Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 5 on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation

The Senate Budget Subcommitee five on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, labor and Transportation will come to order. Good afternoon. The Senate continues to welcome the public in person and via the teleconference service for individuals wishing to provide public comment. Today's participant number is 877-226-8163 and the access code is 736-2834. We're holding our Committee hearings in the 1021 O Street Building. I would like to ask all Members of the Subcommittee to please come to the room. We don't need a quorum for this. Okay?

We don't need a quorum. So we will begin the hearing. Today the hearing is divided into three parts A, B, and C. Part A will cover transportation issues, including California State Transportation Agency, Department of Transportation, California Transportation Commission, and Department of Motor Vehicles. So for that, we will be hearing an overview of the Governor's May revision. Again, in art A, we will discuss transportation issues, labor issues in part B and finally end with public safety issues in part C.

We will have discussion for part A, B and C consecutive. And then at the end of part C, we will have public comment for all of the parts. And we will not be taking up any votes today. So first, if we can please Department of Finance who will start us off.

Good afternoon, Chair. My name is James Moore and I, along with my colleague Matt Macedo, will be briefly highlighting the transportation issues included in the May revision. After our presentation, we and department representatives will be available to answer any questions. First, I'd like to highlight that the total investment in the transportation package remains the same as in the Governor's Budget. The Administration did not propose adding to or reducing any of the proposed cuts in the Governor's Budget.

However, the May revision proposes to shift 150,000,000 of the $1.2 billion ports package from General Fund to state highway account. The transportation agency reviewed its list of potential projects and identified $150,000,000 of Port and Freight Infrastructure Program, PFIP, projects that were eligible for state highway account use under Article 19. Second, the California Transportation Commission requests $200,000 ongoing for CEQA-related legal work.

The Commission has traditionally relied upon the Department of Justice staff for its CEQA legal work, but DOJ has informed the Commission that it can no longer perform this work due to resource constraints. The requested resources will allow the Commission to retain independent counsel for these issues. On May 1, Caltrans submitted its annual Capital Outlay Support Letter to increase engineering resources for various transportation project work performed by Caltrans.

This year's request was $39.1 million and 143 full-time equivalents and conforms to the traditional 90-10 split between state workers and contract resources. Caltrans requests $6.6 million and 27 positions one-time to begin onboarding to Fiscal. Caltrans received pre onboarding planning resources for Fiscal in the 2022 budget and is now ready to begin onboarding. This is the first year of what will be a multiyear effort.

Finally, Caltrans also requests $29.8 million in 23-24 and $7.3 million ongoing for a variety of technical adjustments, including vehicle insurance premiums and augmenting federal authority for a recently awarded road usage charge federal grant. Now I'll turn it over to my colleague Matt Macedo, who will summarize the DMV's May revision proposals.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Members. My name is Matthew Macedo with the Department of Finance. Starting off with Department of Motor Vehicles. As a result of lower revenue projections and a resulting increase in the budget problem, they may revision proposed adjustments related to the Real ID implementation at DMV, specifically, a reversion of 24 million General Fund in 21-22 and 22-23 dollars, and a decrease of 69 million in 23-24.

This is related to the Federal Department of Homeland Security shift in the Real ID enforcement date from May 3 of this year to May 7, 2025, and has allowed more time for us to meet the Real ID demand. The funding was initially provided for staffing up DMV Field offices around the state. There's 170 DMV field offices it was to staff up to meet a surge.

At one point, we were projecting between an average of between 500,000 and 800,000 per month and up to 1.2 million as we approach that deadline. Out of the 27 million Californians that were originally projected to convert or apply for original Real ID, 15.6 million have done so. Since driver license renewals are on a five-year cycle, most Californians have had a chance to visit a field Office to get a Real ID since DMV started issuing Real IDs in 2018.

However, DMV is currently providing 200,000 Real IDs a month, and the majority of those are on-cycle renewals, meaning they're coming in as their license expires rather than coming in off-cycle. The positions provided for were to meet that demand, and it's not materializing. We don't believe that pulling back the resources will result in significant impacts in meeting the Real ID mandate due to the fact that the federal extension allows even more Californians to come in on their cycle to renew.

However, anytime the Department faces a reduction in field office staff, there could be impacts to wait times. However, we'll closely monitor this throughout the year, and DMV will continue its efforts to innovate and modernize as it has done so since 2018. They have provided customers more and more options to process transactions outside of visiting a field office, such as the virtual field office and the ability to upload documents, among others.

It's also important to note that DMV will not be laying off the motor vehicle representatives, rather, through natural attrition and with its remaining General Fund in its budget, will slowly backfill with MVA positions for its field office staff. Second, the motor vehicle account I'll just briefly touch on that it is in a structural deficit. The motor vehicle account is funded primarily by a $65 registration fee and a $30 CHP fee that is paid each year on your vehicle registration renewal.

Compared to the Governor's Budget forecast, revenue is projected to be lower by 358,000,000 in the six year period between 22-23 and 27-28. Part of that estimated decrease is related to the Real ID that I just mentioned. People will not be coming in off-cycle, and so it cannot be counted as expected additional revenue, and that accounts for 53 million of that 358 decrease.

Furthermore, expenditures are forecasted to increase over that same six-year period by a net total of 75 million compared to budget year. However, a 128,000,000 increase is expected in 24-25, mainly attributed to increases forecasted to increases in employee compensation and retirement contributions. Um, moving on, the the May revision proposes 4.5 million for DMV to plan and initiate an IT project related to AB 796, which was for Motor Voter.

This project will capture voter information off of incomplete DMV transactions and send it over to Secretary of State. There includes 36 million in reappropriations. One is for the Digital Experience Platform project, or DXP project, which is a comprehensive replacement of DMV's IT systems. This is one of those modernization efforts that will make DMV more efficient. 6.6 is related to a commercial driver's license information system, which will it's a federal requirement that requires us to share data related to commercial drivers with other states.

Next is a trailer Bill related to mobile drivers licenses. There was a cap established in statute. Capping the population that could be used to test the app that DMV is developing at 0.5% of licensed drivers. The proposal is to increase that to 5% to give us more meaningful testing of that app. And finally, the May revision includes an incremental 5.9 million to rebid the construction phase of the Delano Field Office Replacement Project.

Specifically, 11.4 million General Fund would be reverted and a new funding of 17.3 in lease revenue bonds provided for that project. Be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we have the Department. Yeah, the LAO's office, please.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Rachel Ehlers from the Legislative Analyst's Office. If it's okay with you, Madam Chair, I'll make some very brief, high level, overarching comments about the overall structure of the budget to really set the context for the rest of my colleagues you'll hear from in your subsequent panels. Really as a framing comment, we want to emphasize to you that we do have some concerns about the overall structure of the Governor's May revision.

In particular, based on our revenue forecast, we feel that the Governor's revenues are pretty optimistic. We think there's a lot of downside risk. Specifically, our revenues across the three-year budget window are $11 billion less than the Governor's. And we're concerned that adopting the Governor's overall approach will set you up for some really potentially very difficult decisions in the coming year, both next year's budget, but potentially even in the middle of this year if you have to come in and make deeper reductions if the revenues don't materialize.

And at that point, you may have lost some of the opportunities that you have right now. None of these are going to be easy. None of these choices are easy, but it is easier to reduce one-time spending as compared to ongoing spending and to avoid new spending rather than kind of trying to claw back spending once it's been allocated.

So as a result, I think our overarching message is try to identify more solutions than the Governor does to avoid setting up those hard decisions. And one of the things you can do to that end is not to approve brand new spending proposals before you. So I think you'll hear from my colleagues. Our overarching message is to reject without prejudice most of the new spending proposals that are coming before you, both in January and in the May revision.

There may be some exceptions, in particular around health and safety concerns that you really may want to consider and we think would merit higher consideration, but otherwise, really try to avoid making your problem worse at this point, again, not easy, but easier than some of the other choices you may face. So with that, I will turn it over to my colleague to talk specifically about the transportation proposals.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. Frank Jimenez with the Legislative Analyst Office. When it comes to transportation issues in the Governor's May revision, we have three comments, two related to proposals and one overarching comment. When it comes to the Governor's proposal to shift General Fund dollars 150,000,000 to the state highway account to support the Port and Freight Infrastructure Program, we find that this proposal merits consideration. However, there are trade-offs.

Approving this shift would allow the state to fund the same number of port and freight infrastructure projects that it originally intended. However, this trade-off is that that's less funding that's going towards general state highway maintenance and rehabilitation projects. However, that shift would go towards road improvements and highway improvements adjacent to ports. So that's the trade-off there. When it comes to the Governor's General Fund reduction for the Department of Motor Vehicles, we recommend that the Legislature approve this proposal.

We find that the decreased workload and reduction aligns with the Federal Government shifting of Real ID requirements. So we find that that reduction does have merit. And then finally, we note that the Legislature, and this Subcommittee in particular, has had interest in providing fiscal relief to transit agencies that are facing operational funding shortfalls.

Currently, the Administration does not have a proposal, so we would recommend that the Committee ask the Administration on how it intends to support transit agencies in the absence of having a proposal, and for the Legislature to begin its discussions on a potential proposal if it chooses to provide funding or short-term relief to transit agencies. Happy to take any questions great.

Thank you very much. We will now move to questions and comments from the Members. Senator Seyarto, any questions or comments?

Yeah, I'll hold off.

Okay, great. I have some questions for CalSTA. Let's see. Yes, segwaying from the last comment from our LAO. Why did the Administration not put forward a proposal for transit operational relief? If you can address that, please. Everywhere I go, that's a big issue that comes up. So we're all waiting for the answer.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Carlos Quant, Deputy Secretary for Budget and Fiscal Policy at CalSTA. So, just like the Legislature, we're really learning about the complexities of the challenges that the transit operators are facing. And we held some informative listening sessions last week with Northern California and Southern California transit operators, labor organizations, and other stakeholders.

And Mr. Edison can provide additional information about those listening sessions, but we hope to continue our conversations with the Legislature and stakeholders to really develop a sustainable solution to the challenges that transit operators are facing.

Okay, thank you. Go ahead.

Yes, the listening sessions were very valuable, and we continue to see opportunities that could emerge from those as part of the overall budget discussions. There are a number of both statutory relief provisions that agencies are requesting, as well as opportunities to be flexible in the way some of the funding can be spent. And so we heard a number of good ideas there, but they need to be considered in the context of the overall budget conversation on transportation funding.

Okay.

Can I ask a question?

Yes, sure.

So during the listening sessions, I think part of the problem is if we're going to bail out, we need to know that the problem is going to be fixed. So were they having discussions about how they're going to fix the specific problems that are causing this in the first place before we get a number that says, if you give us this much amount of money, we're going to fix the problem and then we're going to go on and we'll be successful in the future? Because I think that's the tough part for us.

Yes. Well, we continue to see different needs in different parts of the state and with different agencies. And so this is part of the challenge, is that some agencies are really helped by having their capital needs met so that they can be stronger in their commitments to operations. Others very much need operating funding in order to make it through.

There are different solutions for different agencies, and that's part of the challenge, I think, in the ideas that are out there is just a variety of needs and how they would be met.

And I think the biggest need is to increase the amount of people that are actually going to use it going into the future, which means we have to alleviate their concerns, which means we have to address those operational issues that are causing those concerns.

Yes. We also heard a good deal about safety and security and the concerns there in terms of drawing back ridership. And so, as has been noted in this Committee before, I think the safety and security issues are part of the solution as well.

All right, thank you.

I really appreciate that you're actually having these listening sessions, and I've been listening to a lot of also transit agencies about both the capital and the transit, the operations side of it. So I think there's a basic understanding that there's a big problem. It's going to hit some areas quickly. Many areas it won't hit until maybe next year or start hitting until next year.

But I hate to see ourselves knowing that it's coming, that we're going to be reactive to an emergency in one area or another. So it seems like at the very least, we need to come up with those who believe, and they need to show us, of course, that it's imminent. Like it's this year, not in a year or two years.

And I really have a lot of respect for those who are being really forthright with us, saying, okay, we're not going to need it right now, but boy, it's going to come fast in the next year, and we just want to be ready. So I hate for us to see it. You see it coming. You see it coming, at least a piece of it, and then we don't have anything in place before it hurts that particular community.

Yeah, I would emphasize one thing, which is that even if the impact is not in this budget year that we're talking about now, but in the next one, many of the hiring and labor decisions are going to be made midway through this coming year. And so the decisions around the level of hiring they can do and what budget support they have for the following year will be relevant within the next six to nine months. And that's one of the things we heard in the hearings as well.

Well, we greatly urge we need to move on this. We need to include it. We need to be there in support of our communities. And at the same time, I think have an ongoing discussion as to what do we do past one year or past two years, what are we going to do about this? Is the stay going to take up a greater role in transit operations? If we're going to leave it at the local level, primary at the local level, that's okay too.

But then how do we address the finances and how do they address it? I also, in my conversations, push back and say, okay, what are you going to do that's going to give us the confidence that you're not just asking for more money now and then let's wait until next year and see what happens. We expect more.

And I think the conversations have been very positive as far as the ones I've had, very positive, very engaged, very willing to look at new ideas, look at different ways of recruiting and appealing to more writers. But we have to take what they're saying and really do something with that in a very specific, concrete proposal. So we really need that response from the Administration. Anything else? No?

I can talk about a couple of things.

Sure.

A question about the ports and goods movement and the shift of money into highway and having the highway funds pay for that. So what kind of projects I think you touched on a little bit, because every dollar that we shift into the ports from the Highway Fund means less money that's being spent on highways, which I understand is part of, I think, the dream that we can stop spending money on highways.

But unfortunately, when we're moving stuff from the ports, once it leaves the port area, say out of San Pedro or wherever, once it's going out to the Inland Empire to deliver goods to some of the warehouses that are out there and beyond that, we still need roads.

We still need freeways, because if we don't have the roads out there to handle that capacity, they're all going to be sitting on the 60 Freeway and the 10 Freeway, waiting to try to get out into the Inland Empire, which will take a long time. And so that in itself represents a backup of goods and movement of those goods. If we're shifting $150,000,000 into the ports from the Highway Fund, how are we supposed to address the other part of the highways that are needed for this?

Sure, thank you for the question, Senator. So I would just note that the funding that we're shifting from the state highway account is still going to be spent on roadway improvements and grade separations that benefit the ports and goods movement infrastructure. So we categorize it more as a prioritization of these state highway account dollars to the infrastructure that is kind of benefiting the ports just for the $150,000,000. So it's not a different type of expenditure that would normally be spent out of the state highway account.

Okay. Yeah, I think the rest of it, I think you guys have covered most of it adequately. So thank you.

Segue off of the Senator's recent question, can you provide us an update on the SHOPP? The SHOPP. How's the Department incorporating the additional federal highway funding and the governor's proposed fund shifts from the General Fund to the state highway account.

Thank you. Senator Stephen Keck with Caltrans. With regards to the additional federal funding that we've received in the SHOPP, we have to date incorporated additional federal funds through amendments to projects in the SHOPP. Last fiscal year we utilized all the federal funding that was available and were able to capture an additional $680,000,000 in federal funds through a process called August redistribution where at the national level they redistribute unused funds.

In the current fiscal year, we've amended more than $1.2 billion into the SHOPP to take advantage of these federal funds. And at the CTC meeting in San Francisco ongoing right now, the Department is proposing to amend an additional $400 million into the current year to handle some increased storm damage. With regards to the proposed fund shifts, the process of incorporating that into the SHOPP is really quite clear. We're right in the middle now of making our five-year estimate of funds available for the SHOPP.

That estimate is required by law to be done every two years, and it must be based on current law. So what we will do is when the budget is adopted, we will take whatever solution is there and we will incorporate that into our projected funding for the SHOPP. The one time reprioritization of that funding, as was addressed by CalSTA staff, it's really going to help to maintain active transportation, climate adaptation, and goods movement in the short term.

And really, these are kind of the same types of projects we might otherwise program in the SHOPP. It should be noted that with these increased age of funding, we are really expanding our investments in these areas through our planning documents, such as the State Highway System Management Plan. So it's kind of like a reprioritization and moving forward to right now, as opposed to being programmed later on.

Thank you. And you mentioned the winter storms. Can you give an estimate of the damages that were incurred on state highway?

Yeah, so that's kind of a two-part answer to that question. The first and the easiest part is to tell you to date the costs that we've incurred, and that's about $900 million to date. We expect this number to go up. We still have, I think, five road closures due to storm damage and even snow removal at this point. So that's going to continue to rise and we're going to see an even bigger increase as a result of snow melt. Right.

It's going to cause some damage on the highways, too, so easily going to surpass $1.0 billion just on the state highway system. But I can't give you a complete estimate because we don't know what's yet to come. Much of that work is reimbursable from the Federal Highway Administration and a little bit from FEMA. But it's very important to note that the annual budget for federal emergency relief nationally is $100 million. So that's how much they have to split amongst the states to cover ER.

What usually happens is every two or three years, Congress will pass an augmentation to that, usually in the billions of dollars. When something big happens, like massive storms, we've put in a request for California. We hope that the Congress will take it up and pass a supplement. But in the meantime, we spend our dollars and wait for federal reimbursement.

Then there's the second part that's harder to answer, and that is the incipient damage and the accelerated degradation of our highway system from all this rain we've had. So the federal ER money is really, hey, this road washed out, or this road's flooded, or this bridge is damaged. But when we have widespread, diffuse damage to the roads like we've seen if you've been driving on them, increased potholes, some pavement that we might have thought would last five more years now needs attention immediately.

So that is not just a state problem, it's a local problem, too. But that's going to take, honestly, years to assess that damage, to see what has really accelerated and years to address. So that's going to be an ongoing burden. I don't think we could put a number on it, certainly not now. And then we may not ever be able to, but we are seeing that accelerated damage.

And did you say that's picked up by the local?

Well, that would be a state and local. So local roads, they have the same problems that we do on the highways. So it's not just a problem for us. It will be a problem for them as well, and that's going to be an ongoing burden for a few years.

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Keck.

I had a DMV and Motor Voter question.

Okay. All right, we'll move on to DMV. Go ahead.

Okay, so is there anybody from the DMV here to answer questions? Okay, good. Hey, thank you for being here. So the Motor Voter program, it was started a few years back, and it's had some issues. We've had double registrations and things like that. Now we're talking about expanding it a little bit more. Has the DMV taken any steps to decrease the amount of discrepancies? Not just necessarily discrepancies, but they've had people that didn't want to register, and they get registered anyway.

We don't have mandatory registration for voting in this country, I don't think. So I was curious if they've been able to take any steps while they're streamlining this process to ensure that people who sign up get signed up the way they want to be signed up. And that people that don't don't have to be and that people that are ineligible don't get signed up when they shouldn't be getting signed up. What kind of steps has the DMV taken to address those issues?

So, good afternoon. Lee Scott, Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes. DMV is currently working on ensuring that we have enough clean data that we're working closely with Secretary of State understanding how our data does get transferred from us to them. Ultimately, Secretary of State is still the ownership of it. We're the vehicle to get that over to them. We're definitely not in charge of saying, hey, you are eligible to vote, or you're not eligible to vote.

But we do check our records thoroughly, especially when you're going to close out, like when you're doing your vehicle registration or your driver's license registration. We want to make sure that you're affidavit signed that you are who you say you are. We're ensuring that even if you can't make the payment at that moment in time, that doesn't prevent you from getting your information to send over to Secretary of State.

But, yeah, as we modernize the Department and as we're continuing to get out of old 50, 60 year old systems and getting into something a lot more modernized, we are making sure that we focus on the data that we do send, that we're bringing good partners in state service to say, yes, this is what we have. This is what you have. Do we imagine are we good to go forward?

Great. And one of my concerns is always that as we continue to burden different agencies with more and more things, that they're not able to accomplish the mission at hand, which is getting people their licenses, registering their vehicles, and those type of things.

So we want to make sure that, number one, we're given the resources that you need to be able to accomplish your goal, but at the same time ensuring that what we had envisioned or what was envisioned with these type of programs is carried out and that the right agency is carrying it out. And if it's too burdensome, then we should be looking at alternatives.

Yeah. And as we modernize our systems, as well as new bills come towards maybe our desk as they get passed and we look at how we're going to implement them with a new modernized system, we should be able to adapt quicker to these changes. We should be able to work closely with Members to say, this will be successful. This is how much dollars we need to be successful. But that is the future of the DMV.

And part of our budgeting this year is to help with that monitoring?

Correct.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the info.

Thank you. And with regards to the Real ID, just something that you were talking about is there's the regular ongoing cycle of expired IDs and driver's license, which is really what pulls people in. Right. The Real ID could be put off. Could be put off, but you can't put off the expiration of your ID or your driver's license. How does that fit in with also doing the Real ID?

In other words, if they're coming in for a regular business, and then how much of that is done through that process versus somebody just coming in for the Real ID? Because those are the ones you want to make sure are able to access a Real ID even if the date has moved to 2025. Correct. You want to have the capacity to do that.

Right. You want to maintain the capacity to do that and not say, well, sorry, we're not doing real ID. Come back in two years.

Yeah.

How do you maintain sufficient staff that there's not going to be a harm either to the regular driver's license or the Real ID.

Yes. So when your driver's license renewal comes to you in the mail, we try to have it plastered all over the place. Go online first, do your application at home first, and then get pre-approved first as well. Your birth certificate, residency, whatnot. And with that, as long as we can get an individual approved ahead of time, then at the next step, they would come into the next step and say, hey, would you like to make an appointment? We would set up an appointment.

And the goal is that when you come into the field offices, that you spend roughly 20 to 30 minutes inside of our field office from the time you get out of your door until the time you come in. Take a picture if you have to do anything else. But everything should be try to be done ahead of time at home.

So to your point, as you're managing transactions and workload as are coming in, we're hoping that we can remove a lot of that workload ahead of time being done at home. We've also addressed that when we were in the field offices, the individuals would take 20 minutes to do the transaction. We've cut that in half down to 10 minutes.

So it's been a lot more streamlined, a lot more efficient making sure that when we hire Real ID individuals, that they're trained not to just do a Real ID window, they can handle all transactions to help with the flow of the entire field offices.

And so with this proposal, we're hoping, as Mr. Macedo stated earlier, that with the modernizations that we've done, looking at how we can streamline transactions, moving more customers and changing human behavior to go online or to a different service channel in addition adding to more transactions at call centers or at our kiosks, and then doing the best we can to also inform customers if they did come in, to your point, and say I would like to do this transaction. Not a problem.

We'll take it in, we'll take care of it. And then also kind of reminding them, hey, next time, if you ever wanted to do this type of transaction again, just so you know, you didn't have to come to a field office. You could do it at any of these other alternative service channels. So as we're hoping, we'll closely monitor how the Real ID transactions come in, as Mr. Macedo stated earlier, we're tuning about 200,000 Real IDs a month right now.

We'll monitor it in 23-24, and as we build towards 24-25 fiscal year, we'll reassess.

So how many are remaining that you estimate?

At the moment we've done roughly about 16 million Real IDs at the moment. As the deadlines now move two or three times now, I think we're estimating we do around 23 to 24 million. So we're thinking over the next two fiscal years, it could be anywhere between three to 4 million real IDs will be needed. It's hard to tell, because most Californians are going to wait till the last second if they absolutely have they, which is a true statement.

If you do have your passport, you technically don't need a real ID. But that doesn't mean that down the road, someone doesn't say, I really don't want to use my passport to go to San Diego. I'd rather just get a real ID and change their mind last minute.

Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Let's see. Think were good. We're okay. Thank you all very much. Appreciate your presentations. All right, we're going to move on to. Is that it? Oh, boy. That was fast.

Okay. Thank you for the presentations. We've concluded the agenda for part A of today's hearing. We're going to do a quick transition to part B if you'll give us a minute or two.

Okay. Part B labor, workforce development, public employment, and public retirement. Issue one is an overview of the Governor's May revision proposals. Mr. Toppin and Mr. Alamo.

Thank you, Chair. Patrick Toppin, Department of Finance as a brief overview of the list of May revision proposals in the labor and workforce development space. In addition to some technical adjustments, the May revision proposes several major revisions to the Governor's January budget proposal. These include the restoration of the Women in Construction Unit funding at the Department of Industrial Relations, previously proposed in the Governor's Budget to be paused as part of the General Fund solutions in 2023-24 and 2024-25.

It includes ongoing special fund resources for Cal OSHA to implement the recently passed gas price gouging Bill in the first extraordinary session. $5.3 million in federal authority for the California Workforce Development Board to expand the Prison to Employment Initiative to federal prisons in California. Ongoing resources for the EED to implement a direct deposit option for its benefit programs, including EUI, disability insurance, and paid family leave.

And a $306,000,000 one-time loan from the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund to the General Fund to pay the updated Unemployment Insurance Loan interest payment which rose from 279,000,000 to 306,000,000. The budget also includes technical trailer Bill language to clean up the Community Economic Resilience Fund statute removing references to federal reporting requirements that no longer exist.

Good afternoon. Chas Allen with the Legislative Analyst's Office. Just a few brief remarks related to the last item. The special fund loan from the State disability insurance Fund to be used for the interest payment on the state's outstanding federal UI loan.

To sort of situate this proposal in the May revision, this Special fund loan is one of several special fund loans included in the Governor's May revision that total about $2 billion across the budget that allow the May revision to maintain new discretionary spending that was part of the January or May proposals, without reducing those discretionary spending items or tapping the state's existing budgetary reserves.

Another point at the top as an office we wanted to make is that the state's interest payments on the outstanding federal UI loans are a new permanent feature of the state budget that will be with us for the foreseeable future.

And I raised this point to highlight that going back year after year or over multiple times to the Disability Insurance Fund for a loan to pay the interest on the UI federal loan is not likely to be a viable option given how long the state is planning to be repaying the federal UI loan. A few additional comments specific to the proposal itself.

The Administration has noted that the loan won't affect the payroll tax rate that employees pay as part of the SDI program for disability insurance and paid family leave benefits. And in effect, they're proposing to do this by temporarily reducing the reserve requirement for thefFund.

As you may recall, in 2019, the reserve requirement was reduced as part of the plan to extend the duration of paid family leave benefits from six weeks to eight weeks. The current reserve requirement is set at 30% of sort of expected benefit usage for the fund. So this would reduce that by some amount. That means that if an unexpected increase in usage were to occur, the fund would be somewhat less able or capable to accommodate a change like that.

I will note that the Administration has put forth assurances that should something like that occur, that they would be able to accelerate the repayment of the loan. But as you know, Madam Chair, SB 951 presents the largest changes to the rate structure and tax structure for SDI and PFL since the Paid Family Leave program was introduced. Those changes take place the beginning of next year and at the beginning of 2025.

And as of now, it's very difficult to assess how those changes will affect the SDI Fund. So the future of the fund's sort of fiscal position is a little muddy, and this loan would contribute to that sort of cloudy picture for the fund. It's something we'll pay close attention to, but we think is important for this Subcommittee and the Legislature to consider carefully as it moves forward putting together this year's budget.

Great, thank you very much. So I want to take off from that on that issue. Question for Finance is, how does taking money from the SDI Fund actually address the larger issue of an inadequate funding formulary for the UI Fund?

So again. So Patrick Toppin, Department of Finance. This loan again is part of the General Fund solutions. I don't think there's any intent that this addresses the larger structural funding mechanisms of the Unemployment Insurance Program.

Okay. Are there any thoughts of how to address that? Because what we're doing is, again, this reactive piecemeal, and I'm not saying anybody can predict exactly where we're going to be in the economy, but it seems to me that's a particular problem here. I guess the other question is what other sources were considered to cover the cost and why were those not in place of the DI Fund?

And the reason I asked that, Mr. Toppin, is because the DI Fund, as you know, is 100% paid for by workers. We've had a hearing looking into the barriers that are preventing certain lower income families, more vulnerable families, preventing them from getting access to the paid family leave and disability insurance benefits that they pay for. And there are simple things that the EDD staff that we know is going on. The workers can't get on the phone to answer the questions.

They still need to provide more multilingual materials. So if we have this money in a fund paid for by the working people of California, why shouldn't that be used for them to increase access or provide better benefits?

Thank you, Chair. So I think nothing, I mean, ultimately this is in the budget Bill language in the item reflects sort of the stance that this language, this loan is from surplus DI funds. The year end fund balance is projected to be 3.0 billion, billion with a B, at the end of calendar year 2023, 4.7 billion at the end of 2024. And so, to and extent, ED does have the ability to sort of request resources, it's a self-balancing fund with regards to expanding that.

And so I think while we recognize these are public funds, this is part of the General Fund solution.

So just to again make the point even further and more important is, well, I think the response to will there be any danger to the current working people and their benefit structure? That might not be the case directly, but indirectly, it could very well have an impact on the working people. For example, I understand that in 2011, the last time there was a loan, that no benefit expansions were allowed until that loan was paid off.

So that, again, for families that we're trying to, for example, include extended families should have access to paid family leave. So how do we address those needs that continue and the money is there that they have paid for and put into the fund? That's what we need. I think that's what we need to be using this fund for, especially because that's the expectation of the people who contribute to it.

Andrew March, Department of Finance. Chair just note that the fund is required to have a specific Reserve each year. So outside of that, EDD couldn't utilize that reserve funding to meet the needs that were mentioned earlier. So this $306,000,000 loan would be thought of as coming out of that reserve. The adequacy that the fund is required to maintain the language that's put forward for the loan doesn't impact any benefits.

So we can certainly look into the instance that you have referred to here that happened in 2011, but we don't anticipate and we haven't proposed that this loan would require any pause in any benefit expansions. We view this as utilizing sort of a cash balance that's in the fund in order to pay the existing UI loan, which I would just put a point on that.

Under current practice, the state pays the interest on the UI loan from General Fund, so not from the Unemployment Trust Fund that's paid for by employers. And we don't have any proposal to change that structure. There are other states that utilize an increase in employer taxes in order to pay UI interest. However, California in past practice has used General Fund, and we propose to continue to do so except for this loan that we propose in 23-24.

Yeah, but I think you get my point in terms of I'm looking out not just for the current level of benefits, but what should be as long as the funding is there, people are contributing to it. Working people are contributing to it. They should have access to the expansion of benefits or a number of ways in which they could do better with the money that they're putting in. So thank you very much. Appreciate that. What else? I think that's it.

Are we going to wait for some questions on this?

Go ahead, Senator.

Okay, great. Thank you. There we go. This particular issue with the UI loan, I hope you guys understand our frustration or some of our frustrations with this. $260,000,000,000 basically of interest payments. That's a lot of projects that can be done with $260,000,000,000 or $260,000,000 just with the interest payments alone. The last couple of years, even though we're clawing back desperately on what was a huge surplus, it still represented a surplus.

And we did have federal funds for COVID funds that we could have used to pay this debt off so we would not be here talking about this. And yet here we are talking about moving pots of money around just to cover the interest. I think that's a good lesson, but I think the state keeps needing to do that lesson over and over. And the other angst I have with this is that we keep referring to it as the state money.

That's taxpayers money and paying interest on a loan that we don't want to pay back to the feds. We're only one of two states that did this, and now here we are trying to figure out, in a deficit year, where to scramble to get money to pay this. And ultimately where this winds up is on the backs of our business community, because every one of them, when we can't pay the principal back, is going to be hit with higher fees.

I think you've answered one of the questions I had, which, how is this not going to impact the next program that we take money from? And I think you explained that pretty well, which is the SDI program, because that's heavily used also. But going into the future, we have to figure out a better way to get rid of this debt and take advantage of some of our opportunities when we have it, to do it so that we're not paying the Feds 200 and $306,000,000 in interest.

I think it's more of a statement than a question, because my question I think you answered already. But I just want you to understand what the frustration of some of us are in dealing with some of our budget issues is self-inflicted wounds. And I realize our staff is just doing what they're directed to do, but they need better direction is what I'm saying.

Anyway, I appreciate what you're doing to try and help us sort this mess out, but this one really sticks in my craw because we handled this very wrongly. Thanks.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to issue two, which is the Public Employees Retirement System and State Teachers Retirement System. Okay. Department of Finance for CalPERS.

Good afternoon. Department of Aston Tenefas. Department of Finance. I'll be providing an overview of the California Public Employees Retirement System followed by my colleague with the California State Teachers Retirement System. The May revision includes a net decrease of 1.7 million relative to the Governor's Budget. This is a substantially similar amount of 8.5 billion total 4.7 billion General Fund and that includes 744,000,000 General Fund for the California State University.

Additionally, the May revision increases the Proposition Two debt repayment amount by 482,000,000 for a total of 1.7 billion proposed for the Proposition Two supplemental pension payment to CalPERS and I'm available for questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. Ryan Weinberg with the Department of Finance. The State's contributions to the State Teachers Retirement System, or CalSTRS, increased by 8 million General Fund from the Governor's Budget to May revision. This increase is entirely due to a minor change in the reported credible compensation of teachers from 2021 to 2022, as reported to us by CalSTRS.

As noted in the agenda item, the State is not experiencing a change in its anticipated contribution rate as set by the CalSTRS Teachers Retirement Board. And the State is not proposing any supplemental pension payments using Proposition 2 dollars in 23-24, as the State is currently on track to eliminate its share of unfunded liability for the CalSTRS plan by 2028-29. Thank you and happy to answer any questions you may have.

Great. Okay.

Good afternoon. Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. We have no concerns to raise with any of these proposals, but happy to help respond to any questions you may have. Thank you.

Okay. I do not have any comments or questions. Senator Seyarto? Okay. Lucky you. Thank you very much for being here. This concludes discussion for part B. As a reminder, we will take public comment after discussion of all parts. So we'll take a break right now and transition to part C. Wow. Hi, Nora. Let me get this stuff out of your way. I always spread everything out. Okay, we're moving now to part C of the agenda covering May revision overviews for the judicial branch corrections, local public safety, and emergency response.

All items will be held open and again, we'll take public comment on all items after this part C is over for all three parts. So we'll begin with issue 1, May revision overview of the judicial branch. And we'll start with Department of Finance. Who is that? Okay.

Mark Jimenez, Department of Finance. I will be highlighting a few of the notable adjustments in the May revision for the judicial branch's budget for implementation of the Care Act. The May revision builds upon the Governor's Budget and provides an additional 9 million in 23-24 and 5 million in 24-25 to account for the early implementation of the Care Act in Los Angeles County.

We're also including an additional 17 million in 23-24, increasing to 33 million in 25-26 and ongoing to double the number of legal service hours for care participants from 20 hours to 40 hours. The May revision makes technical adjustments to the General Fund backfill of the Trial Court Trust Fund, as well as adds the reimbursement authority to partner with the BSCC to implement a federal grant from the Burns State Crisis Intervention Program.

The May revision includes the reversion of remaining balances of proposals and previous budget acts, including savings totaling 25 million for the acquisition phase of the Fort Board Courthouse project, which is no longer necessary because the land will be donated to the judicial branch. Lastly, the May revision restores the 40 million over the next two years for the court-appointed Special Advocate Program.

These are just some of the important adjustments included in the May revision, and I'm joined by my colleagues at Finance and the judicial branch to respond to any questions you may have on any of the issues I covered or anything listed on the agenda. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Ms. Lee?

Yes. Anita Lee with the Legislative Analyst Office. So we have comments for two of the items that were introduced. So the first one that we'll turn to is the Care Act. So we do recognize that there will be ongoing costs.

But we do recommend that the Legislature only provide the 55.5 million recommended for the budget year of 23-24, and to require that each court that is implementing in the budget year implementing this new program as of October report monthly on some key metrics that are really important to determining what the ongoing future need will be. So, for example, the amount of time judicial staff and legal representation will need to spend with each client.

There is significant uncertainty on the estimates because this program hasn't been implemented yet. And so the data collected in 23-24 is really going to be important to then determine what the appropriate fiscal need on an ongoing basis is. That would also provide some helpful information for the Legislature to determine whether or not any legislative changes are needed to make sure the program operates as intended or to control costs.

The second area where we have comments is related to the Federal Burn State Crisis Intervention Program, also known as SCIP. Briefly, the Committee kind of had a conversation related to this when they heard the BSCCA items earlier this year. Just as a brief summary, the SCIP program provides federal funds to support crisis intervention programs that reduce crime and violence, with a particular focus on gun violence.

The Digital Branch's proposal for increased reimbursement authority is consistent with BSCC's initial plan for the state's share of this SCIP funding to generally go to the judicial branch, with most of the funding then supporting kind of collaborative courts. So we do recommend that the Legislature ensure that the SCIP funding plan reflects its priorities. So, for example, if the Legislature has higher priority gun violence reduction or behavioral health activities that could change sort of what the plan would look like.

And so if there is an alternative plan that could impact the extent to which this reimbursement authority or the amount being requested is actually needed thank you. Happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Okay, thank you very much. Let's see. Senator, any questions? Okay. I do have some questions on the implementation of the Care Act. Where did the Administration get the estimate of the number of legal 8 hours per participant, and why was it revised? What did you find?

Sure, so we worked with a number of stakeholders, and we got some varied feedback from some stakeholders indicating that actually some of the resources that we have that we programmed or that we coded in the Governor's Budget may be sufficient, but we also received feedback that it may not be enough.

And so I think in an effort to respond and ensure that there is sufficient resources for legal services hours, we landed on just doubling the number of hours from 20 hours to 40 hours and looking to see the impact of that. And we'll be monitoring the impact of those resources and reassess in future budget development processes.

Okay. Thank you. And as the public defenders and legal aid start to work on these very new types of cases, how will the Administration support them? How will you support the legal aid and public defenders offices?

Sure. So we, of course, augmented the budget related to providing the legal aid offices as well as the public defenders resources to provide those legal representation. Right. So the State Bar will be administering these grants. The legal aid organizations will have the first opportunity to place a competitive bid on grants that they can use to provide those legal services. Any remaining balances within each county will go to public defenders, and public defenders will be able to utilize those resources to provide the legal representation.

Okay. That's it for me. Anything else that came up with advocates or others that you worked with other than the funding? And I understand how important the funding is. Any other ideas that have come up that they're asking for in advance that they will need?

I think at the time, I know a lot of it is just getting out the details. I know that the Judicial Council was developing regulations on forms. I know that was like, a concern that was brought up. And I think the Judicial Council had just recently provided an update on that. I think just really seeing how it will actually play out. This is a new program. There's certainly some uncertainty with the number of participants of the program.

And so I think there's just kind of just some uncertainty with how it'll roll out. But the Administration will be monitoring closely and making sure that there's sufficient resources to secure the successful implementation of the Care Act.

So along those lines, something. I think the LAO's office recommended some particulars of those. Any response to their recommendations?

Well, so the know the LAO, you know the Administration recognizes that the funding needs of the program is uncertain, so the program is still underway. However, we respectfully disagree with the Legislative Analyst's Office's recommendation to provide one-time funding, and we urge the Legislature to support ongoing funding to implement the Care Act. The Care Act involves the commitment of many stakeholders from all 58 county governments, legal service providers, county behavioral health services providers.

And so it's important that we build in the necessary resources into our budget to demonstrate the state's ongoing commitment to support the success of the program. And lastly, the LAO's recommendation on data reporting. We appreciate the need for additional data. However, we think that monthly reporting might be onerous on the Judicial Council. So we look forward to working with legislative staff on the details of that reporting requirement.

Because I think you mentioned something to a degree that you need information. Right? Yeah, especially it's a new program, and I think that's the point that LAO's office was trying.

We appreciate that.

Right.

Absolutely. And maybe a little bit of additional context. So the enacting law for the Care Act does require that DHCS coordinate reporting on the health side and to work with the judicial branch on reporting as well. Our concern is that you're not likely to get that data in time for your consideration for the appropriate funding levels for the 24-25 budget. And so that's why we're recommending that for the first batch of courts that are implementing of this go around.

That's why you're getting that frequency of funding, of reporting sorry, frequency of reporting so that you can see what the startup looks like. Because I think there's a little bit of a recognition that when a program starts up, it might start off slow. You don't have the takeup that you're necessarily anticipating, so you want to take a look at months over time, but you can also have the reverse.

There's a huge influx of people that think they're eligible for the program, and it turns out they might not be. And so I think that that is kind of one of the key factors.

When we look at the breakdown of the key factors of what's driving the cost, they include the number of participants, the petitions that will be heard, who's admitted to the program, as well as the number of hearings that have to occur, and then the amount of time that is spent both by judges and legal representation. And so when we say key metrics, I think that that's what we're sort of honing in on.

We don't want to do this in replacement or basically have that annual data reporting, like, all of a sudden be expedited. But it's really highlighting these key points which are critical to the calculation of the funding need because those are the key factors that are incorporated into the calculation.

Great. Well, I do agree that early on, especially for the new program, that that's a critical time to be able to gather this information. So I hope you take that as serious request. Thank you. Okay. Thank you both all very much. We're moving on to issue two. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Ghis lightweight paper. Lightweight paper points to that.

Issue two in Corrections. Not sure who from Department of Finance. Okay. Please.

Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Sally.

It's not working.

There we go.

There you go.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and my name is Sally Lukenbill with the Department of Finance. We will be providing a brief overview of some of the he May revision issues before you today and after the presentation we'll be happy to take any questions you may have. So I will start with the San Quentin proposal. The May revision proposes funding for two capital projects in support of the administration's vision to transform San Quentin from a maximum security prison into a facility focused on improving public safety through rehabilitation and education.

The first proposal is for 360.6 million Public Buildings Construction Fund for the pre-construction and design build phases for a project to demolish Building 33, which is the former PIA building, and for the construction of a new educational and a vocational center on that same site. The new facility will provide a centralized location for the expansion of rehabilitative programs.

The second proposal is for 20 million General Fund for the preliminary plans, working drawings and construction phases for various improvement projects on the campus in support of the administration's vision. As both of these projects have a planned completion date of 2025, the May revision also proposes statutory changes intended to expedite the delivery of those projects, including authorization for CDCR to use the progressive design build project delivery method.

Also includes an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and an exemption from state historic preservation requirements. The proposal also includes statutory changes to rename the prison from San Quentin State Prison to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

These projects, which will be informed by the vision and recommendations of the Multidisciplinary Advisory Council established by the Governor, will support the California Model, which will serve as a nationwide model to advance a more effective justice system that builds safer communities and reduces recidivism. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague to continue the presentation.

Sarah Tomlinson, Department of Finance. I will be highlighting adult population projections as well as a few of the administration's May revision proposals. The May revision incorporates updated projections for the adult incarcerated and parole populations prepared by CDCR's Office of Research. Spring projections indicate that the adult incarcerated population will continue to trend downward. The average daily adult incarcerated population for 22-23 is now projected to be 95 600, as compared to approximately 96,000 from the fall 2022 projections, a decrease of 0.6%.

Additionally, this population is projected to decrease by approximately 2700 between 22-23 and 23-24, for a total average daily population of approximately 93,000 in 23-24. The population is projected to decline further to an estimated 90,000 in 25-26. The difference between the spring and fall projections are largely attributed to the fewer admissions to CDCR than previously projected. The parole average daily population is projected to be approximately 39,600 in 22-23 and 37,000 in 23-24.

Based on spring projections, the average daily parole population will decline to an estimated 36,000 by the end of the 26-27 fiscal year. The overall decline is primarily due to recent legislative and CDCR policy changes that allow for a Division for Division of Parole Operations review that may lead to accelerated discharge from parole and shortened parole terms for most offenders released to parole in July 2020 or later.

Consistent with the Prison Closure Plan included in the Governor's Budget, the May revision includes updated savings associated with the closure of the California Correctional Center scheduled to close in June 2023, the California City Correctional Facility, scheduled to close in March 2024, and six facilities at various prisons scheduled to close by the end of the year. The May revision reflects a refined savings amount of 472.3 million ongoing associated with these closures and deactivations.

We note that the Administration remains committed to meeting the needs of staff and the incarcerated population, while right-sizing California's prison system to reflect the needs of the state as our population continues as the prison population continues to decline. The agenda includes summaries of the various May revision proposals, and I will highlight a couple of the most significant adjustments for the Subcommittee.

First, the Board of Parole Hearings within CDCR request 4.2 million General Fund in 23-24 and 2.6 million ongoing to maintain existing service levels to support several of the Board of Parole's core functions. This includes resources to maintain attorney pay and an additional hour of representation in 23-24, which will help the Board remain competitive with current market rates. Where the Board may have absorbed costs associated with some of the core functions previously, these savings have eroded and this approach is no longer sustainable.

Lastly, I will highlight two healthcare related proposals. CDCR requests 11 million General Fund and 85 positions in 23-24 and 17.3 million and 144 positions ongoing to expand the use of telemental health services within the state mental health program to support the delivery of quality mental health care to patients and support CDCR's ability to recruit and retain clinicians. In the midst of a national and statewide shortage of mental health care professionals.

Additionally, the Department requests 39.7 million ongoing General Fund to address projected a projected deficit in the contract medical budget, which supports the provision of specialty care services for patients in prison and community settings. With that, my Department of Finance colleagues and I, as well as our colleagues at CDCR and CCHCS, are available to answer any questions and thank you very much for your time.

Okay, thank you very much. Now call on LAO's office, please.

Thank you. Madam Chair, Caitlin O'Neill with the Legislative Analyst Office. We have comments on several of the proposals within the CDCR item on your agenda. I will provide our comments on the San Quentin proposals, as well as the proposal on the Board of Parole Hearings. And then I'll pass it off to my colleague, who will discuss our comments on some healthcare proposals.

And as was stated by the Department of Finance the budget includes two capital outlay proposals at San Quentin that the Governor has stated are part of an intent to develop the California Model or develop a model called the California Model that would be effective at achieving certain goals that have been stated by the Administration and would be scalable. And we find that while the goals of the California Model are laudable, there are currently no clear objectives or plans for how those goals would be reached.

And without such information, it's difficult for the Legislature to evaluate the merits of these capital outlay proposals and specifically whether or not it makes sense to even pilot them or even begin with development of the model at San Quentin specifically versus another prison. We also find that funding the funding proposals lack key information. Specifically, the scope of construction and the operational implications of the proposals are almost entirely undetermined at this point.

And that's because the Governor is proposing to leave development of those details to an Advisory Council that he has convened. But at this point, you're being asked to provide full funding. So from the design all the way through construction for two proposals without essentially any details. And that makes it difficult to assess whether these proposals would indeed further the goals of the California Model that have been stated by the Administration.

It also means that the Legislature risks approving funding for projects that it may ultimately disagree with. For example, without knowing the operational implications of the proposals, it's very difficult to determine that there wouldn't be some kind of decision that the Administration makes, such as an eligibility criteria or the type of activities taking place in these facilities that the Legislature wouldn't disagree with, for example. And without knowing the operational implications, it's difficult to determine what the operational cost of these facilities would be.

And that makes it virtually impossible for the Legislature to assess whether or not the likely benefits of these facilities would outweigh the operational costs. And it doesn't make sense to construct facilities before the Legislature is able to determine whether it's comfortable with the cost of operating them. We also found that the proposed project completion deadline by 2025 is both unnecessary and problematic. We found that it's unnecessary because there is no clear rationale behind the Governor's intention to complete the proposed projects by 2025.

And we found that it's problematic for various reasons. For example, the deadline could actually undermine the development of an effective model because it essentially would mean that the Advisory Council has to arrive at recommendations by around September or so of 2023 in order for them to inform the design of the educational and vocational center that's proposed. And that really is quite a compressed timeline for the Advisory Council to meaningfully gather stakeholder input, consult the research, talk with practitioners from other states, et cetera.

We also understand from CDCR that even with this compressed timeline, the Department intends to begin some design activities before receiving recommendations from the Advisory Council in order to meet that 2025 deadline. The deadline also creates challenges, in that it's possible that if there were more time to consider alternatives to this project, it's possible that a less costly alternative could be pursued. The statutory changes that are being proposed to allow for this deadline to be met also significantly limit legislative oversight.

These are just some reasons why we think that the deadline is problematic. And finally, we found the facility projects would be extremely costly to scale. Specifically, we estimate that the Governor's proposed 360,000,000 lease revenue bond project would require the state to pay about 25 million in annual debt service payments for 25 years beginning as early as 25-26, and the total cost of that project alone would be about 680,000,000 at the end of that 25 year stream of payments.

To complete projects of similar scope at the state's, 30 other prisons not currently scheduled for deactivation would cost over $800 million in annual debt service, at a total cost of around 20 billion General Fund over 25 years. This would be a significant fiscal commitment that appears to run counter to legislative interest in curbing the growth of spending on state prisons.

And it also raises serious concerns about whether it makes sense to begin developing a model that is intended to be scalable, but may simply not be due to the associated costs. Finally, Committee staff indicated that it may be helpful for me to provide some context, some examples for the Committee to sort of situate this project in the broader sort of trends we see in CDCR capital outlay projects.

And that is very challenging to do in terms of finding a comparable project, because we don't know what the scope is. So we really couldn't say how this compares in cost, for example, to other projects. But in looking at recent projects that have come through for CDCR, this is definitely on the higher-end in terms of cost.

For example, one of the more high-dollar projects we've seen in recent years has been a 50 bed mental health crisis facility at the California Institution for Men, which has a total cost estimated currently of around 133,000,000 lease revenue bond. And in terms of the timeline, this project is certainly a lot more aggressive than what we typically see. And again using that same project as an example that was initially authorized in 2017 and is just now moving into the construction phase.

Whereas this project would be going from authorization to completion in about two and a half years, and in order to do so would take some pretty irregular and extraordinary statutory changes of the likes that we don't typically see for CDCR projects. So, moving on to our recommendation, we do recommend rejecting the Governor's capital outlay proposals and the associated statutory changes. And given the concerns that I've noted here. However, we do recommend requiring that the Department report on the development of the California Model given that the Administration is planning to develop it and that the Governor has convened this advisory council

We think it'll be important for the Legislature to have key information on the development of that model to ensure that the development is progressing in a way that's consistent with legislative priorities and to ensure that the Legislature will have information necessary to evaluate the merits of future proposals, whether budget or policy as it relates to the California Model.

So we would recommend requiring the Administration to report by January 10, 2024, on the objectives of the model. So specifically, what objectives is the Administration attempting to achieve and how would those further the goals of the California Model, as well as how it prioritize any trade-offs in developing those objectives? The report should also detail the administration's strategy for developing a model that is both effective and scalable in achieving the stated objectives.

In doing so, it should explain, to the extent any particular prisons are selected as a pilot site, why that is a strategic choice and what alternatives were considered, and should also describe why the development process would yield a strategy that is ultimately scalable across the system. Finally, we think that the report should provide information on how CDCR involves stakeholders in the model development process, including how it continues to plans to continue engaging stakeholders and keeping stakeholders informed on an ongoing process.

And we would note that in requiring this report, the Legislature could specify specific elements that it wants to see included in. For example, the objectives, or specify that the Administration should consult with certain stakeholders. And then we think that this report would ultimately be useful for the Legislature in determining whether it wants to pursue future action as it relates to the California Model, and at that point could require additional reports, such as on the timeline, an evaluation plan, et cetera.

So really, this report essentially would be requiring the Administration to provide what we would kind of have expected to see supporting a proposal like this. So, moving on to brief comments on the Board of Parole Hearings proposal. We don't have a recommendation here, really, just a couple of quick issues to consider. This is the 4.2 million General Fund in the budget year decreasing to 2.6 with four different components. Essentially, this proposal would maintain existing service levels.

We would just note that two of the components of this proposal maintaining a previously authorized one time increase in pay for state-appointed attorneys, as well as a contract with Parole Justice Works to provide training and mentorship to state-appointed attorneys were two areas that we looked at in our recent report on promoting equity in the parole hearing process, which we discussed earlier this spring with this Committee.

So we just wanted to note that as was consistent with our findings in that report, the state still doesn't have enough data and evaluation collect at this point to know whether those changes have been effective so, have been effective, so the Legislature could consider requiring an evaluation of these changes before authorizing additional funding. Though an evaluation could also require General Fund, but perhaps less than what's included in the proposal. Thank you, and I will pass it off to my colleague to discuss a few additional proposals.

Thank you, madam. Thank you, Madam Chair and Senator. My name is Orlando Sanchez with the LAO. I'll be covering the issues on page five of the agenda in case you wanted to follow along. Starting with the COVID-19 budget change proposal, the May revision reduces by $45 million for COVID-19 related spending. And while some of the funding will be necessary, CDCR did not provide adequate justification on the full request. As such, we are recommending the Subcommittee have CDCR provide additional information justifying the full request.

In addition, the Legislature could consider having the Department report by January 10 next year information on how the Department has spent the funds, such as number of people tested, staff tested, and COVID-19 related overtime usage. In regards to the contract medical, this is the roughly 40 million ongoing for a projected deficit in the Department's contract medical budget. We acknowledge that having sufficient funds for contract medical services is important for the Department to provide adequate medical care.

However, we recommend approving these on a one-time basis instead of an ongoing basis as proposed by the Administration. This should still provide sufficient time for the Department and the Administration to develop a new population based methodology. And we would like to note that the Administration has previously recognized this flaw in the methodology, but still has not presented a solution or provided information on how it is maximizing the Medi-Cal reimbursements that the state is eligible for.

Accordingly, we also recommend, regardless of whether the funding is approved on a one-time or ongoing basis, requiring CDCR to provide a report by January 10 of next year that, one, specifies in detail the new funding methodology for contract medical. Two, provides data that will allow the Legislature to have sufficient information to determine whether the Department is maximizing its federal funds it qualifies for and third, any strategies the Department is taking to maximize the funds it is eligible for, then moving on to.

A third proposal, also listed in the May revision, includes roughly between three and 5 million limited term in the upcoming budget years for the Department to build a billing system for the CalAIM Justice Involved Initiative. And for this, we recommend, consistent with other information technology projects, that the Legislature provide one year funding, and the Department can come forward with additional requests for funding in the future as needed. And this is consistent with other IT projects that the Legislature approves.

And lastly, my comments are in regards to the Comprehensive Employee Health Program. The May revision reflects a reduction of about 7.7 million from the January proposal, and we recommend approving the funding on a one-time basis. Given the continued presence of COVID-19 in the state's prisons and because of the ongoing need for the program, particularly for other diseases, is still unclear.

Consistent with our January proposal or recommendation, we recommend requiring the Department to report data that will allow the Legislature to determine whether the need is necessary on an ongoing basis beyond the budget year as proposed. Thank you. That concludes our remarks and would be happy to take questions on any of the other items.

Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions and then pass it on to Senator Seyarto. Since the population of the incarcerated every year is going down by approximately 2,000, has the Administration considered additional facility closures, especially during this time of budget issues?

Hi, Lynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance. Thank you. Beyond what's been previously announced, there are no additional closures considered.

Could you tell me why that's not being considered?

So the current closures that have been announced, which include California Correctional Center, California City, as well as Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, the six facilities deactivating takes us through March of 2025, which is just less than two years from now. So the Administration is trying to work through those closures. However, we remain committed to right-sizing the CDCR's prison system and continue to look at what's possible to be deactivated in a safe manner.

Okay, thank you. Just if you would tell me if the expansion of the tele mental health, is that a response to issues in the Coleman Litigation? Sorry, try to do this in some order.

Senators and Committee. Thank you. Hello, Senators and Committee. My name is Amar Mehta. I'm Deputy Director of statewide mental health for CDCR. The real goal behind the telemental health development was just to address the effects of the real staffing shortages that we've been facing statewide and really nationwide. The number of psychiatrists we've had has always been low, and that's gotten a little bit better through our telepsychiatry program, which has been in development for about 10 years.

Unfortunately, during COVID the number of our psychologists and social workers dropped by almost a third. And you see the same thing at Kaiser and other places. It's just everyone's competing for smaller and smaller pieces of the same pie until we get more people going through the educational tracks. So the success we had in telepsychiatry really helped us provide care for a much wider slice of our population that needs medications and things like that.

The psychology and social worker aspects of telemental health are really going to help us with the therapy and the other forms of groups and things that we can offer to our patients through those classifications. So we're really addressing that and we've had this in mind since before the court orders or anything like that I would say.

Could you describe where in the prison are these telehealth appointments taken? What's the physical space like, and how do you ensure confidentiality of those appointments?

Yeah, for sure, good questions. And I saw patients through telepsych in our system for over six years, so definitely can answer any questions that you got there. We have currently in the prisons, there's an office for the clinician, and I would say in most cases, the patient is brought to the office, or at least that's where the patient is seen by the clinician. And then in other cases, there's another office closer to where the patients live and things where the clinician can go.

So when we have those vacancies, we can use either the office that would have been dedicated or the room that's closer to where the patients live. And we basically we put in a device there called a DX 80. It's a Cisco device that has a dedicated sort of line for telepsychiatry. So it's HIPAA compliant. You can't actually record or even screen capture the way you could on a normal computer, just take a video of what's going on on the screen.

It actually goes through a whole separate kind of portal for that. So we're very careful to only use HIPAA compliant software and hardware, of course, and this has been really the workhorse of our system. So the corrections officer will escort the patient to the room, and the patient will enter the room. The room typically, the door typically has a window through which you would be watching for anything that might happen to someone in person. In this case, it's the DX 80 and a medical assistant.

The medical assistant serves as a telepresenter. There's a lot of things that you get from a face-to-face evaluation that you might need a little help with in telemental health. So if the patient, for example, smells very bad, that tells you something about their hygiene that you may miss if you're not there in person. So the telepresenter can tell you that.

They can tell you if someone standing outside the door was having a great time playing football, and then he comes in and says that I can't move because of my chronic pain, or something like that. So really nice kind of link to the clinicians. I will say that our telepsychiatrists work with our clinicians and get a lot of that information through other people in the prison as well. So it's not just the telepresenter, but it's a nice piece of it.

So the confidentiality is basically the same as it is for onsite people. The person would be in a room with the monitor in the same way they would be in a room with the clinician.

Okay, great. That sounds good. Okay, I want to ask you about the just this last year, I was visited several times by psychiatrists that work in the prisons. And the main issue was the salaries were far too low. And at the same time, how would I say? Sort of like temp status type psychiatrists were coming in and whenever there was a need, but the temp psychiatrist really couldn't address the ongoing person because they only came in as needed. One shot deal.

Could you tell me more about that? And is that an issue? Like they raised it was a real issue and there's a request to increase the salaries of the psychiatrists and provide the kind of compensation that would make it competitive for them to be able to stay working in the prison.

Yep, for sure. And I'll say as well that I was a proud member of the union for six years that UAPD and we worked very closely with them and we really appreciate their partnership in all of these discussions. In our system, even before the 8% inflation and all the quiet quitting or the great resignation and all of these things that happened during COVID it's incredibly difficult to keep up with salaries of these professionals.

When I went to medical school and the psychiatry was one of the lowest demand specialties and now from speaking to people in academia, it's one of the most competitive because they know that they're going to have 1000 people seeking their work once they graduate. So yeah, we constantly struggle to keep up in general with the progress in the rest of the world. I will say that in our system we do treat our psychiatrists pretty well. We do our best to take care of them.

And a big part of that has been telepsychiatry, I would say. It cannot replace on site. And I just want to be very clear about that. That's not our intent in any way. But we currently have, I'm going to very roughly divide it up into three buckets, so we have onsite civil service, the fully employed, they contribute to CalPERS, the whole thing. We have telepsychiatry and currently every member of telepsychiatry, about 85 psychiatrists are civil service as well.

So they all contribute in the exact same way. And then we have what we call registry or contractors. The more temporary work that you were talking about. It's an interesting group. The rate of pay is different at different institutions depending on the need and we do our best to balance that out so that we're not wasting anything. But that population, we have some of those registry doctors who've been doing that job for years and years as long or longer than some of our civil service.

And then, as you said, there's a population that is more fleeting. They kind of come in when their work is there and then they move out to other places. Our goal is certainly to have everybody in the system that way they have skin in the game, they're all sort of committed to the patient care. And tele is one of the ways that we can be competitive with other agencies. If we don't offer that we're just going to lose every time.

Kaiser has telehealth offered from across the country. You can call into California as long as you're licensed and things. We don't do that in our system, of course, but it's something that we're constantly aware that we're trying to compete with.

I appreciate how you're tackling all these issues, and particularly to provide the quality service and mental health services. I would urge you I understand the psychiatrist got the in-person psychiatrist got paid differential in five facilities. Not all the facilities. I'm not sure what distinguishes one from the other. But it seems to me if we're trying to be competitive, we're trying to really address their needs so they could stay within our prison system. That doesn't appear to help us.

I would certainly agree with you that our clinicians are incredibly hardworking, and I would like to definitely pay them more as well. In this case, the five institutions were the inpatient settings. They're the most severely ill patients in the state and just a really challenging population to work with. They're very rewarding as well, I'll say, but are very challenging as well. And those were the places we were having the biggest problem sort of hiring and filling those empty positions.

And they happen to be the positions, the patients that need it the most. So we were able to kind of move forward with that, which we're very proud of as well. That 15% to say. These patients need it the most. They're harder work, so we'll try to give you more there.

Yes?

Allison Hewitt, Department of Finance. I just wanted to note that the Administration continues to work with the Department on these types of compensation issues. They are subject to collective bargaining, and that process is actually happening now. So I just wanted to state that for the record. Thank you.

Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor, very much for all that you do. Senator Seyarto, I have a few more questions, but jump in, please.

That'd be great. Thank you. So I wanted to talk little about the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Who wants to.

Thank you for coming up. So one of the things that I caught while we were talking about this is we've decided to shorten this timeline. We want to build a building in two years, all the way from tear down, plan, tear down, and rebuild, which seems probably the most unrealistic. But but in order to do that, I know that some things have to occur. One of the things you mentioned was excluding it from CEQA.

So the area where San Quentin is, it's probably one of the most ecologically sensitive areas around San Leandro. All that coastline there, and then plus the peninsula where this is actually on. How do we justify exempting this project from CEQA when the rest of the world has to comply with CEQA, put up with the extended times that it takes to get through the process and build?

Dave Lewis Director of Facility Plan Construction Management for CDCR. With the rapid timeframe that was laid out by the Governor to complete this, a number of decisions were made, including that we were replacing an existing building. And so the environmental impact of constructing in this space would certainly seem to be less significant than a new build in a new location, which would have extended the time and certainly would have required more extensive environmental review. And that was the reason that we're seeking an exemption from CEQA.

And so that would make a lot of sense to me because I think I've repeated that very thing over the years, because when we're replacing a dam which is going in the exact same place that the old dam was, they still have to go through CEQA. So it doesn't seem like the logic from why we should be exempting this project from CEQA versus when we're building or rebuilding a dam. It's replacing the exact same structure in the exact same place, which is this argument.

But flying in the face of that is our continual demands that we have those type of projects go through and create sometimes 15 years of delay going through a project, trying to get a project done that's desperately needed, levees, dams, things like that. So I think you might kind of get to understand a little bit why I'm a little skeptical about why this project gets to skip CEQA. I am a big fan, by the way, of turning our rehabilitation, making our rehabilitation efforts a lot better.

But I feel like this project is being rushed. The $360,000,000 seems like that's a big number. And part of that, if you're doing a design build, is pushing a timeline. And also are you providing incentives, are anticipating providing incentives for the builder to basically work round the clock to get this done in two years? And are we taxpayers going to pay for that?

We haven't obviously done the contracts yet, but no, we don't anticipate providing any incentives for the time frame. We anticipate that the process that we've designated the progressive design build allows a lot of flexibility on the part of the contractor and the state to make decisions that accelerate the construction. For example, this building was built using Progressive Design build. The model that's there allows for a lot of those things to be built into the process as you go through it.

Okay. All right. I wanted to move on to what was the other issue that I was going to have here. The prison closing. Who wants to answer prison closing questions? Back up. So we go through a couple of the what we're getting savings from 170,000,000 annually from various facility deactivations, 155 from California City. But then when we get to Chuckawalla, it's unspecified future savings.

Have we not been able to hash that out yet about how that's going to save, how much that's going to save, versus perhaps some of the others? Because I think, as you know, this is pretty controversial down in Southern California. We have cities that highly depend on this facility and then cities that don't want their facility anymore. And their facility is way older and has much more land value and can be rehabilitated versus this one.

So I'm kind of curious what kind of savings that they must be thinking they're going to get from closing this facility versus the Norco facility.

Lynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance. The savings have not yet been calculated because Chuckawalla Valley State Prison would not be scheduled to close until March of 2025. That proposal wouldn't come forward until next budget cycle.

Okay, well, I understand that, but if they've already got it in the pipeline, then some of that evaluation should be done and we should be knowing what the difference is between closing that facility versus closing another facility, because that's going to make a determination, I think, that weighs in. So we should have some numbers.

Madeline Mclean, CDCR. So we are only looking at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison right now. So that is what has been announced by the Governor, and that is what we are moving forward towards closure by March of 2025. So, as Ms. Ishimoto said, we will begin those calculations over this next summer to prepare for Jan 10. So we aren't doing a comparison of savings at this point.

Right just that when they did the evaluation process of who's closing and who's not, that would have had to been done. I mean, that has to weigh into the equation of where our best bang for our buck in closing facilities, because Chuckawalla is a newer facility. And here we're building a newer facility to do a rehab when we already have newer facilities that could probably be converted and used in a less expensive way to be able to achieve what we're trying to achieve with the California Model.

Understood. The savings is one component of it. We're looking at the ability to house a certain type of population, rehabilitative programming, the age of the facility. There's a lot of other factors that go into it. So as that determination was made, Chuckawalla was the one that was announced to be closed as part of this next round of prison closures.

All right, well, I'm not going to belabor that, but I think we'll have to sit down and talk about that because there are huge impacts to that and nobody knows how we arrived at that. I think there's a lot of people out there that want a little bit more input into how that process came to be and why it's so inflexible. Anyway, those are the questions I have for that section. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Senator. I think you're asking some questions that we similarly have asked on this Committee for the last two, three years. So I'm glad you're raising that. On the San Quentin a little bit more about it. There's obviously issues as the one that the Senator just mentioned, which is $360,000,000, the cost, one building, one institution using the public bonding. And we heard already what that's going to mean in terms of interest at $25 million.

$25 million in estimated annual debt service, roughly over 25 years.

And we're trying to reduce spending on prison infrastructure. So why is this a high priority infrastructure project at this particular time, especially of the budget?

I think in looking at locations where you could make transformational change in the Department, San Quentin was selected largely due to the fact that there's a large base of available programming options and volunteers at San Quentin that provide opportunities that extend beyond other institutions. So that location was chosen.

Also, I think there's certainly a large impact of choosing a location where you previously housed some of our most secure inmates and creating from that a transformational change to allow for a much different type of programming than was previously available at that location. The cost is significant, and I'm not trying to diminish that importance, but we are looking for transformational change in that location, which does obviously bring a cost.

And we're looking at doing different types of construction, very likely, than the Department has done in the past due to what we're trying to do and the changes we're trying to bring about.

I guess maybe that's the question because really the project has not been described other than we're going to demolish this building and we're going to build a new building and it's transformational, and without any description of what that means, then you get the price tag of $360,000,000 plus the debt service. That really is the problem that I think we're facing is how do we approve something, how do we support something that I think in concept, I certainly support 100%.

But it's hard when you have no idea what this is going to be, what this is going to look like. So if you could answer that one. And then second is I hope that there will be a new California Model. I hope that we will change the way the incarceration system works with regards to really rehabilitating people to be able to come out when they're released and really expect a new life and have the hope of a new life. Actually a first chance.

Not even a second chance. But I'm not getting, other than the brick and mortar here and the cost of the brick and mortar, any sense of what that means? Nothing. And so these little tidbits are a little know, but really, what does that mean? And changing and creating a California Model means changing the culture, changing the way things are done by everyone inside that prison, from those who are incarcerated all the way to the staffing, everybody at every level.

So I want to believe, but you're not giving me much here to work with as far as what we're going to get ourselves into. What is this going to be, really?

I think those are very fair questions, and certainly we have some representation that can speak to the California Model itself. I think in some ways, what we're approaching here, I have the easiest part of it because I just have to build something. The cultural change and issues that you need to affect to bring about a model such as the California Model are significant and will require a significant effort and on the part of the Department overall to provide that level of change that you're speaking of.

If you only approach it from the standpoint of that the construction is the biggest component, then likely it won't succeed overall. It really does have to be a cultural change that you speak to. And the Department is beginning to approach that in the entire Department, not just focused on San Quentin. San Quentin is an opportunity for us to make some bold changes.

As I spoke to in a location that previously housed some of our most secure inmates that had no opportunity to exit the system and return to their lives.

But clearly the goals extend beyond the walls of the prison to the opportunity that the population has to return to the community and provide more service to the community and better public safety through providing better integrated programs that address some of the issues that this population faces and so, you know, specific to the California Model you know, there's a lot of efforts underway on the part of the Department to really begin to determine that and where we're going to go with the California Model.

Obviously, the advisory council that the Governor selected for San Quentin will inform our efforts at San Quentin specifically to address the San Quentin portion of the California Model. I think it's important, though, to understand that that's going to extend far beyond the walls of San Quentin. And we have someone here who can speak to California Model and some of the Department's efforts.

Thank you. Welcome.

Good afternoon. Janene DelMundo, Deputy Director of Special Projects and this is just a high-level overview of the California Model so, the California Model is a system-wide change within the Department that leverages international best practices and processes to address long standing challenges related to incarceration and prison working conditions. The Department is committed to improving working and living conditions for all who live in, work in and visit state prisons, as well as improving the working environment and wellness of all employees regardless of their location.

The California Model builds upon work already underway that encompasses the Department's mission to facilitate the successful reintegration of incarcerated individuals back to their communities, equipped with the tools to be healthy and employable members of society. The California Model uses four principles that have proven successful in other countries and states. These include Dynamic Security, an approach that promotes positive relationships between staff and incarcerated people through purposeful activities and professional, positive, and respectful communication.

Normalization, which aims to bring life in prison as close as possible to life outside of prison. The more life in prison resembles life in the community, the easier it will be for people to transition and adjust to life in the community upon release. Peer support seeks to train incarcerated individuals to use their lived experiences to provide recovery and rehabilitative support to their peers and becoming a trauma informed organization to change the practices, policies and culture of the entire Department.

Educating staff at all levels to recognize the impacts of trauma and ensure the physical and emotional safety of all staff and incarcerated individuals. The Department has incorporated these principles at various test sites to identify scalable possibilities for all CDCR prisons, and the Department will scale up these evidence based principles to guide expectations for how our staff and the population interact to create an overall healthier, work environment and support rehabilitation.

These principles have been shown internationally and in other states to improve the health and well being of correctional staff and incarcerated people and to reduce recidivism and increase post release employment.

Could you tell me where? Great. I really mean that. That's really great to hear the principles of the California Model. You said that there have been test sites for applying these principles. Could you give me an example of that?

Sure. So we currently have four right now. So at Valley State Prison, custody and healthcare staff have developed the Youth Offender Program and are now working with incarcerated people and community leaders to develop an in-prison reentry facility in which community organizations provide services to people in the last one to two years of their sentence to ready them for release.

At Salinas Valley State Prison, custody and healthcare staff are testing the resource team with the highest risk, highest needs individuals who have co-occurring serious psychiatric needs to increase time out of cell while decreasing violence and assaults on staff with measurable impact on occupational wellness and professional pride. At Central California Women's Facility, custody staff are starting to develop a Contact Officer test project in a general population unit that builds on their successes integrating dynamic security practices into the institution's rehabilitative programming units.

The Contact Officer project aims to improve the interactions between staff and incarcerated people and foster a culture of mutual respect, reducing rules, violation reports and grievances along the way. And at Central Medical Facility, the Prison Hospice program leans into enhanced dynamic security and normalization training to enable healthcare staff, custody staff, and inmate peers to work as a team as they care for those at the end of life. The Department is bringing this model to other prisons that provide care to people with serious life limiting illnesses.

Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of all of the examples that you gave right now, certainly there's a cost to services. How is that incorporated into this new California Model with this project?

Madeline Mclean, CDCR. Are you speaking specifically to San Quentin or just the California Model in General?

I'm sorry, to San Quentin.

Okay, so the California model will be a component of the San Quentin project. So it's dual. The Advisory Council will come up with recommendations for the scope of the project and the types of services that will be offered. And then the California odel is kind of integrated in that in that it deals with, as Ms. DelMundo said, the interaction between the staff and the incarcerated population. So it's two components that kind of go into San Quentin model.

The California Model isn't going to drive exactly how San Quentin is going to be. That's going to be primarily by the Advisory Council. But California Model is also something that we're looking to roll out statewide. So there's components and pieces of that that don't actually have a cost. That it's just the training issue and teaching people how to interact differently with one another and exposing staff and the incarcerated individuals to that different kind of dynamic between the two groups.

Recognizing that the staff that work there, it's an incredibly stressful and hard job. And so if there are tools that we can provide them and ways that we can teach the groups to interact differently, that relieves the stress on both parties. That's something that can be that's free of charge. And so those are the types of things that we're looking to scale throughout the state, but there are specific components that will be woven into the San Quentin project.

So in terms of once the building is built, what about the cost of doing the services and doing the program? I could appreciate that there'll be some staffing or something that's done that's statewide, but that's still a cost to the San Quentin Center. So when does that get presented to us? Because you're not just going to build a building. You want a building and you want to provide services. What's the cost attached to that?

So that cost hasn't been developed because that's part of the Advisory Council's work. And so that would come to you to the Legislature through a subsequent budget change proposal so that we would be asking for staffing and resources in order to implement that. And so that'll be part, I believe, of the Advisory Council's report that will talk about the scope that will inform the scope of the project and the types of services that will be provided at San Quentin.

Yeah, it seems a little bit like disconnected investing into a building, but not yet planning for the cost of actually carrying out what's the most important part, which is the services that will be given. The program that will be provided to those men and women. It seemed like that needs to be thought more in advance, not just with the timeline that you have about building in two years.

That's not a whole lot of time, and I think it should be part of the deliberations in our budget today. This year is not only the cost of the building, but the cost of what comes and what's going to be needed to carry out the California odel. Is it 10 million? Is it 100 million? That's a big consideration. I don't know any thoughts on that by anybody?

I would just point out that I think what we're trying to do here, I understand it's bold, it's aggressive, and it's uncomfortable. But sometimes in order to make meaningful change, we have to push the envelope a little bit. I think when you look back at what's happened in the 90s and early 2000s, it took us years to learn that mass incarceration wasn't the right way.

And so only recently, starting in 2016-17, is when the state, as a whole, realized that rehabilitation, both educational opportunities and rehabilitative programming, is what leads to reduced recidivism. And so we're building on those principles. We've made significant investments, the state's made significant investments in the Department to expand rehabilitative programming ISUDT, trauma, mental health, all the things that we have learned in recent years.

And so we're applying all of these things that we've learned in recent years, and we're using best practices, we're using things that have happened that have been proven in other locations. And so that's what's informing the San Quentin model. So I understand your concern about that. We're going to be building a building, but we don't know what's going to go into it. But I think we can use what the state has already invested in as kind of a model for how we're going to move forward.

And it's going to be the next level, I think, of how CDCR is going to operate, how we're going to approach incarceration in this state moving forward, because we've learned that the old way doesn't work. We have to think differently, and we don't have control over the individuals that are sent to state prison. So a lot of them come to us with mental health issues, with drug issues, with having trauma in their past life, in their early life.

And so the system has failed them and they're now with us. And so we are doing our best to address the issues much later in life, which is a lot harder to do.

I'm not afraid to be bold. The issue is our responsibility on the budget side of it. That's what this hearing is about and these are the kinds of things that the Legislature, as long as we have some input into the budget, need to ask. Yes, LAO? Ms. O'Neil.

Thank you. I'm hearing your concern is one about what would in terms of this model that we're developing or perhaps multiple models, the California Model and the San Quentin model. I don't know. Essentially what is the operational cost on a system wide level? What is that going to look like? I think is what I'm hearing and I think that really is a huge reason that question exactly is a huge reason why we need a clear set of objectives and strategy.

Because from all of my reading and research and having seen some of these pilot sites in person and talked to people from other states who are doing this work and researchers as much as I have had time to do this spring, there's a really wide range of actual practical changes that could be implemented in this. This is a huge arena that we're talking about.

It could be anything from staff training and changes in the way staff interacting with people, which could turn out to be relatively lower cost to building buildings, changing staffing ratios significantly. So we're just talking about a huge array of what we could ultimately be pursuing.

And so depending on what objectives the state sets that will really inform we can't pursue everything probably, right, strategy prioritization is a reality and so depending on what objectives are ultimately set and what goals are prioritized, the prisons that we select for or the strategy for actually developing the model could look different. For example, the program at Salinas Valley, which is in a very restricted housing for essentially the prison within prison for people with severe mental illness, a very difficult environment to work in.

The set of interventions there is going to look probably pretty different than a general population environment. And so depending on if our goals are to reduce use of restricted housing, self-isolation, staff assaults, things like that, it could make sense to pilot or develop the model at an institution that suffers from those problems more acutely than, say, San Quentin.

So this is all to say that in order to answer that question and for the Legislature to have some sense of where we're headed so that you can really weigh this against your other General Fund priorities.

We do need to know, have a clear sense of the objective so that the Legislature can assess whether it's in agreement and can weigh whether the actual strategy we're pursuing to get there to develop that model makes sense and is likely to achieve a model that is both effective in meeting those objectives and actually scalable. Because we looked for a strategy underlying this proposal and we couldn't find one.

Thank you. Well, overall, I'm glad to see that the effort is going into a California Model. I'm glad to see the trying out at different sites. I went to Norway. I saw know I got a sense, and I certainly don't know all the deep history that went into it, but have a sense of what a prison system could be that is very different from the prison system that we have in this state.

So just that experience of visiting those prisons has just really stuck with me because it's so different and so much healthier for everyone. For everyone. And I've gone to some of our own state prisons. I'm glad to work with organizations that provide both our population that are still incarcerated, those who are about to leave and be released, those who have been released. So I'm glad to see that energy is going into that.

So I don't want to mix that appreciation for the other questions that we have to ask that are very important and what's expected from us by my colleagues in the Senate. So I don't know if there's any.

Just in terms of the final, as, if you could clarify, in terms of the final say on the project, who will have that final say as far as you are planning? who will have the final say on the project, the programs, how the design line of the project, the cost of the services?

The Advisory Council will determine the scope of the project through their deliberations and their meetings that they have. We anticipate participating with the Advisory Council as much as possible and monitoring for what they choose to have included in the building, beginning from the very beginning, all the way through well, through their process.

They anticipate providing a public report at the end of the year, in December of this year, from the Advisory Council that will provide all that kind of overview of how we affect this change at San Quentin. And so the design process for this will go all the way through early next year. And so we'll be making changes based on what the Advisory Council wants to include all the way through their entire deliberations and the instructions we've received from the Administration is that what the Advisory Council recommends It will determine the scope of the buildings and the other improvements that we'll do at San Quentin.

So since the Advisory Council was formed without legislative input, where do you see the Legislature will perform our oversight duties? Where and how?

That may be a question for you.

You're just building the building. It should not be aimed at you.

We recognize that the Advisory Council will be rendering their recommendations through this deliberative, or this process, that involves the numerous stakeholders that are part of that Council. We recognize that this will be a public document when it's completed, and at that time, it will be shared with the Legislature, and we'll continue to, our hope is to work with the Legislature to continue conversations as we develop, as the project scope is more refined.

Okay, yes.

I just wanted to clarify it's our understanding that the public document is not planned to be released until the end of the year, likely after the scope of the project, and the recommendations are used to inform the construction design. Because of the aggressive timeline, it's also our understanding that this Council would not be subject to open meeting requirements. So it's not clear how stakeholder involvement would occur or how the Legislature or the public would be able to understand what's going into these decisions.

Okay. Well, I know, hearing from my colleagues and myself that we really need to address the issue of legislative input and oversight into this project. I think you should see it as a very positive thing that we want to have our experiences be a part of this so that we could make it successful. I'm not sure, I don't think there's anybody who wants to see something like this fail. We wanted to see it succeed, and we have responsibilities and so do you.

We need to make sure that the Legislature has the kind of input that we should have for something moving forward like this. So I would ask you to work on that. And then just a final one specific on the deadline. What is it about the 2025 date? What is it that makes that so urgent and needed?

I'm obviously not completely aware of what that decision making process was. That was the Governor's directive to us. But I think, as Ms. Mclean pointed out, transformational change is sometimes uncomfortable and it requires that you push for audacious goals that seem to be beyond what people are comfortable with.

And I think clearly that's what the Governor has put in the hands of the Department, is seeking for transformational change in a way that doesn't allow some of the kind of bureaucratic delays that normally accompany this type of issue. And so I think it's just really him setting a very audacious goal for the Department to make transformational change in a very fast manner.

Okay, well, I'll just end my comments by saying fast does not necessarily mean that you get the quality of what you're looking for. And so I think that's where all asking is the quality of the input in the front of it. Not because we're afraid, not because we don't want to be bold. We face this out there as far as our communities and the people that we represent. So these are just really big, important considerations that have to be taken into account. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you everyone so much. Appreciate all your hard work. Okay, we have one more. Okay, we're moving on to issue 3, May Revision Overview of Public Safety issues.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Stephen Benson with Department of Finance. I will do presentations on the Cal OES proposals that are on the agenda, and then I'll turn to my colleague Kevin Clark to go over the remaining issues that are on the agenda today.

Thank you and welcome.

Thank you. So, starting with the flood impacts, the May revision includes a $290,000,000 statewide flood support package. And the two issues you have on the agenda today are components of that overall package. That whole package was heard in Senate sub two yesterday morning just as a piece of information.

So, regarding the two issues on the agenda today, the Administration requests that Control Section 11.86 be added to the budget bill to administer a $125,000,000 one time General Fund flood contingency that would support costs associated with preparedness, response, recovery and other associated activities related to 2023 storms, the resulting snowmelt, and other flooding risks, including, but not limited to supporting communities and vulnerable populations such as farm workers and the impacts of potential future flood events.

I would note that the Governor's budget included $125,000,000 drought set aside. This essentially shifts from that drought set aside to a flood set aside, taking into account sort of current events. The reason why we have this focus on flood is that, over the last several years, the budget has included $1.5 billion for immediate drought support that includes direct relief for communities.

For example, just this last week, $71 million of current year drought to support additional relief for farm workers, for hauled water, and to remediate dried wells has gone out. And so that's an area where we've devoted a lot of resources investments into drought. And then all of the recent budgets have included $738,000,000 for flood related proposals and the Governor's Budget has 201,000,000 additional for flood. Those are mostly focused on levy type projects.

And so the idea behind this particular control section is to try and address a gap in the existing funding that already exists for drought and for flood. So the questions come up about, well, why not have this set aside be for both drought and flood? From the Administration's perspective, taking into account all of the existing investments, there's sort of this gap that needs to be addressed. And so the proposal is really to hit that sort of sweet spot.

The second piece that's in from the flood package here is a $25,000,000 one time General Fund set aside in the current fiscal year. So between now and basically the end of June, that for anticipated potential additional disaster relief and response costs that would be administered through the Disaster Response Emergency Relief Fund, or Account, sorry, or DREOA. So that's the two things on the flood. Switching to nonprofit security grants.

The May revision includes $10,000,000 one time in fiscal year 23-24 to support the Nonprofit Security Grant program, which provides funding to support, target hardening, and other physical security enhancements to nonprofit organizations that are high risk for violent acts of hate crimes due to ideology, beliefs, or mission. In each of the last two fiscal years, the budget has included $50,000,000 one time General Fund investments in this program, which is one of Calfires, or Calfires, sorry. I cover that Department as well. Cal OES most in demand grant programs.

So for example, in the 2021 $50 million appropriation, the proposals that were received totaled an ask of 57.7 million. There were 353 proposals and 289 were able to be funded. And then with the 2022 $50 million appropriation, there was $129,000,000 worth of proposals submitted. It was 751 proposals, and 285 of those proposals were able to be funded. So there's just a lot of demand for this program.

And given its critical nature, we believe that investment should continue this year. Transitioning into the gun buyback program. As part of a comprehensive public safety plan focusing to address the root causes of crime, the 2022 Budget Act included $25,000,000 one time General Fund for the Board of State and Community Corrections to implement a competitive grant program to support local law enforcement to conduct gun by buyback programs in their communities.

That program required a match from the locals when it went out, 10% match, of the amount of the grant that was being awarded. The May revision proposes to move this funding to Cal OES, and that would be accomplished through reverting the 22-23 appropriation from BSCC and making a new appropriation within OES's budget in 23-24. And the idea there is that OES would then administer the program. It would work with local law and partner with local law enforcement agencies.

It would go through and establish some guidelines and timelines to do this, and the focus and purpose would still be to provide safe disposal of opportunities for removal of guns from the street, as well as public education to raise awareness of gun violence. The program would also include the collection of data associated with the volume and types of guns that would be removed. The primary reason for switching between BSCC to Cal OES is that the Administration wants to get the funding into the field sooner. Under the BSCC program, it was specified that it had to be a competitive grant program, which required building a Committee, designing the RFP, putting the RFP out, and then you receive all of those and score them and make awards.

Under Cal OES, we think they have some experience in leading and directing state resources quickly, and that we think that as they go through and develop guidelines to administer the program under that Department, that they'll be able to find a fit that's able to get us out more expeditiously.

It may not rely on a competitive grant program, there could be other approaches that will be considered, but the idea is to try and get that funding administered into the local level more quickly and to start getting the guns off the street more quickly. Shifting into the Statewide Disaster Warehousing Operations, the May revision includes $43.3 million in 23-24 with varying amounts between 24-25 and 26-27, but 46.6 million ongoing, 15 positions for statewide multi-agency disaster response and recovery warehousing operations.

This request includes funding for the lifecycle procurement of personal protective equipment that's consistent with the Smarter Plan, but it also includes proper storage, management, distribution of a variety of emergency response commodities such as cots, Meals Ready to Eat or MREs, water, I forget the technical term, but we have these essentially portable medical facilities that can go out and pop up as they're needed. So there's a lot of commodities from a statewide emergency response that's stored and managed here and distributed as needed during a disaster.

And actually one of the things that is really helpful here is, so when we have these big disasters, FEMA frequently comes in and they'll provide direct federal assistance and sometimes they bring commodities like these portable medical facilities and cots and things like that. And when the disaster is done and they're ready to demobilize, they usually don't want to take it with them and so they give it to the state, and so we store these things for future use.

And so it's really critical that we have the space to do that appropriately. So this funding would provide for the continued leasing and operation of the warehouse space for this critical emergency response readiness component. And then lastly on the Southern Region Emergency Operations Center, the May revision includes $174.71 million one time public's Building Construction Fund or lease revenue bonds for the design build phase of the project.

This project includes construction of a new office building, warehouse communications tower, and a helipad on 15 acres of the former Fairview Developmental Center. Want to note that this is the final phase of a continuing critical infrastructure project for which the programmatic needs have been recognized for years.

This project actually started many many years ago, 20 years ago I think, and it was going to originally be a replacement on the Los Alamitos site there and they rented some significant issues with trying to fund a state project on federal land. The programmatic need to replace this has been around for a long time. Most recently, this current path was recognized with the Legislature's approval of the current project in the 21 Budget Act.

The new facility will allow for response efforts between federal, state, and local partners in the Southern California region, which will be a focal point of whenever we mobilize for Southern California disaster response. We wanted to note, as well, that Cal OES has been operating in two temporary trailers located at the Los Alamitos Joint Force Training Base since 1991, so about 30 years ago. The current facilities lack critical infrastructure space for effective daily operations.

It's not conducive to the ramp up that you need to do when there's a major disaster event and you're mobilizing local and federal personnel with the state. And these temporary trailers are designed to have a useful life of approximately 10 or 15 years. So we're more than double what they were supposed to be, and there might be a great understatement to say they are very inadequate to the current need and not in great shape.

The project is currently in the performance criteria phase which is estimated to completed in November of this year. Stopping this project at this point at a critical juncture would result in significant cost increases because of project escalations and the inflation pressures that would come when you resume the project. And it actually may result in a need to completely restart the project if various trades that are currently under contract have to be released because of the project delay.

And then lastly, just would note that this project is a key piece of the backbone to the state's emergency preparedness network and certainly to the residents of Southern California. And so it provides necessary redundancy as well with the state's primary state operations center out in Mather, so very critical to our overall state operations system as laid out in statute as well. With that, I'll stop and turn over to Kevin to take care of the rest of the proposals.

Good afternoon, Chair, Madam Chair. Kevin Clark with Department of Finance. I'll be providing an overview of notable May revision proposals for the Department of Justice, the Board of State and Community Corrections, and the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. We'll begin with three Department of Justice proposals, the first being $1.9 million General Fund in the budget year, increasing to 4 million in 26-27, and ongoing for the Department of Justice to collect, store, and process electronic discovery information pertaining to litigation.

DOJ's second proposal includes a one time loan of 400 million from the Litigation Deposit Fund to the General Fund, and that's really to assist in closing the projected statewide deficits. And that request also includes statutory changes to effectuate that loan. And finally, for DOJ, the May revision proposal includes 1.1 million dealer records of sale and six positions ongoing to continue the project approval lifecycle and address ongoing workload pertaining to the Firearms IT System Modernization Project, which we've discussed in the past.

Moving on to the Board of State and Community Corrections, the Mayor revision includes 12,000,000 one time General Fund for the existing competitive grant program to help California indigenous tribes investigate, identify, and collect information to help California to help these tribes to help these tribes and collect information involving missing and murdered indigenous people. So this population has disproportionately higher rates of crime and victimization compared to other populations and does not have the vital resources to address their needs.

So, as you'll hear from the LOA momentarily, the recommendation is to reject this proposal. However, the Administration strongly supports resources necessary to aid California's historically underserved indigenous populations. And finally, moving to the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. The May revision includes 6.1 million General Fund in the budget year and 5.3 million ongoing to fund Department of Justice legal costs associated with administrative adjudication proceedings related to peace officer decertification in pursuant to Chapter 409 Statutes of 2022. That's SB 2. So we're joined with Finance colleagues and folks from representatives from the Department to answer any questions you might have about the May revision proposals.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Jared Sippel and I'm with the LAO. So for the LAO, I'll be providing comments on OES, BSCC and post. And then my colleague Anita Lee will be wrapping up with comments on DOJ. And so I'm going to start with our comments on OES. And just so, in case you're following along, that's on page six of the agenda, I'll go in order and reference the titles, just so you know which items my comments apply to.

So for our first comments regarding the flood impacts, so we have some broader comments and recommendations on the Governor's May revision flood proposals. My colleague Mr. Benson mentioned that I think those were covered another subcommitee. But specific to this proposal, we are recommending the Legislature consider approving the $125,000,000 from the General Fund. With that in mind, we'd also recommend that the Legislature consider modifying the proposal in a couple of ways.

So first, we would suggest the Legislature consider making the funding available for both drought and flood related contingencies, such as ensuring access to drinking water and helping vulnerable households recover from flood damage. Even though the state did have a very wet winter and the hydrologic conditions have changed, some of the drought impacts still linger. So for example, there are people and communities that rely on wells that are still dry.

And so we believe that making the funding available for both drought and flood would allow the state to devote these resources to the most high priority projects over the coming year. Second, we would recommend that the Legislature add more accountability measures to the control section language to increase legislative oversight. So for example, the language could include or require a notification to occur 10 days prior to an allocation being made.

In addition, the language could include additional parameters such as requiring funding being prioritized for expenditures that are not available to be covered by local or federal funding. I'll next move on to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. And so for this particular program, while this program may have merit, the state has provided a total of 119.5 million in support of the program since 2015 to 16. Accordingly, it's reasonable to expect that many of the high priority projects have received fundings to date.

In addition, FEMA administers a federal nonprofit security grant program that would potentially remain available should state funding not be available in the next year. And then finally, due to the anticipated revenue weakness that my colleague who started off this subcommitee hearing mentioned at the start, our office does project again, revenue weakness in the out years and the need for additional budget solutions. And so with that in mind, we would recommend rejecting this proposal.

Also, given the budget condition. I'll then move on to the gun buyback program, which is next on the list. So we have a couple of comments related to this particular proposal. So first, we would recommend approving the reversion of the gun buyback program from BSCC. As none of the funding has been spent or committed to date, it could be better used to address the state's budget situation, especially given the revenue weakness that our office projects.

Second, we would recommend rejecting the proposed OES augmentation to administer the gun buyback program. It's unclear whether the new program at OES would reduce firearm related crime for a couple of reasons. First, it would no longer be subject to the requirements of the BSCC program, which required research based best practices such as requiring that firearms be in working order in order to receive an incentive and prioritization of the types of firearms used in crime.

In addition, the lack of details for the new program at OES makes it unclear whether the funding would be used effectively. And then I will summarize, I'll group the last two, the State Disaster Warehousing Operations and the Southern Region Emergency Operations Center. I'll give you our recommendations, but our comments under pending those two are the same. So for the Statewide Disaster and Warehousing Operations proposal, we are recommending approving the funding for one year as opposed to ongoing as proposed by the Governor, and then, for the Southern Region Emergency Operations Center, we're recommending rejecting the proposal at this time.

The 22-23 budget package included budget bill language that requires OES to submit a report to the Legislature by February of 2024, and that will include such information as a description of the department's existing emergency response capacity and resources, emergency response goals, objectives, metrics, the State's ability to meet these goals, objectives, and metrics, including regional response capabilities to handle all hazards, emergency situations, and key response activities.

In our view, we anticipate that the Legislature would be in a better position to evaluate these proposals next year with this forthcoming report on emergency capacity once that is submitted. And that, I think, concludes my remarks on OES, and then I will go on to the Board of State and Community Corrections. And so I am on the bottom of page seven, again, of the agenda for those following along, and we have comments on two of the BSCC proposals.

So for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Grants Program, we are recommending rejecting this proposal, as the need for additional funding at this time is unclear. The 22-23 budget provided BSCC with $12 million from the General Fund over 12 years to establish this program. BSCC is currently in the process of accepting applications for this initial funding through June of this year, and then is required to submit an initial report to the Legislature in December of this year on the status of this existing program.

We believe that the Legislature would be in a better position to assess the merits and any additional funding needed for this program after this first round of funding has been awarded and this initial report has been submitted to the Legislature. And then I will move on to the post release community supervision item. And that's on the top of page eight on the agenda.

So for the post release community supervision proposal, as you may recall, the Governor's Budget in January provided 8.21 million one time from the General Fund for grants to county probation departments to support the temporary increase in supervision population caused by Proposition 57. The May revision provides an additional 1.1 million for these grants based on updated caseload projections. We continue to recommend rejecting this funding as it is likely not needed, and again, given the state's budget condition, would come at the expense of previously identified legislative priorities.

And then finally, to wrap up my comments, I will cover the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training. So this is the last item on page eight of your agenda. So for this particular proposal, we have three recommendations. First, we recommend approving the funding for three years rather than on an ongoing basis as proposed by the Governor, because Post has recently implemented the Peace Officer Decertification program and does not have actual data to determine what ongoing level of resources are needed at this time.

Second, we recommend requiring Post to report by January of 2026 on its annual DOJ cost to support the Peace Officer Decertification cases, which would inform future funding decisions by the Legislature. And then, finally, we'd recommend adopting provisional language that would require any unspent funds to revert to the General Fund, as it's possible that Post may have overestimated the amount of funding needed for DOJ cost. Given that Post is still building its staffing capacity and the number of cases that will reach the Office of Administrative Hearings is uncertain. And so, essentially, for this proposal, we recognize and agree with Post that there will be some ongoing level of cost associated with it.

However, right now, since we don't have the actual data to base ongoing funding decisions on, we think it's best to make this limited term, give Post time to collect additional data, and then Post can submit a proposal for additional ongoing resources in the future for legislative consideration. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have at the appropriate time, but before doing that, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Anita Lee to cover DOJ. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anita Lee with the LAO. So if you'd like to follow along with your agenda, we're going to be going back to page six, towards the bottom of the agenda, and we have several comments for you related to some of the DOJ proposals. So the first one is related to the proposed loan from the Litigation Deposit Fund to the General Fund.

We recommend that the Legislature adopt a language requiring the Department of Finance and DOJ to report 30 days before the loan is made to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee a list of the cases for which the litigation proceeds would be used to make that loan, as well as to include some key information for each of the cases on that list.

And an example of that includes when the litigation proceeds were received, what state funds would have been eligible to receive those monies, as well as any restrictions on the use of the funds. And this information is going to be really critical when loan repayments occur to make sure that the state is in compliance with the court settlements, sorry, the settlement agreements and the court judgments that are underlying each of those cases.

If you turn to page seven of your agenda. Just as a reminder to the Committee, we previously provided recommendations on the concealed carry weapon proposal, as well as the ammunition authorization program at your hearing on April 27, so we won't review those again. The third item was presented by the Department of Finance, which is the Firearm Information Technology System Modernization project, or FITSM.

On this one, we recommend that the Legislature provide funding only necessary to complete the alternatives analysis stage or stage two of the state's project approval lifecycle process, as well as to maintain baseline costs pending legislative approval of that alternatives analysis. In conversations with DOJ, they estimate that that report or that analysis will be submitted to the California Department of Technology for review at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.

And so, as an example, it would be reasonable for the Committee to provide funding just for the budget year for 23-24, but not provide any of the ongoing funding. And we make this recommendation because the project may have significantly changed from when the Legislature last conducted its meaningful review, which was in June of 2020, when they completed stage one of the process.

And so, given the potential complexity and cost of this project, it would be premature to provide ongoing funding before the Legislature has a chance to review the alternatives analysis. In particular, given the state's budget situation as referenced by my colleague, the Legislature would likely have some thoughts in terms of how the project would proceed and be funded, which could then impact the needs for ongoing resources and how we fund that.

On page seven, the last item that we'll cover is the Office of General Counsel proposal that wasn't presented by the Department of Finance, so we're going to briefly summarize that first before providing you with our comments. So that was an April finance proposal. It proposes to internally redirect 13.8 million General Fund and 75 positions within the Department of Justice. The redirection really comes from three areas. 6.2 million and 19 positions would come from the civil law section.

4.6 million and 36 positions would shift the entirety of their research center to this new office. And then 3,000,020 It positions from their California Justice Information System, or CJIS division, which is the hub of all of the IT activities, would also be shifted over here, which would also include shifting the entire cybersecurity unit under this new unit. And so when we reviewed this proposal, these are more comments for consideration rather than recommendation.

It was actually unclear to us whether or not this new proposed office would be the most effective and efficient way of achieving some of DOJ's goals related to risk mitigation, for example. So to give you an example of that, one of the goals was to improve information security and risk mitigation.

So currently the Cybersecurity unit is located within CJIS, kind of the hub for DOJ's It activities, and its chief Information security officer, the CISO, currently reports to the chief of CJIS, who is the chief Information officer, the CIO. And so if that's a concern, rather than thinking about reorganizing within CJIS, which was a possibility, this proposal would propose to transfer the entire cybersecurity unit to the general counsel.

And it would also have the CISO, that chief Information security officer, reporting to the general counsel, whose expertise is in legal areas, rather than the chief information officer, as it currently is. And in particular, we would note that this is in direct contrast to state law that generally requires most departments, not DOJ, but most other departments, to have their CISOs report to their CIOs.

And so we wanted to flag this for the Legislature because in particular, the Legislature has interest and incentive to make sure that the information that it's getting from DOJ related to these It areas is of good quality. And the reason for that is DOJ is one of the departments that is not subject to California Department of Technology Oversight, and they in fact actually certify their compliance that they meet certain minimum information security management requirements directly to the Legislature.

And so that's where you have kind of incentive to make sure that the quality of information is really good. And so that will conclude our comments. Happy to answer any questions, and I do apologize for the significant use of acronyms on that one. That was a lot to get out.

Okay, thank you all very much. Appreciate your presentation. Just with going back to the BSCC and moving to the OES, let me make sure I have that here. Right here, the buyback. It's a buyback. Okay. Do you know why the BSCC has not the funding for the buyback program has not gone out?

So BSCC is present, and I'll certainly let them comment as well. I think a lot of it's the nature of the way the program was specified when the appropriation was made.

Okay. Thank you. Hi.

Cynthia Mendoza, Department of Finance. The BSCC, they currently have requirements to do a competitive grant program along with a 10% match, and they are required to go through specific processes that take time to get the grant funds out. So that's why the funding hasn't been spent yet, because they have to go through and get an advisory council together and set up very specific processes that take time.

And so with this change, it's intended to take away the competitive component part as well as the match part, and allow OES to work on getting those funds and work with the local partners and get the funding out as quickly as possible as they work with those local partners.

I wanted to also provide some additional context. I'm Katie Howard, the Executive Director of the BSCC. Hi, Senator. Last year's budget included five new competitive grant programs for the BSCC. Some of those we had to prioritize based on encumbrance deadlines for when the funding had to be put out into the field. In particular, that applied to the mobile probation services grant. So we had to move on that one first.

We've been having actually a fair amount of difficulty in the last two or three years getting volunteers to come and work on our executive steering committees to build these grants. So we had solicited and tried to get people to sign up for Gun Buyback, Organized Retail Theft, Vertical Prosecution, the Mobile Probation Grant, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, all of these new programs that we've been working on, and I think part of it is pandemic related fatigue.

People just don't seem to have the extra time to volunteer and do this work. It's a lot of work. So we simply had not been able to get to the gun buyback program yet. We didn't have sufficient committee members. And as Mr. Benson had already explained, and Cindy as well, the competitive process does take longer. So my understanding of what the part of the thought process was in making this change is that it's not designated to be a competitive grant which takes much longer. So I think the Administration feels like OES is going to be able to put it out in the field more quickly, and that's the goal here. So I just also wanted to let you know there's just been a whole lot of grant work on our plate, so I wanted to let you know that.

Okay, thank you. Is there anything, I know, I think Mr. Benson, someone described the buyback program under BSCC has required certain conditions. And so I guess my question is, does that mean that by moving it over to OES, that those conditions are lifted, they're no longer required? I'm not sure what conditions you meant, but does that mean everything just gets to be done however they want to do it?

Well, so a couple of the ones we already mentioned, is there's a match requirement. I think as we switch it over to OES, the thought is we would not have a match requirement, so OES will still partner with local law enforcement to try and develop what's the best way is to roll out the program and set it up.

But we're not requiring a match, which I think is difficult for a lot of local entities to be able to come up with in order to participate in a program like this. So we wanted to take that component out there's. Also, as was talked about, there's a requirement to put together a committee and develop some of that RFP. So it's the delivery process that we expect to be different. I don't know right now whether or not under OES, we would do it as, say, a formula grant or if we would do some sort of state sponsored events or there are different ways that it could be delivered.

But the idea is to partnership with local law enforcement to figure out sort of the best way to deliver it so that the money can get into the field quickly and that we can start trying to get some guns off the street that don't need to be there, the appropriate ones to try and collect in.

Okay? Yes, Ms. Lee.

Anita Lee with the Legislative Analyst Office. I think it might be a little bit helpful if we provide a little bit of context from the legislative deliberations that happened the last go around, because there was a lot of conversation that then led to the budget bill language that was included as part of the BSCC program. So first, in terms of sort of the match, I would note that it was decided it was a 10% cash or in kind.

And so I think in terms of thinking about in kind, in kind also includes participation, for example, of local law enforcement officers. And so I think that that was a consideration that was incorporated into it. My colleague, Mr. Sippel mentioned there was also a focus on using evidence based practices, based on research, to focus on things that were more likely to then reduce gun violence.

And so those included things like making sure working guns were provided before providing incentive, focusing on areas that potentially had crime rates. And as part of that, as part of the application, the Legislature included language to then also require the submission of data. That you basically established certain levels of proof in order to help prioritize where the money could most be meaningful and be more helpful.

In addition to this, just in terms of thinking about the context of it, the Legislature has taken action over a number of years to put money related to firearms. So as a really good example of it to be proactive, for example, the Legislature, as part of last year's budget, put 40,000,000 one time at the judicial branch to remove firearms from individuals who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders, restraining orders, just generally other gun violence restraining orders, civil orders at the time they became prohibited.

So it was kind of a various pronged approach related to that. So I think that's helpful for the Legislature as they consider it. The one last thing that we would also highlight is on the judicial branch item, right? We were talking about the Burn Skip program, those federal funds.

So we would note that in the federal funds that are coming, the local component is actually going through the BSCC process right now, but it is envisioned that one of the eligible programs also on that side would be gun buyback programs as well. So I do also kind of want to highlight that you do have this other source of federal funding that is now kind of being available for that purpose. So hopefully that helps with the discussion on that item.

Okay. Some of those, I don't call them conditions, but some of those issues, are they going to be transferred over to OES? Putting aside the grant process, as you described as being too slow. But these other issues which don't have anything to do with the grant are just obviously important issues. Would those transfer also to OES?

So we're certainly open to discussing with leg staff which portions of provisional language from last year should maybe be retained and would be workable within an OES process. Things like evidence based. I mean, we certainly plan on partnering with local law enforcement and finding out hey, here's programs they already run and what's successful and what's not. So getting best practices that way is certainly going to be part of what OES does. But like I said, we're open to discussing last year's provisional language and finding out what's most appropriate.

Technically, it was legislation that where these conditions were all included or have been included multiple legislations.

It's in budget bill language. So when it was negotiated as part of the budget process, right, when the Legislature reached agreement with the Administration. So it was something that was discussed and actively decided on. So that's the way we would...

And approved.

And approved.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that we're not going to sidestep what has already been discussed within the Legislature because we're moving it to OES.

So I certainly appreciate that. Like I said, we're open to discussing the provisional language and what stuff would be best to continue to carry over. The idea is to sort of reimagine the program in a way that allows it to go forward more quickly. And so some of that stuff could retain and some of it might not work in that context.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Let's see, on the funding related to flooding, could you describe that a little bit more in terms of what it's actually for? Is it levee repair or is it costs not covered by insurance? And who will decide what to spend the funding on?

So the Administration would put together proposals, put together planned allocations that we would notice the Legislature about in terms of deciding how it's done. The Administration, of course, work with DWR and CDFA and other departments that have programs that help with the impacts of communities that are involved. So for example, some of the ways that it could be used would be for farm worker relief, other economic impacts that will result from it. It's not envisioned to go towards like levee repair type of projects.

There's other funding that's been appropriated over the last several years and some additional is proposed in the Governor's Budget that would go specifically to levy type projects. So it's sort of fill in a gap of, you have the Disaster Response Emergency Operations Account, or DREOA, that's used for sort of immediate emergency operations activities.

And so when you think of get a levee break, there's the immediate stuff you need to do to sort of patch it for a time period or Swiftwater Rescue or some of the other things, setting up medical stations or bringing water. And there's some immediate response things that we use for DREOA for, but there are sort of more permanent long term or more sort of economic impact related things that DREOA is not eligible to be used for.

And so the 125,000,000 would be used for those types of programs. So it's sort of the gap in between your permanent levee projects and your immediate emergency response stuff where you'd go in and try and do some of the economic relief type of things with farm workers and those types of projects.

Okay, I'm glad you mentioned farm workers. The people who many of the people who would be impacted. And assistance to the farm workers has been mentioned. And I know in different conversations that I've had, could you tell me how could I figure out in total and from what pots is actually going to people like the farm workers, and especially if they don't have immigration status?

Yeah, some of that I will not have the programmatic expertise to provide right now. I'd be more than happy to sort of follow up with folks that do to get back to you on that. But there are some specific. Like, as a part of the $290,000,000 flood package, one of the allocations in there is a $25,000,000 one time allocation to a small Agricultural Business Relief grant. And so that's one area that certainly goes very specific to the populations that you're talking about. But I'll have to follow up with colleagues at Finance who have more specific connection with those programs to get you more details on that.

Thank you. And on the Department of Justice, on the Litigation Deposit Loan Fund. I remember in the hearing we had discussed about this, but if there's going to be a loan of $400 million from this fund, shouldn't we be using it for its intended purposes, all of the intended uses of the penalties as they are signed by the courts, for example, tenant protection or small claims or wage theft? Isn't that what this deposit. I mean, we could easily increase more funding to those types of issues and those needs. So why would we take this money where we could use it where it's needed to borrow that?

Yeah. Good afternoon. Kevin Clark from Finance. So we did factor that into our calculation when looking at the amount that we're recommending as a loan to the General Fund. And the $400 million amount represents roughly one third of the total balance of the LDF. And so the LDF has a rough balance of 1.2 billion. And so the 400 million, we don't believe will affect DOJ operations and the use of the funds, or use of the dollars, or use of the programs, that utilize the LDF as a source of revenues. And it is a loan, so it would be repaid.

Is there a time period when it would be repaid?

We don't have a specific date we are looking at outside of the budget window. So that's beyond 26, 27, maybe. Continuing conversation with the Legislature and the Department of Justice as well to make sure that the loan wouldn't be inadvertently affecting program operations.

Okay. That's all I have. Senator?

Yeah. I think we'll go backwards because we're already on the topic of this loan. The fund has 1.2 billion. Is that what you said? What does it expend every year? What's expended out of that fund every year?

I don't actually have the exact. I don't have the exact amount with me. I know that the fund is the primary source of revenues for multiple DOJ special funds, including the Attorney General Antitrust Fund, Unfair Competition Law Fund, other special funds. If that's something that, we'd be happy to follow up with you on the exact kind of expenditure amounts.

I think it's around $20 million. So we got $1.2 billion sitting in an account because we're collecting way more every year than we're expending. So to my colleague's question, is why isn't this just being used for DOJ instead of a loan? We should look at starting to draw that down a little bit at some point because we obviously don't need that much money sitting in that account.

And perhaps this is a better way than loaning the General Fund that perhaps DOJ pays for DOJ stuff and those programs, because it can do both at this point. Because the last thing our General Fund needs is another loan to pay back. So that's my concern on that one and really much in alignment with my colleague's there. Let's see, there's another. Okay, we're going to go backwards to the gun buyback program.

So we're switching it from one agency to another that's going to be in charge of the gun buyback program. My issue with it is something that was brought up by this gentleman about its effectiveness. There are cities that have done gun buyback programs. LA City has done that. But at the end of the day, was it effective? No. I can answer the question. No, it wasn't effective.

So we're going to spend $25 million and a bunch of time trying to create the grants so city can access the grant money to do gun buyback programs that are not effective in the sole purpose of the buyback program, which is to reduce gun violence. I kind of feel like that $25 million can be better put to use trying to get the guns from the already armed and prohibited persons that are out there.

There's 24,000 of them. Because I think those are the people most likely to actually use the gun. And that would have an effect, at least temporarily, until they go grab another one. The other concern I have about the buyback program is when somebody brings a gun that was recently used and turns it in for the buyback program, how do they prevent that from becoming, because sometimes that's the weapon they used on a crime. How do they track that back If they turn it in?

How do they use that? Because a lot of times the detectives want the weapon, but if they put it into the gun buyback program, it's a good way of getting rid of your gun that is now traceable to the crime. So I struggle with the gun buyback program, as you can see, but I struggle more with sinking $25 million into something that is not effective. Do you have any studies that show that it is effective? Is there any, like, even one that says this is an effective way of reducing gun violence?

I don't have any studies, personally. I know that OES will work with local law enforcement to try and consider a number of those factors, I'm sure, as we put the program together. But I don't have any studies.

Okay.

Anita Lee with the LAO. So when this proposal first emerged as part of last year's budget package, our office did take a look at sort of what research was available out there. The research was a little bit mixed. Some of the successes occurred in countries that know, for example, Australia is oftentimes used as an example, but has a very different kind of gun regulatory structure than we have here in California and the United States as a whole.

So it was mixed, I think, in terms of when my colleague, when we were having this conversation about the budget bill language, including language for what makes it most effective. Those were pulling from studies, and they're limited studies that kind of indicated what a more successful gun buyback program is. And so it's like, what are the factors that would make a gun buyback program more successful? And hopefully that's a little bit of that distinction. And so I think that that was one of the things that the Legislature thought about in terms of, like, if we're going to do a gun buyback program, let's at least make sure that it's as effective as it can be. And so hopefully that helps as you're considering the proposal.

I thank you for that. The last question topic I wanted to cover was going back to the ammunition authorization program and the fee increase for that. Because it seems to be that if the existing ammunition transaction fee would have to be increased by a factor of five or six to cover what they need for the program, which would actually make the fee more expensive than the product. I don't know that that's probably a good taxing model for folks that are going hunting and things like that. So how do we justify that to people? That the fee that they have to pay is more than the product they're buying?

Kevin Clark from Department of Finance. We'll have a representative from Department of Justice speak to that.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. I knew you were bored out there, so I thought, you know what? Let's put her to work. Thank you.

Hi. Ashley Harp, Department of Justice. In response to the question regarding the transaction fee versus the cost of ammunition, just want to highlight that the fee would be per transaction. So someone could purchase multiple boxes of ammunition and would only pay one fee.

So they'd have to buy multiple?

They could.

So it'd be a lot better if they just bought a whole slew of it than just one pack.

That would be an option for someone.

Yeah, that might have to be looked at because that just encourages people to buy a bunch of ammunition that's just going to lay around. All right, thank you. Thank you for the answers to my questions. And, oh, I did have one more. Who wants to answer this one? So they're going to have 70 more ongoing positions in the DOJ? What's going on? For internal legal advice? Because I thought the DOJ was all attorneys.

So Kevin Clark, Department of Finance. So it's net zero adjustment of current resources. Right. So it's not 70 additional positions. It's a transfer of positions from one unit, one program, to another to establish a new program. So not any new resources.

Okay, very good. Thank you all.

We're getting there.

Okay, thank you very much. We are done. Appreciate everyone here, all your time. Thank you very much. I appreciate all your hard work. We will now move we're at the end of our three parts of the agenda. We will now move on to anyone wanting to provide public comment for any or all of the parts of the hearing today on all of the items. We will take public comment for 15 minutes till 5:00 p.m. Today's participant number is 877-226-8163 and the access code is 7362834. Now, we're going to begin with witnesses in person here in room 1200. Thank you very much. Go ahead.

Thank you, Senators. Darby Kernan, representing Amity Foundation, WestCare, and HealthRIGHT 360. These are three nonprofits that work with CDCR to provide reentry services and other programming. When you were discussing the California model today, California already has an amazing reentry model. We let people out of prison who are qualified up to two years early. They are in these programs, they are given education, they get jobs, they get anger management, parenting classes, they get reintroduced to society, they get savings accounts from their jobs, and then they transition back with their families in the community. Stanford has done a study of this program and has said how successful, over 85% successful drops recidivism. It's an amazing program. And so we have a great model in California.

One of the things, though, in the May revise, which we appreciate, the contract rates for these programs are exceptionally low. In some cases $70, which you couldn't even get a Motel Six for, for a night. And so while the May revised looks at addressing this problem in June 2024, we have a current problem where these programs are going to end. We are about to lose up to 300 beds because the contract rates. And last year the Legislature took action to expand this successful program. No expansion has occurred, no contracts have been entered into. We are only losing capacity. So we are asking for you to take a look at this and help address the contract issue. Thank you.

We have about 10 people on the phones here calling in, so please make it as briefly as quickly as possible, or else folks are going to get left out. We need to leave as close to five as possible.

Got it. Well, thank you, Chair, committee, and staff. Ryan Morimune with the California State Association of Counties, also here on behalf of the urban counties of California and the Rural County Representatives of California, here to provide brief remarks as it relates to part C. And so for issue number one, we appreciated the updated level of care funding for legal aid.

However, we'd like to note that we submitted a letter to the committee detailing further concerns and considerations for successful implementation. In regards to issue number two, the Division of Juvenile Justice population update. While we recognize that the DJJ population continues to decline, we would like to note that there isn't resources for those that are returning to their county of commitment. That is absolutely critical for the programming and especially the specialized treatment for positive youth outcomes. And then lastly, in regards to issue number three, we appreciate the administration's recognition of the additional workload for our county probation with the $9.3 million to manage the increase of the number of individuals on post-release community supervision. Thank you for your consideration.

Next.

Hello. Madam Chairwoman and senators. My name is Dr. Stuart Bussey and I'm President of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, AFSCME 206. We appreciate the governor's attempt to increase access by all these extra positions that we mentioned before. We do have a problem with a $39 million of contracted physicians in addition to about $100 million that goes out every year to psychiatric contractors. As Dr. Metta mentioned before, the three buckets we have are the onsite, the most valuable, the telemedicine, which cannot do acute care, and the contractors, which are temporary. So we want to consider repurposing some of this money, tens of millions of dollars into a salary increase for our onsite psychiatrists. I have the numbers here. It's about 140 positions. If it was a 25% increase, that would only cost $15 to $25 million, depending on how many telemedicine people were involved. We tried collective bargaining and everything else. So we have to come to the Legislature for this hitting our heads.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Madam Chair. George Osborn, also for UAPD. Dr. Bussey hit on the most important parts. I'm not going to repeat what he said, but I would ask a question, and it's brought up today several times about the budget deficit we're looking for. During my rounds of last week, someone asked why would the state pay two to three times for a contractor what they can get a civil service physician for a psychiatrist. Think about that. Two to three times as much. Now, the increase that the governor has asked for in a telehealth budget is not going to increase the compensation for onsite psychiatrists who desperately need those increases in order to be competitive with outside business. That's what's holding us back from treating those the most severely ill patients in the nation right here in our prisons. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, please.

Thank you. Madam Chair, Rabbi Yaakov Subar, California Director of the Agrath Israel of America, representing the Orthodox Jewish community. We strongly urge the funding of the nonprofit security program per the request of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, which we believe is 80 million is a reasonable request for the safety that it provides. With the frightening rise of anti-Semitic and hate crimes, many of our religious institutions are at high risk to terrorism and violent attacks.

Just a few weeks ago a few months ago, a gunman staked out two synagogues just a few blocks from my home. And he waited for some of the worshippers to leave services, and he very well could have chosen my synagogue as I left. As the representative from the Cal OES said, only less than 40% of the organizations who applied last year for this crucial, vital grant received it. So the need is real and it can save lives. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Good afternoon. Tiffany Phan on behalf of California Court Appointed Special Advocate Association, or Cal CASA. Just want to thank you for the restoration of the funding. We recognize it was first included in the Senate's Protect Our Progress budget plan. It is now included in the Governor's may revise. So I just want to thank you for your leadership on the item.

Thank you. Next, please.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Lindsay Imai Hong. I'm with hand in hand the Domestic employers network. And we are seeking to educate and organize the 2 million households that employ home care workers, house cleaners and nannies. And just here in strong support of funding, the funding requests that would implement the SB three, two, one, Cal OSHA Committee.

These specifically would go to expanding and extending a very successful domestic worker and employer education outreach program, as well as to pilot a new Fund for Low resource, Low income domestic employers, particularly elders, people with disabilities who employ for home care. These came directly out of recommendations that we heard from domestic employers themselves. Thank you for the consideration.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Next, please.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Maegan Ortiz, executive director of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California IDEPSCA in Los Angeles. We're disappointed that the budget recommendations for the SB 321 committee were not included in the governor's May revise. We respectfully ask that you consider including it in the final budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee members. Kimberly Alvarenga, on behalf of the California Domestic Workers, also not repeating what my colleagues mentioned, but really requesting, hoping that the final budget includes the recommendations, the budget request to implement the SB 321 advisory committee recommendations. Particularly, we have over 300,000 domestic workers that are completely excluded from OSHA protections. And these recommendations would go a long way in taking the first step to actually protect them. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. We see no more people here in person in the room. We're going to move now, Moderator, to the phones. Could you give me an idea of how many witnesses we have waiting?

We have about 16 in queue, Madam Chair.

Okay, just want to urge everyone on the phones. Please keep these remarks as short as possible. You'll have the opportunity to send them in writing as well. Go ahead, Moderator.

All right, we'll begin with line 60. Please go ahead.

Madeline Harris from Leadership Counsel. I'm commenting to ask for your support for the governor's proposal of 150,000,000 for flood response across the state and your support for ensuring that disadvantaged communities impacted by flooding like Planada, Pajaro, and Allensworth get the flood response funding that they need. Planada alone requires 20.3 million to recover and so we just want to ensure that Planada receives at least 20.3 million for their flood recovery needs and that all disadvantaged flood-impacted communities receive flood response funding. Thank you.

Thank you for calling. Next.

Next, we'll go to line 65. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name is Olga Rivas and I am calling in support of the $20 million for the flood recovery funding to the Planada community. I am not a resident of this community, yet I have many friends that live there who were infected by the flood and continue to struggle to this day. I do have my granddaughter who attends elementary school in Planada who not only regressed in her studies due to COVID, yet also another two weeks more due to the flooding of her school. Instruction was not available at all. And after returning to school, studies took place in an alternative facility other than her classroom. So please help make sure that the recovery money goes to Planada. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 70. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. My name is Luz Gallegos, calling on behalf of TODEC out of the Inland Empire, Coachella Valley, and part of the Safety Net for All Coalition. Last year the governor said the unemployment benefits for included workers should be considered and accounted for as part of our annual budget process. But this year he did not include this in his annual budget proposal. We can't continue to piecemeal the farm workers that keep our state fed. We can't keep neglecting our workforce. The need to establish a system that provides vulnerable excluded workers. A safety net lifeline has been long overdue. We must protect and value our excluded workforce. Our workers are not disposable. I urge the Senate to continue to prioritize this for more equitable and resilient California. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll be going to line 74. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, senators. My name is Carlos Amador and I'm calling on behalf of the Safe Net for All Coalition, which is advocating for the creation of an unemployment benefits program for excluded migrant workers. Such program would be important for both workers and employers. Unemployment benefits are most effective economic stabilizer of our economy and ways to support workers in the community as well as their families to make sure they don't fall into poverty. I want to make sure that the proposal, Safety Net for All gets included into the final budget and I urge the Senate to continue to prioritize this important proposal. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to Line 72. Please go ahead.

Good evening, Chair and committee members. This is Ginny Oshiro on behalf of the Transformative In-Prison Workgroup, also known as the TPW, providing comment on issue number two, the San Quentin proposal. We really appreciate the comments by the LAO. And while the California model at San Quentin is a step in the right direction, especially as it comes with the acknowledgment that prisons should meet the rehabilitation needs of incarcerated people, it's crucial to extend these efforts to all correctional facilities in California. We respectfully urge the committee to increase support and state funding for community-based in-prison programs beyond San Quentin's, because every incarcerated Californian, regardless of their location, deserves access to rehabilitative and transformative programs and services. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 87. Please go ahead.

Good evening, Chair and members. This is Janice O'Malley with the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. I just wanted to touch on issues related to issue two in the CDCR budget. We'd like to echo concerns raised by the committee on the cost and lack of transparency related to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center proposal. AFSCME members are the frontline workers at CDCR who provide the mental health and rehab services, and we're generally supportive of the reimagination of a true center of rehabilitation.

However, we are disappointed with the lack of engagement with AFSCME workers who can currently provide these services. AFSCME also supports funding to expand the use of mental health within the statewide mental health program to include psychology and social work disciplines. We've been working with the administration on alleviating the chronic vacancies in the program and believe that this will have a positive impact to the workforce. And lastly, we're disappointed in the nearly $40 million dedicated to contract medical services. The state continues to rely on expensive, temporary contractors instead of making true investments into its current workforce. And we believe these funds could be better, more fairly distributed to increase wages and benefits to workers performing the same task. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 67. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Josh Gauger. On behalf of the Chief Probation Officers of California, we want to express our support for the additional post-release community supervision funding under issue three and part C. These are important resources for county probation departments to provide reentry supervision and support to individuals being released early from state prison as a result of Proposition 57. Also, we want to continue to express disappointment and concern that the administration is not proposing any direct resources to county probation departments for the population of youth transitioning from the Division of Juvenile Justice to county facilities as the state closes their facilities at the end of this fiscal year. The mayor revision includes hundreds of millions of dollars for new public safety initiatives that does not adequately resources county probation departments to deliver programs and services for the prior state initiatives. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we go to line 83. Please go ahead.

My name is Ruth Silver Taube and I'm the director of the Santa Clara County Wage Theft Coalition and policy committee co-chair of the California Coalition for Worker Power. CCWP strongly urges this committee to restore the second year of funding. I've participated in CWOP since its inception from Step Forward Foundation in Northern California and helped create CWOP outreach material.

As a result of our work with CWOP, we've been able to increase our capacity and now have Spanish-speaking, Mandarin-speaking, Tagalog-speaking, and Vietnamese-speaking staff that provide culturally competent and linguistically competent outreach and education on COVID and workers' rights. As we move into the COVID recovery phase, it is more important than ever to continue to fund worker outreach through CWOP. Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 82. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Cliff Berg, on behalf of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, JPAC, representing over 32 statewide and regional Jewish organizations in California, we want to first off, thank the Governor for funding the Nonprofit Security Grant Program in the May. Revise $10 million is a good first step. However, we do support the Jewish Caucus requests for a full funding at $80 million. I would point out that last year, the state funded the program at $50 million.

The state was only able to approve 38% of the applicants. The bulk, over 97% of the grants issued were to non Jewish nonprofit organizations Latino, LGBT, Muslim, all potential targets of hate, violence and terrorism. Unfortunately, the reality our state is facing today is that these nonprofits are very much in the bullseye of white supremacists and other terrorist organizations that are using violence to foster hatred against minorities of every ethnic and religious persuasion. Our nonprofits and our communities need your support.

Thank you.

We urge your support of the Jewish Caucus proposal. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we go to line 89. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Katie Wutchiett with Legal Aid at Work, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the rights of lower-wage workers. I'm calling in about part B, issue one because we're very concerned about the impact of taking money from Disability Insurance Fund to pay for interest owed on the Unemployment Insurance Fund. The Disability Insurance Fund is 100% paid for by workers, and that money is intended to go 100% to supporting sick workers and workers who are caring for their families. The unemployment fund interest is a long-term expense. This is not the solution. And taking money from workers when there are very real improvements to the paid family leave program that can and should be made instead isn't justifiable. Thanks.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 92. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. My name is Andrea Amavisca and I'm calling on behalf of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which is a member of the Safety Net for All Coalition. I'm calling to thank Chair Durazo for championing unemployment benefits for excluded immigrant workers and to thank the Senate for including our proposal in our Budget Priorities Plan this year. We were disappointed to see that the $353 million budget request was not included in, the governor's may revise, and we respectfully urge the Senate to continue pushing for this funding to be included in the final budget to ensure a more equitable and resilient California. Additionally, the California Immigrant Policy Center is in strong support of the California Domestic Workers Coalition's budget request of 45 million to protect the health and safety of domestic workers and ask that it be included in the final budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 94. Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Natasha Castro and I'm with the California Work and Family Coalition. We're a statewide alliance focused on expanding access to paid family leave. I'm calling in to express our concerns with part B, issue one, which is the proposal to take money from the Disability Insurance Fund to pay for interest owed on the unemployment insurance loan balance. These funds should be used to pay workers benefits and should be used to improve access and address barriers low-wage workers face in obtaining paid family leave and disability insurance. The state should not take workers money and use it to cover an employer-funded program. Thank you.

Next, we'll be going to line 95. Please go ahead. Hold on.

Next.

95. You're open.

Hello?

Yes, please go ahead.

Hi. My name is Fennel Doyle. I'm calling on behalf of D5 Weather Reporters and as an advocate for fast, clean mobility for all levels and indigenous habitat restoration in the drawdown economy. The transit serves as budget cuts embody greenwashing by each of you. Cutting essential public mass transit completely undermines the State's ability to meet its climate goals, which are built on the goals of increasing transit mode share significantly and substantially increasing the service levels. Transportation emissions are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, about 40%. But today, about 65 million trips a month are taken on transit in California, reducing the vehicle miles traveled by hundreds of millions each year. Almost 60,000% of California residents who commute to public transit have a household income below 35,000. Over half a million California households own no vehicle.

Thank you.

Public transportation for their daily needs.

Thank you very much for calling. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 95. Please go ahead, or 98. Apologies. 98.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Andrea Gonzalez. I'm calling from the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. I'm also calling on behalf of the 160 organizations who are part of the Safety Net for All Coalition. Most of all, we want to thank Chair Durazo for championing unemployment benefits for excluded workers. We want to urge the Senate to continue to prioritize this for a more equitable and resilient California. Additionally, we're calling on behalf of CCWP in support of CWOP. We're asking to preserve the funding for CWOP, and we also want to make sure that CWOP is renamed to the California Workplace Outreach Project. Although the pandemic is over, wage deaths and workplace hazards have existed before the pandemic, and we need to address those urgent needs too. CWOP is built a strong network of organizations that connect with California's most vulnerable communities. Thank you so much.

Thank you for calling.

Next, we'll go to line 91. Please go ahead.

Hello, thank you to this committee. My name is Olivia Gleason with Californians United for a Responsible Budget, CURB, which is a coalition of over 80 organizations. I have a few comments on issue two corrections. First, we urge this committee to reject additional funding allocation to San Quentin. A truly bold change in California requires direct investment in community-based services and resources proven to contribute to safety and health, not more funding to CDCR. Next, we support the closure of CVSP Chuckawalla Valley State Prison. There is no wrong prison to close, only poor planning processes to support the state in developing a comprehensive plan for prison closure. CURB created a prison closure roadmap which could support any city or town with the prison in shifting the local economy and community away from a perceived reliance on incarceration and toward healthy lifestyle and community investments and services, infrastructure, and high road jobs such as those in Blythe and Riverside County. We hope CURB can partner with the state and local community members to ensure the full opportunity of prison closures and full community investment can be realized.

Thank you very much. Next, please. We have, Moderator, how many are still on the lines? We're 10 minutes past our time.

We have about nine others.

Okay, please cut it off. And also, I'm going to ask everyone, please just say your name or organization and whether you're for or against a particular issue. Go ahead.

Next, we'll go to line 93. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. Jessica Stender on behalf of Equal Rights Advocates and the Stronger California Advocates Network in strong support of inclusion of SB 321. Recommended funding for safety and health for domestic workers, as well as the Safety Net for All due to workers program, and very much concerned with the diversion of UI funds from the ESL und. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 88. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. My name is Emmerald Evans calling on behalf of GRACE and End Child Poverty in California, in support of the Safety Net for All program. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 90. Please go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Zack Deutsch-Gross with TransForm on behalf of the Survive and Thrive Coalition. I want to thank Chair Durazo for her comments on the urgent need to address the fiscal cliff facing many transit agents across the state. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 100. Please go ahead.

Hi. My name is Lina Mira. I'm calling on behalf of the Latino Latina Roundtable in support of the Safety Net for All Coalition and supporting excluded workers. We need a California that doesn't discriminate and that it values every workforce available. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 104. Please go ahead.

Chair Durazo, Rita Medina with CHIRLA, calling in support of two items. One, Safety Net for All and making sure that excluded workers are included in unemployment benefits. And the second item is the inclusion of the recommendations from the SD 321 task force into our current-day support for domestic workers. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 96. Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Rachel Deutsch with the California Coalition for Worker Power, calling in support of restoration of the $25 million committed to the COVID-19 Workplace Outreach Project and naming the program the California Workplace Outreach Project to address all workplace concerns of California workers. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Next, we'll go to line 101. Please go ahead.

Hello, Eddie Sanchez. Sorry about that. Eddie Sanchez with the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, giving comment in support of funding for the California COVID Worker Outreach Project, or CWOP for short. I just wanted to mention that the project was instrumental in protecting workers and hard-to-reach communities and ensuring that workers were able to exercise the rights and protections. And we know that when workplaces were safe, where the communities being safe as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to line 107. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. This is Fanelly Millán with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center calling on behalf of the Safety Network Coalition, urging the Senate to continue to prioritize SB 227 and SB 321. Thank you.

Thank you. Next.

Next, we'll go to line 102. Please go ahead.

Hello. My name is Aquilina Soriano Versoza. I'm the executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, and I'm in strong support of three items. One is the inclusion of budget for the SB 321 recommendations, the domestic worker health and safety parallel for the safety net for all, inclusion of investment workers in unemployment, as well as restoring the budget for the CWOP programs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, over line 105. Please go ahead.

Hi. My name is Bryan Sanchez. I'm with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice on behalf of the Safety Network Coalition, calling it strong support of SB 227. Thank you.

Thank you. Next.

Next, we're going to line 108. Please go ahead.

Hello, my name is Claudia Palacios and I'm calling on behalf of the California Domestic Workers Coalition and respectfully urge the inclusion of funding to implement the recommendations of the SB 321 task force related to domestic workers health and safety. Thank you.

Thank you.

And there's currently no one else in queue, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Moderator appreciate all of your work. We've now come to the end of this meeting. I want to thank everyone who called in with your public testimony. Everyone who made a presentation. If you were not able to testify today, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the Budget Fiscal Review Committee or visit our website. Your comments and suggestions are very important to us. Thank you and we appreciate your participation. Thank you to my colleague. Yay. My colleague stuck around. Yay. Thank you for your patience and we've now concluded the agenda for today's hearing.