Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 5 on Public Safety

Good afternoon. Today's hearing we will be focused on May revision proposals. Many of the May revision proposals are technical changes to programs we've already discussed and ongoing programs reappropriations extensions or updates on estimates in the January Governor in the Governor's January budget.

Today's hearing will be focused on new proposals and any proposals that offer significant changes. We will not be taking any votes today, and public comment will be available in-person and over the phone at the end of the hearing. Before we begin with panels, I'd like to provide a few remarks and open it up to my colleagues as well.

Over the past few months, we've had the opportunity to discuss a wide array of budget and oversight issues to highlight the critical importance of the jurisdiction that the Subcommittee has. At times, the gaps and inequities we see in the education system, the social safety net, mental health and health access, the housing crisis, employment opportunities often lead to issues covered by this Subcommittee. The justice system is a complicated place that can't simply be boiled down by people commit crimes.

If we are to truly address crime and victimization, we have to ask the what, the why, and how we go to the last stop in society, which is incarceration. What we do before and after we get to that point can make all of the difference. I want to thank the Administration for hearing the calls of the Subcommittee when we asked for the restoration of the cost of funding, but we also need to do more.

Budget constraints require the utmost prudence in our spending decisions, but I would caution that a blanket role to pull back investments in the short-term can have unintended consequences in the long-term. Particularly as it relates to public safety.

Funding to support indigent defense and community-based rehabilitative programming should continue so we don't irreparably lose the momentum that we've gained. And on the flip side, maintaining unnecessary spending at the expense of vital programs for the people of California is irresponsible.

I was disappointed we didn't see any proposals to address prison capacity, despite the forecast of 20,000 empty beds in the near future, even after all of the planned prison closures take effect. We have a few more weeks to sort these issues out.

And I look forward to working with this Committee and this Administration and the Legislature on our shared goals. Mr. Lackey, do you have any words for us right now? Thank you. Thank you. We will hear now from the LAO on the overall revenue picture.

Thank you. Drew Soderborg, Legislative Analyst's Office. So, I just wanted to provide a brief overview of our state's revenues and the budget situation. Our office is projecting lower revenues than are estimated by the Administration, and as a result, we're estimating a $10 billion larger budget problem. Accordingly, our office is recommending that the Legislature reject, without prejudice, all new discretionary spending proposals unless there's a nexus to immediate health and safety needs.

We'd note that even after taking this step, the Legislature would need to identify additional solutions beyond that. And as a result, you'll see that this view of the budget has informed a lot of the recommendations that we've made today. Happy to take any questions about that, or we can move on.

Thank you. At this time, I think we'll just. Move on with our presentations and hearing of our items. Mr. Hart will take over momentarily, but I did want to start us with. Talking about issue item number one, which is a San Quentin Rehabilitation Center proposal.

All right. Good afternoon. My name is Dave Lewis. I'm the Director of Facility Planning, Construction and Management for Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. On March 17, the Governor held a press conference to present an ambitious plan at San Quentin to address the California Model and begin implementation of the California Model at San Quentin, including constructing an education and vocational education center at San Quentin.

The Administration at this time is proposing, has submitted a budget proposal for $360.5 million of lease revenue financing to do the construction and additionally some trailer Bill language to allow progressive design build to be the method to construct and also some CEQA exemptions and other trailer Bill to implement the proposal.

On May 5, the Governor announced the Advisory Council that he mentioned in his words when he spoke at San Quentin that we will guide our proposals going forward and provide specifics as to how the building will be constructed and what will be contained in the building. In addition, the Administration is proposing another is specifying that the $20 million previously proposed in the budget will be used to begin preliminary plans on other proposals related to what the Advisory Council recommends.

These goals are very ambitious for the Department to begin implementing the California Model. These are beginning to implement the vision of transforming San Quentin from the current institution, which has a high-security mission related to the population that is housed there, and begin to implement a model that allows for programming for all inmates that are incarcerated at San Quentin and changes the model from its traditional mission. In addition to the physical changes that we are proposing for San Quentin.

Additionally, the Advisory Council will recommend programming and other cultural changes that will be needed to implement the Governor's vision as well.

Thank you. We'll hear from LAO now.

Thank you, Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst Office. We find that while the goals of the California Model are laudable, it currently has no clear objectives or specific plans to meet those goals. And without this information, it's difficult for the Legislature to determine whether the Governor's proposals reflect the most effective approach to developing the California model, including whether the model should be first implemented at San Quentin or elsewhere.

We also find that the funding proposals lack key information, specifically the scope of construction and operational implications of the proposed projects are virtually entirely undetermined at this point. Yet the Administration is requesting funding now for the full cost of the projects, including construction.

And this makes it difficult for the Legislature to assess whether the projects would further the goals of the California Model or even to confirm that the projects won't ultimately contain some elements that the Legislature disagrees with, such as, for example, decisions about eligibility or the type of programs or activities taking place in these facilities. Given that the operational implications are not clear at this point, it's also not clear what the operational costs of these facilities will be.

So that includes the security staffing costs, the cost of the programming or activities that will take place in these facilities. And given that, it's possible the Legislature could find that the full operational cost would be too high relative to whatever benefits the facilities generate. So it doesn't make sense to construct facilities before the Legislature can confirm it's comfortable with the operational costs. In addition, we find that the proposed project completion by 2025 is unnecessary and problematic.

It's unnecessary because it lacks a clear policy rationale, and it's problematic for a variety of different reasons, which I'm happy to discuss more in detail.

But as an example, we understand that the Advisory Council would have to reach decisions by around September, sometime in the fall, in order to be able to inform the design of the educational and vocational center, which puts a pretty tight timeline on this council to meaningfully gather stakeholder input, review the research, consult experts and practitioners from other states, et cetera, and to reach meaningful, thoughtful decisions.

We also understand that even given that timeline, the Department will have to begin some design activities before the Advisory Board has reached its recommendations or Advisory Council. Excuse me. And finally, we find that these facility projects would be extremely costly to scale. The Governor's proposed $360,000,000 lease revenue bond project to build an educational and vocational center would cost around 25 million General Fund in annual debt service for 25 years, at a total cost of around 680,000,000 just for that project over the life of the payments.

And if the state were to complete similar projects at all 30 prisons not planned for deactivation, we estimate that the cost could be over 800 million in annual additional debt service payments for 25 years, at a total cost of around 20 billion over the 25 years of payments. This would be a significant fiscal commitment that appears to run counter to the legislative interest in curbing the growth of prison spending and really raises serious questions about whether this model would be scalable.

So we recommend, in view of these concerns, that the Legislature reject the Governor's facility modifications and related statutory changes. However, given the administration's planned efforts and the establishment of the Advisory Council, we think it's important for the Legislature to have key information on these efforts to determine that the development of the model is progressing in a way that's consistent with legislative priorities and to ensure that the Legislature has key information in the event that future budget proposals or policy changes come before the Legislature.

And so we would recommend the Legislature direct the Administration to submit a report by January 10,2024 to require the Administration to more fully develop the model, essentially take the steps that we would have expected to see underlying this proposal to essentially flesh out what are the objectives of the model, how would those objectives further the goals of the model and how were the trade offs weighed in determining those objectives? In addition, to provide a strategy for how the model would be developed.

So the Administration should essentially explain to the extent it's picking a particular prison to pilot or develop a model at, why that prison makes sense, as well as alternatives that were considered, and why, ultimately, the strategy it thinks the strategy would yield a model that is effective in achieving the objectives and scalable. And finally, we would recommend that this report should provide information on how CDCR involves stakeholders in the process of setting the objectives and developing a strategy to build a model.

And then we would note that in requiring the Administration to prepare this report, the Legislature could specify key elements that it wants to ensure are part of these activities, such as directing the Administration to consult with certain stakeholders, such as currently incarcerated people, loved ones of incarcerated people, and frontline staff.

And then with this report, the Legislature could decide whether it's interested in further pursuing the objectives of the California Model, as well as whether it would want to require additional information, such as timeline for development of the model, cost, et cetera. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll hear from DOF now.

Yes. Sally Lukenbill, Department of Finance. Mr. Lewis provided a nice summary of the proposals that are before you today, so I have nothing further to add to those comments at this time, but I'm happy to take any questions you might have.

I don't know that Mr. Lewis actually provided any substantive information, in all due respect, that would allow us to be able to have a conversation about what this proposal is. I was definitely expecting a lot more detail to the proposal at the May revision, and I understand the time constraints that you are under that would allow. For the Subcommittee, as we were told, o be able to actually have an adequate discussion about this.

And aside from the estimated dollar amounts associated with the lease revenue bonds, I don't know that we have a lot more information to go on at this point. So I'll just maybe ask some questions and hopefully we can get some responses. Is there a more detailed breakdown of the costs associated with this project?

Our direction is to take all of what the Advisory Council presents to us and use that to develop the scope. As such, I could present you how the numbers were developed, but it may not reflect what the final scope is that the Advisory Council presents to us that would inform what the actual construction would entail. So kind of leaves us a difficult spot due to the Advisory Council just being formed.

And our direction is that they will provide us the ultimate scope of what will be included in the projects.

So let's dig in a little bit, then, to this Advisory Council. In theory, many respected members of our community and the criminal justice reform community involved in the Advisory Council. So not questioning at all that we have the expertise to be able to do this. I am curious, though, about the role of the recommendations from this advisory body. Will they be providing recommendations? Will they be in the form of a public report?

What are the parameters of the recommendations? What has been their charge in terms of developing recommendations as you understand it?

I do not know what specific direction they have been provided as far as what they're going to work on. We intend to work very closely with them throughout their entire process. They're then anticipated that they'll provide a public report at the end of this calendar year that will be able to inform a lot of these decisions.

But we intend to work with them throughout this entire process so that we can make sure that any information or any ideas that they have are gathered and included in whatever the ultimate scope of this project is. And as I said at this time, that's the reason why the proposal does not have a lot of detail on scope, because the anticipation is that the Advisory Council will provide all of that direction to us.

So we don't have detail on the specific proposal. We know that. We've just been told that we actually don't even know the charge or the scope of recommendations that the Advisory Council will be providing us. What do you anticipate is the role of the Legislature in this process?

Um, I do not have an answer to that question, unfortunately.

I just want to be clear that I don't think that the role of the Legislature is to green light a proposal without any ability to be able to weigh in on the design, the scope of the Advisory Council and the recommendations that come forward, or even to be able to have information shared back about either of those things related to the proposal.

I do know that this Budget Committee has a responsibility to steward the dollars and have oversight over the activities related to public safety and CDCR. This proposal certainly falls under that. And I do believe that it would require a vote of this body to recommend, or the Budget Committee to recommend approval of this budget outlay, which I think, as articulated is at $360,500,000 right now. So I will stop my questioning right there. I don't know Mr. Lackey or Mr. Hart if you have any additional questions.

I have a couple. Not sure I'll get answers, but I'm going to try anyways. I do concur with all of the concerns expressed by the Chair and LAO. This is very perplexing, quite truthfully. I try not to consider it insulting, but it's close. Why does the project need to be completed by 2025? I'm confused by the urgency on this measure, especially in a deficit year, and we had to fight for CASA money, but yet we seem to have plenty for this. I'm confused by that. Should I not be?

Our direction from the Administration is to provide a proposal that completes this construction by 2025. Clearly, that's a very ambitious goal that needs to be set in motion very quickly to be achieved. And so that's why we've proposed the proposal that we've put before you is the direction was to complete this project by 2025.

Okay, sir, I'd also like to add some comments related to your question on the $360,000,000 proposal and the timing of that in a budget deficit period. So with lease revenue bond financing, it's really just authority that's being provided at this time. And so what we would typically do this is through the state Public Works Board. We would take out an interim loan either through the Treasurer's Pooled Money Investment Board or through the General Fund and that would fund the project until it's available for occupancy.

So two years in this case. Two and a half years in this case. So there's no actual outlay of funds for another three years, perhaps. Just want to be clear on that.

But it is a taking on of debt?

Correct.

It will be, yes.

So we would be authorizing debt for a project which we know nothing about.

It still has to be budgeted nonetheless.

Yes.

Right. And so I think that it's an ambiguous answer, but it's the best you could do, and I appreciate at least the attempt. Why are there no legislative appointees on this Advisory Council? Are we that insignificant? Apparently we might be.

I cannot speak to the compilation composition of the Advisory Council.

As I thought, I have a lot of questions, but I don't know that you'll be in a position to answer many of them. I mean, San Quentin has a massive campus. It's massive. And yet we need to demolish a building at a pretty substantial cost. Can you help me understand that proposal?

The intention is to not expand the secure perimeter of San Quentin. You're correct. There's a fairly large campus at San Quentin, but for purposes of allowing complete access to the program, you need to stay within the secure perimeter. So you're not trying to move people in and out of an established point. So that's why this particular location was chosen.

In addition, from an interest of speed of construction, most of what would be outside of the existing secure perimeter would require approval from Coastal Commission and other entities just due to the location.

Okay, I'll just end with this. I find it to be very disturbing that we're following a pathway where we're being asked to fund first and answers will come later. I find that to be not the most responsible path, and I find it disturbing.

Well, thank you. I concur with my colleague, Mr. Lackey, about the level of concern that I have. I'm very excited about the prospect of the California Model. I wanted to thank you, Director Lewis, for being here, and quite frankly, I empathize a great deal with your having to present non information to this body and to the Subcommittee. I'm sorry that you were made to be in that position, quite frankly.

But I know that we are in the position of making sure that we can actually ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent for things that actually have a substantive plan proposal. That we have awareness of the consequence and the opportunity costs associated with a significant capital outlay and that we are doing that in a balanced way. That also recognizes that we are spending 750,000,000 to $1.0 billion to be able to support infrastructure for beds that we don't actually need anymore in the State of California.

So I stand still, duly concerned, very supportive of the ideal of the California Model, and would definitely require a lot more information about how to be able to move this forward. I appreciate LAO's recommendation around moving forward with a report that would actually lay the groundwork that we would need in order to be able to support this kind of endeavor. At this time, I'm concerned about the potential environmental impacts that we haven't had any information provided about.

Concerned about the kind of programming and the extent of that programming, which certainly would help us get at some of the reduction of recidivism that I think everyone on this Committee cares about deeply. And I'm also concerned about the ability to scale this beyond one facility. So I think there's great consensus that we have extreme concern about this proposal as it stands now. But I thank you for presenting the information that you had available to you.

Thank you.

We'll be moving on to item number two, which is an update on the population productions, and Mr. Hart will be presiding over our meeting.

Thank you, Chair Bonta. Please begin.

Good afternoon, Members of the Committee. My name is Chris Chambers. I'm the Deputy Director of CDCR's Office of Research, and twice annually, my group puts together adult and parole population projections. I've been asked today to give you an overview of our spring 2023 population projections for institution population. As of today, we are at 96,279. The spring '23 population projections anticipate the institution population to experience annual decreases throughout the projection cycle.

CDCR predicts the adult institution population will decrease to 87,957 inmates as of June 30, 2027 which is a net five year decrease of 9.5% or 9,200 approximate inmates. The spring 2023 institution population projections are slightly lower for the first year of the projection cycle compared to that of the fall 2022 population projections and then higher for the remainder of the projection period, ranging from 0.7% to 3.3% higher. The spring '23 population projections follow the same downward trend as fall '22 projections.

However, the spring '23 projections anticipate institution population to increase at a slower rate than predicted in the fall of 2022 projections. The differences between spring '23 and fall '22 projections for the first year of the projection cycle are related to fewer admissions to CDCR than previously anticipated. For the remainder of the projection cycles, differences between the spring '23 and fall '22 projections are related to adjusted estimated impact of earned good conduct credit earnings for some inmates.

The spring '23 projections incorporate the updated data and have been adjusted to include a smaller impact on institution population projections. Moving into parole population today's parole population is 36,588. CDCR expects the active parole population will decrease from 43,825 parolees on June 30 of '22 to 36,061 parolees as of June 30, 2027. Anet five year decrease of 17.7% or 7,764 parolees.

The anticipated decrease in the parole population is related to changes to the earned discharge policy in lengths of parole terms that went into effect in July of 2020. Further, that I would offer that our fall projection populations did not anticipate the full impact of the earned discharge policy, and that is my summary. Happy to answer any questions.

As part of the May revision, the Administration indicated their commitment to right size the prison population. I appreciate that commitment, but I also like to translate that commitment into action. We have the opportunity to act on that commitment in this budget, especially in light of the significant spending priorities the Administration has identified. Like the San Quentin Re-entry Center. Right sizing corrections allows the state to responsibly make investments.

But I'm concerned about how we will foster public confidence by using taxpayer dollars to operate on up to 20,000 prison bed empty prison beds at this time. Also, while spending what will likely be a half $1.0 billion investment at one prison for a laudatory but very expensive and ill defined project. At a minimum, the Legislature will need to be very closely involved in the development of this proposal and appreciate the additional information that you're giving us about the prison population.

I think it'll help inform our discussion and the Legislature's review of the budget. Do any Members have questions?

Thank you. I guess I'll just ask one more other question. Why does CDCR feel that you need a 15 to 20,000 bed cushion in your operations?

So I'm going to defer to my partners in BMB for that.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Madeline Mcclain, Deputy Director of CDCR. So, as Secretary McCumber indicated in our hearing earlier this year, one of the things that we're looking at is kind of a reassessment of rehabilitation programs and how that impacts the incarcerated population. So we're doing an assessment right now of overall space needs to make sure that we do have the space for ISTDT mental health programming, rehabilitative programming, and educational opportunities for the incarcerated. And so that is ongoing.

The Administration, CDCR, the governor's office is committed to right-sizing the prison capacity. But we want to do this in kind of more holistic approach. I think one of the things that we also want to consider is how we incorporate anything that we learn from the California Model within that.

So to the extent, instead of having, for example, in Norway, which is one of the bases for the California Model, the housing unit with 28 or 30 incarcerated individuals has a staff complement of almost one to one, whereas in a standard housing unit in a CDCR facility has about 130 to 150 incarcerated individuals to only two staff. So it's maybe spreading that population out, adjusting the staffing component, that's things that we're looking at.

And so while we fully acknowledge that we do have a decent number of empty beds, one of the things that we want to do is take that bigger, broader look at the prison population, at the services that we're offering before we start closing additional facilities. So as included in the Governor's Budget and the Budget act last year, we have announced the closure of DVI closed. CCC is closing as of June 30.

Cal City, we are terminating the lease in March of 2024, and Chuckawalla Valley State Prison is scheduled to close in March of 2025. Additionally, we are deactivating six facilities at six institutions, and collectively that's going to be saving the state approximately $600 million annually between all of those combined. So we are taking steps, we are following with what we have committed to do. But generally, that's why there's no additional prison closures announced right now.

How many beds does that represent the closures that you described over the next 3 and 3 and a half years?

Look at my spreadsheet. Have it in the email. I have it broken out by each one. Sorry. So for facility deactivations, it's roughly. I apologize. Should have had that. So, like Pelican Bay is. We're deactivating 708. California Men's Colony, 1,700. CCI Facility D is 1,000, CIM is about 1,600, CRC is about 800 and FWF was 500. And I'll get you the information on the other two institutions. I don't want to keep the Committee. And I do have it. It's just in my binder. I apologize.

I can speak. Lynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance. For CCC, it's about 1,900 design capacity beds. Cal City, i's a leased facility and there is. Not a design capacity associated with it. In the eyes of the three judge panel. So I don't know that exact number. I thought it was around 2,300, but we can get back to you with specifics. Thank you.

I guess the point of my question is to look at those reductions by the closure of those facilities. With the trend line for your projections of population, where do we end up after these prisons are closed? Do we still have a 15,000 to 20,000 bed cushion?

Correct. So we actually are tracking in the near term, I think, in budget year and through budget year plus two, around 15,000 empty beds. And by budget year plus four, about 17,000 empty beds. So through the lifecycle of the projection.

And then, so I guess back to my question, why do you feel you need to have that kind of a cushion? Yeah, you're on a path to reducing the facilities, but the population still greatly, or the facilities greatly exceed the population. So what is the reasoning why those are not closer in alignment? Or what is the magic percentage that is necessary to have comfort within the Department about having adequate facilities but not having empty beds.

And so that's going to be informed partly by this evaluation that we're doing of rehabilitative needs. And something we learned during COVID while we are at the emergency declaration for COVID has been lifted. We did see we needed a need for 10,000 to 11,000 vacant beds just to cover the issues related to COVID. So it's any kind of foreseen natural disaster. So there's looking at that as well. So we've never really been in this position before.

So the Department is trying to take that bigger, like I said, broader look. We don't anticipate that by the time we get to budget year plus four that we will still have 17,000 empty beds. There will be a plan in place to address that. If we have 17,000 empty beds, it's because we're using them for these other purposes that we've provided you information for and we have a plan for.

So in the near term, we've committed to the closures that we have right now, and we're looking at what we're for the long-term.

Do you want to add something?

I was just going to note that, as was stated, the Administration is considering how many empty beds it needs in the long run. However, in our January analysis, we did recommend the Legislature could direct them to close yards in the near term in order to achieve near term reductions in spending as an option. Those yards could then be reactivated in the future when the Administration has a clear plan of how much capacity it needs relative to those benefits that Ms. McClain was describing.

And once the Legislature also had a chance to assess whether it agrees with those benefits, such as having a higher ratio of rehab slots per incarcerated person or whatever the case may be, whether or not the Legislature agrees with that trade-off relative to the cost.

And I remember in the first informational hearing we had about the subject that there was discussion about plan and a timetable and more precise timing as to when these things might occur. So is there any more additional information about the status of that? Have you considered the recommendations that we just talked about as part of that strategy, closing yards in the interim to save money?

Yes. Part of one of the things we're considering is our overall look at this issue. So what the Committee has said and what the LAO said has not gone on deaf ears. It is part of that, again, bigger look that we're trying to take this time around and be more thoughtful kind of, about our plan and approach. So it's over the next few months. That's what we're working towards. I don't have a definitive date. I apologize.

But perhaps by September, October? Is that what you're talking about?

I hope so. I'm not going to commit because I am not the one that is actually doing it. So I don't want to commit to something that we can't do. But I would generally agree in the next several months. Yes.

Thank you. Any other questions from Committee Members?

I'm a little concerned. So this new calculation that you're doing with the additional beds, how long will that take for you to come back to the Committee with estimates of why you need the additional or the holdover space?

That's the same look, that word over the next several months. So it's not going to be in the next two weeks, if that's what you're asking.

My concern is I've been on this Committee a very long time. I've been promised this information for a very long time. I have not gotten this information for a very long time. And I've gotten the same answer for a very long time. I don't trust we'll ever get the answer. That's my concern, that we're going to look up again and we'll be asking the same questions over and over again. What's really perplexing is we can't seem to get an answer of when it'll get done.

And I understand you don't want to make a mistake and give us a number and then be wrong. But when it goes into a year after year after year after year after year, then something is wrong with the Department's ability to do that. And so I don't know if I need to make a recommendation to the Chair that at some time maybe we hire our own space planner to go into CDCR and get us this information.

It will cost something, but I think it's cost a whole lot more waiting on this information that's never come. At least we'll get it and we'll get it done and we'll be able to make some critical determinations on what to do as there's space available in these prisons. And the reason it's really important for me is you're forecasting maybe a $600 million savings or more. Well, I want to use 230 of that for ongoing programs to go back into the community.

But if I get back from the Department of Finance and others that, oh, that money is already taken up to do other things, I don't have a confidence that that is an actual number. I feel more like I'm being placated until I'm termed out, and then you guys are going to spend that money any way you want.

And so I got to get some certainty before I leave that we're not just being placated or being played with these numbers in reality, that's the problem with the budgeting and all the government. We have to rely on you to give us the numbers. We don't have on-time budgeting. I can't pull up a screen and see exactly how much you're spending in real time, and that is the problem because you have the numbers and I don't.

And so that's why it's so important, especially from a transparency and trust perspective, that we're able to get these numbers as soon as possible so that we can help make some critical decisions. And so I'm probably back again to what I asked before and a time before and a time before and a time before. When can we get some numbers? Or can you go back to someone to give us some definitive dates to give to the Chair?

So Chair can then inform us of when we can make some very significant decisions. I mean, it's a lot of money. Interesting, really important decisions we have to make.

So in terms of the number I referenced of the approximately $600 million that's actually in the budget change proposals that are before the Legislature, that is actually money that is going to be reduced from CDCR's budget next year that's being taken down.

So we also know which prisons will be closed.

We're absolutely positive that's for the ones that. Yes, for CCC, Cal City, Chukawalla, State Valley.

And that's only how many?

That's plus DBI and the 6 institutions.

5? I thought we had a number of 10 at one time. We were possibly closing. So now we're at what? Now? I'm really confused. Do you see why my confusion?

Okay, yes. The Administration has committed to closing the five that we've announced and that savings is being captured. We don't have any additional prisons scheduled for closure at this time. And that report that Secretary McCumber mentioned in his hearing is being worked on. I will see if I can get a solid date. But as for right now, I'm going to go with the next several months. It is in progress. I do know that.

It's been in progress for a while.

I understand.

Well, I guess there's nothing we can do right now until you guys are able to make that happen. So thank you.

Budget Chair Ting also had a question about the proportion of people that are in individual cells versus shared cells. Have any information about that?

I do not have that number, but we can get that for you.

That'd be really helpful. Individual versus shared cells. Okay. There are a variety of questions that go to this space utilization issue, and I think that Mr. Jones Sawyer spoke to the frustration of the Committee well, because we had our first hearing on this subject, and there was a commitment by the Department to have the planning necessary to help inform this budget cycle, and here we are.

It looks to me as though we're going to miss this budget cycle, and that's, appreciate the work that you're doing, the efforts that you're making, but we just need more information on a more timely basis to do our work so that we can collaborate together and achieve what both of us are trying to deliver to the public and to the people in the prisons. Are there any other questions? Okay, well, then we'll move on. Thank you for your testimony.

Telemental health.

Good afternoon, Members. My name is Duane Reeder. I'm Deputy Director of California Correctional Healthcare Services Fiscal Office. Before you, we have a request for positions and funding over the next two years to expand our telemental health program to include psychology as well as social work. The request includes funding to establish dedicated telemental health management, supervisory oversight, administrative support, tele-presenters, research staff, and IT support to help optimize and improve the expanded program.

With me today, I have Dr. Amar Meta, Deputy Director of mental health, to help answer any questions.

I do have a couple questions. Can you speak to any quality of care issues that you track when a person has a telehealth appointment versus an in-person appointment?

Yeah, so our telepsychiatry. Oh, sorry. I'm Amar Mehta, Deputy Director of Statewide Mental Health for CDCR. Our telepsychiatry program is really kind of a gold standard program. They have continuing medical education, peer mentorship, like all of this structure built into it. And when we provide the care, it is hard to compare sometimes. Because telepsychiatry is concentrated at the lower-levels of care for the lower severity patients, we try to keep our on-site, in-person care for the people who need it the most.

And so we haven't done a lot of separation of within the lower levels of care, the quality of care, but we've recently kind of built our system to be able to tell that stuff apart. So as we build larger, that's going to be built into the foundation now, whereas we had to kind of get it grafted on for the old program.

I can just, speaking from experience, I used to be the Chief of Telepsychiatry, and our program has, I think, more board-certified physicians and more, I would say, published physicians and expert physicians in the telepsychiatry program than I've really ever seen in a program like that before.

That's good news. Thank you. Do LAO have some comments on this?

We do not raise concerns with the proposal, given that it could support the department's efforts in filling vacancies as required by the Coralman court.

Thank you, and then another question. Would approving this proposal keep us on track in meeting the court's requirements? And are there paid differentials for telehealth mental health physicians versus on-site positions?

Good questions. I deferred to our finance and legal colleagues for some of the court order discussion, but I will say, as the sort of lead clinician of the Department. I'm really concerned that the staffing shortages have made it hard for us to deliver the care that we really want to give to these patients.

And we're really hoping we can repeat the kind of miracle that happened in telepsychiatry when we were able to hire up our telepsychiatrist to around 90% for the first time in, really, the history of the case, as far as I know, and this is the first time our psychology and social workers have been so low, and we want to be able to get those numbers up and provide that care to our patients, really, as our main goal.

Is the Department doing anything actively to recruit in any unique way to help address that shortage?

Yeah, absolutely. So we've been kind of shifting around the way that we do that. I'll just give you, like, a couple of top ones, and you tell me when you've had enough. But we do have a pay differential for people in the in-patient level of care, the psychiatric inpatient and the crisis bed at certain institutions. Those are all on-site, and then there's no difference. Right now, there's no significant difference between the telepsychiatry and the on-site psychiatry tiers.

But we do expect that there will be some differences for the telepsychology and social work. We're still determining how that's going to work best, but just from the quality of the. Sorry. The type of care that they provide, we think we've changed the way that we do what are called dual appointments.

People can work an extra day at an institution and provide care to a different patient population than they usually do, and they get extra pay for that, although that pay doesn't contribute to their retirement or any of the other benefits there. We've changed the way we do on-call. We've made it easier. We have now what we call night shift telepsychiatry that covers the entire state.

So 99% of the calls that go to the on call physician are fielded by a physician on shift who's just doing their regular shift work. Happens to be from 07:00 p.m. To 07:00 a.m. So they are able to do a lot of that. They're in front of a desk and in front of all the information that they need to just get those orders in right away. We've made some opportunities for specialization.

We have special units for memory care for elderly patients in our system, for transgender patients and other gender minorities. All these separate programs that kind of allow people who have a real passion in one field to really take advantage of their expertise in that area. And we use that as a recruitment tool to bring in those experts into our system to advise us on how to proceed from there. We've really tried to simplify the way we do electronic medical records.

Never heard a Doctor that doesn't complain about their electronic medical record system. But in our system, we're trying to make it more straightforward, less clicks, more ability to focus on the patient, and the time that you spend with the patient in the room, you're not staring at a screen the whole time. If possible. There's a couple of other things. Relationships with training programs, the hiring process itself. We now have these hiring fairs which have been really successful, especially for some of our nursing colleagues.

We're hoping to do that for mental health as well, where you can do a process that usually takes about a month or two. You can do all of that in one, sitting in a hiring fair and walk away with a tentative offer right then and there. So there's a lot of these different things that we're doing that we're hoping are going to have a kind of snowball effect with the telepsych offerage offerings.

Thank you. That's really helpful, and it's great news to hear of all the innovation. Appreciate that.

And then was there anything that you wanted to add about the court requirements?

Yeah, sure.

Allison Hewitt, Department of Finance and in fact, I would actually say Dr. Mehta could probably speak to this better than myself.

But the Coleman Court from 2009 has requirements that certain clinical positions are filled to a 90% fill rate, and that would include psychologists and licensed clinical social workers. One of the core issues here is that we're dealing with a nationwide shortage, as well as a statewide shortage of mental health practitioners. And so the Department, in bringing forward this proposal, the Administration is seeking to find some innovative ways of trying to get clinicians into these harder to fill positions.

And so that's the hope with this proposal, is that it will help with recruitment and retention while also supporting the delivery of patient care. Because these would be positions that may otherwise sit vacant. Is the reality not able to speak to specifically how this might or might not impact any the Coleman Corps or Coleman court fines.

But I think administration's hope is that it will increase compliance in that it will allow the Department to fill positions within the psychology and licensed clinical social worker field, much like the model that they've already implemented with the statewide telepsychiatry program, which I think Dr. Mehta and the Department would say is very helpful in terms of helping them fill psychiatry classifications. Thank you.

Well, thank you for that context. That was really helpful. Are there any other questions from Members?

Thank you very much.

Thank you all. Appreciate you. We'll now move to item four, contract medical services.

Good afternoon again. Duane Reeder, CCHCs. We are requesting to, in our population adjustments, we took a $27.7 million reduction tied to a cost per patient methodology. So we would like to reverse that adjustment as well as ask for $12 million back in reimbursement authority and move that to General Fund authority for a total of 39.9 million. This funding is needed to care for our patients outside of our institutions as well as on-site specialty services. So it's really for specialty services outside hospitals, ambulance services.

And so we had a very old methodology that the 2,763 per inmate patient was from 2011-2012. And with the reductions we've seen through COVID, we've reduced about 25,000 inmate patients, and it's created a hole in our contract medical budget. So the methodology is a little archaic and needs to be updated to be more reflective of the type of patients we have in our system. So we're looking to propose a new methodology for adjusting the contract medical funding in the POP processes.

We're hoping to work with the Administration and come back next year with a new methodology that is more tied to our patient acuities and tied to the populations that use these services. As far as the reimbursement, we've had a $54 million reimbursement authority for many, many years, at least, probably at least 10 million years. And with the reductions we've seen in our population, we need to update that amount. We've seen significant population reductions, and we're not sending as many patients out to the hospitals.

So the federal reimbursement is for a small subset of our contract medical. It's for patients that go into hospitals for more than 24 hours. If they're Medi-Cal eligible and they go to a hospital for more than 24 hours, we're able to then seek reimbursement for some of the services that are provided. So we've seen, based on current trends, that funding reimbursement reduce. We do work with healthcare services, who is the California State entity that seeks Medi-Cal reimbursement.

So we work through them, and we're always continuing to look for opportunities or see if there's additional funding we can achieve through the federal reimbursement. So those are some of our challenges.

Thank you. Mr. Reeder. Any comments from the Leg. Analyst Office?

Thank you. Orlando Sanchez with the Legislative Analyst Office. We acknowledge that having sufficient funds for contract medical is important for the Department to provide adequate medical care. However, we recommend that approving these on a one-time basis instead of as proposed on an ongoing basis. This would still provide the Administration sufficient time to develop a new methodology. We would also like to note that the Administration has previously recognized this flaw in funding methodology, but it still has not presented a proposal or solution to this.

And as mentioned, some of the information on Medi-Cal reimbursement. Right now, we don't have a clear strategy from the Department on what efforts it's taking to maximize those. So accordingly, we also recommend that whether one-time or ongoing funding is provided, that the Department be tasked with developing a report that, one, includes the new proposed methodology.

Two, provides data that will allow the Legislature to determine whether the Department is maximizing the federal funds it qualifies for, and also, third, that outlines strategies the Department is taking to have access to those funds. And thank you, and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Department of Finance, you have any comments?

Hi. Good afternoon. Alyssa Cervantes with the Department of Finance. So the priority for the Administration was fixing the structural deficit within the contract medical sub program for 2023-24. Providing funds on a one-time basis will not address the long term structural deficit that does exist within the subprogram, and this will essentially just create a budget gap for 2024-25 and the out years.

The Administration does anticipate to bring forward a methodology, as the Department mentioned, for contract medical in 24-25 that will account for patient acuity and rising health care costs. We're happy to answer any additional questions at this time.

Thank you. I think that we're all trying to aim for the same space, which is right, sizing the amounts that are needed versus the reimbursement from the Federal Government and through Medi-Cal. So I think that the approach of doing the one-time funding can meet the needs of the Department as well in the long-term, but also give us flexibility to get the information that we need and have the planning and the new methodology applied to next year's budget.

And since there's nobody else here, I don't have any other questions. Go on to the next item. Thank you for.

Thank you.

Next item is item number five, border parole hearings proposal. Welcome, everyone.

Thank you. I'm Jennifer Shaffer. I'm Executive for the Officer for the Board of Parole Hearings. And we are here before you today with a budget request that does essentially four things. One, just to give you a brief overview effective July 1 of this year, pay for attorneys who represent people at parole hearings will revert to $750 a case. Currently, they're paid $900 a case, and that is what they've been paid for the last two years.

Right now, similar pay scales for county level work for people who represent indigent persons at the county level is $945 a case. We think that reverting to $750 is going to be rather catastrophic for us. We think a lot of panel attorneys will just simply choose not to work with us any longer, and we're very concerned about the impact that that will have. The next thing is we are requesting funding for a contract that the board has with a nonprofit entity.

Currently, the recipient of that contract is Parole Justice Works. We entered into that contract in part in response to some pending litigation at the time. The board has absorbed those costs for the last two years, and we are asking for ongoing funding for that. The purpose of the contract is to train, professionally train, and monitor the quality of attorney representation for persons who appear before the board. The third item is we are requesting a supervising administrative law judge, one position, and ongoing funding for that.

We historically have been ratio driven, meaning we provide methodology for administrative law judges, and then we simply say, okay, if you have x number of administrative law judges, then we have a supervision ratio of six to one. And so that's how we determine how many supervising ALJs we have. In the last four years, our total number of hearings that we have scheduled has increased by 49%. It's been a very significant increase for us.

As a result, we've seen a significant increase in prehearing motions combined with an increased in the quality and, shall I say, effective representation. We're seeing a lot more prehearing motions, and specifically with video conferencing hearings. Since most of our hearings are by video conference right now, determining which ones need to be in person is really a question of whether an incarcerated person's disabilities are such that we need to have the hearing in person in order to achieve effective communication.

We have bifurcated a lot of that workload amongst all of the supervisors, and when you're in the middle of class action litigation regarding Armstrong and persons with disabilities, it's not the best way of handling those issues. So we're asking to consolidate all of that workload into one position at the headquarters level so we can be very consistent in our responses, especially for those ADA concerns.

The last piece is, since 2007, the Board has absorbed the ongoing maintenance and other services associated with our main IT system and we are simply unable to absorb those ongoing costs, and so we're requesting funding to continue the maintenance and ongoing costs of our IT system.

Thank you. Ms. Shaffer. Leg. Analyst Office?

Thank you. Caitlin O'Neill with the LAO. We don't have a specific recommendation on this issue, but just wanted to offer a few items for legislative consideration. The first is the proposal would essentially maintain existing services service levels. But we would note that, as you'll recall, we discussed in this Committee in an earlier hearing this spring, a report that our office recently put out on promoting equity in the parole hearing process.

And two of the four components of this proposal do have a nexus to that report which we discussed. So I'll just mention that the attorney pay increase and the contract with Parole Justice Works are two areas where the state has taken some steps to address concerns about access to effective legal and hearing preparation services. But in our report, we found that due to lack of data and evaluation, we just don't know to what extent that those concerns have been fully addressed.

And so the Legislature could consider requiring an evaluation of these changes before authorizing additional funding for them, given the state's budget situation. An evaluation would likely require some additional General Fund spending, though likely less than the proposal before. You also just wanted to clarify one piece about the proposal that in our report we had said that the pay rate for attorneys went from 400 to 700 or 750 around there.

And then the Legislature, which was done in response to BPH coming forward, citing concerns about the quality of representation. Then later, the Legislature authorized an additional one-time augmentation for that increase to where we are now. That's what we're talking about. That's going to expire. And that increase came with expectation of additional responsibilities, specifically to spend one additional hour with clients before their risk assessment. So that's just something to think about, is that I just wanted to clarify that that money came with a responsibility as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. O'Neil, Department of Finance.

Hi, Patrick Plant, Department of Finance. This proposal provides the necessary resources for the board to continue operations at the existing levels. They could no longer absorb the costs.

Thank you. Thank you.

Available for questions.

I don't have any questions. Just encouraged that there's been an increase in the number of hearings and the quality of the pretrial motions. I think that's important for everybody to be represented well in the process and concerned as well about the reduction in the one-time increase in funding for representation.

That is a concern, but appreciate that you're doing everything you can to monitor the effects of that and to continue to plug us into that information, work with the Leg. Analyst Office to make sure that we have the information that we need to make decisions going forward.

That's great. If I could just add one thing. The way we schedule hearings is rather complicated, so I'll try to just give you an idea of the impact. For a panel attorney today, they would see a decrease in pay of $1,500 to $2,000 a month if this does not go back, if we're not able to continue to pay them at the increase, just at the current rate, there's not many people who will continue doing the same work for that kind of a significant decrease in pay.

And many of these people were providing that additional consultation beforehand. We just increased our actual written expectation that they do so in exchange for the money. So I think I can speak for many of the panel attorneys. From their perspective, this is just simply having a pay cut for doing the same amount of work, and I think it's going to be really difficult for us to overcome that.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Are you tracking the representation over time as to the compensation, how it relates to their ability for you to get representation?

Yes, we have a 17% vacancy rate right now. I think that would go up significantly. As far as the quality of the representation, the nonprofit entity that we contract with, we modeled that after what the California Appellate Project does. Each of the courts, they have a nonprofit entity that handles the training and the monitoring of the quality of attorney representation for the courts. And we think they've been doing a really exceptional job. And they've already processed over 2,000 surveys.

They send a survey to every single person who is represented by a panel attorney. And so far, 63% are satisfied with the attorney representation that they've received, which is significant given the outcome. Right. Many of those folks were denied parole.

How many people are filling out the survey? What is the percentage of response that you get from that survey?

I apologize. I should ask them. I just know that they've processed over 2,000, over a one year period. So that was pretty significant for us.

Thank you. If you could get that in the future.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Shaffer. Thank you all. And now we'll move to the judicial branch. And item number one is the CARE Act implementation updated proposal.

I can.

Good afternoon. Henry Ng, Department of Finance. The May Revision includes additional investments to support the implementation of the CARE Act. This includes 9,000,000 23-24 and 5,000,000 24-25 to account for the early implementation of the CARE Act in Los Angeles County. The May Revision also includes an additional 17 million in 23-24, 30,000,000 24-25, and 33 million ongoing to support legal representation of CARE participants. This doubles the number of hours per participant for legal services from 20 hours to 40 hours. We request provisional language to specify the funding allocation methodology for legal services, and we also request language to reappropriate existing funds into the next fiscal year related to IT and planning activities. Thank you and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Mr. Ng. I don't have any questions right now. Thank you. Ms. Lee, do you have something?

Thank you. Anita Lee with the Legislative Analyst Office. Our comments are going to sound a little familiar, so we'll keep them brief because we talked a little bit about this in January. If it's helpful, just in sum total related to this program we're now talking, between January and May, it would be 55.5 million in the budget year 2023-24 and then it would increase to 133,000,000 ongoing beginning in 2025-26. And so we definitely recognize that there are going to be ongoing costs.

However, we recommend that the Legislature only provide the 55.5 million requested for 2023-24. But we also recommend requiring that each of the trial courts in the first contingent, the group that's implementing in the budget year, report monthly on key metrics that are key to calculating future fiscal need. And that's because the Legislature won't receive kind of the data requirements, the reporting in time prior for that decision-making. So an example of that is the amount of staff or resource time that is needed on these types of cases. And so really, part of the reason is that there's a lot of uncertainty about the underlying assumptions related to this because it hasn't been implemented yet. And so for the budget year 2023-24 when it hasn't been implemented, it makes sense to use assumptions. But moving forward, the more reasonable way would be to collect the data and use that data to calculate what the funding needs would be moving forward. Thank you. Happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. That's very clear. And I think that that is obviously the gold standard, and it looks as though you would like to make a response to that.

Sure. And Mark Jimenez, Department of Finance. Similar to our comments previously, we acknowledge that there is some uncertainty with the numbers. This is a new program, but we respectfully disagree with the recommendation to provide one-time funding. This program involves the commitment of many stakeholders from all 58 counties. The public legal service providers within each of those counties the courts. And so it's important that the budget builds in ongoing resources to demonstrate the ongoing support of full implementation of the CARE program. And we also acknowledge that we agree that data is important. We think that maybe monthly reporting of the data might be a bit onerous on the Judicial Council, but we look forward to working with the legislative staff on the details of the reporting requirement.

Thank you. Mr. Jimenez. I appreciate the complexity of rolling out a new program like this and the challenge of providing real-time information that makes it more comfortable for everybody. Would the department be comfortable with quarterly reporting on implementation efforts so that we can more accurately determine the level of resources required moving forward?

Sorry. Don Will, Judicial Council. We would need to assess that, sir. We are working on design we're working on designing the mandatory data reporting right now that's in the statute, we'd need to assess whether we'd be able to do quarterly reporting.

Well, I think that the best solution is the monthly reporting that the Leg Analyst Office is suggesting. But quarterly, given the need for having ongoing funding, for having us hit the right amounts and targets, this is going to have to be an iterative process, working collaboratively and quarterly reporting is really important to be able to get this next budget cycle accurately reflected. And just think that that's a reasonable request, given that with this new program, we don't really know what the expenses are going to be.

Mark Jimenez, Department of Finance. We appreciate your comments, and we're happy to work with legislative staff on the details of the reporting requirement, including consideration of the quarterly reporting.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you again for your time. We'll now move to item number two the Federal Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program Grant.

Henry Ng, Department of Finance. The May Revision includes reimbursement authority totaling 17 million over the next three years to support an interagency agreement between the Judicial Council and the Board of State and Community Corrections to implement federal funds from the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program. This is related to a BFCC request proposed in the governer's budget, and its authority will allow the Judicial Council to implement a statewide project that improves execution of firearm relinquishment orders and expand and enhances collaborative courts. Thank you and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I don't have any questions right now. Ms. Lee.

Anita Lee with the LAO. So this committee heard earlier, under BSCC, a proposal related to this SCIP, the State Crisis Intervention Program grant. So at a very high level, these are federal funds that are made available to support crisis intervention programs, specifically with the goal to reduce crime and violence, with a particular emphasis on gun violence. And so this request is a technical request that is consistent with BSCC's initial plans for the money.

So similar to kind of what we mentioned earlier, at a prior hearing, we do recommend the Legislature ensure that the SCIP funding plan actually reflects legislative priorities. So as an example, the Legislature might want to use the funding to fund higher-priority gun violence reduction or behavioral health activities. And so depending on what the Legislature would like to do and that final kind of funding plan, it could impact whether this reimbursement authority as well as the amount that's being requested is actually needed. And so we think that that's a very critical question for the Legislature. Thank you.

Thank you. And Department of Finance have anything in response to that?

No, sorry, no additional comments.

Okay. And then I guess I would just ask, following up on that, what was the process used to prioritize these particular programs for this funding?

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Katie Howard. I'm the executive director of the Board of State and Community Corrections. So happy to join my Judicial branch colleagues up here on this item very briefly. So last June, Congress passed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. And in that it came in the wake of several horrible mass shootings. At the time, Buffalo had just happened.

And it was really quite amazing that Congress was able to reach agreement on some gun safety legislation, and in that they put in $750,000,000 to go out to all the states and territories. California received 29 million for the first two years, and then we anticipate annual incremental appropriations, probably about 40 million more in total. The process for the plan was laid out in that federal statute and said that each state had to come up with a Byrne SCIP. SCIP, State Crisis Intervention Program Advisory Board.

And the BSCC is the state administering agency for this grant. So a lot of this happened just through existing structures for federal funds to come to the state. When we read the statute, we saw it as being very court-focused with these gun safety issues. And of course, one of the things that Congress was really focused on were the so-called red flag laws, the extreme risk protection orders. We've had gun violence restraining orders, we call them GVROs in California since 2016.

Often on these California things, we're sort of ahead of the curve. And so we had this planning process through an advisory board, worked collaboratively with the Judicial Council to propose one of the primary areas of funding in the bill, which was collaborative courts. But I want to be sure to make clear today, particularly in response to the LAO's comments, that there are two distinct pots of funding. I don't want to give you too much detail, but there's a state share and a local share. The state share will go to the Judicial Council to do a variety of good things related to collaborative courts. And then we're still working on the final plan through our Byrne SCIP advisory panel and it'll be on the agenda for a meeting in June.

And some of the things that have been talked about is funding to the locals on things like gun relinquishment, things being carried out, whether that's by county probation departments or other law enforcement entities, safe storage of guns that have been relinquished, and training for local law enforcement on GVROs and other kinds of gun relinquishment laws in California. So I wanted to give you a flavor of where the discussions stand. And then in specific response to your question, the federal statute pretty much laid out what the planning process was to be. So happy to take any follow-up you may have.

So over time, there'll be more clarity as to what the strategy will be.

That's right. Yeah. There will be a lot more available after that June planning session.

Okay, so that will inform next year's budget more than this year's budget.

Yes.

But there is flexibility, too, and we're able to use these dollars strategically for California's priorities, not just conformity with the federal guidelines.

There's a fair amount of flexibility within the federal statute, but we would have to do things consistent with the federal statute. And in addition, with federal grants, if we were to have further conversation with the Legislature and there were to be more direction given, there are ways to file some budget modifications and those sorts of things, so long as it's consistent generally with the federal statute.

Ms. Lee, did you have a comment?

Yeah. Just from our perspective, just kind of a couple points for legislative consideration as you're thinking about it, in regards to your comments about future fiscal years. That's absolutely possible. I think our focus is on the budget year, and you can still impact the decisions for the state funding. And kind of, as Ms. Howard mentioned, there is room within kind of the federal guidelines for what you would want to fund. So this proposal focuses on the state share.

It's true there's a state share and a local share, but this one is specifically related to the state share because under the plan, the money would be going to the Judicial Council predominantly for collaborative courts. So an example, if the Legislature was interested on focusing more on gun violence, for example, there are programs, existing state programs at the state level that deal with that through the Department of Justice. But there could also be other alternatives as well. And so I think that that's just kind of what we mean in terms of as the Legislature is thinking about it, you do have an opportunity to weigh in on whether or not it matches with legislative priorities.

That's very helpful. Thank you. Appreciate that. Don't have any more questions on this item. Thank you, Ms. Howard. Thank you, everyone. Well, now me moving to the Board of State and Community Corrections and item number one, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person Grant augmentation. Ms. Howard, you're staying for this?

Thank you. Yes. I think some DOF colleagues are coming up to start us off. Yes.

Welcome back, everybody.

Welcome. Thank you. This is a request to provide an additional 12,000,000 one-time general fund to the existing competitive grant program to help California indigenous tribes identify, collect case-level data, publicize and investigate cases involving missing and murdered indigenous persons. This population is disproportionately higher rates of crime and victimization compared to other populations. Thank you.

Ms. O'Neil.

Thank you. We do recommend rejecting this proposal, and that's because the 2022-23 Budget Act budget package provided BSCC with 12 million over three years for this program. So it's currently not clear to what extent there is additional demand or need for this funding or what the need is. And BSCC is accepting applications for the already authorized funding through June 2023 and then is required to submit an initial report to the Legislature on December 1, 2023. So at that point, we think the Legislature would have more information about how many applicants there were, whether a significant number of applicants that the board wanted to fund, it wasn't able to fund, whether there's additional need essentially for money at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. O'Neil, can you give us an update on the funding that was in the 2022 budget?

Sure.

Whether those resources have been awarded?

Okay, sure. Thanks. Again, Katie Howard with the BSCC. The request for proposals that had come through an executive steering committee process, a collaborative process where we had subject matter experts from tribes help us to put the proposal together. That RFP was approved at our April board meeting and the RFP was released on April 14. We did put a proposal out that contemplated the three years of funding that was in last year's budget. As Caitlin has mentioned, those applications are due June 23. So at this moment, we don't know how many applications we will receive. We did have a bidders conference last week on May the twelfth. There's quite a bit of interest, but as yet, we don't know exactly how many applications will be coming in. If, for example, we were to find that several million more qualified proposals came in in June, we could move immediately if this were to stay in the budget, to award more funding out, or we would move quickly to release a new RFP if, in fact, we didn't get sufficient applications on the first round. So that's the status. I hope that helps.

That does. Thank you. How are you engaging with the tribes to evaluate these proposals and to allocate these resources?

To allocate the resources we use the executive steering committee process that we use for most of our competitive grants. So we have a committee of subject matter experts come together and work with our staff to build a request for proposals and to establish what the scoring criteria should be. And then those same committee members are the people who are trained by our research staff to read and rate the proposals. And then all of that is tallied up and put together. And we're anticipating the recommendations to go to our board to award these grants in September of this year.

And is there tribal representation on this evaluation committee? And then do you already have metrics in place to evaluate the outcomes on these investments?

There will be local evaluation reports built into the RFP, so those who are applying for the funding will be aware that some information will be required to be reported to the BSCC, which we will then put together as part of our usual grant administration process.

So the typical you ask for data collection from the recipients and then they give that back to the department. And then does the department have some sort of evaluation process that will use that data that's collected to make an overall assessment of the?

Well, there is, as the LAO mentioned, some additional reporting that the Legislature has asked us to do. And then just as a matter of our usual processes and procedures, we build in some data collection and evaluation with pretty much all of our grants.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Howard. Any other comments from anybody? Yes.

Yes. Patrick Plant, Department of Finance. Department of Finance does not support the recommendation to reject the proposal. Thank you.

Understand. Thank you. Appreciate your input. We're going to go slightly out of order and have the Commission of Peace Officers Standards and Training go next on their one item, which is SB 2, Department of Justice Costs. Welcome, everyone. Who wants to begin?

I will start.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Assemblymember Hart and members of the subcommittee. My name is Manny Alvarez. I serve as the executive director for the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Seated to my right is POST-chief counsel, William Darden. I'll keep my remarks brief, I promise.

Today, we are before you to request funding of $6.1 million from the general fund in fiscal year 2023-2024 and $5.3 million ongoing to fund the prosecution work by the Department of Justice for costs associated with the implementation of Senate Bill 2. This funding will enable POST to meet the administrative adjudication responsibilities associated with peace officer decertification actions before the commission.

POST estimates it will receive thousands of cases monthly once all agencies begin to report acts of serious misconduct, to fully report. To date, some of the largest agencies have reported relatively low numbers. Based on early estimates and the volume of cases POST has received since January 1 of this year, we project that approximately 3500 cases will meet the threshold of serious misconduct and thereby subject an individual to possible revocation or suspension of the Peace Officer's certification.

Peace officers who are subject to having the certification removed or restricted are afforded due process under the Administrative Procedures Act. We estimate roughly, approximately 10 to 15% of these cases will be appealed and administrative proceedings will be initiated. Cases that are appealed will be transmitted to the Department of Justice as the DOJ represents state agencies and litigation matters, and will serve as the prosecution arm of POST in preparing administrative disciplinary cases before the Office of Administrative Hearings. That concludes the opening remarks, Assemblymember Hart. Happy to answer any question when the time has come.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. Appreciate your presentation. Yes, Leg Analyst Office?

I thank you. Jared Sippel with the LAO. We have three recommendations related to this proposal. First, we recommend approving the funding for three years rather than on an ongoing basis, as proposed by the governor, because POST recently implemented the Peace Officer Decertification Program and does not have actual data to determine an ongoing level of resources at this time.

Second, we recommend requiring POST to report by January of 2026 on its annual DOJ cost to support peace officer decertification cases, which can then be used to help inform future funding decisions. And then, finally, we recommend adopting provisional language that would require any unspent funds to revert to the general fund because it is possible that POST may have overestimated the amount of funding needed for DOJ cost, given that POST is still building staffing capacity and the number of cases that will reach the Office of Administrative Hearings is uncertain. So I think, bottom line, we recognize and agree with POST that there will be some ongoing level of resources that are needed for this proposal. However, right now, the Legislature doesn't have the actual data to debase any ongoing decisions on, and so we think it's best to make this limited term, give POST some time to collect some actual data, and then POST can resubmit a proposal for ongoing resources after that. So, happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sippel. Department of Finance?

Sarah Tomlinson, Department of Finance. We'd just like to state that the administration acknowledges that ongoing costs related to decertification hearings represent the best estimates at this time and that future costs may vary. The administration's position is that ongoing funding for the Department of Justice costs related to administrative adjudications, as with the Office of Administrative Hearings costs, is the most appropriate and reasonable approach as it pertains to continuing to support POST in their implementation of SB 2.

And lastly, as POST has shared with the subcommittee previously, SB 2 includes a number of reporting requirements for data that POST must share with the Legislature, so we do not believe any additional reporting requirements are necessary. However, the administration is open to working with the Legislature to the extent there is interest in additional reporting requirements.

Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson. The LAO's recommendation sounds like a practical one, considering we're still trying to assess what the actual workload will be. Is POST amenable to their recommendation?

Yes, in terms of the reporting requirements and the deadlines, and reverting the money back to the general fund, of course. I believe the budget change proposal requests ongoing funding, and I think that may be the only.

I think that is the sticker. Yeah. We'll figure out a way to get there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Alvarez, Mr. Darden, appreciate your testimony today. Any other comments from anybody? Thank you. We'll now be moving to our last Department, the Office of Emergency Services. And item number one local law enforcement gun buyback program.

Welcome everyone.

Good evening. I'm Eric Swanson, Deputy Director of Finance and Administration. For the first issue, we are proposing 25 million in a one-time General Fund for a gun buyback grant program. We will provide resources to participating local law enforcement agencies that can implement the program under the guidelines and timelines set forth by us. We want to ensure a few things here. First, that there are safe disposal opportunities to remove the guns from the streets.

We want to be sure to include an educational component, and we also want to make sure that we're collecting data such as volume and types of guns collected. And with that, I will turn it over to your next witness.

Thank you, Mr. Swanson. Mr. Sippel?

Thank you. Jared Sippel with the LAO. Just to give a little bit of context for one of the recommendations, we have related to this. So separately, as part of the, I think, May revision proposal, the Governor is proposing to revert $25 million in the General Fund that was provided in 22-23 for BSCC to administer a gun buyback program, which also had accompanying budget bill language specifying grant eligibility and requirements. And so now I think they're proposing to move that gun back buyback program over to OAS.

So I just wanted to give that context because, ultimately, we have a couple of recommendations. So first, we're recommending approving the reversion of the gun buyback program from BSCC, as none of this funding has been spent or committed, it would be better used to address the state's budget situation, especially given the anticipated revenue weakness our office is currently projecting.

And then second, we would recommend rejecting the proposed OES augmentation to administer the gun buyback program, as it's unclear whether the new program at OES would reduce firearm-related crime for a couple of reasons.

So first, it would no longer be subject to the requirements of the BSCC program, which required research-based best practices such as requiring firearms view in working order to receive an incentive and prioritization, or the types of firearms used in crimes, or focusing on the types of people or locations that are prone to firearm violence. And then second, the lack of details in the new program at OAS also raises questions about whether the funding would be used effectively.

And so with that available for any questions, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Sippel. Department of Finance?

Hi there. Tess Scherkenback, Department of Finance. So the Department of Finance does continue to support the request as it was originally proposed, and gun violence continues to be a major issue across the state and the nation, and the administration does continue to support getting guns off of the street, and funding for this program is in furtherance of that goal.

So, the way that the program is intended to roll out is to capitalize on programs that are already existing in local communities, and we would rely on those best practices that the communities are already using. So this will be a different approach than under the BSCC, and we should be able to roll it out quicker under Cal OES and Cal OES would continue to take time to look at setting up this program and the best guidelines, best practices informed by those already existing local programs, and they would take that time to make sure this is a successful program. Thank you.

Thank you. This is curious. I don't understand why we would be moving this from BSCC to OES. What is the reasoning? Why what subject matter expertise does OES have related to gun violence issues?

I think I would say that part of the reason. I'm not familiar with the struggles that BSCC has, just on the surface level. But our grant's management team has about 100 federal, state grant programs, and we have more than $807 million that we give out to support local government, community-based organizations, and nonprofit organizations. We have more than 100 staff in that program.

So we have a very accurate and quick and very good follow up in terms of making sure the grant funds are used for the appropriate purposes. This is a specialty area for Cal OES.

And was this a proposal from OES to the administration to say you had the staffing and the ability to move these dollars more quickly than BSCC? Or how did this conversation evolve?

Stephen Benson, Department of Finance. So, no, it wasn't Cal OES approached and requested the move. I think there was a sense, as the administration considered the best way to go forward with the program, that there was sort of a change in opinions and the administration as a whole felt that it'd be quicker to get the money out on the streets and get the program up and going if they used Cal OES as the implementing department.

And why are the BSCC requirements not continuing on in this new approach?

I think we're opening to this is sort of- I hate to say this and Steven may kick me- but this was a last-minute add-on. And so we're open to many of the provisions that were in the BSCC budget language. I understand that that went through the legislative process and all those issues were talked about. Some of them we have a little bit of concern with. So we're open to working with legislative staff on what would be appropriate to put into this budget.

But there are also some that we have concerns about as well.

Can you go into those a little bit?

I think we want to take a look at some of the requirements for a local match. Some of the law enforcement agencies that we may have submitting proposals for our grant program may not have the ability to provide that. We also want to look at, and I understand the LAO has looked into research regarding these programs, but some of the research also suggests that these programs work particularly well for domestic violence and self-violence as suicide.

And I want to make sure, too, that we're not discounting types of guns that are used for those efforts as well.

So your point is to try to be more proactive rather than reactive in regard to criminal activity. Okay. All right, well, thank you. That's very helpful to have that additional information. Thank you, Mr. Swanson. Any other comments from anybody else? Okay, thank you. Now we'll be moving to item number two, the statewide flood support.

Hello, Stephen Benson with Department of Finance. Again, I'll go ahead and kick this one off. So the administration is requesting as part of a larger flood package that we understand is going to be heard in assembly sub three as well. So this is just sort of one piece of that. But as this piece, the administration is requesting control section 11.86 be added to the budget bill to administer the $125 million General Fund, a one-time General Fund flood contingency set aside. That's a part of the package.

And this set aside would be specifically to support the costs associated with preparedness, response, recovery, and other associated activities related to the 2023 storms, the anticipated snow melt-off off, and then other flooding risks. It would include, but not be limited to, supporting communities and vulnerable populations such as farm workers from the impacts of these events. I think it probably well covered that there's been a lot of communities that have been impacted by the storms and the flood.

And so this is set aside to try and address some of the needs that will arise that can't be addressed by our sort of pre-existing disaster funding mechanism referred to as DREOA, the Disaster Response Emergency Operations Account.

Thank you, Mr. Sippel.

Thank you. Jared Sipple with the LAO. We'll have some broader comments and recommendations on the Governor's May revision plot package that my colleague Mr. Benson mentioned, but just specific to this proposal. We're recommending that the legislature consider approving the $125 million from the General Fund for contingencies. We would note that the particular amount proposed 125 million is the amount that the Governor had proposed for drought contingencies in January, which the administration now is proposing to redirect for flood contingencies.

And so with that in mind, we'd also recommend that the legislature consider modifying the proposal in a couple of ways. First, we'd suggest that the legislature consider making the funding available for both drought and flood-related contingencies, such as ensuring access to drinking water or helping vulnerable households recover from flood damage. Even though the state has had a very wet winter and the hydrologic conditions of the state have improved, there are still parts of the state that are being impacted by drought.

Second, we'd also recommend that the legislature add more accountability measures to the control section language to increase legislative oversight. So, for example, the language could include notification to the JLBC to occur ten days prior to making an allocation. In addition, the language could also include additional parameters, such as requiring that funding be prioritized for expenditures that are not eligible for federal or local funding. And so with that, happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Mr. Swanson, do you have a thought about allowing the funding to be eligible for drought as well as for flood control, or is that if?

If I could actually weigh in on that?

Sure.

So what we were looking for when we made the switch actually is we're trying to compare sort of the landscape of the bill of funding for both issues. So just note that over the last several years, the budgets included $1.5 billion for immediate drought support, which included direct relief for communities.

Just in the last week, we allocated 71 million of current year drought contingency to support for farm worker relief, for trucking in water, for remediation of dry wells. And then also in recent budgets, there's been 738 million, with an additional 201 million proposed in the Governor's budget for flood investments. But that's mostly focused on levy projects.

So really what we are aiming to do with this is sort of fill a gap that those other two existing sources of funding aren't already addressing, and that is mostly sort of the results that come from these more recent events. So that's really where our thought in terms of the drought versus the flood is. There's this sort of gap that we wanted to fill there in terms of the reporting requirements. I think we're open to discussing with ledge staff the requirements of reporting.

Can you give sort of an overview too about the federal funds and reimbursement that we received so far or can anticipate so far from the flood disaster support requests?

Yeah, so what I would know specifically about is within the disaster response area, there is a presidential major disaster declaration that's been declared, and so that opens the door to FEMA providing some reimbursements. Those reimbursements haven't come into the state yet. What will happen is they I should really let OES talk about this as we get it, but I can do some highlight.

As costs are sort of incurred and collected, they get reported into FEMA, who has then a review process, and so it usually ends up taking several months, in some cases even several years, before the money comes back in from FEMA. But we will certainly be maximizing the submittals from response costs and then also that declaration includes some of the categories that go towards permanent repairs, but that'll be on the nature of the projects and stuff like that. But we will certainly maximize the use of that.

And you're monitoring the local agency requests for reimbursement as well to sort of have an overview of what the state's needing in terms of reimbursement from-

Yeah, absolutely. All of the FEMA requests and funding coming back all flows through OES, whether it's local or state or nonprofit; frankly, even it all goes through OES, so there's monitoring of all of it.

And so far, everything seems like it's going according to plan. I mean, it's always late and delayed, and it takes time to work through the process, but there are no red flags at this point that would have you concerned.

Eric? Yeah, I'll let you.

Again, I think it's kind of difficult for us to judge because we find out we can't control the Federal Government's timeline, and they often take years to evaluate these proposals, and they sometimes come up with issues we hadn't identified before. But so far everything looks like it's going according to plan. And we're very pleased with the federal declaration because that helps us immensely to get those reimbursements.

And if I maybe would add, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think actually FEMA's region folks have been sort of embedded is the right word, but they've been at OES working through a lot of this stuff along the way, too.

So that helps. That's really helpful to make sure all the applications are accurate and well done and have the best chance for reimbursement. Thank you. Regarding the LAO's recommendation that the legislature would benefit from receiving notification prior to funding going out rather than after, is the administration amenable to the LAO's recommendation?

We're certainly open talking about the staff; I don't think there's a major red flag with doing that. This isn't the same nature sort of emergency response stuff you have with, so...

Okay, thank you for that. Thank you all. Appreciate your testimony. And now, we'll be moving to item number three. Southern Region Emergency Operations Center.

Yes. For our next agenda item, we are proposing to continue the design-build phase of the new Southern Regional Emergency Operations Center. The request is for costs of 174.7 million over about four years for this phase. The design-build solicitation process is estimated to begin in November 2023 and be completed by October 2024. The design-build phase is scheduled to begin in October 2024 and will be completed in September 2027.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Marvin Green. I'm the Deputy Director for Logistics at Cal OES. This capital outlay, BCP continues to financially support the development and construction of Cal OES' Southern Region Emergency Operations Center at the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, California, with a target completion date of 2027, just in time to support the 2028 Olympics in the LA area. This project is currently in the design-build phase and is managed by the Department of General Services with input and support from Cal OES as the customer agency.

The Southern Regional Office for Cal OES is responsible for 11 California counties, 226 incorporated cities, and more than half of the state's population. Many of the state's critical infrastructure, both public and private, resides in this region. This includes international airports, some of the nation's largest seaports, major aerospace and engineering sectors, research facilities, both private and public, and major refinery operations.

This proposal supports the following: it helps support the long-term goal to relocate the current Southern Operations Center, which is two 25-year-old trailers sitting on a Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamedos, and move it into a more modern facility. It supports the improved response and incident command infrastructure for Southern California incidents and emergencies.

And including this would be the Southern California Catastrophic Plan in support of a major incident in Southern California, and it provides a focal point for mobilizing and assembling response assets for incidents and emergencies. It also provides an alternate state operations center for Southern California incidents and supports the state's continuity of government operations that Cal OES supports.

And it allows for the use of the site for training at the local, municipal, county, and regional levels, including using the California Specialized Training Institute emergency management process that Cal OES provides. And, of course, this will provide incident command for specific public events, such as the 2028 Olympics. So with that, I want to thank you for your opportunity to present this proposal, and my colleague and I are available for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Green, Mr. Swanson. Mr. Sippel?

Thank you, Jared Sippel, with the LAO, for this proposal. We're recommending rejecting it at this time, as it's unclear whether OES needs a new Southern Regional Emergency Operations Center in the absence of an upcoming OES Preparedness Response Capacity and Needs report.

The 22-23 budget package requires OES to submit this report, which will identify things such as the department's existing emergency response capacity and resources, state emergency response goals, objectives, and metrics, as well as a description of the state's ability to meet the identified emergency goals, objectives, and metrics. And we think this information would better position the legislature to assess the merits and needs of this center after it's submitted.

So, again, once this information is provided, the administration could resubmit this proposal for a legislative consideration at that time. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance?

Dominic Adira, Department of Finance we just had a few comments to note. The programmatic need for this project was recognized two years ago through the legislature's approval of this project at that time. The funding requested for this proposal is the next phase of a continuing project, and delaying this project will increase the cost of this project potentially by 10 million or more per year.

Can OES speak to what the critical need is to start this year, as opposed to waiting six months to get the strategic plan back?

Yeah, and let me just say, too, I would describe the report less as a strategic plan. We do have a strategic plan that's on our website that we update every three or four years. It's more of an operational gap analysis. And what I don't think I don't think the report itself will lead to recommendations based on infrastructure. The report itself is more based on this is the national, state, and local picture of disaster response in California and where are their gaps.

I don't think we're going to be getting into specifically where the warehouses are that support that need and some of the operations centers; this is more of a need because we're trying to create a space where, if our headquarters is not working at Mather, we have a redundant headquarters in Southern California, as you know, most of our population bases itself in Southern California. And this will also provide a staging ground for disasters that occur there.

And I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Green, who may succinctly describe some of the other reasons why we think this is a high priority at this time.

Yeah, so this gap assessment doesn't really look at the organizational structure or the doctrinal policies that we follow in OES. California Government Code 8607 and the California Emergency Services Act require that government entities, local, municipal, county, and regional, have and operate under the Standardized Emergency Management System, or SEMs. Part of that SEM is having viable emergency operation command posts. Right now, we're asking for one because what we don't have is a state-of-the-art one.

Now we have an old one that's in two 25-year-old trailers sitting at Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos. So we'd like you to look at it from that point. Also, this endeavor has been going on for nine years, still has about four and a half years to get us across the goal line.

And any slowing down of this, I talked to DGS this morning and at least a 10% increase in cost if we take a pause here for a year or two before we get this back up and running. And so this creates a problem for us. And then also there are several parts of this operation that are already in movement because this has been going on for several years.

And that is we're working on the responsible departure off of Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos over the next year, moving to a swing space that's already been approved in Santa Ana, which is just some additional office space to put the operations center while we build the phase or build the actual structure in Fairview. And so the consequence of pausing this project will negatively impact our current operations. It'll impact future continuity operations, and of course, it'll cause us some problems with future emergency management capabilities.

So our recommendation is to go with the BCP, continue funding it, and let's get this ball across the goal line and open up the site.

Does OES have a capital improvement program that looks ahead over time as to what investments you need to make in your infrastructure?

We work closely with DGs on all of our facilities, leased and owned facilities. And so we have a program that we look at those, we look at the Lifecycle Management for those. For example, we have another facility in the Fairfield area here in the Northern California that's just lived its life. And so we're moving into a facility that will be able to provide State of the art office space and so forth, whereas the other site was just totally inadequate and not appropriate.

But that happened because we look at the lifecycle management of all of our facilities and make sure that we're paying the right amount of money, we've got the right upkeep going on, and that it's serving the needs of whatever part of the program that OES is running there.

Just to be clear, too, we do submit a five-year infrastructure plan.

These projects are all part of that?

Yes, yes. Including this project that we're talking about right now.

All right, Mr. Sippel, do you have anything you want to add to any of this?

I guess the only thing I'd add is, I mean, I think our hope is from this report is that we would kind of get a lay of the land in terms of kind of here's the disaster state of disasters in California, here's the capacity at the department.

And all of this would kind of this would still kind of fit within that discussion of where different infrastructure and assets and everything should be positioned, including helping inform like what would this emergency operations center need in order to help respond to these. So I think that's from our perspective, why we thought it would be good to have that before we make a decision to go forward on this.

Thank you for that and thank you all for your input today. Appreciate that. And now we'll be moving to our last item, which is item number four statewide disaster warehousing operations.

As you may recall, last year, you and your colleagues invested 114.3 million General Fund on a one-time basis in 2022-23 to provide warehouse space and commodities for disasters and personal protection equipment. This year, we're requesting 43.3 million in 2023-24, various amounts in the out year listed on your agenda or in the BCP, and 15 positions for statewide multi-agency disaster response and recovery. This request includes funding to maintain the State of California's PPE or Stockpiling program consistent with the SMARTER Plan.

And with me today is Mr. Green to provide background on the request.

Cal OES has developed a long-term plan for the warehousing and distribution of medical and personal protective equipment and all hazard commodities to support future incidents and emergencies while maintaining a fiscally responsible logistical solution for the state. This solution includes first, moving from a pandemic-high warehousing footprint of 2.5 million sqft at nine locations to a responsibly sized solution of 586,000 sqft in two regional warehouses in the town of Dixon in Northern California and in San Bernardino in Southern California.

This provides support for the state's SMARTER Plan to stockpile 75 million high-quality mass and to provide additional warehouse space for storage and distribution of COVID test kits, which is managed by the California Department of Public Health, but we work very closely with them in support of their storage needs. It provides support for warehousing and distribution of mass care commodities and storage of disaster logistics equipment.

And it provides a short-term warehousing space in support of the Logistics and Commodity Movement Task Force as emergency management logistics needs arise. The 43.3 million request in the BCP is really broken down into four specific areas. 9.5 million is for managing the stockpile of medical PPE in accordance with the Smarter Plan, as well as sustaining the six California medical stations in inventory.

By the way, a California medical station is a 50-patient hospital kit that can be set up to supplement existing hospital capability to support any medical surges. Then it's 2.7 million for staffing of 15 permanent state employees and to manage warehouse operations both in Dixon and San Bernardino. 26.5 million for warehouse leases, warehouse and distribution operations management costs for facility wraparound support, including security, custodial, and utilities.

11 lease vehicles and information technology support for receiving storage, inventory control, and shipping of warehousing, materials, and commodities. And finally, 4.1 million for the following, which is racking systems so that we can better space optimize in the warehousing area eight trailers for prepositioning of materials and commodities, near incident areas and material handling equipment purchases of eight forklifts so that we eliminate the higher cost of running this equipment.

Much of the work has been done to envision what the state's warehousing solution should look like as we exit the pandemic. The Smarter Plan, as well as the Southern California Bay Area and Cascadia Subduction Catastrophic Plan, have been good tools for us to develop a vision for warehousing over the next several years while being mindful of the state's scarce resources. I just want to 1 thing out here.

In the recent with the atmospheric rivers, we went out of our warehouses and established nine staging areas strategically placed throughout the state of California so that we could have all-hazard equipment, COTS, blankets, MREs, and water so that we could help anyone at any moment. So the capability that we have here is to rapidly put this out to help anyone.

Now, there are redundant capabilities: American Red Cross, FEMA, and so forth, but they take three to five days to show up to the show, and we have the capability of showing up in 12 to 24 hours to help people. And that's what this warehousing capability provides. And so we recommend that the legislature approves the request as is. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Green. Mr. Sippel?

Thank you, Jared Sippel, with the LAO, for this proposal. We recommend approving the request for one year rather than on an ongoing basis, as proposed by the Governor, to allow for a reevaluation. After OES submits the report that I referenced in our prior discussion, we think that this information would allow the legislature to better assess the merits of the proposal and the legislature can resubmit a proposal for ongoing resources for legislative consideration after that time. So thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance?

Tess Sherkenback, Department of Finance. Finance continues to support the original proposal, specifically the ongoing funding for warehousing, and the reason for that is that we know that there is an ongoing need in this space. And the gap assessment, or the strategic plan, as we were talking about a little bit earlier, the gap assessment we don't anticipate will minimize what we know. The need for that ongoing continuity of operations is in the statewide disaster warehousing space.

So given the market and other factors, the warehousing space that OES has now is a good location. We have a good rate. So we do believe that we need to lock it in now for continuity of services. And an additional point of importance is that any lease that we can negotiate for this space that we operate will require funding for a period longer than one year. So we don't think that approving just one year of funding for this is a workable plan. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Will the strategic plan that we talked about in the previous item, obviously, help inform this as well, coordinate with local governments and nonprofits? Is that part of the scope of the strategic plan to look at how disaster response is coordinated amongst all the different actors?

Yeah, I think there's language in the strategic plan that mentions that. I don't know if it mentions nonprofit, but it certainly mentions federal, state, and local government and how they provide disaster services.

I specifically asked that because, in my district, Direct Relief International is a major player. They provide disaster assistance all around the globe and they're located in my district in Santa Barbara and just want to make sure that their resources and facilities are integrated into the state's system as well because they're a significant resource that should be utilized to maximum degree.

This is one of the things that our regions do, is they interface very detailed with the counties and local emergency operation management people. And then going back to talking about the REOC, it's another reason why we have to maintain those regions because they're so important in communicating with the local and the community levels.

Thank you for that. Well, thank you all for your help today. We're going to continue this conversation and work together to get a budget that works for everybody and protects all Californians from the significant disasters we've been experiencing. I think that everybody in our state understands fully well how important disaster response is and how sophisticated the state is becoming in that working with local governments, because we've had a lot of experience with it last few years. Unfortunately, we'll probably have more experience in the future.

So thank you for your work and thank you for your time today. I think that is our last item. I want to thank my colleagues. For their conversations and help over the past few months. The chairs led these discussions very capably and well. And she's unfortunate she wasn't able to be here for this last hearing. I also want to thank the administration, the Department of Finance, and the Legislative Analyst Office for all the insight and recommendations in advising this Committee. Your work is invaluable.

We're going to move to public comment now and see if there is anyone here in the room that would like to submit public comment. I don't see anyone. Next, we'll turn to the phones. The phone number to connect is on the Committee website and on the screen. And if you're streaming this hearing, the number is a public toll-free number: 877-692-8957. And then do I need to give the access code? The access code is 131-5437.

That's 877-692-8957 is the toll-free number, and the access code is 131-5437. The operator. Do you have anyone on the line?

Operator?

Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to make a public comment, please press one, then zero. We'll be going to line 29. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Danica Rodarmel, on behalf of the Transformative In-Prison Support Group, Grip Training Institute, and Initiate Justice. Providing comment on the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center proposal. Pleased to see that members of our network of community-based programs providing programming both at San Quentin and statewide are on the Advisory Committee, but also calling for increased support state funding for these programs beyond San Quentin.

And I also wanted to read a statement from the People in Blue Incarcerated Committee, who are currently incarcerated at San Quentin who say we incarcerated residents of San Quentin know the importance of the proposal. The path to success is only possible when all perspectives are explored, including equal representation of the incarcerated voices. Nothing for us without us.

Please consider our voices so we may pay a living amends by giving back, healing our communities, and growing through family so that our wounds are not transferred to future generations. Thank you.

Next, we'll be going to line 30. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening. This is Olivia Seidman with the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. We are happy to see that 125 million were proposed in the May revision for flood preparedness, response, and recovery to support impacted communities and vulnerable populations. Our organization partners directly with low-income residents in the disadvantaged, unincorporated communities of Planada and Merced County, which was one of the first communities in the state to be completely evacuated and severely impacted by extreme flooding in January 2023.

The community is still facing the impacts of that flooding. We recommend that the budget direct $20.3 million of that proposed appropriation to Planada for home repairs, emergency rental assistance, lost vehicles, home inspections, and infrastructure repairs that FEMA did not provide. Only one in four households in Planada qualified for FEMA, and of households that received that aid, the average assistance received per household was only around one-third of the estimated median need per household.

In light of this funding gap for a vulnerable farmworker community in the Central Valley impacted by a flooding disaster, we recommend that the state allocate $20 million to this community to meet the need. We can supply this committee with an analysis conducted by UC Merced that lays out the basis for the identified funding need. Thank you.

Next going to line 31. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you chair and members. This is Janice O'Malley with the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. Wanted to just touch on a couple of items. We would like to echo the concerns raised by this committee on the costs 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 rehabilitative services, and we're generally supportive of the reimagination of a true center of rehabilitation.

However, we've been disappointed with the lack of engagement with AFSCME workers who currently provide these services in prisons and state hospitals. These workers have the expertise and insight to help structure a truly transformative program. Next, just wanted to say that we support funding to expand the use of mental health within the statewide mental health program. We've been working with the administration on alleviating the chronic vacancies in the mental health program and believe that this will have a positive impact to the workforce.

And lastly, we are 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. We believe these funds could be better and more fairly distributed to increase wages and benefits to workers performing the same task. Thank you.

And there's currently no one else in the queue. Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the public comments. Appreciate your staying through the whole hearing and adding their valuable insight into the issues we're talking about. That concludes our sub-five hearing. We are adjourned.