of funding. Please use cap and trade allocations or shift federal highway funding. Do not kick riders to the curb and do not abandon the need to reduce VMT. Thank you,

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Good afternoon, Committee Members. My name is Olivia Gleason with Californians United for a Responsible Budget calling from Long Beach, California. I'm calling to oppose Governor Newsom's proposal to increase prison spending by sinking millions into the San Quentin Prison Rehabilitation Center project. Rather than funding this proposal, California must move forward with closing additional prisons and adopt a comprehensive, community informed roadmap to do so. CURB's Prison Closure Roadmap is here to support the state in this process.

With that said, I urge you to follow the lead of the Senate to reject the governor's proposed $360,000,000 construction request. Rebranding San Quentin Prison as a rehabilitation center, in quotes, is simply creating a prison by another name, which will continue to perpetuate all the harms associated with incarceration, such as systemic racism and violence. Yesterday's article in the SF examiner proves why this is a terrible plan. CDCR staff are already retaliating against incarcerated people because of this announcement.

The culture of CDCR is defined by abuse and neglect. It's endemic. This department can't be entrusted with meaningful change, and this money could be better spent if invested in services and resources needed to directly support Californians before and after incarceration. Thank you for your time.

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Yeah, thank you, Tom Davis with the ITSC Council. I wanted to thank the Chair of the Committee, as well as the Chair of the Subcommittee Number Four, for the ongoing support of the California Film and Television Tax Incentive. This program has created tens of thousands of jobs, and the continuation of this program will continue to do so and support those families that make their livings in the entertainment industry in those good and middle-class jobs. Thank you very much.

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Hello. My name is Madeline Harris. I'm reading a comment from Planada residents who are impacted by the flooding disaster this winter. I, Rufino Dominguez and Esmeralda Patino and Jesus Dominguez, residing at 9415 Broderick Avenue in Planada, addressed this comment to whom it may concern due to the flooding of January 9, 2023. We are suffering the consequences of negligence from Merced County and are witnessing flood impacts till this day. We ask that you help us with the losses we suffered from such negligence.

We ask for help for the losses of our material and economic assets. We were left with impacts from the flood without being able to repair our losses, all while facing moral and emotional suffering. We need the governor to approve $20 million in aid to Planada alone and deliver directly to the people who were harmed, not second or third hand. This budget proposal is important as locally we have faced corrupt people in government without feelings and morals.

I ask the leaders of the Assembly, Senator, and the state Governor for help to myself and all of Planada with this budget request which will bring aid not only to my home but to my business since I am starting over again while struggling and grieving. Thank you.

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Good afternoon. My name is Tannah Oppliger. I'm a policy advocate with the Californians United for Responsible Budget or CURB. I'm calling from Irvine, California and Orange County. I'm calling to oppose Governor Newsom's proposal to increase prison spending by sinking millions into the San Quentin Prison Rehabilitation Center project. I urge you to support the closure of more state prisons instead and follow the lead of the Senate and reject the Governor's proposed $360,000,000 construction request. The San Quentin proposal will misallocate state funds.

Instead of saving California billions by closing more state prisons, the Governor is proposing to spend $20 million from the general fund on his ill-defined San Quentin Rebranding project and threatening to take the state into debt for $360,000,000 more. This money could be better spent on programs that directly support Californians such as affordable housing, education, or mental health resources rather than further entrusting rehabilitation to a prison system that continues to perpetuate harm. Thank you.

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Good evening, Assembly Members and Chair Ting, my name is Kevin Ortiz. I am the co-president of the San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club and also co-founder of Mission Destino which is a transportation advocacy organization for Latinx and Indigenous folks here in San Francisco's Mission District. I'm urging you today to fully fund transportation.

We are right now in the middle of a transit fiscal cliff and Muni and BART will not be able to survive unless additional funding is put in place, particularly to make sure that transit operations is fully-funded and invested. Please include more funding sources to prevent these cuts. Muni, for example, is facing $130,000,000 shortfall and BART was reliant on 70% of riders coming in and we've only received one-third of the actual riders coming back in. Transit will not survive.

And if we do not fully Fund transportation, this is going to bring 50,000 more cars back into the streets of San Francisco which will detrimentally impact our climate goals moving forward. So I urge you, Assembly Member Ting to really fully fund transportation to make sure that we do not have this transit cliff approach. Thank you so much for your time.

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Hello. Good afternoon, Committee Members. My name is Brian Kaneda. I am the Deputy Director of CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget and I live in Los Angeles, California. I'm going to oppose Governor Newsom's proposal to increase prison spending by sinking millions into the San Quentin Prison Rehabilitation Center project. I urge you to support the closure of more state prisons instead and follow the lead of the Senate to reject the Governor's proposed $360,000,000 construction request. This proposal lacks transparency and accountability.

The Governor is asking for vast sums of money for plans that are largely unknown, to be decided by an advisory council that is not subject to open meeting laws. And this lack of transparency undermines democratic process. We can't support Californians being kept in the dark about how their tax dollars are being spent. This is the best example of wasteful prison spending and poor planning.

This proposal includes a plan to demolish a building whose roof was just replaced a couple of years ago at a cost of $5 million. The evidence of wasted resources because of CDCR's continued failure to provide a comprehensive plan for prison closure can't be denied. Thank you.

Line 227, your line is now open.

Hello, my name is Nora Monaco and I'm the downtown property owner who's created the Brewery District. Our small businesses need more housing within walking distance in order to grow, but outdated infrastructure has been and is a major barrier. I'm calling in support of the City of Fresno's Public Infrastructure Plan for $250,000,000 and request its approval in the Assembly budget. The downtown represents the heartbeat of a city, and this infrastructure investment will make a difference now and for generations yet to come. Thank you for prioritizing Fresno's downtown. Please approve the Bill.

Line 223, your line is now open.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. That's Elliot Balch, CEO of the Downtown Fresno Partnership. We operate our downtown property and business improvement district with 346 parcels contributing. Our downtown community and Members are strongly in favor of the proposed allocation for the City of Fresno Public Infrastructure Plan. Thinking about the central San Joaquin Valley of tomorrow, downtown Fresno really is our region's ground zero for environmental sustainability, for inclusive economic opportunity, for nurturing new knowledge based business sectors, and it's the most fun urban place anywhere around.

Which is why we see thousands of valley people not only visiting downtown today over and above pre-pandemic levels, but also seeking housing in our downtown also by the thousands. More housing and more residents, as Nora Monaco just said, will have the greatest benefit for our smallest businesses, bringing more customers closer. And it's great for residents in an urban area of the state that's relatively affordable, but it can only happen with the right infrastructure.

And that's why the Downtown Fresno Partnership urges your support for the City of Fresno Public Infrastructure Plan. Thank you.

Line 234. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Members. My name is Abby Halperin with the Center for Ecoliteracy. Thank you for your leadership in the full funding for School Meals for All and Child Nutrition Program. We are asking the Assembly to consider including the 100 million for the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Program as was included in the Senate's budget plan. We also urge the Assembly to reconsider the proposal to eliminate 60 million for the Farm to School Grant Program.

The Center for Ecoliteracy works with a network of over 100 public school districts across the state, and we've heard from these nutrition service directors that these state investments will help realize the full potential of school meals to nourish our students, support local farmers, and benefit the planet. Thank you.

Line 210. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon. My name is Valeria Torres, and I am an employee at Summit Public Schools in Redwood City, California. I oppose targeted cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant Program, which specifically provides support for schools in low-income communities. This program is already underfunded, and further cuts will force staffing and service cuts at school sites for the students with the greatest needs. Please reject the proposed cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant Program. Thank you.

Line 236, your line is now open.

Line 236, your line is open.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. This is Teresa Bui with the environmental group Pacific Environment. I'm calling in to urge you to restore the proposed $400 million in cut to the ZEV ports program at Carbon CEC. That would promote investment in zero-emission cargo handling equipment, locomotives, and harbor craft at ports. The funding is critical in improving air quality in many regions of the state and protecting port communities. And this dedicated funding is particularly important for addressing the health burdens placed on environmental justice communities who are disproportionately impacted by the goods movement industry. Harbor crowds such as ferries and tugboats are the top three camps for causing emissions at the port, and state funding will make a significant difference in accelerating the deployment of these zero-emission technologies at ports throughout the state. With that, thank you so much for your consideration.

Line 229, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Thank you for your service. My name is Cherella Nicholson and I work Downtown Fresno at Access Plus Capital, Fresno area's largest locally nonprofit community lender. We're doing more and more in real estate because we recognize that our mission of racially equitable wealth creation requires more opportunities shared with more people in our community. As a part of that, we're committed to helping make housing happen in Downtown Fresno, and I'm calling in support of City of Fresno's public infrastructure plan for 250,000,000 and request its approval in the Assembly budget. Thank you so much for your time.

Line 246, your line is now open.

Hi, I'm Anna de Benedictis. I'm calling on behalf of myself. I'm a transit rider. I'm disabled, I'm young, and I need transit to get around. If we don't get more funding, we won't be able to have as many lines, as many services, and we won't be able to employ a lot of people that live around here. So I highly suggest finding a way to do that that will help us little people who live in the Bay. Thank you.

Line 250, your line is now open.

Hi, I'm Leanne Chang from the west side of San Francisco in Assemblymember Ting's district. By choice, I don't have a driver's license or a car. I'd like to thank the budget chair and the whole committee's attention to avoiding the fiscal cliff and for the $2 billion proposal. We do still need more money so that the budget fully matches your words. Public transit is mobility and independence for everyone. And I just want to say this is the most meaningful for the most vulnerable people who have the fewest options. This was me at one point in my life, and I think for all of us, at some point in our lives, that is us for any number of reasons. And being able to get where we need to go is life-changing. So I'm asking for more money for public transit and for more funding sources to be considered, including cap and trade. However, please do not force agencies to repurpose the TIRCP transit capital funds for operational needs. Doing this would cause California to lose $6 billion in federal matching funds, which seems like a huge loss in a deficit year. Thank you.

Line 66, your line is now open. Line 66, your line is open.

Hello, this is Kathy Garmezy calling for the Entertainment Union Coalition to speak in support of the extension of the film and television tax credit and to thank Assemblywoman Carrillo and the Subcommittee Four, and the full committee and chair team. Thank you.

Line 257, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. Karina Laigo, Child Care Law Center. Childcare is essential to families, and so we are thankful for and supportive of the proposals for increasing funding for childcare, adopting the alternative methodology for subsidy payment rates, increasing payment rates by 25% now to providers, reducing family fees to 1% of total family income, and for the CalWORKS permanent grant increase. However, we are disappointed regarding the proposal to delay the 20,000 spaces promised for this year. Additionally, the proposal to streamline eligibility for state preschool for three-year-olds is vague if it means to eliminate health and safety. In the interest of streamlining enrollment, we oppose. We also ask the Legislature to pay providers based on certified enrollment and not on attendance. We can set up a more equitable childcare system in California that embraces childcare as a public good. Thank you.

Line 259, your line is now open. Line 259.

Hello, my name is Chris. I'm a resident of Oakland, California. I'm calling in to voice support for more funding for public trans in the Bay Area. I appreciate everything the committee has done to add more funding than was originally proposed, but it's not enough. We should not be leaving federal matching funding on the table. We should be adding more money into an infrastructure that already exists that works effectively for the vast majority of Bay Area residents. If we don't, there will be thousands, tens of thousands more cars added each year to the ongoing traffic problems in the Bay Area. The Bay Bridge will be increasingly congested, and it's not something that I think anyone in the committee is looking would personally favor. So please reconsider and add more funding to public trans in the Bay Area. Thank you.

Line 245, your line is now open.

245?

Yes.

Good afternoon. This is Janelle Warren-Evans. I work in Downtown Fresno at Access Plus Capital, the region's largest locally-based nonprofit community lender. I'm calling in support of the allocation for the City of Fresno public infrastructure plan. At Access Plus Capital, we are working increasingly in real estate because we recognize that our mission of racially equitable wealth creation requires more opportunities shared with more people in our community. As a part of that, we're committed to helping make housing happen in downtown Fresno but the infrastructure has to be there. That's why I'm calling in support of the City of Fresno's public infrastructure plan for $250,000,000 and request its approval in the Assembly budget. I would like to thank the State Assembly for prioritizing Fresno after decades of disinvestment.

Going to move on to line 261. Your line is now open. Line 261, your line is open. Going to move on to line 216. 216, your line is now open.

Hello. Good afternoon, Chair and members. My name is Sadalia King, the associate director of government relations for Catalyst California, speaking on the investment for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative. Our education system is inundated with inequalities due to historic racist policies that have specific and unique impact on where people live and the quality of the resources they have which have contributed to poor educational outcomes for students of color and the pandemic exacerbated these inequalities. And so to close those and allow educators and students of colors to thrive, we must invest in the diverse school leadership. So the $18 million investment for the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative will uplift student equity by providing grants to local education agencies, qualifying community-based organizations, and credentialing institutions to increase culturally responsive TK-12 administrators to better reflect students, teachers, and the communities they serve. The Senate Subcommittee on Education recognized the importance of investing in diversity, inclusion in our state's educational workforce, and ultimately, as a result, our state's economy. This committee has demonstrated a strong leadership on these issues and we ask you to do that again by supporting a one-time investment of $18 million for the Diversity Institute. Thank you for your time and enjoy the rest of your day.

I just want to make a quick announcement. Operator, hold on one second. We will do a quick recess at 3:15, probably about 15 to 20 minutes recess so that Mr. Fong and I can return to the floor to vote, at which point we will be welcoming in all the committee members. So we will be probably taking a recess on public comment so they can ask their questions, make their comments on the budget, and then after they're done, we will again resume with public comments. So we again appreciate everyone's patience and we'll make sure we'll be hearing everyone today. But operator, you can go on with the call and then we will again recess for about 15, 20 minutes at 3:15.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're going to recess in 10 minutes?

Correct.

Yes, sir. We're now going to go to line 23. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Lucy Salcido Carter with the Alameda County Office of Education. We are aligned with earlier comments by the California County Superintendents and others. We strongly support the $80 million for students in juvenile court and community schools, but this funding should not be delayed. Young people are already coming to the counties from state DJJ facilities. We cannot, with current funding, provide the range of services and support these students need to succeed. The students in our court and community schools are most vulnerable and deserve stable funding now so we can help them reach their education goals. Thank you.

Line 199. Pardon me, line 190, your line is open.

Good afternoon, Chair Ting and members. Emily Loper with Bay Area Council. We're grateful that this proposal provides significant funding for transit operations, and we encourage you to continue to look for new funding to ensure that BART, Muni, and transit systems across the state are not forced to make severe service cuts in the coming months. If we cut transit service, we truly risk losing our workforce to other states and our economic engine along with them. This is your opportunity to rebuild transit into a better, safer, cleaner, more integrated, and more efficient transit network. But we can't make those improvements if the systems collapse now. So thank you, Chair Ting and others, for your commitment to save and improve public transit in our state. Our future economy depends on it. Thank you.

Line 124, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Elena Pieri on behalf of the California Association of Local Conservation Corps related to Sub Three's report. We'd like to express our gratitude to Chairs Bennett and Ting and the Assembly generally for restoring all funding that was proposed to be cut under the governor's proposal for local cores to perform nature-based solutions projects. This funding will ensure that the next generation is part of the solution to climate change and enable our core members to continue serving the most climate-impacted communities, which are often their own neighborhoods while receiving on-the-job training that will set them up for professional success. Again, really appreciate the Assembly's recognition of the critical work our corps members do and the impact they make. Thank you.

Line 97, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Eileen Cubanski with the County Welfare Directors Association. There's much that we could comment on in this budget, but wanted to highlight three issues in particular. We're in support of the reimagining CalWORKS proposal coming out of Sub One. Make the program more family-centered and supportive. Reforming sanction policy and repealing the WPR penalty pass-through are critical components in reducing the compliance culture and improving family engagement in accordance with the CalWORKS 2.0 and CalWORKS Principles, which CWDA and County Human Services Directors led in the development of. We look forward to continuing to work with staff and other proponents on the final details of the proposal. We also support the additional funding added by Sub One to provide housing supplements for foster youth in supervised independent living placements. And lastly, we thank the Administration and the Legislature for their support of much-needed county CalFresh administrative funding so counties can assure access to critical nutrition benefits. Thank you to the Budget Committee and especially the members and staff of Sub One for all the hard work and support this year. Thank you.

Line 155, your line is now open.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. Jeff Vaca, representing the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools. Thank the members and staff of Subcommittee Two for their work this year and specifically today to express support for the May revised proposal to provide $80 million in ongoing funding for the Juvenile Court and community schools operated by county offices of education. Like others who have spoken before me, we're very open to the discussion about accountability language, but we urge the Legislature to include such language in a budget trailer bill this year so that the funding will immediately benefit the students in these programs. Thank you.

Line 128, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. This is Juliet Terry with the Childcare Resource Center, calling to express gratitude and support to the Assembly and Budget Sub Two Committee for allocating funding for the 25% rate increase for childcare providers. This will work as a down payment as we transition to the alternative reimbursement rate methodology, which will be a permanent solution to increasing wages for childcare providers. Also working to address the family fees issue and moving to paying providers based on enrollment not attendance. Thank you.

Line 244, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chair Ting and members of the committee. My name is Alan Abbs with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. I'd like to thank the Assembly for support of the AB 617 program and maintaining funding at the $300,000,000 level, which will help the Bay Area AQMD provide support to the communities of East Oakland, West Oakland, Richmond, San Pablo, and Bayview Hunters Point. I'd also like to encourage the Assembly to set aside some funding for the farmer program for changeouts of diesel tractor equipment. The Legislative Analyst Office identified the farmer program, as well as the AB 617 program as being one of the most cost-effective programs to get greenhouse gas reductions as well as criteria pollutant reductions, and also getting these reductions in the most disadvantaged communities of the state. So with that, I thank you and encourage your future support for these programs.

Line 72, your line is now open.

Hi, this is Laura Kerr with the Charter Center. We appreciate the governor for funding the charter school facility grant program in both the January budget and the May revise. But Chair Ting, we are disappointed that Budget Sub Two rejected $30 million for this program, which is a partial lease reimbursement for school facilities in disadvantaged communities. This program is a rare and vital source of facilities funding, and a recent review by the state auditor found that the program is being appropriately administered by the State Treasurer's Office, creating classrooms in places where adequate educational facilities are scarce, and exceeding the target of 55% of serving schools, with 55% free and reduced-price lunch. In fact, these schools that they examine are serving, on average, 70% low-income students. Cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant Program will harm students and families in high-poverty communities. Please restore the $30 million for the charter school facility grant program. Thanks.

Line 83, your line is now open.

Hi. This is Alex Tonisson, the interim national executive director of the International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600. I'm speaking in support of the film and television production tax incentive, and I want to thank Subcommittee Four for all the work they've done on it.

Line 24, your line is now open.

Hello, thank you. My name is Somer Lowery. I oversee facilities at Growth Public Schools. We are a charter school in Sacramento, and I'm calling in to oppose targeted cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant Program, which specifically provides support for schools in low-income communities like ours. This program is already underfunded and further cuts will force staffing and service cuts at our school sites and our students greatly need our services. These cuts would hurt our school and our community. Please reject the proposed cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant Program.

Line 154, your line is now open.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. Jean Hurst, calling in today on behalf of the Urban Counties of California. I want to express our appreciation for restoration of the final year of funding for the public defense pilot program. And also on behalf of Urban Counties as well as the Rural County Representatives of California. We again want to express our appreciation for inclusion of funding for Alpine, Mono, and San Mateo counties to backfill losses associated with insufficient ERAF. Thanks for your hard work on these issues this year. Thank you.

Line 74, your line is now open.

Thank you. My name is Mark Ankcorn. I am senior chief deputy city attorney of San Diego, and I am calling in strong support of item 7350, creating an $18 million block grant for city attorneys and county council's efforts to protect workers in their communities and across the state. We thank Sub Four Chair Wendy Carrillo and Committee Chair Phil Ting for recognizing the ongoing crisis in labor law enforcement. Thank you.

Line 110, your line is open.

This is David Chiu, your former Assembly colleague and a proud former member of this committee, currently the San Francisco city attorney, calling on behalf of city attorneys and county councils around the state to strongly support row 138, item 7350 in the Sub Four budget related to the Department of Industrial Relations. I want to thank Chair Ting and Sub Four Chair Carrillo for recognizing the crisis in labor law enforcement and providing $18 million in funding to local public prosecutors for worker rights enforcement. I also want to thank the California Labor Federation for advocating for resources to return stolen wages to workers, ensure labor laws passed by this Legislature are actually enforced, and to secure our safety net, I want to thank the Assembly for championing this. Thank you.

Thank you. On that note.

And we have now reached.

Sorry, go ahead, sir.

Yes, Mr. Chair. So we've reached that point where you're going to recess.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate. I know there's still quite a few people online. We will definitely get to people after we welcome the members back to committee and after they ask their comments and make their questions known. Thank you so much. Be right back.

We're just waiting for a quorum. Then after we get quorum, I'll ask for a motion and then we vote. And then for Members who want to make comments and questions, then we have obviously, they can make questions and comments as they wish. Since we're waiting for quorum, I'm just going to open it up to any Members who want to make statements or comments while we're waiting for people to gather or they have questions, any questions, or.

It was just subcommittees presented there. Yeah. Apologies for the very awkward Committee today. Yes, Ms. Rivas, please.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, I wanted to express my support for the extension of the film tax credit. It benefits our state and in particular the Los Angeles region. The La County delegation, which is a group of Members, 39 Members that represent La County, voted to support this extension. And so on behalf of the La County delegation, I want to express how important this is for our region and our support for the film tax credit extension. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Rivas. Ms. Friedman.

Thank you. I just want to echo Chair Reevis's support for the film tax credit. I am honored to represent a district that has four film studios within its borders. I moved to Los Angeles in 1992 when I got a job at Paramount Pictures. I worked in the film industry for 25 years. So many people in California came here to follow that Hollywood dream.

And we are a community in all of California, in Bay Area, in Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles, certainly all over that is part of that identity as California, as the home of entertainment for the whole world. And that industry brings tourists to California every year. It powers people's dreams. It causes them to move from around the country, around the world, to come to Los Angeles. We have film courses taught in our elementary schools, in our colleges.

So many of our local businesses depend on that economy, from our restaurants to our Prop shops to our lighting facilities. Even, I would argue, Silicon Valley in the tech industry has some roots within the creativity of the entertainment industry. So we give tax credits for a whole number of industries in California. We give tax breaks for all manner of things. It makes sense to me that we extend those credits to our most Californian industry.

And I can also tell you from personal experience that the tax credits that are offered by other states and by other nations have pulled productions out of California. My old company, I was part of Offshoring Film Productions because of just the bottom line and what a razor thin financial basis a lot of these productions operate on. The company that I was with had made the decision to send productions to Canada because at the time, they were the first ones offering a film tax credit.

We have leveled the playing field here in California. And my neighbors are being able to work and stay at home with their kids and their families because productions move back to California because of the success of our film Tax credit. We need to make sure that we extend it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Friedman. I'm going to ask our secretary to call the role. We have quorum?

Yes, we do. Ting. Fong. Vince Fong. Alanis. Alvarez. Arambula.

Here.

Bennett, Bonta.

Here.

Carrillo. Cervantes. Connolly. Dahle. Essayli. Mike Fong.

Here.

Friedman. Garcia. Hart. Jackson.

Here.

Jones-Sawyer. Lackey.

Here.

Lee. McCarty. Muratsuchi. Jim Patterson. Joe Patterson. Ramos. Reyes Rivas. Rubio. Sanchez. Wicks. Wood. Quorum is present.

Thank you, Madam Secretary. So I just want to let everyone know what occurred earlier in the Committee. The five Subcommitee chairs each presented the proposals of their subcommittees, which has been rolled up into the Assembly's proposal on the budget. The LAO was present, as well as Department of Finance was present to answer questions. They are still present. What I'd like to do is to ask for a motion and a second to approve the Assembly's version of the budget.

And then after we vote, obviously, any and all Members are welcome to stay to ask questions, to make comments, et cetera. And then we do have, I think, at least 80 people on the phone to give further public comments. So since we have a motion to second to approve the Assembly version of the state budget, can we please take the roll?

Ting.

Aye.

Ting aye. Vince Fong.

No.

Vince Fong no. Alvarez. Arambula.

Aye.

Arambula aye. Bennett. Bonta.

Aye.

Bonta aye. Carrillo.

Aye.

Carrillo aye. Cervantes. Connolly.

Aye.

Connolly aye. Dahle. Essayli.

No.

Essayli no. Mike Fong.

Aye.

Mike Fong aye. Friedman.

Aye.

Friedman aye. Garcia.

Aye.

Garcia aye. Hart. Jackson.

Aye.

Jackson aye. Jones-Sawyer. Lackey.

No.

Lackey no. Lee.

Aye.

Lee aye. McCarty.

Aye.

McCarty aye. Muratsuchi. Jim Patterson. Joe Patterson. Ramos.

Aye.

Ramos aye. Reyes.

Aye.

Reyes aye. Rivas.

Aye.

Rivas aye. Rubio. Sanchez.

No.

Sanchez no. Wicks. Wood.

We had a few Members call.

Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Alanis.

No.

Alanis no.

Can we go back through absent Members?

Yes. Alvarez. Bennett. Cervantes.

Aye.

Cervantes aye. Dahle.

No.

Dahle no. Hart. Jones-Sawyer. Muratsuchi. Jim Patterson. Joe Patterson.

No.

Joe Patterson no. Rubio. Wicks. 15. No. Five.

Okay. Thank you, Will. We're going to keep holding the roll open now. We're going to continue back to the Committee apologies about not able to fit everybody and to have seats for everybody. But again, we're now back to questions and comments to either Finance LAO or to our Committee staff. Any questions? Comments? Mr. Lee?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a comment about what the proposal right now in our Assembly budget is to save transit right now as there's fiscal cliffs that are facing in the Los Angeles and the Bay Area region. I know there's negotiations and money being appropriated, but I'm not sure what the latest status of it.

And I'm not sure who best to answer that would be, but I just wanted to get update of where our proposal to save transit and allocate several billion dollars towards transit is going to what shape it looks like right now.

Thank you. Genevieve Morales Assembly budget. Our current proposal reinstates the transportation deal from last year, which is $2 billion in this year's budget and $2 billion next year for Trrcp and an opportunity to flex some of those dollars for transit. It also has provisions for accountability and it reinstates the COVID safeguards that were there to allow transit to use the dollars as they need to.

I also want to comment, in addition to the amounts that were listed by my colleague Genevieve, this Christian Griffith Assembly budget, we also restored, there are two Zev proposals that were proposed to be reduced for transit, one for infrastructure and one for charging for vehicles. We restored that funding as well.

Other questions, comments from the Committee. Otherwise we're going to go back to public comment at this point.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. At this point, we are going to resume public comment. Operator, you still there?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Okay, we're going to start again where we left off. People are still in the comment queue. We're going to go first to line 183. Your line is now open. Line 183, your line is open. We're going to move on to line 30. Line 30, your line is now open.

Good afternoon. This is Sima Rapani on behalf of the office of Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker. We're part of a group of city attorneys and county councils throughout California that want to voice our strong support and appreciation for item 7350, specifically the $18 million for a grant program for our offices to enforce workers rights. I'd like to thank the California Labor Federation for their advocacy on this issue and Chairwoman Karillo and Chairman Ting and Committee staff for their work on this item.

This funding is critical to help close the gap between the laws on the books that protect workers and the lived realities for workers in California. This funding will help give workers access to justice, hold employers that break the law accountable, and really secure our state safety net. So thank you and we look forward to this item passing and being able to utilize the funding for workers rights enforcement.

We'll now move on to line 205.

Good afternoon. Chair and Members Magaly Zagal with Greenberg Traurig on behalf of Aspire Public Schools, we align our comments with those of the California Charter Schools Association and urge you to oppose the targeted cut to the charter school grant program, which specifically provides support for schools and Low income communities. We ask that you again reject the proposed cuts to the charter school facility grant program. Thank you.

Line 161, your line is now open.

Hello, Mr. Chair and Members. Eric Premack with the Charter Schools Development Center. We were very disappointed to see the $30 million cut targeted toward the Charter Facilities grant program. We really hope that you will restore that funding, particularly given that it was part of a multi year commitment and many of us have been planning on it. Thank you very much.

Line 255, your line is now open.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Committee chair and Members. This is Evelyn Aleman representing our Voice Communities for Quality Education, a nonprofit organization primarily comprised of Latino and indigenous immigrant parents from La County, whose children are English learners. Our parents express that they face enormous challenges in accessing early and proper screening for reading difficulties and dyslexia, as well as services and resources for their children.

Too often they are ignored and gaslighted by their school districts, which causes much pain, suffering, and feelings of helplessness of the inability to properly support their children. The Governor's proposal would give parents the support they need so that their children don't fall through the cracks, but can thrive. We support and urge you also to support the Governor's proposal to require universal screening for reading difficulties and Dyslexia for grades K through two. Thank you.

Line 171, your line is now open. Line 171, we're going to move on to line 105, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chairman Ting and Members. My name is Larry Del Carlo, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my family and Chairman Ting. I'd like to thank you, first of all, for your years of public service both in San Francisco and Sacramento. I'm supporting and hope you support the inclusion of early screening for Dyslexia.

My daughter and my grandson would have benefited greatly from early screening had it been in place at the time they went to school. So, again, please support the Governor's recommendation for this funding. Thank you. Line 270, your line is now open.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Adina Levin with Seamless Bay Area and the Survive and Thrive Coalition wanted to thank Chair Ting in particular for his words of support in terms of providing funding to over the fiscal cliff and also to ensure accountability for strategies that regrow ridership and improve transit. That said, the budget items that were voted on today does not yet do that. The funding is not sufficient to avoid the fiscal cliff and to avoid severe cuts, and that proposal is not compatible with the strategies to regrow ridership.

So we do hope and encourage the legislators to keep working with the other House and with leadership and the Governor on a solution that will Fund transit, will prevent the fiscal cliff and will particular here in the bay. Area set us up on a path and also in the state to set up for working out a path for long term fiscal sustainability with this short term funding. Thank you very much.

Line 95, your line is now open. Line 95, your line is open. We're going to move on to line 11. Line 11, your line is open.

Thank you so much. Hello, chair and Committee Members. My name is Jennifer Caballero. I'm the Executive Director of the California Association of Museums. Our Association was the primary advocate for an investment of $50 million into the California Cultural and Historical Endowment through natural Resources for the museum grant program. I'm here to express our gratitude for your support. Thank you for rejecting the proposed budget reduction for this museum grant program that represents transformational funding for the small and medium sized organizations who operate without an endowment.

We're extremely thankful to the Assembly for recognizing this need. California museums were losing millions every day at the height of the Pandemic, having a mandated closure for 18 months. Thank you again.

We'll now move on to line 253. Your line is open. Line 253, your line is open.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Ronald Coleman Baeza, here on behalf of the California Pan Ethnic Health Network CPEN. We appreciate the proposal to ensure the individual mandate penalty revenues be used for additional affordability subsidies in Covered California. We also support the inclusion of the MCO tax to increase provider rates in medical. But we also urge the Legislature to not leave CHWs out of that discussion. By our estimates, they are at 80% of the Medicare rate and should also be brought up to 87.5.

Additionally, we appreciate the rejection of the trailer Bill to delay workforce investments to HKI. As the TBL is modified, we urge you to Reserve some funds for grants and stipends for CHWs, or at the very least, ensure a robust stakeholder process can continue. However, we are extremely disappointed that the Assembly did not include the framework for the Health, Equity, and Racial Justice Fund.

We understand that there may not be money for the funding this year, but we are only respectfully asking for the Assembly to follow the Senate's leadership on creating the framework this year to ensure communities can leverage philanthropic dollars or future state funding.

There's been a lot of work done on the proposal this year to work with public health stakeholders in the Administration to make key changes that we believe make the proposal stronger by enhancing coordination and collaboration with local public health and to enhance metrics related to our deliverables for grant projects. We think it is a mistake to not continue to support the health, equity and racial justice innovations and urge you to change course as you go into negotiations with the Governor and the Senate.

Thank you, operator, if you could hold on 1 second. I'm just going to ask our Secretary to add role. The motion was to approve the Assembly's version of the budget.

Alvarez. Bennett.

Aye.

Bennett aye. Hart.

Aye.

Hart Aye. Muratsuchi. Jim Patterson. Rubio. Ayes 19. Seven no's.

Thank you. We'll continue with public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'll now go on to line 281.

Good afternoon, chair and ranking Members. Grace Glaser on behalf of Valor, the California Partnership End Domestic Violence and the alliance for Boys and Men of Color. I'm calling to express disappointment that the 2023 final Assembly budget did not include funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention. We urge you to include 20 million in ongoing prevention funding in this final budget. These funds are essential for preventing violence and building healthier and safer communities. Thank you.

Now go on to line 187.

Good afternoon. This is Maria Lora with Leadership Council. We have a couple of points on water. We support the 4.8 million allocation for the State Water Board's oversight roles for the basins deemed inadequate. It is critical for the State Water Board to have the internal capacity to move basins into probation in order to protect drinking water supplies and comply with Sigma.

We support the Assembly's proposal to allow the State Water Board to use the remaining four 6 million for water arrearage that occurred through the end of the Pandemic Emergency. While we understand the urgent conditions that led to the proposed drought and Flood Trailer Bill, in its current form, it lacks adequate protection for drinking water quality. We look forward to working with the Committee on Amends that are protective of drinking water supplies.

In terms of Planada, we are supportive and appreciate the proposal to dedicate 25 million in flood recovery funds to Planada and pajaro the funding need for planeta alone is 20.3 million. So we urge the Assembly to continue to step in the right direction and ensure that both communities receive the full amount of funding needed for them to fully recover. And lastly, for Fresno, we want to express concerns with the proposal to invest in Fresno's public infrastructure plan given the urgent needs in Fresno and beyond. Thank you.

Thank you, operator one second. I'm going to allow Mr. Bennett to ask questions or make a comment, then we'll go back to public comment.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And I was still down on the floor when I know a question was brought up about transit funding that we have.

And I just would like to get this on the record, and that is that from my perception, the Assembly, the Budget Committee, we are supportive of trying to make sure that transit stays viable in this crisis, but that we are very concerned about the fact that we need to have a long term plan for how transit is going to be. The transit operations of the future.

Transit that is sustainable so that we don't just keep doing the same thing and having it get increasingly more difficult for us to handle. Operation and maintenance. So with that, I think that we have lots of challenges ahead of us over the next 1218 months as we both try to keep the transit system alive and not in a death spiral in terms of cutting service, but also, at the same time, trying to design the transit system of the future that we can all feel confident about. Thank you very much.

Just one quick item from our majority leader. If anybody needs to add on to the floor vote, they could go downstairs to add on to the floor vote. We'll take another addition for our budget vote.

We just have a motion to adopt the Assembly version of the budget, and then if you have any questions, comments, you can feel free to make any after that.

Muratsuchi? Muratsuchi aye.

Thank you. We're going to go back to public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're going to go on to line 289. Your line is now open.

Thank you. This is Ross Buckley. I'd like to speak on behalf of two separate issues, the first being on behalf of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. We'd like to line our comments with the previous Bisbee Mayoral which was speaker around the HAPP funding. Additionally, we'd like to voice support for the Youth Jobs Corp. Program. We respectfully ask for additional funding for this important program.

Sacramento has been able to support nearly 300 youth this year and expect to do about similar numbers next year, so this funding is critical. And then on behalf of South Coast Air Quality Management District, we are very appreciative of the Assembly budget's plan to restore AB 617 funding to last year's level for air district programs for implementation incentives.

The continuing prioritization of funding for programs such as AB 617, which the LAO has acknowledged as cost effective, ingestion air quality, public health and climate challenges, is critical. Currently, the AB 617 program is severely underfunded, and the number of communities has continued to grow, but there are not enough resources to support that growth.

Further, although South Coast Region contains almost two thirds of the EJ communities in the state, we cannot add new 617 communities.

To address this, we simply ask that if GGR revenues surpass current estimates that we consider additional investments in this worthy program to help cover actual costs and cost effectively reduced air emissions that help meet federal air quality standards and protect health of disadvantaged communities statewide. Thank you.

Now move on to line 284. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Chairman Ting and Members. My name is Alex Maldonado.

I'm a resident of San Francisco, and I'm calling in to thank the Assembly Members for their work so far to avert the public transit fiscal. However, as a number of callers have pointed out, the funding proposal so far is not enough to avoid severe operational cuts and to prepare for a higher transit, lower emission future.

I don't have a car. I don't want to have a car. And people who do have cars and want less traffic probably don't want me to have a car either.

A lot of Californians will need to choose to live without a car for us to hit our emissions goals. And reliable, frequent public transit is an important part of making that a good choice. I appreciate Chairman Ting's recent support statements in support of transit.

To match those statements of action, I ask the Committee maintain public transit's capital funding, in order to access $6 billion of matching federal funds. And also that the Committee identify additional sources of operational funding to allow public transit to survive and thrive, including cap and trade funding and the reallocation of highway funding where possible. Thank you.

Line 293, your line is now opening. Line 293, your line is open

This is Mcpherson with the Monterey County Board of Education, also President elect of the California County Boards of Education. I want to echo the comments made by previous members of the education community thanking the Assembly for including the $80 million for court and community schools. But this is funding that we need now, not next year. These are our most vulnerable students, and that situation has only been made worse by the Pandemic. This is a critical time for these kids in these programs.

And as others have said, anything associated with accountability, we can deal with later. But we need the funding now. Thank you very much.

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We're going to take a few more votes. We had a motion in a second to support the Assembly, the Assembly's version of the budget, and to support that get that out of Committee.

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Operator, if you can hold on 1 second. I'm sorry, we're going to take a few

Rubio Rubio aye. Wix aye.

Thank you. And we'll go back to public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're going to go on to line 294. Pardon me, just a moment. And pardon me, I apologize. We're going to move onto line 296.

Hello. My name is Maurice Raeford. Thank you, Committee and Chair. I work at downtown Fresno at Access Plus Capital, the Fresno area's largest local based nonprofit community leader. And we're doing more and more in real estate because we recognize that our mission of racial equity, wealth creation requires more opportunities shared with people in the community.

As a part of that, we're committed to helping housing happen in downtown Fresno, but the infrastructure has to be there. That's why I'm calling today to support the City of Fresno's public infrastructure plan for $250,000,000 and request that there's approval in the Assembly's budget. Thank you all today and have a good rest of your day.

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Good afternoon, Michelle Underwood. On behalf of the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education on Subcommittee Two, issue 20, we thank the Assembly for rejecting the proposal to obstruct the local governance relationship between special education local plan areas and their member districts. For some SELPAs, the Member LEAs have decided to change next year's local plan due to the mental health funding shift put in motion by the current year budget, designed drastically different local plans for next year.

That just won't work with this proposal for other SELPAs, collective bargaining agreements, changes in student populations and programs have changed how their local plan is structured. Other SELPAs would not be able to afford the services their LEAs have asked them to provide for the direct benefits of students with disabilities. In conclusion, this proposal will not result in any better services for students with disabilities and will cause confusion and conflict for SELPAs and LEAs. Thank you again for your rejection of this proposal.

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Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Ting and Members of the Committee. My name is Dan Zack. I'm an urban planning consultant who is working on several potential housing projects in downtown Fresno and I'm calling in support of the $250,000,000 public infrastructure plan for downtown Fresno. Fresno has been a very responsible and proactive city in encouraging infill housing. We have been designated as a pro housing city and we have preemptively zoned our downtown to have a capacity of about 75,000 new ministerially approved homes.

But it's difficult for builders to make projects pencil out due to high construction costs. And our low incomes and high poverty rate means that we can't really offset that with higher rents and revenues. So, if the state and the city can make a large upfront investment in infrastructure, this would help thousands of units of housing come to fruition for people who desperately need them.

And by focusing housing in our walkable, transit connected, job rich, urban core, it will also promote equitable economic development, climate resilience and farmland preservation. So, Fresno is suffering through a housing crisis and has been working very hard to promote infill housing development and we would really appreciate your support. Thank you.

Thank you. Operator, if you're going to hold on 1 second, I'm going to go to Mr. Alvarez who I believe has some comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. I have some questions. I know that a lot of the staff is here and appreciate your availability. I think I just wanted to start off with a more general question. I just had an opportunity to ask very briefly about the totality of this budget, the amount that this current plan relies on in terms of revenue.

And so if anybody, certainly the LAOs, is welcome to come and provide response. But staff, would you like to just respond on this plan? And I know that maybe it's not completely tallied at the moment but just a general sense of where we stand.

I'm going to ask LAO to address it. Mr. Pettic, if you could kind of walk through your comments about spending and then long-term spending and out years, I think that'd be helpful.

Sure, yes. Gabe Petek Legislative Analyst so the crux of the question is about funding or?

Yeah, the crux of the question is you might not be able to respond to this as well though. We have a budget plan before us right now based on some of the governor's proposals and some of Assembly proposals and others. I don't know that you've had the chance to go through this and get an assessment.

I'll just say my concern is something that I know you've already expressed is overly optimistic revenue projections and a plan that relies on that is something that is of concern. And so I'm just curious as to what your assessment is.

Yeah, thank you very much for the additional clarification. And it's true the basis of the plan does kind of begin with the May Revision proposals to a significant extent. However, in addition to that, there are a couple of points I can make. One is that it does rely on the May Revision revenues, which our office does think are a bit optimistic. So, we estimate 11 billion in lower revenues for the budget year, which translates to an additional $6 billion budget problem.

However, the Assembly plan does provide for a bit more in terms of budget reserves than the May Revision. So there's some additional resilience from that. This comes in the form of.

On the one hand, a bit lowers Special Fund for Economic Uncertainty, the SFEU. But the plan also adds back 450,000,000 that the Governor proposes to remove from the Safety Net Reserve. And then in addition, there is, I forget the budget deficit savings account. There's 815,000,000 put into that as a Discretionary Reserve. So, on net, there's about 670,000,000 of additional reserves in the Assembly Plan.

In addition, the Assembly Plan does make note of an openness to considering additional resilience options, such as reducing some of the one time spending. We've estimated that there's about 11 billion in planned one time spending in 2023-24 and another eight or so billion in the subsequent year. So that's a source of potential savings that the plan references.

In addition, the plan also makes reference to even the idea of pausing the delay of some of the one time spending until early 2024, rather than dispersing it immediately upon the beginning of the fiscal year. That would allow some time for you to see if the revenues are materializing according to what is assumed in the May Revision and in the Assembly Plan, or if it's something lower like what we've talked about, then there would be the option to revisit those disbursements at that point.

I appreciate that. I do want to acknowledge the Chair's focus on that longer term resiliency, which is where we're concerned. On that last point, how much of that delayed expenditure? What is the amount of that?

As I recall, it's not a specific dollar amount that is referenced in that paragraph.

Okay. Is it all one time, delays for one time, or is it delays of potentially other ongoing spending?

Christian Griffith, Assembly Budget Committee. I think what Mr. Petek is referencing is in the back of our summary, there's talk about what other tools we might consider. And one of the contexts of this is that we built this budget. We spent about two weeks building this, and the LAO revenue numbers came out very recently. So, we're trying to think about, as we get better information, as we get closer to June, what will we do?

And there's some strategies there articulated at the end of our summary that sort of articulate what would happen if things get worse. I think in general, we started from the May Revision built a little bit more reserves on top of that to be more prudent and frankly haven't touched our reserves and haven't used a lot of our other resiliency options.

So I think we're looking at ourselves looking at a budget that's pretty prudent overall in terms of trying to avoid any kind of strain for new multi year commitments. There are a couple of little things that are in the budget that the Governor proposed that we're pretty consistent with. And that's essentially to put us in a position as we go through this uncertain time to have options and to maintain our options if we get to a really bad year next year.

And of course, as you know one of the big challenges since we don't have real revenue numbers until October we all are guessing. So that it's really hard to tell even with LAO numbers whether high or low. And if you look at their chart there's a big graph with a huge uncertainty curve in it and I think that's the environment in which we're building this budget so we're never going to be sure.

And so we're trying to stay as prudent as we can with looking at one time things that are critical and if you heard from public comment invested people think are critical but trying to not make ongoing commitments because we are really concerned about what we can do in the out years.

How much then remains in the budget? I remember recall that the Governor had proposed what I'm calling trigger expenditures. I don't know if that's the right term but expenditures, if revenue materializes that he would like to request authorization for that stays in this Assembly plan.

So what we have proposed is to essentially move those out a year because we do because a lot of those proposed trigger expenditures which are new expending include long standing Assembly parties like for example completing the Cal Grant reform which we made 90% of the way and we just almost finished. It's also really important the CalWORKS Maximum Aid Grant really dealing with a deep poverty issue in CalWORKS. Those are long term.

How much does that add up to?

Well, some of those have numbers and some of them are sort of TBD because for example the CalWORKS one there's a long way to go. So, what we might do in budget one or two or three would kind of depend on what we could afford. We have a long way to go to really deal with a deep poverty issue for example.

Okay. I think the concern is that setting realistic expectations I think that's sort of the lesson learned from the last couple of years where there was Revenue and individuals expected things to happen and given the situation that they can't happen. So appreciate that. Let me ask some specifics about education.

For education this is related to the screening and just want to make sure that some of the concerns that were raised, particularly for non English native language speakers, where does that stand in terms of recognizing that there are non English native speakers and making sure that we are addressing them as these assessments occur?

Yeah. Chris Ferguson with the Department of Finance. We're aware of the recent comments about that proposal as it relates to non English speaking individuals in California.

We're certainly looking at that right now, but I don't have a specific response as to what we would be looking at, but certainly aware of the comments and are investigating that.

Erin Gable from the Assembly Budget Committee staff so the Assembly action is to approve the Governor's proposal around the screener process, the vetting of the process, as amended. The amendments that we are going to be working on would be trying to take into consideration the needs of dual language learners and multilingual language learners as the screener list is being developed and as that policy process continues to move forward towards the eventual mandate for screening.

We anticipate, though, that there will be Trailer Bill Language with this budget correct. To address this.

Correct.

And that's still being drafted then.

Okay, thank you. I have a question of transformative communities. This is probably sub three, and I just have honestly, we got this last night, so I haven't had a chance to really dive in deep. Was that at all restored either in the May Revise or in the Assembly Plan?

Correct.

It is not restored in the Assembly plan. So we had originally approved $420,000,000. I think over multiple years. The Administration has proposed to cut $205,000,000 of that in the May revision when they cut an additional $100 million. They had mentioned that could go on a bond in the future. I think the bond discussions will likely be done through Policy Committee, but there is potential that it will be restored through a bond.

Additionally, the Administration has told us that the federal infrastructure dollars basically mimicked that program that we created, and the state is expecting to get a few $100.0 million from that as well.

So do you think from your conversations with the Administration that the projects that were because there are some projects that were somewhere along the path that those would be then prioritized, is that the understanding?

The Administration also has a proposal that we approve, which is of some of the money that they do have already, that we'd actually increase the administrative costs, which typically you don't want to do. But for this reason, the state is going to help those communities that are sort of in the works apply for the federal grants to help them be more competitive. So there is a focus on making sure the communities that are in the pipeline are able to access the federal funds.

One other question for you on GGRF and just the status of that Fund and how much of that is being utilized. I know, a lot of the programs are now being funded by that. But where does the Fund actually stand and are there opportunities there? And does the Assembly Plan tap into some of those opportunities in that Fund?

I don't have the total numbers. LAO might have sort of how much there is typically there's quarterly auctions. One just came in today getting in some emails about that. So, the LAO, they can speak for themselves in 1 second. But they had estimated that there's about $460,000,000 more than the Administration had assumed in the May Revision. And so a lot of our restorations are funded with that $460,000,000. Did I answer that?

That does answer. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Appreciate all of you. I think those were the specific questions. Mr. Tang, thank you very much for the opportunity to ask those questions. And as I stated in the beginning, just wanted to make sure I appreciate specifically the 450,000,000 in the safety net that was very concerning that that was being utilized.

And I think the framework allows us to move forward with that mentality and that understanding that the out years aren't so great and that we need to be very cautious as we move forward. So appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Mr. Ralph, do you want to add on to the vote? There's a motion and second to approve the Assembly version of the budget as stated.

Alvarez Alvarez. Aye.

Thank you. Looking back at the Members, any other comments from the dyess? Unless I'm going to go back to public comment, if that's okay. We're going to return to public comment. Operator still there?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you. All right, so we're going to start now with line 178. 178, your line is now open.

Hi, everyone. I just wanted to continue to advocate for the tax credit for the film. I'm a teamster out of 2785 San Francisco Daily City and I just want to see the commitment continue to go to California filmmakers and to show off our beautiful state to the rest of the world. Thank you.

Line 297, your line is now open.

Good afternoon, sharing Committee Members Stephanie Estrada with Cruz Strategies on behalf of the City of San Jose. Mayor Matt Mahan, joining the big city Mayors coalition in thanking the Governor and the Legislature for maintaining the 1 billion planned spending for an additional year of the HAPP program and also concerned about the youth job courts cuts. That have been extremely successful, that has increased employment of underserved youth across California and has enhanced local capacity to address the risk of homelessness. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, chair and Committee Members. My name is Rachel Hurd and I'm the President of the Board of Education for the San Ramon Valley Unified School District in the East Bay. We strongly support the Governor's May Revision proposal and Trailer Bill Language to require universal screening in kindergarten through second grade for risk of reading difficulties, including dyslexia.

Our school district already does universal screening for reading difficulties in these grades and have found it to be immensely helpful for addressing our youngest students early literacy needs quickly and proactively through our multitiered systems of support. In general education settings, screening does not label or track students, but it does provide timely data that allows their teachers, and the grade level teams to objectively see and address their needs for the benefit of our California learners.

I urge you to approve it, as it is this important first step for improving English Language Arts achievement for California's students.

Going to move on to line 308.

All right. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Awesome. Thank you. Hi, Chair Ting and fellow Committee Members. My name is Alida Fisher. I'm a special education advocate and the newest member of the San Francisco Unified School District. I'm honored to be part of a school board that on May 9, voted to add SB 691 Senator Portantino's early screening Bill to our active support list here in San Francisco. Only 52% of third graders are proficient readers.

And when we dive deeper into our data, we find that 24% of our African American and Pacific Islander kindergartners were proficient readers last year. That's less than one in four students. Can you imagine a classroom of 20 students where only five are proficient readers? Early screeners are a critical component of increasing literacy rates in California. We need these tools to help us dive into the reasons behind our students not reading.

So. Thank you, Governor Newsom, Senator Portantino, Chair Ting, fellow Committee Members to your attention to this we need these investments in our students. They are the future of our state. Thank you so much.

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Good afternoon, Chair Members. Rebecca Summers, coordinator of Administrative Credentialing Programs for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, speaking today in support of Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, a proposal to invest 18 million in the credentialing placement and retention of 300 diverse school leaders across the state. Research shows that good school leadership matters and representation matters to positive student outcomes, especially for students of color.

The demand for our Administrative Credentialing Programs in LA County is very high, yet administrative preparation costs are a barrier for many potential leaders of color to be able to enter or remain in the profession. This initiative would go a long way toward removing those barriers. Thank you for your support and for the opportunity to speak.

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Good afternoon, this is Kenni Alden calling, representing the Right to Read project in support of the Governor's May Revision proposal to require in grades K through two universal screening for reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia. I just want to emphasize that this is about way more than identifying students with reading disabilities. This is about all students. This is about preventing totally preventable reading failure, in thousands and thousands of kids. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting and Committee Members. This is Dylan Fabris from San Francisco Transit Riders, a riders supported nonprofit organization. I wanted to thank the Chair for his recent statements about saving transit and for the funding already in the existing budget proposal. But the current proposal is not enough. The Bay Area would be devastated if Muni and BART Crater and cities all across the state will suffer if their local transit agencies are forced to cut service.

Make no mistake, this harms the most vulnerable Californians the most. If this budget passes, then by this time next year, hundreds of thousands of Californians will lose access to the lifeline that connects them with everything, from healthcare to education to family. Normally, my organization focuses on advocating for better transit at the local level. We know as well as anyone that public transit needs to improve.

But with this budget, transit agencies won't be able to focus on improvements and will instead have to focus on just staying alive. So please Fund Transit Operations so our agencies can survive, and we can keep advocating locally for the improvements that we need to increase ridership. Please, please, please don't let public transit in California die. Thank you.

line 309, your line is now open. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, this is Jerry Dyer, the Mayor of the City of Fresno, and I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to express my support for the proposed $250,000,000 Public Infrastructure Plan for downtown Fresno that is currently contained within the Mayor's or the Governor's May Revise. Great cities have great downtowns and Fresno was on the cusp of having a great downtown, but definitely needs much more housing. Fresno has been planning for catalytic high-density growth in the part of our urban core for over 15 years.

We've done the master planning, specific plans and neighborhood plans and all the sequel work has been completed. We're definitely shovel ready. We currently have 3000 residents in downtown Fresno, but are prezoned for up to 75,000 residents. Replacing aging infrastructure built in the 1800s is an essential component in developing thousands of housing units amidst our housing crisis. These infrastructure dollars will serve as the foundation the transformation of our downtown core and serve to reconnect this forgotten area with the rest of Fresno.

Thank you for your consideration as our community looks to create a thriving, high density, walkable green and pedestrian friendly downtown. I'd also like to voice my support for the Youth Jobs Corps program that is also in. The Governor's May Revise. This program is transforming lives not only in Fresno, but throughout the State of California. Thank you.

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Thank you, Chair and Members. Rita Medina with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights [CHIRLA]. I want to start by thanking budget leadership, in particular the leadership of Dr. Arambula, for the commitment to health for all, regardless of immigration status. We'd also like to thank this body for the accelerated timeline and expansion of CFAP to older adults, and continue to support expansion for all, regardless of age and immigration status.

We'd like to thank Assembly Member Carrillo for her leadership and support for a proposal to provide funding that would allow immigrant rights serving organizations to intentionally work with shelters in LA County to ensure that they are best equipped to serve immigrant individuals in their care. Lastly, a couple of items we continue to highlight as needed investments. We're concerned with the cuts to the Governor's proposal for the Youth Job Corps. We are excited that this program looks to expand access to undocumented youth.

But the success of this expansion is also dependent on full resources for this important program. And we continue to urge the Assembly to consider investments in resources to create high school Dream Resource Centers to serve the nearly 27,000 undocumented students graduating from our high schools each year. And separately, but equally important, consideration of the expansion of the Cash Immigrant Program. The Cash Immigrant Program [CAPI] to ensure our most vulnerable undocumented seniors and disabled individuals have access to this program. Thank you.

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Thank you. Good afternoon, Assembly Members. First, I want to thank Assembly Member Ting for a statement on saving transit. I do want to just repeat what others have said, that more money is needed. And it's not just about saving transit. It's about saving our small businesses and jobs, bars, restaurants. They rely on transits for customers to get to them, especially in downtowns historic areas, ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown. There are simply not enough places for people to park.

So people need transit or they can't go. And then we'll be looking at businesses closing and loss of sales tax revenue. Funding transit is an investment that will pay off this year in the addition of sales tax revenue that comes in from people being able to go places. So please look at the cap and trade and diesel tax and other sources to fully fund transit so we can avoid any cuts. Thank you.

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Good afternoon, Chair Ting, Subcommittee Chairs and Committee Members. This is Zak Accuardi, senior Transportation Advocate at NRDC. First, thank you for your funding commitments to the community food hub and organic transition programs. NRDC also asks that state leaders reconsider the reversion of $60 million for farm to school funds, which is a third and essential program to advance equity and climate resilience in California's food system. Second, NRDC supports the rejection of the floodwater trailer Bill and the referring of the infrastructure trailer bills to policy committees.

Finally, thank you for refunding and adding flexibility for transit operations in CISCRP. Still, we need robust capital funding and funding for transit operations in order to meet our climate and equity goals. So, we want to see the Assembly and other state leaders reallocate abundant and flexible highway dollars to transit to avoid the fiscal cliff and align state transportation spending with the state's priorities. Thank you for your time and attention today.

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Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi. My name is Kareem Weaver from FULCRUM, full and complete reading is a universal mandate. Calling in support of the Governor's May Revision which funds screening for reading risk, including Dyslexia. I'm so grateful that California is now going to be a state that refuses to wait for kids to fail before screening.

With 80% of inmates functionally illiterate and 48% having Dyslexia. I'm proud to have a Governor and Legislature who take civil rights seriously and refuse to wait for our kids to fail before taking concrete action to support them, their parents and the teachers who serve them. So, thank you very much and yeah, just thank you from our kids and families.

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Good afternoon. My name is Larissa Adam and I'm the Superintendent of Schools of Education for Change Public Schools in Oakland and I strongly oppose the cuts to Charter School Facility Grant program which specifically provides supports for schools in Low-income communities such as ours, which serves a population with a 91% unduplicated count.

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This program is already underfunded and further cuts will force staffing and service cuts to our school sites which will harm our students who have the greatest needs during a time when we're actually in need of additional resources to mitigate the learning and mental health impacts of the pandemic. So I respectfully request that you support our Low income, high needs community and reject the proposed cuts to the Charter School Facility Grant grant. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Jenny Trice calling on behalf of the County Council for the County of Santa Clara. I'm calling to express our strong support for item 7350, which would put $18 million into the hands of public prosecutors who are willing, able and ready to enforce laws that protect workers rights. There is a dire need throughout the state and certainly in our county to resource enforcement, so that our labor and employment laws have teeth.

This budget item is an important investment towards worker justice and we thank you for your support on this item.

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Good afternoon, Chairman Ting and Committee Members. Gera Gonzalez Garcia. On behalf of the Public Health Institute and our over 200 supporting organizations, we want to thank the Assembly for recognizing the crucial on the ground work our trusted community based partners, clinics and tribal organizations are spearheading in their communities. And for your steadfast support for creating and funding the Health, Equity and Racial Justice Fund program in the Office of Health Equity of CDPH over the past two years.

We urge the Assembly Budget Committee and leadership to continue to stand with us and join the Senate, including the Health, Equity, and Racial Justice Fund. Senate issue 88 in this year's budget. We recognize the fiscal constraints in this difficult budget year and request, at minimum, the establishments of the Fund's framework into law, making it possible for the Fund to receive future public and private appropriations as the state's budgetary outlook improves.

The Pandemic has starkly reminded us that it requires broad partnerships to successfully address our deep seated health and racial inequities. Now more than ever, our communities need the Health, Equity and Racial Justice Fund. Thank you for your consideration.

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Good afternoon, Connie Choi. On behalf of Public Advocates, I'd like to refer the Committee to our sub two letter submitted last week with Equity Coalition on the LCFS focused school implementation and the Equity Multiplier. In addition, we urge you to sustain funding to the Golden State Pathways Grant Program, as well as the National Board Certified Teacher Incentive Program, where there's been especially strong uptake by teachers of color and has been vital in supporting the retention of expert teachers in high need schools.

We're heartened to see that the Assembly has largely maintained funding for the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant and thank you for sustained ELOP Funding, but would urge extension of funds to middle and high school students who need the support. Thank you.

Line 363, your line is now open.

Hi. Williams Lopez, on behalf of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. Strongly encouraging the extension of AB 118 ABA for the CEC's Clean Transportation Program through 2035 as proposed in the Budget Trailer Bill Language without action. On January 1, 2024, the state will lose $173,000,000 per year in AB 118 and AB 8 vehicle registration and small fees that Fund Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure and vehicle adoption.

The scope and speed at which we need to transition the transportation sector to zero emissions is unprecedented and will require substantial investment. AB 118 AB 8 fees provide a stable zero emission vehicle funding source for maintaining progress towards decarbonization. Further, we respectfully oppose eliminating Carbs/CEC's port program as proposed in the May Revives offroad sources are a growing source of pollution at our ports, and state funding will provide the incentives necessary to help them transition to zero emissions.

This dedicated funding is particularly important for addressing the health burdens placed on communities who are disproportionately impacted by the Goop's movement industry. Thank you. Line 264, your line is now open.

Line 264, your line is now open.