Senate Standing Committee on Rules

So I will go ahead and call the Wednesday, January 24 meeting of the Rules Committee to order. And to start, let me ask our Secretary to please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Thank you very much. We have a quorum present. Welcome, everyone. And we do anticipate a full Committee today, so I know that Senator Ochoa Bogh will be here. We're going to go ahead and get started. And before we get into Governor's appointees required to appear, I'm going to see if we can dispense with some items fairly quickly. We have item number two, Governor's appointees not required to appear. And these are appointments to the California Exposition and State Fair Board of Directors 2, F and G. Do I need to separate those out?

No, ma'am.

Okay. Seeing no indication to separate, I would call for a motion on items 2, F and G. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, will you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Five to zero. Thank you. We will take up item number three, bill referrals. That's reference of bills to committees. A motion. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Five to zero. Thank you. Item number four is our 2024 Senate Holiday Schedule. Very important. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Five to zero. Thank you very much. Okay, items five through nine are floor acknowledgment requests from our colleagues to recognize groups and individuals as part of our session schedule. I would entertain a motion for items five through nine. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, will you call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Five to zero. Wonderful. We have dispensed with quite a lot. So now I will start with our first Governor's appointees required to appear. And let me invite Harry Le Grande and Mary Salas up to the table in front. These are appointments for members of the Community Colleges Board of Governors. Let me say welcome to both of you. And, of course, it's so good to have you back. I don't know what to call you. Former Assembly Member, former Mayor, good friend. It's good to see you, Mary. What I will invite you to do is, why don't we start with you, Harry, and have you. Sorry, Mr. La Grande.

Harry's fine.

Thank you. Trying to work on the decorum here, especially today, since this is my last session as Rules Chair. I welcome you, invite you to make any opening comments you want, acknowledge anyone that you would like, and then after you make your comments, we'll go right to the honorable Ms. Salas and ask her to make comments, acknowledge anyone she wants, and then we'll go right to Committee for comments and questions. So welcome.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Senate Members. I'm Harry Le Grande. It's an honor to be here today. I'm really happy to have been selected to serve in this very important role. I'm joined today by my wife of 46 years, Denise Le Grande, hiding, and also two of my amazing cousins, Dr. Calvin Wheeler and Sarah Jane Wheeler. And I want to thank them for their support today. They're sitting behind me. I've been in higher education since graduating from UC Irvine in 1975.

I spent the last 35 years of work at the University of California, Berkeley. I have worked in student housing from 1975 until 2007. I served as Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs from 2007 until I write until I retired in 2016. Since retiring, I've had the pleasure of serving as interim Vice Presidents of Student Affairs at three CSUs and one private school, Cal Arts.

I've learned a lot about the community colleges over the past 10 months since my appointment, and I can see the impact and role that our close to 2 million students can have on the economy of our state. So thank you.

Thank you very much, and welcome to your family and friends. We're happy to have you here today. Ms. Salas.

Yes, thank you so much, Senator Atkins and all the other Senators. It really is a privilege for me to be here. Many times people ask me, why would you want to join a board that's going to be a lot of hard work after your retirement? And I have to tell them that I wouldn't be here except for the community colleges. So if you don't know my background and my story, I was married at a very, very young age. I was a pregnant teenager.

And when I found myself in a situation where I was being divorced and had two children to raise. It really hit me hard, but I had to take stock of my life and see what I wanted the future of my children to look like. I wanted the future of my children to have a mother that was a role model to them. I wanted them to have a future where I could provide for them in dignity.

And so I was a college freshman at 37 years old, and my first entry was into Southwestern Community College. Had not the college been there, I know I wouldn't have eventually transferred to SDSU, where I eventually got a degree in social work, and I graduated magna cum laude. I met so many people in that journey that were my mentors and that were pushing me along and had faith in me.

And that's why I'm so passionate about the community colleges, because I know firsthand how the instructors, how the college instructors on the community college level really look after their students and are there for them. My service for almost a year now on the California Community Board of Governors has even sparked more of a passion for me to serve in that capacity, seeing what the organization is doing, seeing all the new initiatives that are being driven to focus on students in their new manner of learning.

And we do have to change our manner of learning. We have to move on to technology, just as they have. And so I'm ready to serve, and I really am humbled. And thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you so much. I'm going to go ahead and start with Madam Vice Chair as she's getting settled and see if you'll kick us off.

Thank you, Madam pro tem. Thank you, both of you, for being here. I appreciate it very much. I just have a couple of questions. I know we try to limit our questions because there's a lot of people in the audience that want to either support or oppose, and they want their time as well.

One of the questions that I have is, obviously, since October 7, this has been a hot subject item on our community college campuses and our UCs and our CSUs, the Hamas terror attacks against Israel. Jewish students, they feel, based on the articles that I've read, that they are threatened, and they don't have a safe place to come to our community colleges or our UC systems. So there's a concerning trend that Jewish students are pleading for college leaders to do something.

Is there something that you guys have already implemented that you intend to implement to make sure that our Jewish students are safe and that they can pursue the education that they have chosen to pursue? It can go to both of you.

Okay, well, I'll try to take a stab at it because there's 73 different districts, right, that implement their own policies. And so I'm sure that they are exploring these situations. I know from a standpoint of at least a community college that is closest to me, Southwestern Community College, that we want a campus, as I'm sure all the chancellors do. They want a campus that's safe for all students, whether you're Jewish or you're Palestinian.

It should be safe for everyone, whether you're black, whether you're white, that everyone should be welcome into that space. And that, not only the community college spaces, but our universities, as well as K through 12, that there has to be an open discussion of tolerance and a look at history of how we got here and the hope and the continuing hope that humanity will rise to a level at some point in time where we feel that it's all about acceptance and love of others.

Knowing that there are differences, right. And the atmosphere in our country today is really appalling to me, that we can't have a discussion, that we can't exercise our free speech on any manner without the fear of being attacked. And I'm talking on the liberal side and on the conservative side, as know when I see students at UC campuses that shut down a speaker because they're opposed to their view, to me, they're limiting their opportunity to learn on either side. Right.

Because nobody is 100% right and nobody is 100% wrong. And we have to come together. We're better human beings than that. And I believe that our community colleges are a place to start because we are so diverse and we have so many different students of very many different faiths.

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Le Grande.

Yeah. I would just add that our chancellor, as well as our board, are very committed to making sure there's a safe environment for all of our students on the campus. And I think much as Members Salas has said that with the 72 different districts and the 116 campuses, it's hard to manage that. But I think as board members, our role is to set the standard and set the tone for that.

And we can do that by either policy direction or working with the chancellor to make sure that our college presidents are aware of the need to be open. Having been on Berkeley's campus for 35 years, protests are not unusual for me. And I've kind of lived through all of that, and I just know how important it is for students to have a voice to speak out.

I think that it's not in the best interest of the United States or any of us to limit freedom of speech. We actually do need to have all the voices at the table and trying to resolve that. And it's unfortunate that the situation has gotten to the point with what's happening in the Middle East, that it's made the intolerance just even that much more exacerbated here in the United States. But I think our role is to be committed to a safe environment for our students so that they can learn and that our faculty and staff have a free and a safe place to work as well.

Thank you. The other question that I had, I have two, actually. The data. There's data out there that suggests that 20% of the California community college applicants are really fake students trying to take advantage of the financial aid. Have you guys been addressing that? Is there some program that you have in place to try to stop that, or are you aware of that?

Well, to tell you the truth, I am not aware of that, nor have I heard that that is a fact. Certainly, I'll go back and try to dig some more to see what's behind that.

Absolutely. And if you'd just follow up with me, I'd really appreciate that.

I sure would.

Thank you both.

It's the same question. Same answer. Yeah.

And then my last question is that, in the real world, I'm a business owner. We all bring our lived experiences here to this legislative body. I didn't go to college. I don't have a college degree, but I started a business. It's been in business for 30 years. And a lot of times we have people that come from our community college, individuals looking for a job.

And there is a severe disconnect to what we need in the world of employment, to what is educated or programs that are available at community colleges or colleges? Has there been a reaching out of the community and CTE programs and how best to be able to make sure that once these students finish a college education, that they'd have the opportunity to go right into be gainfully employed? Because sometimes I say the real world all the time, my colleagues get it.

But in the real world, it is very difficult to find somebody with that quality of education. It's not impossible, but it is difficult. And if the college was going to adjust some of their curriculum, if they see new emerging technologies, carbon capture in my area, just different things that are coming on that are new technologies, where I think if they're going to be educated on this, the college needs to step up a little bit.

I think the message has been clear that we need to do a better job of preparing our students for the workforce. We actually have a Workforce Development Unit within the community college system now that's actually looking at that, reaching out to employers to find out what the gaps are, what do we need to fill those gaps, and then to, I think, try to be nimble enough to make those kind of changes.

I think that's one of the good things about the Calbright system being as new as it is and not in some ways encumbered by kind of the traditional sense of doing that kind of work. But they can be very, very flexible, and I know they've actually been out meeting with community members and business owners to find out how we can best address those needs. But that's something that we're very well aware of and know that, like I said, with almost 2 million students, we are the economic engine for California. And so our students need to be prepared to take those jobs.

And just because you, Mr. Le Grande, mentioned Calbright. You know, Fresno is the fiasco location of where Calbright and Bitwise kind of had that collapse. And so I would hope that we've learned from that. Every business, every business venture, every new startup has failures. And I'm not judging this failure. I'm just saying I hope we have learned from that particular failure in that. But yes, ma'am.

So I think we have learned from that failure, and I think that we've really addressed a lot of the initial concerns. And one of the things that I'm really keen on is workforce development. Many years ago, I was appointed to California Trade and Commerce Agency. That is not here anymore, but I was working in the areas of Imperial County, San Diego, and Orange County. And we heard it back then that there was a disconnect between education and what was needed in the workforce, constantly.

But I know of really good programs now, for example, Imperial Valley College, that is really doing technical training for all these people in the new industry of geothermal mining for lithium and other precious minerals, which is really going to create a lot of jobs there for a population that historically has had about a 30% unemployment rate. And so the jobs are going to be able to be trained for and have a good livable wage that supports their families.

Those are the kinds of programs that we need to continue to support and fund, are those that have a direct connection to the new industries that are always originating from the State of California. Right. And if we don't keep up with that demand and educate our students, we're going to fall from being the fourth largest economy in the world. And I don't want to see that. I want to see that California thrives for everyone.

And so it's focusing on those types of programs that you can actually see results, and you can see somebody go to work and earn a lot of money after two years, I think that that's great. If they go on to a four year university and become those engineers and those developers of those industries, that's even better.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank both of you. I look forward to your confirmation. Thank you, Madam pro tem.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Let me turn to Senator Smallwood-Cuevas and ask you to go ahead.

Thank you, Madam President. And I want to apologize in advance. I'm fighting this bug, but I was excited to be here, especially with the pro tem being her last session. But, of course, for your nomination process today. Really excited to hear your introductory remarks. Very inspiring. And I wanted to follow up on a question that my colleague lifted up about workforce development.

You talked about the ways in which you are tracking the new economy, the climate resilient economy, and trying to connect the campus curriculum and students to those opportunities. How do those green employers plug in to the community college system? In what ways do you engage the actual businesses that are out of the sort of the green sector? I was curious, as a follow up to you, Miss Salas, your response?

Well, I can speak to the experience of what I know in San Diego and the outreach and the involvement of business organizations within the community college districts, the participation of EDC's, Economic Development Councils and Chambers. And there's a cross pollination. So there's representation of education on those boards. And likewise, there's focus groups from the industry that also report to the college that work with the college to try to develop these things.

We had a very strong Mexico component, and what they were doing at the time is working with the maquiladoras in the south, in Tijuana. It still is a great job hub that has really lifted the quality of life for a lot of Mexican citizens on that side. But we do the R&D on our side and you do the base manufacturing over there.

And so it's that coordination with the two countries to make sure that you're developing those programs and creating a pipeline of those R & D people, as well as training the other workers. It used to be where they were doing simple assembly over there, and now they're doing more complex things. They're building automobiles over there. And you may say, well, that may be a job loss, but we need workers here. We have a dearth of workers here. And if we can't provide those workers without the technical training that accommodate is going to continue. I don't know if I've answered your question.

No. I appreciate the focus groups and the different councils that bring employers together, and I'm curious, would love to learn more about how you're targeting those employers and businesses that are starting to emerge and grow as part of the green economy. I'll go to my next question, which unfortunately, in my community college district, we see a lot of homelessness amongst students. We have about 62% of our students who are also food insecure, about 19% who are homeless.

And obviously we've done at the legislative level all that we can, given our budget, to figure out ways to ensure that every student is housed. I'm just curious, what are the ways that you are thinking about addressing the housing crisis amongst community college students?

I know we've approved funding for some of the more rural campuses to actually build housing, and one of the things I'm most curious about is how you think about how those dollars will be used moving forward, in terms of, not just providing the housing itself for students, but also it being a job creation opportunity for the lower income disadvantaged students who may attend the college to actually have the opportunity to build.

Have you looked at the idea of incorporating a skill and train model that allows the campuses to build the housing, but also to provide an opportunity for the residents, the students, to grow in that particular sector and occupation?

I'll start. I'll take a stab at it. I think that I will say that we're very grateful that the Legislature did put money into affordable housing planning. I think when I sat on the Student Aid Commission, one of the things that I was always concerned with was in California, the cost of housing was really the big debt reason for students, because they had to borrow a lot of money to pay for the rents that are locally.

And having built a lot of housing myself, I know that developers don't reduce my cost because I'm building student housing. So I do think that by the state doing that, and I just visited Santa Rosa Junior College's ribbon cutting to see their partnership with, not only the money that the state provided, but also private philanthropy that came in to help that project come to fruition. And really, I could see how it was really able to keep the cost of rents down for those students.

And so I think that's a good model to kind of take a look at as we continue to expand these kinds of programs. From a training development, what I know is that students get a lot of on the job experience by working in student housing because there are lots of jobs that are there that they actually do pick up skill sets that they can use later. I mean, that's kind of how I got my start.

I was an RA when I was at Irvine and then went on to doing stuff that I never thought I'd do right or be. And so I do think it's a great opportunity for them to pick up skills that are, I would say maybe are soft skills that may not be technical, but are the kind of things that employers are looking for. I know many times I had employers calling me, asking me, can you give me the list of RAs? And I'm like, well, why?

Well, because they know how to team build. They know how to work in groups. They know how to solve problems. And those are the kind of things we don't necessarily have time to teach people, but we expect them to have those skill sets when they come to work for us. And so I do think on campus housing, or housing provided by the college, allows students that opportunity for additional growth.

I don't know if we've spoken specifically about looking at it from a training perspective, but I think that's something we can take back to the board and actually talk about how we might work with our colleagues around the state to do that.

And we can build those partnerships with, not only the developers, but also with the building trades to cooperate, because the building community also needs a pipeline of skilled workers as well. And those are good paying jobs as well. So I think that's great. Now, the students of today, the nontraditional students, are facing so many hardships. Not only is it the housing insecurity, but it's the food insecurity and the cost of transportation.

Those are really the drivers of expenses that cause nontraditional students to drop out of college. It's not the tuition cost. It's not the book cost. They can manage that with help, but it's everything else, all the other pressures that they have in their lives, that they have to work, and some of them are working more than one job. But certainly that housing insecurity is, I think, a number one thing.

And I, too, thank the Legislature for funding that, and I know that San Diego has been a great recipient of some of that funding, and we're ready to build, and we're willing to build, and we're excited to build while offering those technical and those career opportunities for our students.

Well, I appreciate that. I look forward to working with you on it and exploring the opportunity to really figure out a way to multiply those resources. I think you have amazing construction programs. I know we have a phenomenal one at Trade Tech College, for example. We certainly need housing, for sure, in Los Angeles. But to be able to train and learn and earn and be certified while building your community college and housing could be an extraordinary opportunity. So we'll look forward to working with you on that.

My last question has to do with black student performance, and you spoke earlier just about making sure that the campus provides the safest and most productive space for students of all kind. And I know that two thirds of black students attend community college, which is phenomenal. But then when you look at the actual transfer rates, and that's an important rate that we track to see the educational success of our students, academic success of our students.

Only 35% of black students transfer, and usually it's within six years, and that's about 10 points lower than their white counterparts. And so I wonder, what is driving that disparity, and what do you see the Board of Governors doing to address it?

Well, again, I think that much of that is a question of economics and the historic poverty and redlining that has occurred that has not opened those types of opportunities to many students. The demographics of the community colleges are so diverse, and so that's a focus of the Community College Board of Governors is really providing that equity to learning. It's all about equity, right? It's providing those same opportunity choices.

And many times, students are so overwhelmed with having to work that, if you don't have flexible college schedules, then they're likely to drop out. And that's one of the things that I'm excited about working with Calbright is the flexibility that we're starting, that we're showing there with flexible schedules, flexible learning environments, and not only that, but the tracking tools that have real time tracking to what the student is doing, where the student can anytime look at this dashboard and see just where they're lacking spaces.

But it's not just that the student is responsible for reaching out to the instructor. The instructor is also following that and very closely, saying, okay, you did not do well in these particular chapters. I'm going to give you either the same materials back to study again or some supplementary materials that may help you. So the dropout rate is a lot of things, but I think if you're not meeting the basic needs of someone, food, shelter, clothing, security, then education falls down on the list of priorities.

And so that's a role that the community college has taken on more and more with their feeding pantries and their collaborations with food banks and other organizations to provide that extra help that these students needs. And we know that California has the highest cost of living in the United States. Okay? So it's not about people not working and being lazy and not wanting to earn. It's about the cost of everything else that's going on.

So we have to be part of that, that thinks of those solutions to make it possible for people to be thinking about their, other than their basic needs, their education, that will provide them that better living in the future.

I would just add that I think a lot of our community license are kind of geographically bound, and they have families and other responsibilities. And so that makes the transferring four your school sometimes even more difficult because it may be away from family. You're not only responsible for your immediate family, but there may be parents or somebody else that you're also dealing with.

And so I think one of the things that we are continuing to get better at is actually talking to our students about what are the reasons why you're not matriculating the way you should, continuing to work with our UC and CSU partners with our articulation agreements, and seeing how can we make that process easier. And I think, as Member Salas has also said, that it's a resource issue.

So making sure that the financial aid is actually available when you make that transfer, that you can actually feel comfortable and feel like you're not leaving your family behind when you leave to do that. And we do find out that a student with the community college degree is going to make about $30,000 a year more than if they just had a high school diploma. And so showing them that there's really some benefit, a point of privilege.

I've been invited to speak at an elementary school assembly in May at their closing. And I said, you know, I'm going to talk about community colleges. I think we start too late when we start talking about middle school and high school, about the opportunities. And this is a low performing, underrepresented school in Solano County.

And I was pleased that they invited me, and then I was appointed when I said, oh God, I can take some swag and really get them excited about kind of going off to college if they don't go to a four year, but at least looking at community college as an option.

And then I think that helps educate the parents about how they can support them and what they can do to make that an important part of the conversation in their families, because many times they don't have the support behind them to know that they can make a difference.

And I think as a first generation college student and the first in my family to go to college, I know how important it was for my family, that my parents, that I did this and that then I made a way for my sister to follow behind me. And I just think that we have to really understand the complexity that the students are going through now and how we can actually help adjust or make the transitions easier for them. I think I'll leave it at that.

So the Board of Governors is tracking. There's a metrics for tracking this, and is Calbright a part of it? Is it the student engagement piece? I'm just trying to understand what's the metrics for it and how do we measure beyond just seeing the numbers changing? What are the things that we can track to ensure that we can reduce that 35% gap that we have and disparities across groups?

I would just say I don't think we've discussed since I've been on the board, there's been a specific conversation around that. I know we're tracking a lot of information. This is some of the things I think we can take back and get some specific answers for you because we're capturing a lot of data and it's important that people know that we're doing it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. The enrollment numbers are going up, so make sure that the academic success goes along with it. So I look forward to following up with you on that, and good luck with your nomination today.

Thank you.

Thank you. Before I go to my next colleague, I would just make the nexus from this comment and question to the roadmap and Vision 2030 goals and the outcomes of different student groups. So I hope that's part of kind of that conversation. When you talk about metrics, I understand. So just to throw that in there, I was going to ask a question about that, but I think I could just direct it to that, and hopefully we'll get something back on how you integrate that. So thank you for the question. Senator Ochoa Bogh, please.

Because for two-year colleges, for community college, many a times they go there because they have programs that allow them to go into the workforce right after college, after a two-year endeavor in school. Hopefully it's two years, but depending on the students. But ideally it would be two years. So is there also metrics as to maybe they won't go into a four-year, but they may be successful in achieving their personal goals, academic goals, in achieving their job, that those two years would allow them to continue on? Because that's success as well, right?

Yeah, that is a measure of success, actually. I mean, our students in our mortuary science program at Cypress College would be a good example--that when they complete that they can actually get a job and go into the workforce and not really have to consider transferring to another institution. And so there are still good playing jobs out there that after two years you get a certificate or some kind of certification in order to do that. So, yes, that is part of the tracking mechanisms that we're looking at.

And I mentioned that because I know we have a lot of training schools that are technical, that our students purposely choose those schools because they don't want to go to a four-year college and they just want to get a certificate or a two-year degree and get right into the workforce for economic reasons, for whatever it may be. But that also is considered success because they've achieved their goal, not necessarily because they're wanting to go to a four-year college. So, I was trying to figure how do we frame that and make sure that we have the right data saying that that is still success after two years?

Of course it is. And I just wanted to mention that Senator Grove mentioned that she didn't have that four-year degree, and yet she was very successful in what she chose to do. And so long as you have that education base, no matter what it is, and then you're able to live the way that you want to live. Right?

Not everybody wants to have a yacht, but everybody wants to have a home and everybody wants to have a car that they can get back and forth to work to. They want to be able to raise their children in dignity. And that doesn't always mean having a four-year degree. And we need those technical skills. Now, I'm a big proponent of the community college and getting those vocational goals met. Sometimes I'm really discouraged. I used to be chair of the California Veterans Affairs Committee.

As Mr. Laird well knows, we have an inside joke. But what was happening to a lot of our veterans is they were being funneled into these for-profit technical schools and just being fleeced because the government was paying for it, and then coming out with no marketable skills. And then just being focused on that technicality and not the overall education of a person that they do get when they're at a community college. So success isn't measured by that.

I know a lot of people that are really successful, and I belong to a great mentorship group--I have since 1988. And our mission is to have every woman live the life that she wants to live, and that means success as a housewife, or it means success as a PhD.

Amen. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. So I just wanted to evolve on that a little bit for clarification. But I do have two questions, and one has to do with the Vision 2030 plan. As you folks know, we're in a severe budget deficit this year. And so being that we do sit with Senator Laird, actually, Senator Smallwood-Quavis on the Budget Committee for Education.

I want you to express what your thoughts are as to the programs that we must pay most attention to improve the overall outcomes for our students. And in light of the budget that we have right now, if there were to have cuts to the community college, has the board and the chancellor's office prioritized which programs are going to, or initiatives will, be the most important to be able to move forward and fund as we move forward in implementing the plan?

So this last meeting, we got our first look at the Governor's budget. We got our first briefing on it. And then I had a discussion with, a brief discussion with Mr. Senator John Laird, because we all know he doesn't like to talk. I had a brief discussion about him. So even though the initial budget looks okay for the community colleges, and we're really thankful that the Governor did not choose to cut funding from that, we know we're not safe yet, but we also know that-

-Well, I believe. I don't know. I believe that the community colleges are the bedrock of the majority of our students in California, and we need to focus on educating that population of students. Because they're going to be taking care of me in a couple of years. Right? I don't know about Mr. Laird because he seems to be eternal, but we are going to need them, and we're going to need an educated workforce that we're not going to have to support in the future with government programs, that they're going to be actual contributors to our stream of income and our quality of life.

So I think that it's always a difficult decision to make, because I served in the Assembly when we were having the crisis of 2008, where we had that big economic downturn and we had huge budget deficits. You have to make those tough decisions. And certainly my being mayor of my city for eight years and understanding our budget and our budget process: things cost. Okay?

And so we have to make sure that those revenue streams that are coming into the State of California are sustainable, that they make sense. And right now, the way that we get it, it's so volatile. We have to rework that. Otherwise, we're always going to be on this roller coaster in the State of California and then make choices that we don't want to make.

I would say that Vision 2030 is a very ambitious vision. Chancellor Christian is really out of Vision, and we're all marching towards that. But I know that in any situation, you also have to have a backup plan if it doesn't go as you thought it would be. And I would say it's a dynamic process. So we're always looking at it and retooling it. And we really haven't had the conversation as a board yet regarding what the budget-

-if the budget cuts come, what would that actually look like? But I think it's something that we're well aware of and the Chancellor's offices are well aware of--that we may have to make adjustments to the speed of which we make this stuff happen or how far we're able to go.

But I think we're doing it with intentionality to make sure that when we decide if we have to cut something, then we prioritize what those cuts are or what those areas--where we get the most bang for a buck with the resources that we do have. If we're not thinking that way, then we're doing ourselves and our students a disservice.

Agreed. Thank you so much. And my last question has to do with the housing. Housing is huge for me, and I understand how our student population in our schools impact the local communities and the cost of housing for the local community. So I'm a huge, and I've been a huge, advocate from the get-go in building housing on our campuses so as to not impact our local communities. On that end, Mr. Le Grande, I know that you are a housing expert on that end.

Have you identified any legal or programmatic obstacles that local districts face that we could fix to streamline the process and actually speed up the construction of our student housing on campuses?

I actually haven't thought of it in that context from a policy perspective yet. I'm just beginning to find out how the process actually worked with Santa Rosa. And I know Napa's got a campus that's going to open pretty quickly, I think, next fall as well. But I do think as I think about this, it is a partnership.

And so campuses that actually have land that's available, that could be built upon, is actually a huge cost savings because you're not going out to the community and doing that. And so if we were prioritizing the best way to stretch our dollars, finding places where we don't have to buy land in order to make that housing, have that housing construction happen, might be a first stab that I'd want to look at of how to make those resources really stretch.

And then second, it's always a community partnership. And so finding communities or cities that are friendly to us doing that--because I know in many cases they don't like us taking the housing stock from regular residents, too. And so they really do like the fact that universities and colleges are actually building housing communities because then their local communities can continue to be housed there. And that usually--when we build it, we have more control, usually, over what the costs are going to be.

So we're not at the market. We normally will shoot for some percentage of below market in order to make our students' dollars stretch, because financially it will only go so far and loans will only go so far, and you don't want to get indebted. You'd be totally indebted just because of housing, and that's where all your debt is coming from. So I do think that's one of the areas that I've kind of expressed interest with the Chancellor's office about helping them think through that. And so hopefully we'll continue to move down that path.

I truly, truly do appreciate your comments and your perspective on that end. If, moving forward, there are any other areas where you see that we need to work in order to be able to speed that construction in our campuses, I would love to hear from you on those ideas so that we could see how we could help you on that end, because that is a passion of mine. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the opportunity to answer the question.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Senator. And last but certainly not least, let me turn to Senator Laird.

Madam Pro Tem, does he have a time limit?

As the chair of Budget Sub 1, I think I'll give him some latitude but understand-

-I expect to take less than all my brief colleagues have.

Thank you. Go ahead, Senator.

Because most of the questions have been asked. And so let me just first say thank you for both of you, for your willingness to serve. And let me ask each of you one question. And for Mr. Le Grande, actually, my colleagues started to get into it with housing.

I was going to ask you about that, but it might allow for the focus of how you see your role as a trustee, because with your expertise on housing, as we have discussed--and the only place the Governor recommended pulling back any money and housing was the little bit of the extra that hadn't gone to community colleges yet.

And so in your role, how do you see advocacy and how do you see oversight of the administration with regard to housing so you can sort of bring your expertise to bear and bring your desire that you discussed for what's necessary to bear in sort of advocating?

Well, I would say the Chancellor's office has been really receptive to any comments that I made. We just lost Lizette, who was actually our Vice President, that was kind of leading that effort. I'm not quite certain who's stepping into those shoes right now, but I will be kind of in lockstep with that individual as they continue to move down this path. I think, again, these are community and campus-based decisions.

I've actually had a couple of developers that know that I'm on this board now calling me. "So what role do you have in getting housing built in town x?" And I'm like, "Well, I really don't because those are locally made decisions by that administration and those district trustees. And so I could just point you in that direction." But I would say that I'm pretty good about kind of thinking outside the box, usually, when it comes to those kinds of things. And so I'm hopeful that there is receptivity to some of the ideas that I may come up with as I begin to think more about it. But at this point, I haven't given it a lot of-

A brief piece of advice. And that is that what you said is exactly right about the projects, but the funding is at the state level, and the funding for community colleges housing of the three branches was the one that got completely balled up last year, and it got balled up two ways. There's three projects that are joint with either a CSU or UC and how they were funded together, it finally took UC standing up and saying, "We will use our bond authority for community colleges in the joint."

And the finance department still hasn't clarified how they're going to resolve the issue of community colleges borrowing for this. So what I would suggest is, as an advocate and as somebody knowledgeable, there is a place for you with the state, from the board level, to make sure somebody's paying attention and dogging this. And I would just suggest to you.

Assignment received. Thank you.

And then for Ms. Salas, when you made your opening statement, you reminded me why I was so happy to serve with you when we were together in the Assembly. That was heartfelt and it was on point, and I know it drives people. My question to you, and thank you for meeting today, enrollment, there has been declining enrollment in community colleges, and it was exacerbated by the pandemic. And it's sort of coming back. How do you see that from your level as a trustee?

Well, you're right. It was devastating-

-On the mic. We're not hearing you very well. Thank you.

Yes. So there was a huge decline in enrollment, but last year we grew enrollment by 8%. And so we see that as an upward trend now. And so I think it's incumbent on us to really reach out to students at a lower level to explain to them the opportunities that lie ahead of them when they reach that higher education level. Right? Sometimes when you're talking to college or, excuse me, high school students, they can't see themselves in a four-year university. They think it's a lifetime.

And so they think, "What, another four years? I'll be an old person when I graduate from college." And so if you can show them a pathway that the community colleges are just that: community. Okay? They are the ones that are, like, on the ground. It's kind of like the analogy of: I was an Assemblywoman, but I didn't have that contact with my constituents. When I was a mayor, I was deeply involved with my constituents. It's the same thing on the community college level.

Each individual community college has that level of involvement in their community, and if they don't, they should. But I've seen in San Diego, in the San Diego community colleges, where the chancellors, the presidents make it a point to be involved in those community functions to champion dual enrollment, which I think is going to be--it's really already proven.

We have a student that graduated from Bonita Vista High School that also graduated with her college degree because she was also concurrently enrolled in dual enrollment, and she was 16. So it's phenomenal what programs like that can inspire students to do and look at education as something that they can achieve. When I was growing up, I didn't think about college for myself. That wasn't a tradition in my family. My parents were hardworking.

I think they were smart, but they didn't have the formal education, and so they didn't push me to that. They didn't put that in my mind that I could go to college. They wanted me to be a nice little wifey, and there's nothing wrong with that. But think about the potential that's not being developed on students that cannot see for them. So I think the real role of the outreach is with the community college levels and that we have to, as a Board of Governors here, encourage those kinds of policies and actions that will get students into the pipeline, like dual enrollment.

Thank you very much. A closing comment, because I had a chance to meet with Ms. Salas. We, on the Budget Committee keep, along with the system, kicking the can down the road on the student-centered funding formula, and it is now in the fifth year of a hold harmless, which makes you wonder: if we keep holding harmless those that are losing, whether we should look for a more permanent solution. And every community college Board of Governors member that comes by here is not familiar with it.

So I would just urge you to get familiar with that, because it created winners and losers, and most of the losers happen to be in my Senate district, and their budget will be cut by 10% if we don't figure something out here. So just to call that to your attention. Thank you both.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. It's been a real pleasure meeting with all of you. It's been a very humbling experience, and I'm glad to be in the company of such good people that serve our community and our State of California.

Senators, thank you. And thank you. My colleagues have very much covered the questions I wanted to ask. I did want to ask about your expertise from CSU and UC, related to housing. I know housing is an issue you've long been engaged in, and I was thrilled to see the community colleges start to think creatively about how they could help solve that problem, because you do have some land and the ability to do this, and I think it's really important. You know I love--some of what you said, Ms. Salas, resonated with me.

My parents had no experience trying to figure out how to help me go to college. So it was peers and counselors and support staff at the high school level that gave me, and friends, basically, that gave me that vision. And when you think about families, and I've heard so many great stories--we all have stories--and because we're such a diverse Legislature, the stories really resonate.

And I think those stories are really important because I don't know about most of my colleagues, but I think I do. I wouldn't be here were it not for the opportunity to get an education. And I didn't know community college was an option, and that might have been the only option, financially, I would have had, had I not had the help of counselors. So I really think our community college structure and system in California is so important. We have a wonderful UC system.

We have a wonderful CSU system. But our community college, working together, the integration of these educational opportunities, we really need to be working hand-in-glove together. And so I appreciate your responses on the 2030 Vision, on Calbright, because, of course, that's been a discussion since its inception, and Governor Brown promoted it. Obviously, during the pandemic, we realized how important it was. But we also know many of our community college already had some online capabilities, so I hope we're through that.

And I think all of these things are important. So I don't really have questions at this point. I just really appreciate your responses and your histories that bring you here, that make you really good appointments for something so critically important in California. I'm going to turn to members of the public, now, who have been waiting patiently and see if we have folks who would like to speak in support. I would ask you, if you're here to speak in support, first and foremost, to approach the mic.

You've made your case quite well, it seems like. That is good. Clearly, your friends and family here are nodding, "Yes, we support them, or we think we still support them, but we're not going to get up at this time," so we'll take that as acquiescence. Let me just also ask, is there anyone here in opposition? Okay. With that, I would ask my colleagues for a motion. Madam Vice Chair has made a motion for both appointees or conferees. We shall vote. And let me ask Madam Secretary to please call the roll.

Laird. Aye. Ochoa Bogh. Aye. Smallwood-Quavis. Aye. Grove. Aye. Atkins. Aye. 5-0.

It is 5-0 from this Committee, we will forward these appointments to the full Senate for confirmation. And we say congratulations and thank you for your service.

Thank you so much. Nothing like good trouble.

Good trouble, as only he could say. Thank you. We will take about five minutes, and then we'll shift to item number C, which is James Cooper, Member of Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training. So five minutes and we'll be right back up here. Thank you.

In just a moment, as people take their seats and my colleagues seem to be prepared. Let me invite Sheriff Jim Cooper up member of Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, and let me invite you to do the same thing. Welcome. Introduce yourself off any comments you'd like. Thank anyone and opening comments, and then we'll go right to colleagues.

Thank you, Pro Tem and fellow senators. Great to be here. Thank you for your time. I know you're very busy. Jim Cooper, for the POST-Commission. I'm the sheriff of Sacramento County, the 37th sheriff. I'm actually the second black sheriff ever in the history of California. I have four daughters. They're all gainfully employed and they're working. So they're not here with me today to support me. Lifelong Sacramento resident. So I'm in my 31st year in the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.

I also spent 15 years as a founding mayor and Council Member of the City of El Grove of Sacramento suburb, about 178,000 people. And I spent eight years in the Legislature in the Assembly from 2014 until 2022.

Well, thank you so much. Let me go ahead. I will start in a different route, a different direction. Senator Laird, do you want to kick us off today?

Yes. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for your willingness to serve.

Thank you.

I had two questions, and let me ask the more policy based one first, and that is, there was a bill, I think you were probably in the Assembly, that Assembly Member Jones Sawyer did to establish a modern policing degree program, and it is through the community college system. And there's a report that's been done and it really encourages education in relation to modern policing.

And I wondered, just as a POST member, what's your view of overview, where that is and how you're going to sort of make sure that that is implemented?

Sure. So I think education is important. The issue is when I first started many years ago, I didn't have my college degree. I was going to college and working full time. And it's problematic right now in law enforcement that bill, and the reason being is tough to hire right now.

Obviously, it's not popular to be a law enforcement officer, so you're already limited to a group of only certain individuals, and then you're working weekends, holidays and missing birthdays and Christmas and dealing with some pretty horrific things at times. So it's really tough to hire to get folks in that have that four year degree when you can make more money somewhere else. Once I got in, if you want to promote and move up, you obviously need a higher education.

So I went back to school with kids and got my undergrad and got my grad. So most folks do that. And you look at the college rates, I know the chancellors or the folks are up here from the community colleges, and it's tough getting minorities in there to have that four year degree. So the bill is making a tough job even tougher to get people and to really be diverse.

And when I came in last year, I had 100 vacancies for sworn officers, and we've done a lot of hiring. I still have 100 vacancies. So that's really the tough part with that bill, where it is problematic, where you're forced to. It's tough to hire people. If someone has the resources that their family can put them through the academy, they can. But if you're a woman, if you're a person of color, it is harder, because the majority of academies in the state are unpaid academies.

Very few pay you to go through. So that's really the big issue, having that degree. But in our Department, I've been there a year. Most folks that promote up their ranks have their degree. They get it eventually.

Is that something you'd like to work on to make sure that isn't the choice between sort of having an education in mono policing and not being able to afford to do it?

Absolutely. And my degree is in business. So I think as long as you have a degree, at some point, it doesn't matter. You've bettered yourself. So I would definitely agree with that, Senator.

Okay, thank you. And then a more difficult question. We were all, or some of us were, at least I can't speak for everybody, were provided a letter about a workplace conduct unit finding on the assembly side.

And in the body of the letter, it says that after considering the allegation and the facts on the preponderance of evidence, the panel found insufficient evidence to substantiate that the assemblymember, which at the time was, you, yelled at the person that complained. But the panel did find that the assemblymember made an inappropriate comment to the person involved, although found that the comment was not related to their sexual orientation and I was wondering if you could speak to this so that we could understand your feelings about this situation

Sure. So I just repeated what someone else had told me, and I said, that person, I made it very clear what someone else had told me. So I've always been diverse and inclusive with things, so I would never make an off-gender remark for anybody. And I guess the WCU, which I believe in WCU, started when I was here, and it was unsubstantiated.

I don't know what more to say. It pains me to be up here and talk about it, but it happens when you're in positions like that and I think they did their job and they did their job very well, and I stand by what they found.

And did you learn something from this situation?

Yeah. It was just difficult. And I would not rephrase what someone else told me. I would use a better choice of words, but that was my fault. And I set full responsibility for saying what someone else said. So I'll follow my sword on that one.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, madam.

Thank you, Senator. I will come down once again to you, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, and ask you to go next.

Thank you, Madam President, and good to meet you, Mr. Cooper, I've heard a lot about you and the work of the black caucus and wanted to ask you a few questions about maybe a follow-up to my good colleague's question about this particular complaint. And particularly in your role at POST. You said you learned a lot through that experience.

Part of POST is helping to train police officers, peace officers, on how to engage with different communities. And different communities have certain protections and deserve particular protections, particularly when we get to groups of different races and gender identity and sexual orientation.

So I wonder, from this process, how would you go into POST in terms of making sure that training requirements and curriculum have sort of an equity component to it that understands some of the needs of communities and how they need to be policed and how they need to be protected?

Great question. Training is important. Training is key. Obviously, POST mandates 24 hours of training every two years. So I taught cultural competency in the Sheriff's Department before. It's important to me to have that and to talk about that and to really go out. And I think being a person of color and being the leader of an organization has an impact.

And that's why in the past year, I've actually attended every briefing, which very few leaders go to, every briefing in the Department to touch every employee and let them know what your expectations are and really talk about things. SB 2, there was a lot of, "hey, they're trying to get us." and it's like on SB 2, there are only, I believe, 13 or 16 states that don't have a decertification process.

So walking them through that, and I'll tell you what was very helpful, my time in the Legislature and you deal with diverse views, and if you don't compromise here, you're not going to get anything accomplished. So bringing that experience to folks and talking about those things and really making them aware and hirings and trainings, it's an important thing and you need more of that.

And on the bill that Senator Laird talked about, it's tough on the education thing because it's going to make law enforcement less diverse. It's not that diverse to begin with. So it is tough with that, trying to get people, especially people of color and trying to encourage them to come, especially women, too, trying to get them to come in. And it is a tough nut to crack.

But yeah, I'm all for training, but a lot of it's trying to find time for training because you're pulling people off of work. So you've got to pay overtime. So POST reimburses to a certain extent, but if you want to do additional training above and beyond, how do you make time for doing that? So we're actually doing that and spending overtime and taking officers out of the field some time to do that training. And a lot of it starts in the academy. So there's a lot of POST mandated curriculums in the learning domains that they go through. But it's one of those things you got to take it out of hide if you really want to be effective with diversity and inclusive with people.

I appreciate your focus on inclusionary training and how to make sure that we're better protecting our communities. And you mentioned SB 2, and that was another question that I had, the bill by Senator Bradford that looks at the decertification process. And as you're now in this role, how do you think POST can address the fact that so many departments are not participating in this process?

What are the ways that we can encourage that process and what are the ways that we make sure that the investigations that are happening are done in an impartial way so that we get as comprehensive a ruling as possible.

So we were actually a test agency initially for SB 2 with POST Sacramento county was, and we gave them some of our cases and went through that. I think where the disconnect is, is a lot of these small agencies because we have a full-time unit that deals with redaction and everything regarding this and the investigations, and smaller departments have a tough time with resources.

So I think it's more of the carrot than the stick a little bit here to trying to get them to come along. And it's tough, like I said, smaller agencies to meet these things and do the research. They've got to draw that personnel from somewhere so bigger agencies are more able to absorb it. So I think POST is getting there. I know Manny's been good. Manny Alvarez about working with those agencies and trying to get them there to do that.

But I think it's just a handful of agencies out of over 400 agencies in California, so that's actually pretty good. But we want 100% compliance with that. And I think we get there. It's just those small agencies you have to do. And law enforcement is very different in California, so we definitely have to get them along here and I think we get there. I'm very optimistic.

Is your strategy, do we need to think about investing more money for certain sized departments, or what is the mechanism from a POST perspective, is it just the training to show how important the SB 2 and decertification process is? I'm just trying to think, how do you bring those other departments? And I think it's about 16, right?

Yeah, I think it's a combination, really, of the two. And there's a lot of folks don't really know about SB 2. And when you talk about it at a very high level, I think some folks get it. So that's really the big part, is educating those folks in this.

Thank you for that. I know this is a sheriff's role on POST, and glad to see that your approach to decertification is one of educating and trying to inform and improve the numbers of departments that are participating in that. And I hope to hear more as you move forward in terms of what are the ways that we can track those 16 departments to see what are the things that we can do to encourage them to participate in the process. So I'd love to follow up with you on that.

I would love to. And I told my folks, hey, go out and do your job. You know the law, follow law, and you're fine. You don't got to worry about stuff. Just obey the law and do that and you're okay. And people need to be reassured and told that because you want them going out there and being proactive and doing things, but being smart.

So I think it's incumbent upon leaders, and we need to see more of that, I think, from leadership, because otherwise there's a vacuum. And sometimes people know you have to really monitor people and make sure they're doing what they should be doing, and for the most part, they are.

Senator Ochoa-bogh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Senator Cooper. Good to see you again, and thank you for your time. So, as an assemblymember, it's my understanding that you didn't either support or oppose SB 2 at the time. It was due to several concerns that you and others had regarding the implementation of the program. Now that you're a sheriff on POST, are there any other concerns or fixes that you would like to see with regards to implementing SB two?

I think it's tough. The retroactive part made it tough going back for those cases and trying to get that. So there's a lot of work to do. I know that we've used a lot of resources to try and comply with SB 2, and it hasn't been easy. We've made it, but we had the resources to pull from other areas. So I thought SB 2 did some good things and some things that could be done better. So that's why I laid off on that vote.

But I think it has a place, it's doing its job, but I think we need to do a look back and go back. And obviously, POST has a lot of input with that on things that we can change to make it better or modify it.

And that was actually the question is to what would you like to see as fixes? What do you see now that you're on POST? What are some of the fixes that you would like to see now that you're on sheriff of the POST?

Well, POST is having a tough time hiring. I mean, they had 100 something positions, plus they've only hired 52. It is tough to hire right now. And part of that problem is that the state pay is not that good. I'll be honest with you, folks go to local municipalities, I. E. Sheriffs or police agencies and make more money. So we want to have good investigators and good staff at POST, but we've got to be competitive. So that is a big issue with that.

And like I said, it's a competitive market. So I can't speak for POST. That's Manny's job. But yeah, they do need the funds to have those equivalent salaries to hire the best talent possible because they're actually weeding out the people that shouldn't be in law enforcement. So to me, you want the best investigators and staff, professional staff possible. So we've got to have the requisite salaries, but that's just my opinion.

And that's all I'm asking is your opinion based on the perspective of your experience of sitting there. So that's perfect.

Sure.

And then the other question I have for you is, how does the commission prioritize reported allegations? Does it triage the causes for immediate attention or based on the seriousness of the complaint?

Both. So it's a triage, obviously, seriousness. Depending on what happens, the level of the complaint, they'll do that. So they are triaged.

Perfect. All right. That's all I have for you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you Senator Ochoa-Bogh, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem. I have waited for this day. For those of you in the audience listening or watching online, I had the privilege of serving with Assemblymember Cooper when I served in the Assembly and working alongside all of our sheriffs.

My Tulare County sheriff is the President of the California State Sheriff's law enforcement Association, and so I get the opportunity to engage with other sheriffs around the state, and Sheriff Cooper is one of them. Some of my questions are. Actually, most of my questions have already been asked. One of the questions I had was about obviously not having enough law enforcement on staff. Why do we have so many open vacancies?

My colleagues have followed up on that, and your answers were completely adequate, and I have no questions on that. My other question was on SB 2, and given the fact that there's 103 positions for these investigators open and you've only filled 52, I get just exactly what you said. So I thank you for your response on that. I'm going to go to something that's not on my questions that we've been dealing with for the last couple of days.

There was a bill when you were in the Assembly, and this is just your opinion, there was a bill in the Assembly. It was authored by Assemblymember Bill Quirk, and it was Assembly Bill 2188. And actually, it was probably because the State of California had a ballot measure about legalizing marijuana. And this particular bill made marijuana a protected class under employment law. Race, religion, gender identity and everything.

The building trades were excluded from this because of obviously working in an environmentally safety sensitive position. Law enforcement was not and I don't know how you feel, I do want to know your personal opinion. I'll let you know mine. Sure. If you're going to carry a gun and you're going to be in a high-speed chase, law enforcement should be exempted from those requirements to allow their personnel to smoke pot.

I mean, that's just me, and I'm not trying to be a prude or anything like that. But like I said, if you're going to carry a gun and you're going to go to domestic violence situations and you're going to be in a high-speed chase with a vehicle, one accident, one shooting, and the guy tests or the girl tests positive, it's going to be a lawsuit towards the city or the county, and resources are just going to be flooded into funding lawsuits.

Now, that's just my opinion, but you being in law enforcement for as long as you have your position as the Sacramento County sheriff and on the sheriff's state, California sheriff's board and then also being on POST. Just share your thoughts with me on that.

Yeah, thank you, Senator. It is problematic, and the big issue with that is substance abuse. And we see in law enforcement in the building here, when I was here, had two employees that had alcohol problems. And we see it a lot in law enforcement where someone comes to work under the influence or they're missing time from work. That is a problem in any job sector. But I think you see it quite often, more often in law enforcement. So we deal with it on daily basis.

And with the new bill, I think we're going to see more of that. People are going to try that. And you're right, you have the power to take someone's life as a peace officer. So you don't want anybody under the influence and you don't want them being impacted or impaired and people are going to do it. That's the problem and that's the issue with that. So I think because of the responsibility, enormous responsibility that a peace officer has, they don't get to do certain things.

You get in trouble for doing certain things in law enforcement where you don't for other jobs, obviously a different job, you don't get time off in law enforcement. You either get terminated or you get significant time off for driving under the influence or being under the influence at work. So, yeah, you are held to a higher standard and we want our peace officers held to a higher standard to be responsible and be professional.

So they really should be exempted from that because you don't want someone to come into a call. And like I said, over the years, number of problems, I've dealt with alcohol day in and day out with people, and this is just going to add to the problem with it. We've got people calling already right now. Hey, we can do it now. And hey, be careful because under the federal part, on our federal task force, you're prevented from it. But yeah, it's problematic.

I do understand there were some exemptions. You have a class B license, you drive heavy equipment at the sheriff's office or whatever, then you are exempted. You cannot be smoking pot.

But like I said, and nothing against rank and file, nothing against any of that, but it's just my concern about the liability and the exposure that we have, especially now, it is a protected class underemployment and law enforcement, first responders, firefighters, they were not exempted, but there was an exemption for building trades and construction because they felt like that was an environmentally safety-sensitive position, driving heavy equipment, building a building.

But I really do believe that carrying a gun and driving a vehicle and those responses that your individuals that law enforcement deals with every day, they should be exempted from that piece of legislation and mandated as well. So thank you very much for your opinion. Thank you for being here. It's my honor to support you and I wish you nothing but the best. And you are really a class act.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you. It's good to see you. I'm glad. My colleagues ask a lot about SB 2, decertification, and I had a question about it, but I think you kind of fully answered it related to the investigators and keeping up, particularly the look back. I did follow up, clearly. I supported that legislation along with Senator Bradford, and I did follow up to kind of get a sense of the look back and what the dilemmas and the challenges were.

So aside from staffing, which is critical and very important, and I appreciate your sharing with us the state pay piece of it, a number of our other agencies are having trouble, as you indicated, finding investigators, a lot of it because of salary and not enough people available or wanting to do the job. So the feedback is really helpful. Other than that, POST has pretty much fully accepted kind of the importance of SB 2 to community and the Legislature. You feel that that is really true for the board as a whole?

Yeah, the post has done a great job. The staff is great. You've got a very solid board. I think you're going to see a lot of good things from the board, and it's just tough to get through this and get started. So I chaired sub four before, which is State Administration, and you would think that an investigator across the state level would be the same salary. There's side letters for everybody, and depending on DOJ, makes 15% more than someone at cannabis or consumer affairs.

It's just crazy. And that's what hurts. I think from my experience, that's what's hurting. POST is just the state, and the state is so big. Just the salary level is what's really killing us. And not just post, but a lot of state agencies because they go around to the best-paying agencies that they can get.

Well, thank you. I think this is really important for a bigger kind of comment I want to make at the end, I want to turn to, obviously, you were here when we did in 2019, AB 392, the use of force, Assemblymember Weber Shirley at that time, Weber and then also, we did SB 230, which was Caballero, two different pieces of legislation that sort of worked hand in hand in terms of policies that provide guidelines to use of force, de-escalation, all of those kinds of things.

And so that's done. Those are pieces of legislation clearly in response to what's gone on across America, not just in California, but in other places. And you talked in your opening comments about officers not wanting to serve because of this double dilemma of how they're perceived. And help me, this is sort of an esoteric question, not exactly a data-driven one, but what can we do to really find a balance between, and not just a balance. We've got to have accountability and transparency.

I think that's what the community was saying in looking at those guidelines and changing policies and supporting pieces of legislation, but also the need to have public safety officers, law enforcement. The communities want to be safe. We are now going through a rash of retail theft, huge here. You're dealing with it. How do we strike that balance? How do we convince law enforcement that it is a noble profession?

The community needs you, and at the same time understand we do expect accountability and transparency, and we want the diversity in the police force. You represent a part of that. So your thoughts on that? There is no right or wrong answer. I just think we need to grapple with all sides of this and every Department. You mentioned your vacancy rate. I talked to our sheriff. I talked to our Police Chief in San Diego. Same comments.

I think the social stigma, really, that's a big thing. And what's crazy right now, you have small police departments that offer signing bonuses. So, like Bay Area departments, $75,000 signing bonus to come work for them. A lot of tens, 20, $30,000 signing bonuses, trying to attract officers because the pool is so limited. And I think, like I said, it's a job where you work weekends, you work holidays, you're getting calls because someone's having a crisis or nothing good is happening. So it's negativity.

So a lot of folks have steered away from that. You're right. That's a good question. Madam Pro Tem, how do we bring people back with that? Because the pay is good. The pay is absolutely good. But there's other jobs you can do where you are off on weekends, and especially now with having to telecommute and folks can work from their home. So it's just tough. I don't know how we get there. It's tough.

I mean, we've done all kinds of things and we've reached out, but it's still and everyone's having the same problem. But I think what has really hurt it the most is just the social stigma. I don't want to be a cop. I talk to young kids all the time. Hey, it's a great job. Come in. I don't want to be a cop. I don't want to do that. I wish I had an answer that was perfect for you. I don't have one in right now.

I'm a year in. But it's frustrating. I'm on my staff constantly. For every 100 candidates that apply, you might get five. That's a lot of people to go through. And we do lie detector test. We do a lot of testing because you want the right person in there. And these young kids these days, they do some things that are silly that I can't get into, but it's tough. So you try to weed people out and it's a tough process to get through.

Is there a role that POST plays in trying to message or set a framework for kind of the bigger profession?

They do. They do a very good job. Like I said, it's one of those societal things right now. And I think we get there at some point, but post has a role in it, definitely. And they do that. So I'm excited to work with them and bring some things to them along with the other post commissioners. And we've got a really good Commission. They got a lot of women's sheriffs on there. I think there's four other ones had.

Confirmations of these candidates or appointees who were incredible.

And that's unheard of in the sheriff's agencies.

Well, thank you. I appreciate the comments. I think sometimes the public thinks that they're all this way or all that way, and this is complicated. And we're the largest state in the country, and I think it's really important for us to really have an open line of communication about how to do a better job. And so if you think about these things, I think our Committee and certainly legislators want to know what can we do to help?

Because we're the ones making comments about the need for transparency and accountability. But we also know that our communities are struggling. So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to go to Members of the public. We're going to start with people who are in support. So what it would be your name, your organization or hat you wear, if any, and very brief comments, mainly because we have two more people waiting in the queue to be appointed. So no pressure, but brevity is good. We did better today, I think. colleagues, so far. So thank you and welcome.

Thank you. Tim Taylor with National Federation of Independent Business. We strongly support the governor's appointment of Sheriff Cooper to the Commission on peace officer standards and training we've been working with. And I hesitate to call him sheriff because we've worked with him for so many years and he's worn so many hats as mayor, Assemblyman and sheriff. And he has always been somebody that we go to when we discuss retail theft or other public safety issues.

He has been a strong advocate for police officers and also small businesses at the same time. Again, we strongly support the governor's appointment and hope that you will confirm him today. He's outstanding.

Thank you very much. Next speaker, welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair Members. Aaron Reed, very happy to be here. The Governor did well. We love this guy. I'm going to speak on behalf of Brian Marvel, President of Porak, who's unfortunately out of town, and the President of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, Jake Johnson, who's also unfortunately out of town, or they would have been here for sure. Absolutely. But they have meetings they couldn't get out of.

So I get the pleasure of doing this and saying to you, we worked with this man for eight years in the Legislature. He's not just passionate about his officers and law enforcement, he's passionate about the public and protecting the public, and so are the groups that I represent. As you know, Madam Chair, you've worked with us on many bills, and we don't shy away. We come to the table, we talk and we try to work things out.

And that's the model that Jim Cooper sets for everybody. And his time in the Assembly, he worked lots of amendments to bills, took bad bills, made them better, carried a lot of good bills. We can't thank him enough for that, but he's going to bring a lot of talent and expertise to post, and we greatly appreciate that. So I want to thank this Committee for, I'm sure I can't imagine any problem, but we really do appreciate everything he does. And he could have taken easy street.

He could have retired. He had 30 years with his sheriff's Department. He could be out enjoying himself, traveling around the world, but he didn't. He spent eight years in the Legislature and he spent now a year as sheriff. I mean, he's an energizer bunny, so.

Can't hold a good man down. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next witness, please. Welcome.

Thank you, madam Chairman and members Cory Salzillo, on behalf of the California State Sheriff's Association. Happy to be here in support of Sheriff Cooper today. I would just say to your question, Madam Pro tem, about the profession and law enforcement and they can't, every day I see Sheriff Cooper in the community with different groups, with his staff. He was with the A shift last night in corrections. He's constantly with his staff, he's constantly in the community at different events.

And just, I think, a tremendous example of not only the leadership that we hope for and expect out of a law enforcement Executive, but a true Member of his community who really fights for the profession and really stands for the best of peace officers everywhere. So very pleased to be here in support of Sheriff Cooper. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I welcome next witness.

Neil Flood, Vice President for California Correctional Peace Officer Association. We are here to support Jim Cooper. Sheriff Cooper, we've worked with him in a few different roles in the past and for law enforcement. We definitely think that he will help guide the future of what it looks like to both be in the community and where you end up in rehabilitation. So we stand in support of Sheriff Cooper.

Thank you very much. Next witness. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem and Senators. Brandon Marchy with the California Medical Association, proud to support Sheriff Jim Cooper. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next witness.

Hi. Thank you. Tish Rylander, a former Assembly staffer of over 20 plus years, longtime constituent. And I'm very happy to be here in support of the sheriff's appointment today. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Next witness. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tam and Senator Skyler Wonnacott, on behalf of the California Business Properties Association, as well as a former 10 year staff member of Assemblyman Cooper, as his communications director. I cannot tell you how great it was to have the Assemblyman as a boss. He was always professional, courteous, and just an absolute amazing leader. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next witness. Welcome.

Hi. Chris Lundstrom, Executive officer of the California Tribal Business Alliance. We've known Jim many years. The Member tribes worked well with them. He's always been there to talk about how to improve public safety, in particular related to MMIP, missing and murdered indigenous persons and trafficking of persons of particular Native Americans. And we're hoping to continue to work with them on PL 280, getting a firm understanding of jurisdictional roles on tribal lands. And he's been a pleasure to work with over the years. And we hope you confirm governor's appointment. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Hi. Welcome. Next witness.

Good afternoon. Taylor Roshan, on behalf of the California Grocers Association in support of Sheriff Cooper and thank him for his service.

Thank you. Hi. Welcome.

Hi, good afternoon. Brenda Bass with the California Chamber of Commerce in strong support of Sheriff Cooper's nomination or appointment. Sorry.

Thank you very much. Hi.

Hi, Natalie Bass with the California Business Roundtable in strong support of Sheriff Cooper's appointment.

Thank you very much. Hi, welcome.

Lawrence Gayden on behalf of the California Manufacturing Technology Association in support of Sheriff Cooper's appointment.

Thank you. Okay, having heard from those in support, let me ask those who are here in opposition to come up again, same thing, name, hat, if any, that you wear, and brief comments.

Thank you. Good afternoon, madam Protem and Senators. My name is Terry Schanz. I'm a 20 year employee of the State Assembly and State Senate. In April of 2022, then Assembly Member Jim Cooper sexually harassed me and threatened me with workplace violence during work hours on the fifth floor common area of the swing space in this building.

During an eight and a half minute diatribe, which was captured on security footage, Jim Cooper degraded and demeaned me because I was not supportive of his campaign for Sacramento county sheriff. As he continued to demean me, he began shouting, why do you have a hard on for me, Terry? Followed by at least 10 affirmative statements from him yelling at me, you have a hard on for me and you have a hard on for me. As a gay man, this was highly offensive and highly inappropriate way to speak to me or any person. After this diatribe, Jim Cooper then leaned into me, looked me in the eyes and said, well, I hope you can sleep well at night, and then walked away. In shock, I went to my office and began to file a WCU complaint against Jim Cooper. But as I was typing, his words, "I hope you can sleep well at nigh"t echoed louder and louder in my mind.

Knowing that Jim Cooper had recently been detained at a local airport for attempting to take a loaded weapon, a loaded gun, onto an airplane, and widely known accounts that Jim Cooper carried a loaded gun with him at all times, including at his swing space office. I became fearful for my safety and the safety of my husband, who also works for the State Assembly.

After meeting with the Assembly chief sergeant at arms, she determined that Jim Cooper's threats against me was credible and offered to have armed sergeant at arms escort me to and from the staff parking garage to my office for a week. This behavior is unbecoming of any public official, whether they be a Legislator, a local sheriff, or an appointee of a Governor.

Jim Cooper's actions to sexually harass and intimidate me in my workplace is unacceptable and unbecoming of any public official. Jim Cooper lacks fundamental ethics and the moral capacity needed to provide objective guidance to the Commission on Peace officer standards and training. And I respectfully ask that you reject his appointment.

Mr. Schanz. Thank you. You can leave that. I believe we have that letter. Thank you. Other witnesses. Okay. Colleagues having heard from witnesses. Further comments? Okay. I would say we did receive the letter. Thank you, Mr. Schanz, for that. I know that was probably not easy, which was why we also made sure we were able to get.

We don't, as this body, the Senate, hear Assembly complaints to the workplace conduct unit, I guarantee you we have our own, and we will have one today after an Executive session. So we do take these allegations very seriously. We did ask for that. The comment that we could get from the Assembly. We're expecting that they're a separate house. We did receive that letter. I think Senator Laird made reference to that. So it is definitely part of the record. And I appreciate your coming forward. Colleagues.

Madam Vice Chair. Okay. We have a motion to approve the confirmation. Madam Secretary, will you please call the role.

[Roll Cal]

Thank you. We will move your confirmation to the full Senate for confirmation. We thank you for your service. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Okay. We are going to take about a five minute recess, and we will come back. And I just want to say to those of you waiting, thank you so much for your incredible patience. We promise to be timely and be right back and ready to go.

Get situated before we begin. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and call the Committee back to order, and I know that our Vice Chair will be right back, but we have enough Members here to continue on. Let me again thank you for your patience, and Tamatha Foss, the Undersecretary of Operations for the Department of Corrections. And welcome again, thank you for your patience. I want to invite you to do a similar thing, which is introduce yourself. Feel free to acknowledge anyone that you want to make opening comments, and then we'll go right to Members of the Committee, welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. I appreciate this opportunity to come before you today. I would like to recognize my husband in the audience and my parents who drove 7 hours to be here.

Go ahead and tell us your husband and your parents name.

This is Mike and my dad is Marvin and my mom is Janine. Like I said, they drove over 7 hours to be here today. My biggest fans right there.

Welcome. We're happy to have you with us today.

My kids would be here, but they have jobs and little children who would not be as patient as some of these others. So they are watching, though, on the video. So I want to thank them too for their dedication to my career, especially when they were young and I worked long hours and holidays. So I appreciate them watching. I also want to acknowledge the numerous friends, my CDCR family, and my mentors that have supported and guided me through the career.

Many of that are here in the audience today. I began my career at CDCR in 1996 as a correctional officer at Pelican Bay State Prison. I've held numerous positions since then throughout the Department, and I was honored to be appointed to this role by Governor Newsom because I care about this department and those we serve. I care about the staff who come to work each day in these difficult environments.

And I also care about being a change agent in the lives of incarcerated people, giving them hope and leading them to go home as successful members of this community and be our neighbors. Each position I have held has prepared me to be effective as the Undersecretary of Operation. I'm eager to make a lasting impact on California through our efforts to foster correctional environments focused on rehabilitative opportunities, wellness, and staff development.

I would like to thank Governor Newsom for appointing me to this critical role within the Department, and I also want to thank the Senate for your consideration. I value the opportunity to bring meaningful change to this Department, and I welcome your questions.

Well, thank you very much. A long career. Let me say thank you for your service and thank you for being here and certainly to the family and friends. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, I'm going to start again with you.

Thank you, Madam President. And thank you so much for being with us today. I'm sorry I was ill. I really wanted to spend time with you before today's hearing, but I'm glad we get a chance to connect. I just saw my good friend Neil Flood. We were in Norway together, and we spent a lot of time looking at the Norway model and thinking a lot about the California plan.

And your role is just going to be so important to that transformation into a place where prisons create the good neighbors that we need because so many folks will come home, and how do they come home in a way where they are contributing and supporting their communities and where the workers inside of the facilities are safe. The question that I have is, I spent MLK week at Chowchilla.

We went to tour the women's prison, got to spend some time with the new warden there who has the absolute confidence of the residents who are there. But we were still informed of sexual assaults that are continuing to happen inside of that prison. We know of, according to reports, that there was one officer, a CO, who was charged with 96 counts of sexual misconduct against 22 incarcerated women. About 1% of the prison's population was abused by this individual.

And we also learned from women who reported those instances. Oftentimes they faced retaliation, and in many ways, losing their programming, their educational classes, their ability to be in unrestricted housing. So they were victimized, and then they were victimized again by the system. It's clear from the conversations with the women that this is a deeply systemic issue. It's not about one actor. It's about the system and the process to report these incidences, as well as to make folks in those facilities safe.

There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. And given your long history in this department and your role, can you share a little bit about what do you see that can be proactively done to prevent these kinds of instances from happening? And also, how do we structure a grievance process that does not retaliate against those who have been harmed? What is the way we create some structured punishment that is really when things go wrong, but not when someone has been victimized?

And is there, in your sense, of how these facilities are created, real safe havens for women inside of the prisons that aren't restricted housing, but a place where they can be made whole, have a chance to heal, and be supported when they've gone through this kind of an incident.

Thank you for your question. I take these allegations extremely serious, and I was completely devastated about this incident when I was appointed as Undersecretary of Operation that very first week, I went to Chowchilla prison and I sat down and I met with the women there because it bothers me to my core that this happened, it happened over such a period of time, and that we didn't catch it sooner. I'm committed that this will never happen again.

I think with the new leadership that we have there, the new warden, she's absolutely amazing. She is out there and she talks to the population. I am strongly, strongly condone any staff member, condemn any staff member that does this type of behavior. That person will be prosecuted and should be. And my goal is to never let this happen again. And I think leadership, staff training is super important.

Town hall meetings with everybody, because it doesn't only impact the incarcerated population, it also impacts the staff that work there that want to do good and are doing a good job every day. It impacts them and the trust that the public has in us that we are protecting people. I think that we have developed a peer support so other incarcerated population that those women can lean on. Also using our community based organizations to come in.

We have a work group, a sexual assault work group now, and prevention, the Women's Caucus. We're doing all kinds of proactive things. What I don't want to have is be reactive to these kind of incidents. I want to have a proactive area, like you said, a protective area where women feel comfortable coming forward and sharing and talking about it. Our population of our incarcerated women, many come in as victims. They've already had trauma before they even come into our system.

So for them to be victimized again is just devastating, and it should never happen. And I can promise you, in this role, I will not let it happen. I'm going to do everything possible. We have an Associate Director now of the Female Offender Program who goes and visits both the institutions, CIW, the California Institute for Women, and the one in Chowchilla.

She meets with the population quarterly. And then with the new leadership that we know just being out there and being aware. We've also established where any sexual misconduct allegation goes out of that institution directly to Office of Internal Affairs for review. That started in January of 22. So that is kind of a fairly new process where it's not just looked at by the institution and the staff that work there, but by everybody. We also monitor those cases.

So if someone comes forward with an allegation of sexual misconduct, we monitor that individual to ensure there's no retaliation for a minimum of 90 days. That means no bed moves, no program changes, no write ups for things. We meet with them to ensure that they are not feeling retaliated against. So I think those new processes will help. I still think we have a long way to go. We have to ensure our staff are comfortable coming forward when they even suspect something is going on.

And in this case, this was a long period of time, and we have to know that our staff are comfortable coming forward. So I can tell you I'm committed to this. I just recently went back to the Women's Institution two weeks ago, and I sat with the same Women's Advisory Committee, and I walked and I talked to a lot of people, and it felt better. It felt better from the first time I was there. So I do see it getting better as far as people able to talk and be more open.

I appreciate that. I was very impressed with the leadership of the peer support teams and the advisory group, and would love to stay in touch with you as you look.

Would love that.

Metrics in terms of how we're better protecting women. And I often wonder, why don't women just protect women inside of these facilities? And maybe that's something we need to think about. How do we attract women to protect and support women inside of our facilities? I have another question for you, mainly because you are in charge of facilities, and that's something that is really interesting to me.

I was part of a bill, SB 150, where we're looking at community benefits as a way of strengthening our infrastructure investments. So where we are making investments to build roads, for example, we are looking, how do we build local hire, targeted hire, increasing the number of apprentices, and really calling in communities that are the most disadvantaged to participate in those opportunities?

And I wonder, you know, inside of our prison system, I had a chance to meet with some residents from Lancaster State Prison who were working as plumbers, essentially, inside of the state prison. They were making about eight cents an hour. And when I asked them if they knew what a plumbing union was, they did not know anything about it. It struck me as an opportunity to think about how we utilize our contractors inside of our system.

And how do we think about a requirement of building skills and apprenticeship using the contractors that we have to help maintain our various facilities, meaning a skill and train model, a learn and earn model. And I wonder, is this something that the California model would be open to facilitating? Sort of looking at where are there opportunities for this kind of contracting metrics which would bring in local residents and hopefully build skills and a new group of neighbors who are coming out with industry networks. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.

I love the opportunities that the apprenticeship programs through CALPIA, we have for them. And we have the career technical education pieces. They aren't quite 100% apprenticeship. They don't come out with a certificate, but they get really good learning skills there with those different programs that we have. I welcome anyone that wants to come in and work with us, any labor unions.

I would love for more people to reach out to us and say we want to come in and be a part of the correction environment and teach skills and have meaningful jobs for people when they get out of our institutions. We have a program at Solano, the Delancey Street Program, which teaches people skills in money. It's a restaurant. It's really just a little restaurant. If you haven't been, you really should go.

They cook really good meals, but we teach them food ordering, chef skills, waiting on tables, cash register skills. They're learning an entire restaurant business, really. It's a really great program. In addition to coding programs that we have. Valley State Prison, we just started a tiny house program to support the homeless where they're learning to read blueprints and everything in construction on up to finishing the house. I just recently visited the program to see how it was going.

They're just waiting for some more tools, but they've already got the population in there excited to start that program. I'm always excited to look for new programs. I talked to Senator Ochoa Bogh yesterday about joint ventures, and we do have about four joint ventures currently in our institutions. But it's something that I would love to explore more.

Can we get more businesses coming in and using our population and teaching them skills and giving them earning wages that they can put in savings for when they get out. So I love anyone that wants to come knock on our door and come into our institutions and help, especially laborers and contractors.

One of the questions raised when we talk about apprenticeship in prisons is space for training and facilities. And I'm always curious, as you're creating sort of empty facilities, how is it that we are short on space to do training and education inside of our prisons? Can you talk more about the facilities issue? And do we not have enough room for classrooms, or are they located in different locations? I'm curious, what is the challenge around the facilities piece?

I think when prisons were designed, they were not designed for rehabilitation. They were designed for just housing the population. So we didn't have a lot of classroom space. We didn't have a big mental health part. We didn't have a big health care piece, and now we do. So a lot of our space has been taken up by the needs of the population, the mental health, the medical. We have a very robust substance use disorder program, which takes up a lot of space.

We do have classroom space. We have to get creative with the space that we have. With the reduced population, it has helped to get some of those spaces less crowded and less of a waitlist for people to get into the programs that we do have. But we have to get creative with the space we have. We use visiting rooms when they're off hours. We use dining rooms when they're off hours. Our classrooms become self help programs. Our gyms become programming areas.

So we do try to use the space we have in everything. But when we talk about the closed prisons and the closed facilities, this is just kind of new. Where we've just recently closed some yards within institutions. For example, Pelican Bay closed their shoe program on one side. If we can use that for program space, I think that we would definitely do that. And same down in San Luis Obispo. We closed a facility over there. If we can stand up a Voc program over there, that would be great.

Thank you. I look forward to your confirmation and maybe working with you on these efforts around rehabilitation and how to maximize our space for building the kinds of folks we know we can build and bring back home into our community. So thank you.

I look forward to working with you and would love to meet with you.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

So we had quite a lengthy conversation, and I think we share the same goals and vision for many of the programs that we would like to see be implemented with our imprisoned population. On that end, I think you talked about, I think many of the questions that my colleague had are some of the comments and concerns that we actually discussed yesterday. So I'm going to leave it at that.

So I'm going to go to a different one, which has to do with the last state audit of the CDCR rehabilitative programs found. I'm sorry, the question is they found that the Department had failed to place people in programs based on their rehabilitative needs. What was done to address the audit's findings to ensure inmates are prioritized for rehabilitation programs based on their risks and rehabilitative needs before they are released?

We look and evaluate all of our population on their needs. They go through an interview with a counselor. We look at their education needs. If they can't read or write, we try to match them with a peer literacy program. We try to individualize every single incarcerated person coming into our institutions. It starts at the reception center where we look at their needs and then we try to match them to what institution has those programs.

I would probably have to get more information on the audit report that you're talking about to get you details on it and on the waitlist. But I can tell you that we are working extremely hard to ensure that there's the right person in the right prison, in the right program. That's extremely important for rehabilitation and reentry and going home. One thing I really like a lot that we do and appreciate the legislative support on is our Male Community Reentry Programs and our Female Community Reentry Programs.

They do such a great job of taking individuals that are incarcerated. They get to go out and work in the community, they get counseling, they get real life experiences before they're actually released to go home and get real jobs. I might not have understood your question, so I apologize.

No worries. No worries. I think I should have probably put it a little more into context. This is just giving you the question. One of the things that has come to my attention is that the CDCR reports that in the fall of 2022, 34% of people left prison without their academic needs being met, 71% left without their employment needs being met, and 39% left without their substance use disorder needs being met. So data also suggests that these trends extend to the parole population.

For example, in 22, 36% of the people who had been on parole for at least one year had not participated in any CDCR funded programs that met the rehabilitative needs. So we briefly touched yesterday on the fact that, in Public Safety, we saw several bills that had to do with the allocation of the funding for these programs that the inmate population had access to and whether or not they were conducive to the actual needs of the population.

So when we look at these bills that basically are addressing concerns within the system, and then we have this data that shows these programs, I would like to know how we're addressing these audit findings and the data that shows these facts and what we're doing to kind of remedy that moving forward.

Okay, thank you.

Is that better?

Yeah. Thank you for your question. We do have waitlist for programs, and we try to maximize those going home to ensure they're in some type of program before they are released. With our parole population, we have a reentry program now that is focusing. We have a new director that just restructured. During COVID, we kind of got away from ensuring people had reentry services upon released.

They've since restructured, and we now have that reentry piece upon parole where they're looking at all of those important job skills and whatnot and meeting with them and ensuring the community has services for them. And prior to getting out, we are really looking at, with our Department of Rehabilitation program, establishing reentry programs in all of our institutions.

We have pre-parole people that work inside our institutions, but we've really got to match people up with those important job skills and what they need when they get out. Sometimes, you know, and I was just talking to these individuals at Valley State Prison that are lifers that are doing peer support, and they're doing reentry program discussions with younger population coming in. And that peer support, that one on one, some people, they don't want the programming, and we need to push them in that direction.

So having incarcerated population working with the population that's kind of on the fence about going into program has been huge. So when I talked to them about what we can do better, they said, this kind of program where we're here talking to the population is very helpful, because I can tell someone all day long, you need to go to program, and I sound like their mom, so they don't quite listen to me.

But these individuals, they've done a long time, they change their ways, and we talked about how can we get more people into programs and want to be a part of the program. I think when they get there, some of the population get forced to go into something. They don't really want to do it, but it might give them some credits. So they do it, then they really like it, and then they start growing, and they go into more and more.

One thing they did tell me, though, is sometimes when they're coming into the system and they have short sentences, we're not giving them the time to rehabilitate because they don't even get a chance to get into a program and they're getting out.

So I would have to look at the data as far as the 34% in 22. It might be related to Covid at the time and us coming out of it, because we had shut down a lot of programs and a lot of self help people couldn't come into our institutions. So that data might be a reflection of that. And I really see now that we're in a growing period of our rehabilitative programs. So I look forward to the next audit is probably what I should say, and I bet the numbers will look better.

Okay. And then a follow up on that coursework and those programs that are being given. Granted, I'm glad you made that distinction about when this data was released in 2022, because I had not made that connection on that end. But there was another audit that was released in January of 2019, and it had to do with the CDCR's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Programs that found that programs had not reduced recidivism.

So it says here that it failed to ensure that the vendors providing the CBT programs were using evidence based curricula. In addition, the audit found that the CDCR had failed to place people in programs based on their rehabilitative needs. So that was also. And that 62% of the people released from prison. Oh, here we go. Here's an update. Well, not updated. This is still 6-7 years ago.

Rehabilitated needs that 62% of the people released from prison in 2017 and 18 had met none of their rehabilitative needs. So have there been any conversations with regards to the quality of the or evidence based coursework that is being provided currently in our prisons?

We are constantly looking at the coursework and working with the Department of Rehabilitation programs. I have a new director there right now, matter of fact, and we're continually looking at what we're teaching, and is it valuable to when they get out? I mean, I think we're constantly looking at our curriculum. I think we spend a lot of time on substance use disorder. We really look at that population because that's what we're made up of.

A lot of our population has drug problems and really focusing on that. But also, I think we're continually looking at our curriculum to make it better, to see if it's relevant to today's communities and what's being taught out there. I don't really have a solid answer on this because I didn't look at that report before coming in here to really analyze the data.

But I can definitely get you and follow up with you on details of data, of what is relevant and what we see as being important to making sure that these kind of audits, numbers aren't out there. And we're increasing our numbers to look better.

I mean, my goal, honestly, is I look at numbers all day long, but my goal is really the right prison, the right person, and the right program, and ensuring that individual, because I look at everybody like an individual, what their needs are, and are we going to be able to rehabilitate them.

And are we giving them what they need when they get out of prison and following them on their parole journey to ensure that we're not just checking a box, but making sure that they have what they need when they get out, from housing to jobs to family support, whatever it is that they need. So I do look at the audits, but I really take it more of an individual. I've got to go down to the individual and what their needs are.

And I think that's one of the biggest concerns that I have, is not concerns, but one of the biggest lenses that I have is to ensure that these programs actually do benefit the individual so that have them come back.

I absolutely agree.

So that's the most important part for me. Thank you very much.

Thank you. It was nice to meet you too.

Thank you, Senator. Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Madam pro tem. How are you today, ma'am? There is a lot of questions that were asked. Full disclosure. Represent Kern County. Our oil industry used to provide employee opportunities and upward mobility upwards. $100,000, $200,000 a year. If we can get our permits back, I'll take every second chancer you have. Because we went from 30% down to 13%, but not because we were laying people off that were second chancers.

It was just a tremendous layoff because we import oil here that we use instead of produce it here. But if we ever get our permits back, maybe with a new Governor or something, just saying, we would take every second chancer you have. Because teach anybody a skill in the trade that's willing to show up and do the job. So just throwing that plug in there. I do have a couple of questions.

I know a lot of my colleagues followed up on the bad things going on in the prison, but I want to know about staff. I know that staff goes into that facility or those facilities every single day. And staff deals with a lot of things. I toured Kern Valley Prison, Pelican Bay and others, and.

I agree with my colleague from Los Angeles that we need to make sure--and my colleague, Ms. Ochoa Bogh--I agree that they need to be prepared when they get out. Because the best solution to poverty is a job so that they don't go back, and they've got to be able to provide for their families and themselves.

And hopefully--we had to do a bill, I think, a couple of years ago for non-contiguous parole county connection, because we wanted to leapfrog Los Angeles over other counties or whatever to get to Kern so they could go to work in the oil industry when it's thriving. And they had to be contiguous counties. So we fixed that. So I do believe that we need to make sure that there are programs. They need to be able to get out and keep a job and have a job, and we should provide them with rehabilitation and the skill set to do that. You need the resources to do that. And I agree with that.

But when I toured Pelican Bay, went to the SHU--which was the prison inside the prison--and I'm not trying to be stereotypical, and I'm not trying to be, but when I looked at some of those people in that SHU, I thought, thank God they are there. And when I got their background, I was like, so grateful they were there and not out in my community. So I realized that there's a push to close down prisons and remove people from the prison environment.

But I realize also that there are people that need to be in prison and we need to protect society from them. And I realize that you have the obligation to make sure morale--and the individuals that go into those prisons that have feces thrown on them that are constantly attacked--I saw some of the stuff that happened in that prison, the stuff they have to go through.

I want to know what we're doing to improve the morale in prison, specifically with that that I just mentioned and prison closures--where is staff going to move? You got prison closures in California City in 2024. You got another prison in 2025. You had the prison up in Dahle's district that closed the day we had a confirmation for the last director, when nobody even knew what was happening. What happens to the staff? What happens to them? Is their placement--are you moving them?

Which is, you know, a bad, it's--I guess it's the worst or the best of all evils, because you uproot your family and move from California City to wherever. And what are you doing to improve the morale of staff? Because when I talk to some of these people, when I meet with them--and I'm not talking lobbyists and people up here--I'm talking my people on the ground at Tehachapi Prison.

And they're very worried about the notice that they're going to get, and the city is very worried about how they're going to maintain all those people leaving that area. It's a beautiful mountain community, four seasons. So these impacts of closing these facilities and the morale of the staff is a huge concern for me. And if you can address those things, I would appreciate it.

Yeah. I completely agree with you. The prison closures are very traumatic for our staff, the communities, and the incarcerated population. And everyone's waiting for the next notice. And I lived in Crescent City, where Pelican Bay is. They feared they were going to be closed. I lived in Susanville. I was the Chief Deputy Warden at High Desert State Prison prior. So I know that community. It's a small community. They were devastated over the prison next door, closing the camps, kind of going into one.

It's really hard to talk to staff that are going through, having to think about moving or losing their jobs if they don't move. We do work very close with them. We have a voluntary transfer process, so if they want to leave and go to another institution, we help them with that. Closing the institutions that are near another institution helps relocate that staff so they're not having to uproot their families.

Also, looking at our population and instead of closing the whole prisons and just closing the facilities within the prison and being able to keep the staff there and have them move over to the other--staying in their institutions has been also helpful. Trying to recruit staff to come in, right now, though, when we're closing prisons, has been a struggle.

We're struggling, just like Sheriff Cooper said, with our vacancies and getting people to want to come to work for us. I think the biggest cheerleaders we have for coming to work in the department is our own staff. And when you have the bad morale because of prison closures and the terrible incidents that happen within our prisons--I mean, I've had my entire face broke in an incident by an incarcerated person when I was an officer. So I understand the conditions that they have to go through.

And I think that's why the Norway, the California model, changing the way we treat our staff and having them be a part of the solution, having them be a part of what we're doing inside the institution to prevent incidents from happening. I think they need to feel value in their jobs. I think they need to be heard. I want to know what they want--what would make them happy in the institutions. I'm a big walker and talker. When I was a warden, I never sat down.

I was out in the institution, and I was constantly talking to the staff and the incarcerated population. So morale, I think, has to start with the leaders, our wardens. We're looking at our wardens a little different now, too, about: what kind of person are you? Are you going to be out there championing our staff, doing things? Employee wellness--I think we have a really robust employee wellness now, where if you have a substance abuse issue, we're working with you. We're not firing you anymore.

That wasn't heard of back when I started. You would be fired. We're really taking people into account and really listening to them. What would make this a better department? We want to hear from them. We recently allowed cell phones to come in for staff in one of our institutions. They're able to bring their cell phones in, so that they're able to communicate with their families when they're in an institution for 16 hours. We're trying it at one institution to see how it goes. It's going well.

We're going to expand it to another institution and slowly roll that out. Because when you're stuck in a control booth in a prison for 16 hours with no contact with your family, and you have little kids at home, it's hard. It is hard. So we've got to recognize those things. And I think that we're in a place right now where we have a secretary that wants change, and he thinks out of the box. My other undersecretaries I work with, you know Diana Tosh, who's the undersecretary of healthcare.

She's always got crazy ideas, but we love them. And we jump on them and we talk about them. We have a great relationship with the community-based organizations out there. I think we're a different type of leadership right now that we want to know what to do better, and we aren't afraid of making change. We like thinking out of the box.

And staff to me is so important, because when they go in every day, how they treat the incarcerated population will make or break the next person coming on that shift. And if they're happy and they're saying good morning, and they're treating the incarcerated population happy, they're going to go home happy. The next people coming in are going to be happier. I think that it's just that change of how we all have to start treating people kinder. And this prison closure is hard for people.

It's hard for me when I hear it. I went to Susanville when it was happening. I walked around High Desert. I walked around the prison that was closing next door. You know, I talked to people about it and I tell them, you know, "We're going to be here for you." And almost every single person did end up getting a job at High Desert or voluntarily moved. There was a couple that were laid off, and I just heard two weeks ago that they've both been hired back at the institution.

So I love stories like that. And I hope that we can do that with the upcoming prison closures where we don't see the big impact. And I hope we don't have any more prison closures because I know that we're in a reduced population. But with this California model and what we want to do with staff morale, inmate program, we need that space. And I lived in the overcrowding days when there was triple bunks in the gym. And it was hard times.

There was nobody that was happy during those times. The incarcerated population, the staff, you're on edge the whole day. You have to wait in lines to get your medication, your canteen packages. Staff are on edge because there's so many people on the yard. You're just tense. So this reduced population has allowed us to have a better relationship, I think, with the incarcerated population, and go home feeling better about what we're doing. We still have a long ways to go. We're 60,000 employees, approximately.

And change is hard and the direction we want to go with the California model, and teaching people what it means to them, because it is really about employee wellness to me. It really is about morale and people being proud of the job they're doing.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I appreciate--I know the question was a little more one-sided because I felt like my colleagues covered the other side--but I appreciate the fact that you're promoting a decency and respect with the incarcerated population and the officers, or the individuals, the personnel that work there.

Because I think the overcrowding and all the things that happened in the past and the whole baton thing and everything that goes on that you see in the old movies, that is completely unacceptable. And I don't support or condone that in any way, shape or form. But like I said, I sat down, I've been inside prisons. I've talked to--I went to--as a matter of fact, some of the sergeants took me to a prison, and I met with all--and I was shaking everybody's hand.

"Hi, I'm Assemblywoman Grove." And they're like, "Stop shaking their hands." And I went into a classroom and somebody was--and this is a grown man, right? A grown man that was incarcerated population. And he hid his paper, and I said, "What are you doing?" And it was a classroom--like school. And he goes, "I'm learning--I'm taking my spelling test," and he's got his hands all over this piece of paper. And I'm, like, moving his hands. And I said, "What is it?"

And it was like: fox, they--it's like a 40 year old man. And he goes, "Well, it's fox, not folks." And he says, "So when I pass this test, I'll get to go on to another grade." I said, "Good for you." And so I realized that I know that if you treat all people with decency and respect, including those in the SHU, but I would prefer, honestly on the record, that they stay there.

But those that have the ability to come out, we need to make sure that they have jobs, because, like I said, it's the best upward mobility and the way to keep them out. And I appreciate your balance with staff morale and what's going on with staff. I met with staff when I went and met with the others--and I'm getting ready to go to another prison visitation. And I'm not going to out anybody-

-But I look at the people that we, at the Senate, have hired that have come from a prison setting as second chancers, and they are thriving. And one day when one of them walked up to me--because I give him a bad time sometimes, but we've helped him get settled and things like that--he showed me his prison ID and his California State Senate ID, and he is so proud of that.

And if you met that young man today, you would never know that he'd ever been incarcerated--either of them; there's several of them here--but if you met them. Because there is opportunity on the outside, and you just have to give them an ability to do that, but they have to be willing themselves to participate in that process as well. So I thank you for being balanced.

Thank you.

I have no further questions.

Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. And I just wanted to make sure you know that if Kern County were a state, it would be the fourth largest oil-producing state, in case you missed that. My colleagues have asked many things and have done a good job. So two questions. And the first one was raised by something you said. We've talked about the people and the workers with regard to prison facilities, but we haven't talked about the facilities.

And you mentioned San Luis Obispo, where I'm going in a couple of days, because it had two units and one unit is closed. What do you do with the units as you scale down? That sounded like you were using it for prison-related things that you didn't have the space for before. So how do you handle that as we go through this? With the various-

I honestly think that Dave Lewis, who's up next, he's actually over facility planning and construction.

And I had that down to ask him. But you opened the door.

I mean, I think he would probably be the best one to ask it. I don't even know if we're allowed to go in there and use it for program space, honestly. I would love to have it for putting in--if a contractor wanted to come in and teach our incarcerated population a trade, I would love it, but I don't know if we're allowed to.

Even though you passed it off to Dave. If either of you don't know that now, will you get back to us?

I bet Dave would know more about it than I do.

I would submit that Senator Laird would be willing to make sure that he would ask whoever needs to be asked, have that facility.

Yes.

I knew I'd pay for that oil comment.

Right. Yeah, I would love to use the space. I think that we're not allowed to put our population-

-I understand the population, but I just know--thought there for a second you were using it for a related program, and-

-I would like to.

It might require budget or legislative authority, so that would be a good reason for us to hear back. Another question I wanted to ask you, and you alluded to it earlier, but I thought I'd put a finer point on it. You were a rank-and-file officer in the first years, and now you're doing what you're doing. What, as you go through each day, do you sort of draw on from that?

Does experience like--"Jeez, I know that doesn't work," or, "Jeez, that's new," or "I can't believe they're thinking that when this is really"-- how do you draw on that experience in your current job?

I think of all the positions that I've held in my jobs has prepared me for this. So early on as an officer, I didn't really even know what a secretary or undersecretary was. I knew we had a director, an associate director. So as I grew in my career--and I didn't take the traditional route of sergeant lieutenant from officer--I was very interested in the budget. So I became a budget analyst.

And then I wanted to learn how to buy stuff, like how does the cars come in? And how do we get this? So I became the procurement officer and the business manager, and I had a very curious mind of how the department worked, and it's benefited me so well in my various jobs. I even jumped over on the healthcare side and worked for the receiver as the Director of Correction Services during COVID and was the incident commander.

And I've learned so much about every little pieces and nuances of the department. I'm not an expert in any of it, but enough to know where to look and where to research and where to pull the best information from. I do know from my experience that in the early days, when it was overcrowded and Pelican Bay was a very rough prison, when I was there, there was a lot of violence.

I've seen a lot of things as a young correctional officer never thought I would see in my life that was very traumatic. So what I draw on now, and even when I was a warden, is I want my staff to not have that trauma. I want them to come to work every day and do the job that they were hired to do without seeing the violence.

And to do that, we have to be able to talk to the incarcerated population, give them hope that they can get out. That's how I approach it. And when I think about all the jobs I've had, the one thing I've learned the most is they're just people that are incarcerated, just like we are people. They were probably in a different lifestyle than I was. Their parents probably weren't sitting in the audience at their graduation.

So taking that into account when you deal with the incarcerated population, that they didn't have the same upbringings, and having our staff take that into account. I really do appreciate the lower population right now. I think it helps greatly, our staff being able to be out there and do the job they need to do in a respectful manner. Every position I have had has prepared me for this, and let me tell you, it's not been the traditional custody route. I've bounced around to different positions because I always wanted to learn a little bit about everything.

Thank you very much. That's a wonderful thing, and I look forward to supporting you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Laird. At this point, a lot of ground has been covered, and I really do appreciate it. A couple of things. One, the discussion about prison closures, and I do think it's appropriate to have enough space to do the work you need to do, because I'm very excited about the California model. I've heard from lots of my colleagues who went to Norway. We've listened to the secretary talk about his vision of that.

But I want to make sure that those rehabilitation programs and opportunities exist for all incarcerated individuals in every single prison. And we can have a wonderful example--and I look forward to that, of a new model--but I don't want anyone to not have the opportunity to access rehabilitative services, educational opportunities, technical skills, whatever it is they want to do to change their ability to have economic opportunity for themselves and their families. So I'm excited to see this go forward.

I'm glad my colleagues brought it up. On the closures, I do want to say, I think we kind of learned about previous closures at the last minute, and I understand that. I think the administration has to make some hard calls if we are going to close prisons and we are going in a different direction. We want fewer people incarcerated. We want these programs to work so that we continue to lower population. And the people who shouldn't be in prison should not be in prison.

They should have access to job training outside of the prison system. They should have access to mental health services and health care outside of the prison. They should have access to education outside of prisons, so that all those things are what we're aiming for in different parts of our society here in California.

The closures, however--I've said this before, and I know the administration is here--I really believe we have to approach this sooner and earlier because it is about the community and economic impact in a community, as well as to the employees and for them to know and be able to plan. And it doesn't get any easier just by telling someone later as opposed to earlier and trying to plan it.

We still have to deal with the same criticism, the same complaints, the same lobbying to keep this prison open versus that one. And we still have to deal with local communities and cities and counties who count on that economic impact. So we should have an economic impact statement and we should back up.

So the poor administration has heard me say this the last couple of times, so I just wanted to repeat that so that when it comes to your position, you have the ability to say, well, "I was asked by the legislators to say that they want this information sooner," so I'm just pointing this out so that we're part of a bigger process to do this the right way.

Absolutely. I agree.

I might have one question, but I really want to underscore what my colleagues over here said about your experience starting as a correctional officer and really working your way up to understand every aspect. I think there's great value in that. I think there's value in your experience and what you bring to it.

And when I compare your--28 years? 27 years--to also the attitude I'm hearing displayed today about culture shift and change, when I put those two things together, I'm thrilled to be able to support you today. And I think we're lucky if this is the direction we continue to move in. I only have one simple--well, it's not simple, but one question: is fentanyl in this day and time, how it's impacting every single thing in our community, inside and outside of jails and prisons. But how big a problem is fentanyl compared to other illicit drugs for you?

It's devastating, honestly. It's such a small drug and easy to smuggle in either through mail, staff, drones. Drones have been a problem. It's so tiny. And our population overdoses scare me because it doesn't take much. I think we really are doing a good job with our substance use disorder treatment programs, our medical-assisted treatment programs, really educating the population about fentanyl and what it can do--a very small amount of what it can do will kill them. We're really championing that.

Also, working with our healthcare partners, we have deployed Narcan to the population. We're giving them to them when they're coming in. From jails to us, when they come in reception. The correction officers now have access to them--where we had had the sergeants--they have access immediately to it. But also piloting some institutions where the incarcerated population is keeping it in their cell. We've already seen where it saved a few lives, where their cellmates have used it on the other incarcerated person.

We're really trying to tackle this from every angle, just like the communities are. But it is an impact. We have 68 canine dogs that can go out and search for the drugs. We would like to expand that. Also have the passive resistive dogs where they can pass by visitors and staff to ensure there's no drugs on them. We've had about 100 visitors arrested this last year for trying to bring contraband in.

Those are the only ones we catch, though. We still know, because, like I said, it's just such a small amount it takes, and it's so deadly. We're trying to tackle it from every single area, but it is a huge impact for us. I think the Narcan out there is very helpful.

Well, thank you. If you learn of other mechanisms that would be helpful, it'd be good to know.

Yeah, absolutely.

We have had a lot of conversations. So I'm going to turn to members of the public now and ask if there are those who would like to speak in support. Again, your name, the organization or hat you wear, if any, and your brief comments. Anyone like to speak in support? I see a few folks heading towards the microphone. And let me just thank all of you for your patience. I've noticed a number of people standing along the back of the wall and in the audience, so I appreciate your patience. Welcome. Go ahead.

Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Souza. I'm here on behalf of three community-based organizations, including Amity Foundation, Health Right 360, and the WestCare Foundation. These organizations have combined decades of experience working in CDCR and in reentry and really just want to relay their wholehearted support for Ms. Foss. They have seen the R come in 2009. They have seen the decade of shifting culture change, and Tammy Foss represents exactly that. She's what CDCR needs now. She's what the staff needs. She's what treatment needs.

One thing that's really particular about Ms. Foss and how she reacts with providers is she's willing to sit down, tackle tough conversations and address problems that come up. And that, to us, is something that just represents the change in CDCR that you see throughout the department right now, which is the willingness to address an issue done the right way and not just the easy way. And so we urge your aye vote today. Thank you.

Thank you for that testimony. Very good to hear. Welcome. Come on up. Your name?

Good evening. My name is Wajuba Mcduffy. I'm the Regional Manager of Anti-Recidivism Coalition and I'm in full support of Miss Undersecretary Foss.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Peace, power and positivity. How you doing? My name is Sean Gage. I'm a life coach with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Hope and Redemption Team. And please forgive me, but Madam Chairman, I was in the back of the room wanting to clap when you was talking. I had to do that. I myself served 27 years residing in CDC back when it was pretty much at its worst. Today I stand here as somebody who's reformed, rehabilitated, and now go back inside the institutions. Madam Foss is an advocate of that. I've sat and talked with her. Everything she's saying is who she is. I'm in full support of her.

Thank you very much and congratulations to you. Welcome.

Hello. My name is Shone Robinson and I am a life coach for Anti-Recidivism Coalition as well. I am in support of Tammatha Foss. I was also currently incarcerated--well, formerly incarcerated--I served 22 years of my life, and now I'm a rehabilitated woman. Thank you.

Congratulations, and thank you so much for being here today. Hi. Welcome.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. My name is Tyson Nguyen, and I'm with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. I was serving most of my time at High Desert, so I've met Ms. Foss personally, and what you see today is what you get. So I'm here in support of her.

Thank you. Congratulations to you as well. Welcome.

Good afternoon. My name is Brandon Patterson, and I'm a life coach with the Heart Team at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. And as a former life inmate, I'm in full support of Ms. Foss.

Thank you so much for being here. And let me say congratulations to you as well. Hi. Welcome.

Madam Chair, distinguished Members. First, I want to say thank you for all of your dedication and diligence to the community, to California citizens. So thank you. I am Neil Flood, the Vice President of CCPOA--a couple of my Norway partners here. We are here to support Tammy Foss. Please understand that we are supporting someone that would be our boss when we're wearing a uniform, so we're not always in agreeance with them. But we have enjoyed working with her.

She does make the secretary's job much easier because I almost never have to contact him now because she answers the phone every time we need an issue addressed or something to be fixed. So we hope, as we go through these major changes, and we begin to have a new way of doing our job, that she will help guide us. And we just want to note: we support you.

Thank you so much. We'll make sure the secretary gets that comment. We have ongoing conversations with the secretary, as he promised us he would do in the earlier days when we weren't getting so many positive comments from everybody. And he has kept that promise to my colleagues in the Senate. So, thank you, and we will pass that message on. Welcome.

Thank you. I'm Levi Lindemann, and I am a member of ARC and I support Ms. Foss.

Thank you so much for being here. Hi. Welcome.

Good evening, panel. My name is Daniel Chestang. I'm also part of the Heart Team at ARC. Change is possible. Change is good. I've also been in the SHU, and we're amongst a bunch of lifers, 29 years myself. Thank you for what you are attempting to do. And thank you and thank you for your support.

Thank you.

Support Ms. Foss.

Thank you. I can't tell you what it means for us to hear from people who have been in the system that there's something that's working. That makes all the difference to those of us who are trying to do the job when we don't always understand in great detail every aspect of what goes into it. So I cannot thank you enough for taking the time. Welcome.

Good evening and thank you so much for this opportunity. My name is Joseph Osorio. I am the Associate Director with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition here in Sacramento. On behalf of ARC, our staff, our members, we fully support the nomination of Ms. Foss and look forward to working with you in the future and continuing the collaboration, not just with you, with CDCR. And thank you all for your service to public safety. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Other comments in support? Again, assuming the family is in full support, so they're smiling. Right. Okay. I want to also give people who might be here in opposition, and that's also very important to get that feedback. Anyone here who wishes to speak in opposition? Okay. Thank you very much. You know, I am going to say I've been on the Rules Committee my entire time in the Senate, which is seven years, and I recall the days--I want to thank ARC in particular.

There are a number of organizations that have paid very close attention to these issues and in addition to representatives from the employees and the union and the staff who come and make their positions known, I just want to say, I will say it again--when we hear from ARC--because we have had moments where you've been here and you've had some feedback that was really important for the Committee to get.

And I want you to know we have followed up on everything with an incredible staff of the Rules Committee. And when Mr. Flood talked about Norway Pals, we had legislators, but we also had the secretary of our Senate go, because she sits here and hears these conversations. And to my Vice Chair, you know, she has been one of the very few that talks the talk and walks the walk and supports formerly incarcerated people.

And we have a number of folks that work for us, very proud of being able to offer an opportunity and she's done it in her own business as well. And Mr. Lewis, you're going to get the same wonderful treatment, I'm sure, but be prepared on those facility questions. But having said that, this feels good because we really care about what you do and the change that you are making within this system and it's important to us. So I appreciate your thoughtful answers today. I appreciate the time you spent with us, and I know that we appreciate really you taking the time to meet with us.

Thank you.

Who wants to make the motion? Madam Vice Chair.

Madam Pro Tem, it's my honor for the nomination of Tammatha Foss to the floor for full confirmation. Just briefly, we interview a lot of appointees or a lot of conferees that the Governor sends to us. You did this interview with no notes, with heart, with passion. You get it. And you're definitely the right person for the job. So I'd be honored to nominate you and vote for you fully on the floor as well.

Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Secretary, will you please call the roll?

Laird. Aye. Ochoa Bogh. Aye. Smallwood-Quavis. Aye. Grove. Aye. Atkins. Aye. 5-0.

We will forward this to the full Senate for full confirmation. Congratulations.

Thank you so much. And for your time, Ms.

Absolutely. Okay. With great respect to Mr. Lewis, we're taking three minutes and three minutes only. And this is more for our court reporter as opposed to my colleagues. So three minutes and we'll be right back.

And Mr. Lewis, let me thank you. Someone had to go last, but I'm thinking we saved the best for last. I want to welcome you and again, thank you for your incredible patience and also ask you to do the same thing, which is to make any opening comments you want, acknowledge the folks you would like to, and then we'll go right to questions and comments. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Senators. I don't have any family with me today. My wife's a teacher. She felt it was more important to educate our children than to come sit through this experience. And I appreciate that. But because we've gone so late, I'm sure she's online watching this at this time. And my children are all adults and have their own things that they're dealing, so, including small kids similar to Tammy.

So before we begin, I want to thank all the people who have supported me through my career working for the State of California. I want to thank my family for all the support they've given me. Also want to thank Governor Newsom for this appointment and the leadership of the department for supporting the opportunity to lead the Facility Planning and Construction Management Division. I also want to thank all the hardworking staff that work in facility planning and construction management.

Sometimes it's a thankless job and they assist me in tackling all the needs of the department with regards to facilities. As we move forward, CDCR is primed to make significant changes in implementing the California model. We have the opportunity to create positive and lasting change. The environment that people live and work in has a significant impact on that change, and I'm thankful for an opportunity to be a part of that change.

And I appreciate the opportunity have had to meet with, well, only one of you this time. And I look forward to any questions, answering any questions you have for me today.

Well, thank you very much. And we know how important teachers are, so we know that your spouse is fully in support of you. Thank you for being here. Senator Laird, let me start on this end of the dais and let you go first.

Thank you very know in the Legislature, if we're in a long session and you want to take up a bill, you want to take it up just before everybody has to leave for the airport. So you might have ended up getting the best place here. Let me just ask the follow-up to the question where the buck was passed to you about the closing of facilities and their use, how to the best of your knowledge, does that work?

So when we close a facility, we generally keep staff on board to do warm shutdown activities to keep the utilities and systems in the institution running while there's no incarcerated people at those locations. And that can be a very challenging job because it's only a small skeleton staff that do it. It's also challenging from the fact that a lot of our infrastructure has deteriorated over the years, and so maintaining that with only that small scale of 10 staff can be very difficult.

We have to take a hard look at our ability to maintain those facilities, though, in the long term. The idea has been if there was a population spike, that we could reactivate. But the reality is, especially with some of our institutions, such as you mentioned, San Luis Obispo, that facility that was closed is of 1940s World War II army wood-framed construction. The idea that we could ever reactivate or reutilize that facility is probably not real on our part.

So we have to look at long term options for that property. Also understanding, though, that the infrastructure is tied to the main facility and that actually in San Luis Obispo, we are, in effect, a utility provider, as we also provide water and wastewater services to Cuesta College and the National Guard camp that is also located there. And so any future use will have to take into account the fact that we still provide those services to that part of the institution.

And how do we create a use that makes sense that's also on that property, though it is about a mile away from the main part of the institution. We also still house incarcerated people in that area because the fire camp is still located there and the minimum support facility, so the low-level worker incarcerated population is still located there. So that would have to also be dealt with in that particular case.

So one follow-up related question, and you raised it, and it's very interesting, and that is that it was educational to me to know that local jurisdictions do things jointly. And so, for example, in Salinas Valley Prison, I think it's the City of Soledad has half the water system and the prison has half the water system. And there was a time when the city came up with its half and the prison wasn't coming up with.

I mean, this was when I was budget chair, back when we had really no money, although we seem to have returned to that. And the same thing is I met with Cal Poly, the City of San Luis Obispo, and their water passes right by there, and they're salivating at the fact that there might be a savings from the prison that would allow them to have a little more.

How do you negotiate or make sure that when you're working with adjacent communities, you're helping them on the infrastructure questions that they have.

Absolutely. And disposition of property, I should be clear, is a function of the Department of General Services and not CDCR. And so future use or disposition of property has to be coordinated with DGS. And that would include addressing those infrastructure issues that exist and would need to be dealt with. But you're right, we also have joint infrastructure with other localities, and it's certainly an issue that can be worked through.

In particular, though, with the water situation in San Luis Obispo, we also face some challenges with our water rights there related to contaminants in the water, specifically arsenic, that will have to be dealt with before you could really deal with the water rights as they exist. Because despite the fact that we have water rights, generally, we draw off of the state water instead because of the particular issues with the arsenic removal in that water system.

And the one closing comment is that, yes, the Department of General Services has the responsibility, but they're not triggered until we ask. They know you're going to walk away from a unit in terms of closing it, or that you're expanding in a place, and yes, you need the additional water. And so it's just important that that coordination happen. So appreciate it. Thanks for your patience.

Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem, I just have a follow-up question on that. I know DGS is the one who facilitates all that and the transition or disposition of properties. You're very familiar with these properties where we have prison closures, enclosures, and there's minimal to no staff. Do you, in your own opinion, foresee other beneficial uses, full sale of the property, demolition of the property, new housing? Is there a beneficial use for these properties? Are they like out in the middle of nowhere?

Is there a beneficial use that you would see thinking outside the box for these properties, either for development for the community in which just lost that prison, which lost those jobs, or, I don't know. I don't want to say an Amazon facility, but you know what I mean.

Is there another beneficial mean?

I think that's a difficult question to address just from the standpoint of a lot of our facilities are in fairly remote locations. Our closure facility in Susanville, it's a fair distance, about five or 6 miles outside of Susanville itself. There's plenty of available property that someone wouldn't have to deal with the existing buildings and demolition or anything like that, and deal with the shared infrastructure with the existing institution as well, that make those maybe a little more difficult than some situations.

The future closure of Chuckwalla in Blythe is similar in that it's actually even further outside of town. It's about 25 miles from Blythe, and so it makes it a little difficult because it's so remote and there is so much accessible land between those two locations that beneficial use in those might be a little bit more difficult. But we also have closing DJJ facilities or closed DJJ facilities, Division of Juvenile Justice, that are in a little bit more urban locations.

So since I've taken this job, we've declared the Stark Youth Correctional Facility surplus. We've sent that letter to DGS, so that could be sold potentially. DGS just finished trying to sell Preston in Ione didn't have many interested parties, even though the price was fairly good because of the need to deal with existing infrastructure, which doesn't have a lot of alternative uses. Unfortunately, it's hard to find alternative uses for selled housing or that kind of thing.

I mean, it's just not something that lends itself and a large land use idea like an Amazon, for example, that's difficult to do because of the need to clear the land. And when there's plentiful available land in that area, I think they would tend to avoid some of ours. But we have dealt in some places at the California Institution for Men, for example, we have a large property there in Chino in Southern California, where land isn't readily available.

And we've done ground leases with Walmart and other areas so that they could build on that property where it's appropriate. And so in some of those locations, I think there's more opportunity for beneficial use. But on the other hand, it's not as impactful to the community as it would be. Unfortunately, in somewhere like Blythe or Susanville, which is much more devastated by a closure than some of these urban locations.

Okay, thank you. I really appreciate that. And I appreciate. I caught what you said. They're land use leases. So the state is receiving revenue on those leases, which helps offset some of the expenses that we have as a state. And I think that's out-of-the-box thinking instead of just letting the property sit idle. But thank you very much for your comments.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair, Senator Ochoa Bogh.

I think the majority of the questions were addressed that I was going to, that we discussed actually in our meeting. But I did have to. Just a quick question here with regards to Brigham Young University Provo or Idaho, your schooling?

I went to Brigham Young University in Utah. Also, my wife, my parents, and three of my four children have gone to BYU. My youngest is a senior this year. So I'll finally be done paying for college after the past 13 years of paying for education for my children. And also, by the way, my great-grandparents went to BYU when it was Brigham Young Academy, actually.

So my father in law and my daughter actually just finished BYU in Provo. That's why I went to ask in December, and I have a second one there and hopefully a third one coming up next year, keeping my fingers crossed. I just noticed that. I can't believe I missed that during our interview, but I think in reality, I think they've addressed the questions that I had with regards to the facilities and how they could be reused. And that's one of the biggest things that we had.

I just learned today that we perhaps can't use them for, well actually we don't know yet. We're going to look into that, but for work opportunity sites. But that's all I have today. This is the time so, those are my questions. Thank you.

I think Senator Laird was correct when he made his opening comments. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you. And I'll keep it brief. I guess, given the California plan and all of the conversations that were had right before your hearing in terms of the opportunities of facilities and how important a role that will play in terms of expanding rehabilitation services, what is the biggest challenge that we face now to creating more educational facilities so we can take the 10 thousands of residents who are on waiting lists who are desperately wanting to access these skills and program?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity for some outside-the-box thinking in this regard of not viewing programs as exclusively needing classrooms and also being much more flexible in our use of classrooms. Our massive project we're working on at San Quentin, for example, one of the main ideas that we're approaching there is flexible use of classrooms. So the classrooms are used all the time, not just during the core programming period.

I think Undersecretary Foss addressed the fact that we use pretty much all available spaces to try and provide program visiting the gyms and other spaces, chapels to try and leverage space to create programs. Our institutions were not built with that in mind. They were built very much in a period when punishment was seen as the primary driver of correctional need and the facilities to some degree represent that. And so, but we can do some outside-the-box thinking. You mentioned apprenticeship programs.

For example, under FPCM, we have inmate ward labor program, and we are starting to implement a pre-apprenticeship program for people that are participating in that, in our construction projects internally in the department, so that hopefully when they are released, they've fulfilled all the requirements of the pre-apprenticeship program and can move into a full apprenticeship program with the various unions. We hope to start that at CMF within the next short little while.

We've already founded an instructor to begin that process, and I've had discussions with other labor unions that are also interested in those kinds of opportunities as well, so that we can begin to roll those out. I think it's pretty key to continuing a robust program in that regard, that it's not seen as just a cheap labor program, that it's seen as a full rehabilitative program.

And creating those opportunities will give us the opportunity where it doesn't require a large amount of classroom space, and the classroom activities are a small part of the program and give people practical experience at the same time.

And I know Pelican Bay, everyone talks about all of the programs that are happening there. How do you look at the different facilities and is there sort of a grading process by which you look at facilities and think, okay, this is where we can expand the number of educational offerings based on the facilities that we have? I know the women's prison lifted up, having very few opportunities, particularly around construction trades. I think woodworking is the one sort of trade that exists there.

So I'm just curious, how do you determine where will all. I think the Madam President said this earlier about making sure that all facilities have access to these programs. How do you grade that? What is the plan for that, and when do you see that plan being shared with us to kind of be able to track how these programs are rolling out and where they'll roll out.

I mean, I think that's probably largely something that's best addressed by the division of rehabilitative programs. We assist them wherever we can in helping them find space. I know, for example, this week they were planning on being at San Quentin. Even though we're building a large building there, there's still a need to expand other programs, especially around technical education, that won't be included in the new space that we're building.

So in order to do that, we have to identify space where we can look at something that maybe had a previous use and do that. Obviously, any project that would require funding would require us to come to the legislature and ask for that money, and there's probably a large need for that at some point in the future. And as a department, we'll have to sit down and really go through a thorough planning process of determining, and the division of rehabilitative programs has been very effective.

I was the Deputy Director of Fiscal Services for CDCR back when we went through the recession. And we essentially gutted all of our rehabilitative programs at that point, just from a funding standpoint. But it was a unique opportunity coming out of that to identify programs that are effective and evidence-based as opposed to they just existed because they'd existed for many years. For example, previously, almost every prison had a dry cleaning program. There's very few jobs available for dry cleaning.

That was more of a staff service than anything. So why are we paying to have a dry cleaning program when that is not going to result in jobs? Whereas I think now they have a very rigorous process to determine where a program actually provides some opportunity for employment on the outside. And we just need to continue to leverage that process. And wherever we find opportunities, find ways to implement a program. And if space becomes a barrier, find the easiest and simplest way to address that.

And that can be done through scheduling, for example. It doesn't have to always be a new space. Sometimes it's scheduling effectively so that you continuously use that space. So it's not only used for three or 4 hours a day. When the program that was in there is in there. We have plenty of evening programs, a lot of college programs, and providing educational opportunities to the incarcerated population that may have a job during the day but still wants to participate in programs.

It shouldn't be an either or opportunity. We should have programs that are available when they are available.

So you're working closely with the Department of Rehabilitation and sort of identifying those facility opportunities and program opportunities together. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Appreciate the work that you do. I know that we get into the rehabilitative programs and the facilities are critically important. One of the first meetings I had with some folks from CDCR was about the deferred maintenance and the criticalness of, you can have a lot of programs and we need them and they're really important and critical, but you got to have decent spaces for people to know. The rain dripping in and all of that stuff.

I mean, I heard the horror stories, and I'm sure you are still dealing with trying to catch up on all of the deferred maintenance. We never get enough money put towards really fixing our infrastructure. You've been in this a year. I think you were appointed almost a year in February. How do you prioritize infrastructure projects to ensure that the most pressing needs are met?

I'm sure it is sort of chasing your tail to use a phrase. And especially in light of what you're getting ready to do with the California model and the creating the spaces at San Quentin, you know, that's kind of two different worlds to live in. How do you balance those priorities?

That's a great question and one that's been my life for the last year. It's difficult because the department has a huge infrastructure need. And unfortunately, we've had two major power outages in the last four months where it's essentially shut down power to the entire institution, one at Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla and one at the Richard J. Donovan facility in San Diego.

And unfortunately, what happens is if you leave all maintenance decisions to the local institution, they're going to be very focused on what's directly in front of them today and maybe not provide enough attention to kind of the potential critical infrastructure that could fail. Power, for example, going out in both those cases.

Well, in the case of RJ Donovan, unfortunately, in looking into the issue in the past, they had a report that indicated that what failed was a problem about two years prior to when it happened, and it wasn't addressed because the institution, I mean, it could have been addressed for $50,000. Instead, we're going to end up spending $2 million addressing the problem.

So I think taking some of those more strategic looks, an institution, when they look at doing an electrical survey, for example, and they look at spending $70,000 on that, they can spend $70,000 on that, or $70,000 on a problem that they know they have today, they're going to spend it on the problem they know they have today. And that's the right decision for them, but may not be the right decision for the department.

And so we're taking some of those really critical, and we're going to start directing that as an activity at our level, instead of leaving it to the person who they've got to make daily decisions about what they fix and don't fix in an environment where the infrastructure is in pretty poor condition and start to really plan for that as a more strategic resource so that we don't lose infrastructure that we could have identified and fixed prior to having a large, and it'll turn out to pay off in the end because we won't have those critical failures that end up costing a lot of money for generator rental and other activities.

So really taking a hard look at that and identifying and prioritizing from an overall what has the biggest risk for the department as opposed to what is the most ready to go forward. I think previously, because we got somewhat of an influx of money, we were more focused on, again, similar to the institutions, what's right in front of us, what's ready to go when instead, it should be looked at from a very much critical infrastructure standpoint, but the money is limited.

And so at some level, you're always kind of looking at putting band-aids on a problem, but that doesn't mean we can't provide better direction on where those band-aids get applied.

Wow. Thank you. I appreciate that response, because I think you're talking about how to balance that, and I'm really happy to hear you're taking a look at that from a higher level, because the people on the ground have no choice but to do what they've got to do in the moment. And so I think that's really important, given the lack of resources. And you've been around for a while. You've done budget work. You've been in the Senate. You've got experience, kind of.

And you never get to talk about. This is one of the frustrating things when I got here. You never get to talk about the money you would save if you did this now. So I think the RJ Donovan example is a really good one, because we're dealing with that on other infrastructure projects not even related to CDCR. So I appreciate that approach, and I wish you the best, because you really are going to be trying to get resources to fix so many problems. I know.

Well, thank you. Let's go ahead and go to members of the public who have waited patiently and are still here, and we appreciate it, and I'm sure Mr. Lewis appreciates it. Anyone that would like to come forward and speak in support, we're happy to have you come forward. Okay. And I will offer that same opportunity to anyone who would like to speak in opposition. And seeing no one, I will say congratulations on that.

At this hour of the day, and I see my Vice Chair, even out of my peripheral vision, hitting her mic. Madam Vice Chair.

A motion to move the Comfrey forward.

Thank you. Madam Secretary, will you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

Congratulations. Thank you for your service, and we will forward this to the full Senate for confirmation. And congratulations. We will prepare for executive session, and.

Full disclosure, or point of order, I guess. Point of personal privilege.

Madam Vice Chair?

Yes.

Thank you. Let me sit down so I have a microphone, I guess. This is Senate Pro Tem's last. I told Ms. Contreras I did not want to do this. This is Senate Pro Tem's last rules hearing as our Chair, and I've had the opportunity. We both came in together in 2010 and then serving in the Senate. She got here a couple of years earlier than I did and then serving in leadership.

Many people in this building and around this state don't understand the friendship that we have. They look at both of us and say, how is that even possible? While politically we are very different, with life experiences, both growing up poor, both knowing that our mamas taught us the grit and how to be determined women and make a difference, I think that speaks volumes. I also know that she is an incredible leader.

We don't always agree, but I know that she empowers her people that work for her. She is deeply respected by not only her staff, but every member of this body. And she has integrity, she's trustworthy, she's truthful. And I have the deepest respect for my friend. And this will sound strange. I hope people get it. Tony Atkins is an individual who rules with a servant's heart and leads like a king. And we just have these flowers for you.

And I want to give you this on behalf of everybody.

They're beautiful. Can we bring the Senators?

Yes, it's for everybody.

Wow, these are gorgeous.

Because we're not balanced. Sorry, photographer moment.

Full job for us. And I appreciate you each and every committee meeting in session. Thank you. Okay. You'll tell me when we are. Thank you.