Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 4 on State Administration

Good afternoon. Will the Members of Budgets of Four please come to room 447? We are about to begin. Again, the Members of Budgets of Four, please come to room 447. Welcome. Good afternoon and welcome, everybody, to Budget Subcommitee Four on State Administration. I want to welcome the Department of Justice to our Subcommitee.

It is our first hearing for this Department and we look forward to getting better acquainted with the critical work that is being performed on behalf of the state and for the people of California. Today we will be discussing the DOJ budget proposals as well as receive progress updates on the armed prohibited person systems, the implementation of AB 1506 which involves investigations of officer involved shootings, and an overview of the new conviction review unit.

The panelists are listed in speaking order and we will have questions from the Subcommitee after the presentations of each item. I ask that the panelists introduce yourselves before we speak. We will not be taking any votes today and all items will be held open. Public comment will be available at the end of this hearing, both in person and over the phone. I am present, so I am announcing myself as present, this meeting and we will get started. The first issue, issue one, Department overview and update on armed prohibited person systems. Please begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair, my name is Chris Ryan and I am the Division Chief for the Division of Operations, and we appreciate the opportunity to be here and we look forward.

Can you speak a little closer to the mic, please?

Got it. I was hearing it in my ears, but I appreciate you giving me that hint. So appreciate being here today to discuss the agenda items. I will start with an overview and then I will turn it to Thomas Patterson for some additional information. And then we'll take a pause for Louis Lopez to give an apps update. The Department of Justice is primarily made up of four program areas, the Legal Services division, the Division of Law Enforcement, California Justice Information Services Division, and Administration.

The department's proposed budget is $1.2 billion. Approximately 60% are special funds, 40% General Fund. The 36 special funds are a blend of fee for service, enforcement actions, and settlement funds. The Department has over 5,600 employees in office buildings, labs, field offices, task forces from the Oregon border to San Diego. The Legal Services Division is made up of the civil, public rights, criminal, and Medi-Cal fraud, and elder abuse programs.

The civil division defends state agencies clients such as Department of Consumer Affairs and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Public Rights division is charged with protecting and enforcing California statutes related to consumer protection, antitrust, health care, the environment, and many other public interest statutes. The CRIM Division is primarily focused on criminal law and appeals in the criminal justice system.

Medi-Cal fraud and elder abuse is charged to investigate and prosecute those who defraud taxpayers of millions of dollars and divert scarce healthcare resources from the needy. The Division of Medical Fraud and Elder Abuse also works aggressively to protect residents in nursing homes and other long term care facilities from neglect and abuse.

The California Justice Information Services Division is primarily our technology division, and it works with local law enforcement and the criminal justice agencies throughout California to provide criminal history information through our California law enforcement telecommunication system. And our Division of Law Enforcement is comprised of the following bureaus, the Bureau of Gambling Control, Bureau of Firearms, Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Forensic Services. The mission of DLE is to enhance public safety by conducting criminal investigations, regulatory oversight, and forensic analysis of evidence for criminal proceedings.

DLE is dedicated to enhancing the safety and reducing the vulnerability of all citizens throughout California. While 2023 has just begun, DOJ has been very busy. We've made arrests in years-long homicide investigations and work with partners to target human trafficking. We've taken guns from those too dangerous to possess them. We've successfully defended a judgment against Johnson&Johnson for hurting Californians with dangerous pelvic mesh products. We've fought for stronger housing laws and stood up when communities didn't do their part to protect California's access to housing.

We've pushed forward legislation to better protect Californians, including legislation prohibiting hidden junk fees. We sued Google for its antitrust violations, insulin makers for overcharging patients, protected patients in skilled nursing facilities, and defended state agencies and the laws adopted in our state. Now I will turn it over to Thomas Patterson for some additional comments about the AG's office.

Good afternoon. My name is Thomas Patterson. I'm the Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Department's government law section. This afternoon, we'll discuss a broad array of areas in which the Department of Justice, under the direction of the Attorney General, is diligently working to protect and serve the people and interests of California.

At the Department, our core responsibility is to do justice, and this afternoon we'll address various ways in which the Department is doing just that, whether that means addressing homelessness and housing shortages, investigating officer involved shootings, enforcing California's common sense firearm laws, helping to solve cold cases through DNA, or protecting consumers and workers' rights, not to mention various other areas that are not prominently featured on today's agenda but are equally as important, such as improving health care, fighting the opioid crisis, protecting children's rights, ensuring environmental justice, and many other important missions.

In considering the Department's work, the attorney general's constitutionally granted discretion plays an important role as he identifies the best way to utilize the department's impact to effectively meet California's diverse needs at the right moment. As he enforces the rights and privileges for Californians under the state and U. S. Constitutions and under the laws that the Legislature passes.

There's a long line of authority found in the Constitution, statutes, and decisions from the California Supreme Court that recognizes the importance of the AG exercising broad discretion in the types of investigations and cases he brings and how the AG litigates those cases and how he organizes the Department so that he can remain nimble to meet the state's needs in a broad array of areas at the time that they arise.

While there are many state agencies that address areas of governance or oversight that may overlap to some degree with the AG's authority, the AG is unique and distinct from those state agencies under the constitution, the Attorney General is one of the few independently elected statewide executive officers, specifically the chief law officer. This constitutional title means that on the criminal justice side, the AG oversees sheriffs and the district attorneys, and he handles most criminal appeals as well as some criminal prosecutions.

On the civil side and regarding public rights, the AG has broad ranging authority to enforce rights as defined by the constitution and through legislation. Indeed, the AG is authorized by the Constitution and by statute to have charge over nearly all legal matters in which the state is interested. And as the head of the Department of Justice, the AG has ability to dictate the department's priorities and arrange resources in a manner that serves the goals of justice.

The Constitution wisely gives him power to determine the laws and public rights, to prioritize with authority generally to file any civil action to enforce the constitution or to protect public rights and interests. This discretion allows the AG to use the Department's full complement of diverse tools to address multifaceted problems. Practically speaking, what does this mean? Well, as just one example in addressing the housing crisis, the AG can use tools related to consumer protection, tenants rights, land use, environmental justice, and civil rights.

He isn't bound by a narrow and cabined mission in any area. Again, the Attorney General's duty, and the duty of the Department is to serve justice. And ultimately, when the Attorney General has the resources he requires to effectively exercise that discretion, there are distinct and valuable benefits for all Californians.

First, the AG gains flexibility to address emerging and often systemic issues as they arise and we have seen this over the years when the AG has quickly pivoted to address corporate offenses, environmental violations, public health emergencies, and pendulum swings in federal policy as federal administrations change, as well as in many other areas.

Second, by addressing these issues with his full scope of authority, the Attorney General gains the ability to obtain compliance with California's laws where they have been violated previously, and to obtain reform through successful litigation and settlements. And third, he's able to discourage violations from occurring in the first place simply by maintaining a strong and nimble Department that can readily enforce public rights created by the Legislature and those that are woven into the fabric of the Constitution.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Department's pursuit of justice in particular areas today. And unless there are any initial questions, we'll turn it over to Director Luis Lopez.

Thank you for that. One moment, please. Thank you for that. Getting myself acquainted with your agency. Any comments from the LAO or Department of Finance?

Anita Lee with the LAO, no additional comments. I'm happy to be available for questions.

Great.

And Kevin Clark, Department of Finance. No additional comments at this time.

Thank you. And thank you so much for that presentation and really broad overview of the responsibilities of the Department of Justice. Each Attorney General has a set of priorities that they focus on and under their constitutional authority, as you've mentioned. Can you give us a sense as to what are some of the priorities that Attorney General Bonta has for the DOJ?

Well, a lot of what we're going to be discussing today are some of the main priorities that this Attorney General has identified. The scope is very broad. The Attorney General has a very expansive role that he serves in the state of California in enforcing justice, whether it's on the criminal justice front or in the public rights front. For instance, we're going to talk today on the public rights front about housing.

We have a number of experts here to talk about the role that the Department is playing, pulling together a very multifaceted team for the housing strike force and focusing in on what is currently a crisis in California and using the strength of the Attorney General's Office to go after those local entities that are not abiding by state law to defend the state laws that the Legislature has passed when they're attacked by others. And so that is certainly one area of priority.

We're going to talk shortly about the importance of enforcing California's firearm laws. California has been very ambitious in enacting common sense constitutional firearms laws that protect the public. We have a Department of Law Enforcement that is very active in enforcing those laws to ensure that when criminals are found to have weapons, that those weapons are taken away from them. The Department is very actively defending the state's firearm laws against a broad range of challenges.

My section is handling somewhere around 30 lawsuits that have been filed to challenge almost every notable aspect of firearm regulation in California. So we are around the state. We're in the appellate courts. We're dealing with some very challenging Supreme Court precedent in that area right now.

But it's a very high priority for our Department because of the importance that it plays for our society, the importance that it plays for you and I as we go out to the store, as we send our children to school, et cetera. So those are a few of the Attorney General's priorities. They're just a small section of the grand scope of authority and responsibility that the Attorney General has. But there are definitely a few of the primary areas of concern right now.

Thank you. I appreciate that. We are going to cover a lot of issues, all of importance, but understanding the Attorney General's top priorities think would be beneficial for us to be able to move forward. I'm really glad that you brought up the issue on housing that we will address.

As a former member of the Green Carpet, Attorney General Bonta surely can appreciate the process of the Legislature and the importance of the legislative body having an impact in the work and a say in what's being done on a variety of different issues and levels. And so I'd be very curious as to the process that took place when we get to that issue and how my role is to advance the needs and work of the legislative body, in particular the Assembly.

And so when we get to that, I look forward to more interesting comments and more discussion. So thank you for that. We're going to move on to Mr. Luis Lopez on arm prohibited persons systems APS.

Yeah. Give you this mic.

Hi. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name is Luis Lopez. I'm the Assistant Chief with the Division of Law Enforcement. And thank you for the opportunity to share our progress with the investigation of armed and prohibited persons. Our APS annual report for 2022, as required under Senate Bill 94, will be released in April. And as the Department is in the process of completing the report, the statistics and the results that I will be sharing with you today are from our 2021 report.

With that being said, the COVID pandemic directly impacted our APS enforcement efforts in 2021 as we navigated the critical mission of APS enforcement with the health and safety of both the public and our staff. So, just a brief overview of APS. In 2006, the Department implemented the first and only system in the country that proactively identifies legal gun owners that become prohibited.

And the way that this works is the data for firearms that are legally acquired in California is cross checked with criminal history, mental health, restraining order, and wanted persons information. If there's a match, that subject is pushed to a crime analyst who will manually confirm the prohibition with gun ownership and will validate the information before it's pushed into the APS system. Once in the system, investigative teams across the state can access that information and build case packages.

We have teams of special agents located in our six regional offices who will take 10 to 15 of these APS packages. They'll take them out to the field on a daily basis for investigation. The primary mission of our Bureau of Firearms is APS Enforcement, and we have 70 allocated positions across the state to work on this mission. I'll add that with APS Enforcement, we will frequently partner with local law enforcement.

And the gun violence reduction grants that were made available and dispersed in 2021 and 2022 were helpful to incentivizing collaboration on APS with the local sheriff's departments. So when it comes to the APS numbers, there were 24,509 prohibited persons in the APS database. That's broken down. Excuse me?

Sorry, can you repeat that number again?

24,509. And that number is broken down into two categories. 10,033 are what we call active cases, and then 14,476 are categorized as pending cases. And those are essentially inactive cases for various reasons. So, in 2021, 8,937 prohibited persons were removed from the APS system, while 9,484 were added. We investigated 6,663 APS subjects and we recovered 1,428 firearms. We also investigated 195 APS subjects that were identified as attempting to purchase ammunition through the ammunition background check process.

With the APS system, there's constantly this churning of people coming into and out of the APS system on a daily basis. People are being added, people are being removed. It's just this constant churning in and out. Annually, what we see is between 9,000 APS subjects come into the system and 9,000 subjects get removed. So it's just, again, this constant churning. So in 2021, we had some great enforcement results. COVID pandemic aside, I know this was brief, but I hope it's offered some insight into APS. And I welcome any questions that you may have related to the APS program.

Thank you for that. So no additional comments. Thank you. I do have some questions for you, Mr. Lopez. Can you describe what the coordination looks like with local law enforcement partners and in any ways that could be improved?

Absolutely. So we frequently will collaborate with local law enforcement when it comes to APS enforcement. We are regularly conducting outreach and soliciting collaboration with the locals. In 2021, we conducted four regional, multi-day, what we call APS sweeps, where we collaborated and coordinated with the local law enforcement to conduct those. Going back to the gun violence reduction grants, those were great, because, again, that incentivized sheriff's departments to get involved in APS and also to collaborate with us.

So when we go out on APS operations, we're communicating with the local law enforcement agencies and, again, soliciting partnerships with them. So it's been very good.

Any ways that that can be improved?

Absolutely. So with the gun violence reduction grants that were made available for 2021 and 2022, those were limited to sheriff's departments, and we have had some great working relationships with sheriff's departments. But I think moving forward, maybe in the future, the Legislature might consider opening those grants up to municipal law enforcement agencies and probation departments. That would kind of cast a wider net and incentivize more folks to get involved in APS. And I think we'd see much more collaboration.

Just, I'm thinking about small cities versus larger. Right. So I represent the City of Los Angeles and Glendale, but in southeast LA, you have small cities like Carahe and Southgate. So I would imagine that that's because they have a contract system policing I believe. That would be in small cities like that. Would that be a sheriff's overview in APS?

If it's a contract city, it would be a sheriff's department. We've done some outreach to some of the local law enforcement, the municipal law enforcement agencies, as well as probation departments, about this very topic. And the feedback that we're getting is that they would definitely be interested in applying for if there were grant opportunities to work apps, they would definitely be interested in applying for those.

Thank you for that. I appreciate also the Attorney General's general interest in all of the mass shootings that we've experienced, not only across the country, but here in California specifically. And we've seen that in the last several months. Were any of the individuals that we know of in the APS program?

Not as prohibited. No.

That's interesting. Okay, thank you. Keep forgetting to press this button. Thank you for that. We're going to move on to issue number two, which is officer involved shooting investigations related to AB 1506.

Just very briefly, AB 1506 we have an update, implementation update that Luis, Mr. Lopez, will be giving us. And then we have a presentation by Mr. Newman related to the BCP request that is in this year's Governor's Budget. So just to clarify.

So, effective July 1, 2021, AB 156 required DOJ to investigate all officer involved shootings where an unarmed civilian is killed. And in order to carry out this mandate, the Department created the California Police Shooting Investigation Team program, or CAPSIT, that program within the Division of Law Enforcement. The program comprises investigative teams with special agents, criminalists, and attorneys strategically located throughout California. Our role under AB 1506 is to investigate and independently review these incidents for potential criminal liability.

And well before July 1 of 2021, we started to train staff to be ready and able to investigate homicide cases beginning July 1. This was happening at all levels of the Department, from our agents, to support staff, to criminalists, to our attorneys. This required a substantial amount of foundational infrastructure, including everything from new internal policy and procedures, extensive formal and on the job training, to the purchasing of the required equipment.

And in building this program, we've spent countless hours on outreach with the law enforcement community as well. We've created a program that has taken best practices from across the nation, and we're implementing it consistently statewide. We can ensure that these cases will be investigated, reviewed, and a legal determination will be made consistently throughout the state, from the Oregon border down to the Mexico border and everywhere in between.

The mission is such that all investigations are technical and very labor intensive and may be multi jurisdictional and multi agency involved. And these investigations, they don't end when the crime scene is taken down. Just the investigation portion of these cases can take up to six to 10 months. And even with that, depending on the facts of the case, they can last years. We currently have 31 special agents and four special agent supervisors that cover the entire state.

We can't anticipate when these calls are going to come in or when these cases are going to happen. They happen at all hours of the night, they happen frequently during early morning hours, and they happen everywhere in the state. We can't anticipate it, but we have to be ready and prepared as best as possible. So since July 1 of 2021, we've received 80 notifications of potential AB 1506 critical incidents. Our teams have responded and conducted 55 on scene evaluations, and to date, the CAPSIT program has opened 36 investigations on qualifying events under AB 1506.

Can you please comment on the additional data points you may intend to collect regarding requests for officer-involved shooting investigations and the outcome of those requests?

So we currently collect data related to the agencies that are notifying us. The location, obviously, circumstances surrounding the officer-involved shooting event, qualifying event determination, we document everything concerning the notification. The folks that are involved, we're identifying their race, their gender, their height and weight and age and whatnot. Pretty much all of our data points are collected during the investigation are located in all of our reports.

I have a question on race, and this is something that we've been thinking about in a larger scope, the Latino community under race is White, and even the Biden Administration has identified that in the census that data collection potentially could change or needs to change. So when you divide race, do you also divide ethnicity or collect information on ethnicity?

My understanding is we're collecting ethnicity, but I would like to confirm that, and we can get back to you on that one, if you don't mind.

Thank you. I think that would be helpful in accessing data points to related communities. How is gender currently defined or how is that data collected? And I'm thinking about folks that are nonbinary, trans, et cetera.

Again, a good question. I don't want to misspeak. I'd like to confirm--my understanding is we are documenting nonbinary in addition to male and female, but again, I'd like to confirm that, and we can circle back with you.

Okay. That's just very helpful. I think not only for DOJ, but in a variety of different spaces that data is collected. Based on the kinds of requests you received so far, can you clarify the anticipated workload of how many investigations you expect to take on annually?

Yeah. So initially, we had projected 40 cases annually, and that was based on the data that we had available to us at the time back when we're trying to make a considerate projection. Since 2021, since July 1st of 2021 to now, it looks like it's right around 20 for the time being. We don't know if it's going to increase or not, but at this point, it looks like we're doing about 20 of them annually.

And do you feel that you have the resources to be able to comply with what you project and AB 1506?

That's a great question. It's challenging. So we're working with the resources that we have, but as I had mentioned earlier, we only have 31 agents and four special agent supervisors that are working on this workload. And to be perfectly frank with you, we have to be ready to respond to these at all hours of the night.

So with that being said, we have folks that are on call all the time, and so our folks are on call three weeks out of every month, which, as you can imagine, is a lot of time, and we are experiencing some burnout, and it's tough. These cases can take thousands of hours. There's a lot of work that goes into them.

So we're working with the resources we have, but I think that we would like to work with the Legislature to see if there's maybe some room to increase some resources because we could definitely use them.

Thank you. I think insofar I pride the work that we do with not only asking on accountability pieces that are important, but also asking: do you have the resources necessary to actually comply with the policies that we've moved forward, so I think that's an important thing just for us to consider moving forward. In addition, when you mentioned that you have folks on call, I want to better understand salaries, current, overtime, as well as looking at the difference.

If it's feasible to have, if you need more personnel, what's the most benefit toward the California taxpayer? Is it to have folks on call or is it to actually increase the agents that you have in the Department? Can you share a bit about that?

I can tell you when it comes to salaries, recruitment and retention is tough, and it's tough within law enforcement altogether. And when it comes to the Department of Justice, our special agents are paid far less than some of our law enforcement partners or state law enforcement agencies. Some of the local law enforcement agencies are paid significantly more than our special agents. Now, in 2021, our agents received a 12 percent pay increase, which was very helpful, definitely a step in the right direction.

But even with that, we remain lower paid than some of the other agencies, and so when we're trying to recruit from a shrinking pool of viable candidates that law enforcement, everybody's competing for those same candidates, and we have an applicant that can go across the street to another state agency and make significantly more money than they could at DOJ, that's challenging, and it's hard to be attractive to those candidates. So pay continues to be an issue. To your question regarding the hours, they're long hours.

Our folks have to be ready and able to respond at any hour of the night. So I think if we had some additional staff, that would definitely take some of the burden off of the 31 agents that we have.

Thank you for that. I think that's really just important for us to know and understand. Madam Majority Leader, I know you're just joining us. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

I apologize if the question has already been asked, but what is the progress on the Police Practices Division the Department is required to operate by July of this year?

Actually, that's our next issue we're going to be talking about.

She's getting ahead of me. Okay. We are now moving on to Issue Three.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Oh, we're still on Issue Two. One moment.

So, Issue Two, the second part of Issue Two is going to be a briefing on the Police Practices Division, and currently in the Governor's budget, there is a proposal under consideration. It's requesting six positions and 1.8 million dollars to do the work specified in AB 1506. Michael Newman is here with me today, and he can answer any questions or give you more detail about what the plan is for this division.

Thank you very much. I'm Michael Newman. I'm the Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Enforcement Section. The Civil Rights Enforcement Section handles the Department's law enforcement oversight through civil systemic investigations. AB 1506 will require the Department of Justice to conduct new workload upon the request of any local law enforcement agency, review their use of deadly force policies, and offer specific recommendations. Oh. Sorry.

And I may ask our technicians as well, I'm also having a hard time hearing, so if we can raise the volume on the microphones, please?

Would you like me to start over? Sure. While we will be able to leverage our subject matter expertise from these civil systemic investigations, we do not currently have the resources to take on this new workload of evaluating and offering specific recommendations without the requested new positions. With that, I'm happy to take your questions. Sounds like you have some.

And we are going to hear from the LAO and the Department of Finance as well.

Anita Lee with the Legislative Analyst Office. We don't have any concerns with the proposal.

And Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. No additional comments.

You may ask your question.

Actually, before that question, the first comments that I was hearing about was about the fact that you aren't able to get good, qualified people to come or more qualified--additionally qualified people to come and work because they'll go across the street to law enforcement, and I'm hearing from my law enforcement departments that they are also looking for qualified people to work.

So I guess there is a great need, but it would be a wonderful place to work. So maybe it's in the advertisement. I don't know. But let me get to my question. What is the progress of the Police Practices Division the Department is required to operate by July of this year?

Because it has not come into effect, won't come into effect until July 1st, this BCP is what will allow us to begin the progress, to stand it up and begin the process of evaluating requests from law enforcement agencies. So the progress is we are doing some pre-planning. The BCP offered us an opportunity to put together the sort of the process that we would undertake, and then the positions will allow us to actually take in the requests and handle them.

So you need the additional six people to be able to begin the operation that's supposed to start in July?

We need the additional six people in order to actually start the process of evaluating the requests that come in from law enforcement agencies. We are prepared now. Our BCP lays out the plan for how we will evaluate them, how we will go through the process of looking at the policies and the way the law enforcement agencies are implementing those policies, and so we have everything in place and ready to go.

But until we have the positions July 1st, we will not be able to actually move forward. Also, the mandate doesn't begin until then, so we're ready to hit the ground running once the mandate begins.

Very good. Thank you.

We can do an LAO, or do you want me to do. Okay. A brief overview from the Department. So, primarily looking at our three proposals.

And I'm so sorry, but the microphones are actually really low and there's an echo, so you sound farther than what you are. Is there a way that we can raise the volumes? Please, or just speak louder?

Okay.

Use your right.

Right. Gotcha. The Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement, Bureau of Firearms requests three permanent positions and a General Fund augmentation for the compliance support section. This is the unit that handles many of the transactions that happen when firearms are purchased, dealers record of sale transactions, ammunition purchases, and so there's a large volume of workload that goes on in this unit. So we're requesting some additional positions to handle that workload. The next proposal relates to the micro stamping and law enforcement transfer.

Again, this is a proposal that was driven by some legislation a couple of years ago. We're estimating 1.5 million General Fund and five positions needed to do maintenance and operations work and to make changes to our systems. There's approximately nine systems that are impacted by the new legislation and new requirements. So that's what these resources are being requested for. And then the third proposal is one where there are multiple legislative bills. There's about six bills bundled together in that third proposal. So we can take any questions or happy to answer any questions on any of these proposals.

Thank you. Let's hear from the LAO as well as the Department of Finance, please.

Anita Lee with the Legislative Analyst Office. As Madam Chair mentioned, we do have a handout that we'll be using as a guide. If you'd like to follow along with our comments. On page one of your handout, you do have a summary of the bills in question. This totals to about $6.9 million annually in 2023-24 with about 6.3 million of that coming from the General Fund and the rest coming from the dealer's record of the dealer's record of sale or DROS special account.

If you turn to page two of your handout, we do recommend that the Legislature approve the request for additional funding as it is needed to implement the legislation and deal with increased workload. However, we are recommending that the Legislature reject the governor's approach to funding them from the General Fund and instead fund them from the DROS special account instead.

And this is because we do think it is an allowable use of that special funds revenues, and we think that there's sufficient revenue and fund balance to handle that in the near term. And so specifically, if you look at the table on the bottom of the page before you, you'll see that beginning in 2019-20, which is when there was a last fee increase, the revenues start to exceed expenditures and is currently expected to be 5 million more than the expenditures.

This has allowed that fund balance to grow over time and at the end of 23-24 is expected to be about $35.9 million. And so we do think that it is sufficient to handle that amount that I just mentioned. Additionally, if you turn to page three of your handout, we would note for you that our recommendation would free up 6.3 million in 23-24, declining to 3.3 million annually beginning in 26-27 in ongoing General Fund resources relative to the Governor's Budget.

And this is really helpful as the Legislature might prefer a different package of budget solutions that is currently proposed by the Governor. And the fiscal situation that we might be facing might be a little bit more dire in the spring. And this would also help deal with those projected out year deficits. And so that's why we make our recommendation. Happy to take any questions if you have them.

And Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. So, as LAO notes, gross revenues have increased over the last few years due to the fee increase, the DROS fee in fiscal year 2019-20 though the fee increase was enacted in large part to support the firearms IT system modernization project. And that's a very large IT systems project that's currently in the works? Fitsum planning costs, or we call it Fitsum.

The planning costs are forthcoming and so we'll know have a better sense of the actual program implementation costs in the near term. And so we cautioned that funding these legislative BCPs with DROS revenue, these BCPs with DROS revenues could compromise other firearms priorities, including the Fitsum implementation project. Happy to take any questions.

Thank you. And we do have another panelist, Mayra Morales. Is she joining? Just in case there's any questions, I'm not sure if you may want to come up, so I'll begin. We know the Administration has expressed concerns regarding the General Fund condition. We all have concerns. Can the Department of Justice get into more detail as to why these requests that we just spoke about in issue three cannot be funded through DROS? Is it just a preference or is there a restriction?

If there isn't a restriction, is the Department willing to resubmit these proposals and use the special fund instead of the General Fund?

So, point of clarification on a couple of the proposals. So there's AB 1594, which is firearms civil suits. Our understanding is that the enforcement actions would generate revenue to the General Fund. So that was one where we thought that that should be, since the fines and penalties and the enforcement actions are being deposited in the General Fund, that it made sense to have that BCP funded by the General Fund as opposed to the DROS.

And then there's a portion of the micro stamping proposal that we feel is more appropriately funded by the General Fund versus DROS. Specifically, to answer your question about why we did this, our comments are in alignment with the Department of Finance, that there was the fee increase, there was a planned IT project that is in flight, and we still haven't been able to bring that proposal to the Legislature. But that is a large part of why there is that fund balance there.

So I would just note that to the extent that these proposals are funded from DROS, it will require a fee increase in the future, at some point in the future to cover those new projects. So, Mayra, do you have anything else?

No, I think you covered it. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to ask the LAO if you can respond, please.

Yeah, so there are two comments that we would provide. So on the summary of your funds, AB 1594 is not included there because we actually treat that as part of the legal workload item which is going to be forthcoming. And so we'll give you our comments specifically related to that. So that is not considered when we make our recommendation related to that. So I think that's piece number one.

In terms of the Fund balance, in our review, we do acknowledge that there is this Fitsum this big IT project that is coming down the line. But the Legislature does not currently have a proposal before you to consider that. It's currently in the planning stages. This Committee has heard other IT projects, and sometimes that can take more or less time. The costs might change. And because you don't have a proposal before you, it's also unclear whether there are alternatives that you could take from the General Fund.

So there could be a fee increase that could potentially be needed in terms of special funds. A Legislature could decide a General Fund loan or from other sources. And so because you don't have a proposal in front of you, you really don't have anything to react to. And so our recommendation is based on what you specifically have in front of you and moving, especially given the situation of the General Fund and kind of making best uses of the resources there.

Thank you for that. Any questions? Yes, Ms. Reyes?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would ask from the Attorney General's Office, the comments by LAO, and also the chart. I mean, let's begin with the chart. Do you agree with this, with the amounts that are being shown? Did you receive a copy of this?

I don't have a copy, but we're familiar with the numbers and the Fund balance we understand. And I think we haven't necessarily been able to spend down that Fund balance because that Fitsum project, the Firearms IT Modernization project, hasn't been enacted yet. Right. So we haven't brought that forward. And that's what those, the Fund balance would have been utilized if that project were further along. There is a BCP that was approved last year for planning dollars. So there is some motion, but that larger proposal still is in development.

And I suppose it sort of begs the question, when do you anticipate that proposal is going to be before us?

I'd like to say next budget cycle, but it also depends on the other projects that our sieges team has going on right now.

And also the Chair has asked about what's acceptable, what's allowed. I'm not sure that I have a clear answer on whether or not it is allowed to use the DROS money specifically for this. So how do we get a legal response to that?

I think you're able to answer some of those questions, right? Regarding the use of the DROS funds, given the specified criteria and statute.

Yeah, that's actually laid out in statute as to what we can use the funds for. I don't have the statute readily available for me, for the most part regulating firearms purchases, manufacturers, and transfers. In this case, like we said, the workload associated with 1594 would not necessarily qualify under that.

And some component of 2699 would also not component of that qualify under that given that historically law enforcement has been exempt from regulatory nature and to use the fees collected from previously regulated groups to regulate previously non regulated groups would be an inappropriate use of the funds. So I could provide more information after, if you would like, and provide you some follow up.

I think it would be appropriate, especially in light of the comments from the LAO and also the fact that it is a question. I don't think that the answer is entirely clear, and I think it would be appropriate to look into this a little bit further. In the end, the IT Modernization project is going to happen, and if the funds are not there, then you'll be coming to us at that point also. But if these funds are available, then the first question is, can they be used for the very things that are being requested here?

So based, they could be used now for the workload that we're proposing, with the exception of the two that I identified. However, that could mean that we would need to, as I noted earlier, potentially raise the fee later on if the Fund cannot support these current legislative proposals, plus any future legislative proposals and the Fitsum project.

Very good. So to then receive a formal legal opinion on this, that it's something that can be done regarding the use of fees?

We can request from her. We have a few dags that we can request that information from. Thank you.

Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you for that, Assembly Member. Just as a note, the Biden Administration, based on the situation we are experiencing, California, amid heavy rains, floods, catastrophes, et cetera, has given the people of California the opportunity to file their taxes up until October, I believe, which means that our General Fund dollars are going to fluctuate.

So it seems prudent to potentially use the special funds to fund the proposals that you currently have before you and potentially at a later date when we have a better understanding of the General Fund, potentially request what's additionally needed, just as an observation as to what we're all going to experience given a budget shortfall, as well as not clearly knowing where we're going to land. So, again, thank you so much for the presentation.

We are leaving this item open, as we are with everything else, but we are going to move on to issue number four, the DNA ID fund backfill. The LAO has also provided a handout for the Subcommitee for this item. May have it. And let's begin.

Absolutely, Anita Lee with the LAO again. So we do have a handout, as Madam Chair mentioned, we will be walking you through some key background to understanding this issue, as well as the governor's proposal and then our assessment and recommendations.

So if you turn to page one of your handout, the Bureau of Forensic Services, or BFS, within DOJ, maintains 10 regional laboratories that provide criminal laboratory services, such as DNA testing or onsite crime scene investigative support, generally at no charge to local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies in 46 counties. BFS also provides assistance to 12 counties and eight cities that operate their own laboratories, but don't necessarily kind of do a full range of services, and BFS fills in the gaps.

We would note that local agencies also have the ability to contract with private or other government entities. BFS also provides services to non local entities, manages the state's DNA laboratory and also the state's criminalistics training Institute. If you turn to page two of your handout, you have a figure before you, 2013-14 on the left and 2022-23 on the right.

And this shows that BFS receives support from various Fund sources, with the most common being the DNA Identification Fund, which is a special fund that receives criminal fine and fee revenue as well as the General Fund. So you can see in 2013-14 it was about 89% and in 2022-23 it's about 86%. But the proportion of General Fund needed has increased over that period. As a quick note, in the middle you'll see the missing person's DNA Database Fund.

You're actually going to talk about that one in your next issue item, so I just wanted to flag that for you. If you turn to page three of your handout, I mentioned that the amount of General Fund needed over time has increased, and it's really due to this issue that we're going to talk about on this page.

Specifically, as shown in this figure and the dark bars, you will see that the amount of criminal fine and fee revenue deposited into the DNA Identification Fund has steadily declined over the past decade, from a high of 69 million in 2013-14 to 34 million in 22-23. And that's about a decline of 51%.

In relationship to that, beginning in 2016-17, if you look at the light bar, you'll see that an increasing amount of one time General Fund support has then been needed to maintain service levels. We would note for this Committee that it is part of a broader decline in state and local criminal finance fee revenue that has been collected and distributed. That amount has been declining since 2010-11 for various reasons, such as fewer traffic tickets being written.

And so because of that decline in revenue, there are various state funds and the programs that they support that have faced insolvency. The Legislature has dealt with that in different ways, such as by shifting costs, including to the General Fund, reducing expenditures, or attempting to increase the amount that is collected.

If you turn to page four of your handout, as part of the 2021-22 budget package, the Legislature required DOJ to submit a report that identified various alternative options for supporting the Bureau of Forensic Services other than the General Fund, and one of those options was supposed to include a cost sharing model with local agencies. In response to that requirement, DOJ identified five alternative options that you see laid out on this page for you, ranging from a tax increase all the way to requiring non local governmental entities to pay for their share of services.

DOJ also provided the benefits and drawbacks of four different methods for that cost sharing model, such as like a flat fee or an hourly fee. And so that was part of the report as well. If you turn to page five of your handout, I'm now going to present the governor's proposal. It really has two key components. The first component is that the Governor's Budget proposes to increase DNA Identification Fund support for BFS by $17.3 million annually.

That consists of $10 million to restore historical funding levels and $7.3 million related to equipment replacement and facility maintenance. The second component is that the Governor's Budget proposes to transfer $53.4 million from the General Fund to the DNA Identification Fund on an ongoing basis to backfill those declines in revenues and also to meet that increased expenditure level that I just talked about.

The Governor's Budget also proposes provisional budget language that would allow the Department of Finance, upon 30 day notification to the Legislature, to actually increase the General Fund backfill if revenues in the DNA Identification Fund are lower than expected. If you turn to page six of your handout, pages 6 and 7 are going to provide our assessment, and there are really four findings that we have for you. The first is that the proposal does permanently address the ongoing decline in the DNA Identification Fund revenues.

The second is that the increased support being requested from the Fund is reasonable because DOJ was able to provide sufficient justification for that. Our third finding, however, is that requiring users of BFS services to partially support operations really merits consideration. And this is because local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are responsible for both collecting and submitting this type of evidence for testing and then using it to pursue convictions.

The current system that we have is actually pretty inequitable because you have agencies in 46 counties receiving service at no cost. And so that's effectively tens of millions of dollars in services that are being subsidized, in contrast to the counties and cities that are paying to maintain their own laboratories and doing the work locally. And so for local or non local entities, if you're not kind of charged a fee, you really lack incentive to think about what is being prioritized and being sent for testing.

So if you turn to page seven of your handout, this is our final finding for you, our fourth and final one. As mentioned, DOJ was required to present alternative options. We did find concerns with four out of those five options. Walking you through them quickly, related to the General Fund tax increase that is effectively General Fund resources. When we increase taxes, they typically go into the General Fund for use for various purposes, so it's not an alternative to the General Fund.

A second option that was proposed was a surcharge being added to background check fees, and we found that BFS's work really didn't seem consistent with the intent of those fees, which are background checks for employment and licensing purposes. The third option that was raised was to increase the specific fee charged when an individual was convicted of a criminal offense. That would go into the DNA Identification Fund. We have a very complex formula, statutorily driven, for how criminal finding fee revenue are distributed.

And so just because that fee is increased, it does not necessarily mean that the amount deposited into this special fund would actually increase as well because of that distribution formula. And then the final option that they had raised was for the judicial branch to provide support.

And so for this Committee, we would say that local prosecutorial agencies and law enforcement, not the judicial branch, is responsible for determining whether or not a case is filed, as well as the type and quality of evidence that is then presented to get a conviction. And so we wanted to flag that for this Committee. In light of that, if you turn to page eight of your handout, we have three recommendations.

Our first recommendation is that we recommend the Legislature require users of BFS services partially support their operations beginning in 24-25. Agencies would be required to pay for a portion of the services that they receive, which would provide greater incentive to think about what is being sent and prioritized to BFS.

We would note for local governments, this would be a model that is more equitable than the current system, in which there are some entities that are receiving significant benefit while others are paying to operate their own laboratories. Delaying implementation until 2024-25 provides time for this new system to be implemented and for entities to kind of adapt to that new system.

Our second recommendation is for the Legislature to direct DOJ to submit a plan for calculating each agency's share of total services it uses and report on this plan no later than October 1 of 2023. We would also recommend that the Legislature provide DOJ with direction on how much of BFS's operational costs, such as one half or one third, should be supported by this type of revenue.

DOJ would have flexibility in the calculation of these payments, for example, charging more or less based on the type of service being requested or the size of the agency. But while coming up with this plan might be difficult, and we do acknowledge that, it would increase user incentive to use BFS services more cost effectively. It would promote some equity amongst local governments and it would reduce kind of the General Fund needed in 2024 and in future years.

So, turning to the final page of your handout, page nine, our third recommendation in line with that is to approve the requested amount of funding, but only provide the 53.4 million being requested on a one time basis while this new system is being implemented. With that, happy to take any questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you for that. That's very detailed and appreciated. Let's hear from Department of Finance, followed by, I'm sorry, let's go to the DOJ first and then Department of Finance, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair, Members, can you hear me? Okay, I'm Barry Miller. I am the Director of Forensic Services in the Department of Justice under the Division of Law Enforcement. And Ms. Lee gave you a very detailed overview of what services, the bureau provides. And so if you have any other questions about that, I'm here to answer those. Speaking mostly to the recommendations and the report that we are discussing right now. The term that was brought up was that it would be equitable.

And because I've never spoken to this Subcommitee before, just a brief history on the reason the bureau was formed was because of inequitable circumstances. Large local agencies had access to forensic laboratory services and the rural areas did not. They couldn't afford to contract with those larger agencies. This takes us all the way back to the early 1970s when it was decided that the state would work for those rural areas that could not afford forensic services to provide that equal access to justice.

We were funded by a grant in those early days and then moved to the General Fund. And over the years, this discussion of fee for service has been brought up from time to time with us discussing what that would look like with that access. And more and more, we have seen a necessity for forensics in the courtroom for the science to be provided. And we do, as Ms. Lee pointed out, still provide some services to those counties that have their own laboratories.

When this was idealized in the early 70s, the large urban areas were asked if they wanted to join the effort to become a statewide system, and the sheriffs and chiefs of police that ran those laboratories decided that they did not. They would rather maintain and exercise their local authority over their laboratory services. So as the laboratory has grown, we've taken on DNA. We've taken many state initiatives, such as the databank program, which has solved many crimes.

And even though law enforcement is the primary conduit for evidence to come to the Department of Justice Forensic laboratories. Our mission isn't about serving law enforcement, it's about serving the people of California. And the people of California in those areas need access to those services as well whether or not a law enforcement agency can afford it.

The argument has been that I personally, as the Director of Forensic Services, would never want somebody to wonder or worry about whether or not their evidence was being turned in based on the fact that there was a cost associated with it, and that an agency might have to prioritize one case over another instead of submitting it to us and letting us determine what the most probative evidence is in order to move that forward.

The idea that we also exist primarily for prosecution is also not one that we ascribe to. We exist for making sure that those that committed a crime are identified, but also those that didn't are exonerated. And the fact that we look at that evidence and make those determinations doesn't just provide prosecutorial incentive, it also provides that access to justice.

The idea or the suggestion that LEAs would be more mindful in the evidence that they turn in if they were charged also supports that narrative that they would think about budget in order to decide whether or not they wanted to pursue a case. And that is something that me, my staff, we do not want to ever happen. We want to make sure that everybody that needs it has that equal access.

The other term that's been brought up is, if somebody didn't pay, what would be the outcome? The outcome is responsibly I would still take that evidence and analyze it regardless of whether or not there was collection or debt out there with the local agencies. So, in summary, just that brief history I felt was important for this Subcommitee to understand why we came into existence.

And yes, as we exist today, we service 58 counties, but 46 of them primarily get our service from that initial standing up of this bureau within the division of law enforcement. So with that, I'll take any questions. I apologize if I ran long, but I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you for that. No, you're fine. And appreciate the background on that. Department of Finance?

Yeah. Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. We would just echo DOJ's comments on this and in relation or specifically to LAO's comments around requiring BFS users to partially support services beginning in 24-25 and also directing DOJ to calculate agency shares of services. We believe this model may create a disincentive for locals to utilize forensic services testing, and that information oftentimes provides valuable evidence in criminal and missing persons investigations.

So we note that this just may raise some equity issues for counties that don't collect sufficient tax revenues to pay for these services, so think smaller local rural counties, and requiring counties to share those costs could result in disparate utilization of services across the state.

In terms of, in response to providing the proposed General Fund backfill for one year, we would just note that the Administration is committed to promoting sustained General Fund ongoing for the Bureau of Forensic Services and to fully cover DNA, any backfill, any revenue declines in the DNA ID Funds.

Thank you for that. Can you provide us with a sense of which counties, which of the 58 counties have their own lab?

Once again, Barry Miller with the Bureau of Forensic Services. Yes, the 12 counties that have their own forensic labs are generally the larger counties in the state. And I usually have the list in front of me. I could probably pull it out here. But if you look in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, those are the areas where we're mostly looking. Los Angeles Police, Los Angeles Sheriff, Orange County, Ventura, San Bernardino.

And then as we move farther, sorry, San Diego has the police and the sheriff both have their own labs, and then we have San Mateo, Alameda, San Francisco, Solano. But we still do a lot of Solano County's work as they only have partial capabilities. And Oakland also has the lab in Contra Costa as well. And if that's not 12, I can try to dig up the other ones for you.

I think I caught six or seven of those, but I'm going to ask LAO if you have a list.

Yes. So the counties in question are Alameda. Not in question. The counties in response to the question are Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura. So those are the counties. In terms of the cities, El Cajon, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and there's a regional one in Glendale.

That's interesting. Thank you. I really appreciate the background on why this was established to begin with. And I imagine that in the, you said mid 70s or late 1970s?

1972 to be exact.

So 1972. In the more rural areas, population had changed, or has changed up until now. Curious if you can share which of the rural areas where the state does most of its support. Right. What are some of those areas like? What are some of those counties? So we get an idea as to where the allocation is going.

Absolutely. Barry Miller again. So when we look at where we regionalized, the bureau had a different name in the early 70s and was only located in Sacramento. There was a look at regionalization to help those different counties that were in those rural areas. So we're talking about a lot of Northern California and Central Valley agencies. Not a lot of focus on the Bay Area communities as well as the Los Angeles, San Diego area.

When, when you look at the counties in Northern California, it's very small communities. Yes, some have grown, but they still are strained with resources such as Glenn, County, Siskiyou County, Humboldt County, Del Norte, a lot of those northern areas, Mendocino as well.

And as we've talked about, 46 of those counties, our jurisdictions, but having worked in the field for a number of years, many times, some of these agencies, they had a chief of police or a sheriff that was the only person that could respond to a crime scene. And we were there to give them support for everything in the area of evidence collection, preservation, and storage to the point of sending it back to them when we were finished with our analysis.

Thank you. And out of the 46 counties that you work with, have there been conversations about potential opportunities for them to pay for some of the things that they need that's currently done by the DOJ's lab services? And what would it look like in the future for them?

Yes, Madam Chair, there have been conversations in the past. There have been workups related to how much it would cost them and whether or not there could be a cost sharing model. And traditionally, it has very much been not well accepted as a possibility for those areas.

Have we received any official feedback from the 46 counties? If the state were to consider a sliding scale to offset the operational cost?

Not that I, not that I recall, Madam Chair.

And are there any other services that DOJ provides the counties to have a fee for their service component?

Sorry, could you repeat that question?

Are there any other services that the Department of Justice provides to the counties that have a fee for the service?

There are fees that are established statutes, such as a blood alcohol content reimbursement fee and a controlled substances crime laboratory fee in the Health and Safety Code, that the Health and Safety Code fee goes back to the General Fund in my understanding. The blood alcohol fee is reimbursable to the local jurisdiction and the state in a split.

Interesting. Thank you. And does the LAO know of similar services that a state agency or department provides to some counties that has a fee for a service arrangement?

Does Madam Chair mean broadly or specific to forensic services?

Broadly.

Okay. I would say DOJ is a pretty good example broadly, with experience in terms of charging back entities for services, a significant portion of the legal division, which we will get to shortly. When DOJ provides legal services to state agencies, they do bill back for the services. This Committee, I think, has, I believe, experience with DGS, kind of other entities that bill back for services to other parties.

And so it's not an unusual--that's probably the way that I would put it--it's not necessarily unusual, but the structures that are implemented may look different and takes into account legislative priorities, administrative priorities, and other practical concerns as well.

Thank you. Any questions from Committee? Okay. Assembly Member--okay. Mr. Patterson. Assembly Member Patterson, welcome. Questions?

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Joe Patterson, too, you know, as you know, not to be confused with my good friend Jim Patterson. Just wanted to ask a couple questions about services performed here. Are there generally--first of all, I apologize for missing like 90 percent of the presentation because I was in about eight other Committee meetings--is there generally, with some of these things a backlog in terms of getting the information or timeframes lengthier than maybe some of these regional or county crime labs?

Yes. There are backlogs in areas such as controlled substance analysis. We refocused a lot of our efforts a couple of years ago when Senate Bill 22 was passed to ensure that we had the resources to complete sexual assault kit evidence within the 120-day timeframe.

So other than sexual assault, are there other priorities that are made there? And is it by--internally--is it by regulation?

In the event that we have to evaluate those things, it generally runs by priority, public risk, statute of limitations, and any other pressures outside for identifying what to analyze first, second, or third.

Okay. One more question. To the extent that other counties build crime labs, what kind of impact would that have on--I mean, it seems like maybe the proposal, at least from the LAO, so maybe LAO might be better to answer this, but whoever wants to, I'm open. I hate to make this comparison, but like the cigarette tax, right? The less people that smoke cigarettes, and we become reliant on these programs and the revenue and things like that, and I'm aware of other counties considering crime labs.

And so would that impact your revenue to the extent that you become more reliant on revenue from these counties and things like that? Does the LAO have a thought on that? Because this is your proposal, right, from the LAO, in terms of charging the counties?

Yeah. So that is our recommendation. We're not familiar in terms of whether or not there are counties that are considering building forensic labs. That's something that we can certainly follow up with. In our analysis when we were looking at it, you have counties and cities that have made the choice to operate and fund their own laboratories. And so they are making decisions about what types of cases to prioritize, how to process that.

And for us, when we looked at then the counties that are receiving services at no charge, that did present an inequitable kind of choice there. And so our recommendation is that they contribute, they partially pay for it to then provide a little bit of greater incentive to think about what was being submitted. We did kind of note kind of earlier on that local agencies do have the ability to contract out with private labs or other labs.

And so in terms of, from the county basis, in terms of thinking about what's the most cost-effective, it does provide them with the choice. And I think for us, we're thinking about the best uses, the most cost-effective ways of using BFS operations in combination with thinking about where General Fund dollars are. The legislative committees are having discussions about General Fund priorities. We're also aware that in the budget, there is going to be an issue with potential revenues, and so this is a potential option to provide assistance with that.

All right, well, I would just submit to you for consideration that it could become a declining revenue source at some point depending on how reliant the state becomes on that. Did the Administration say whether they had an opinion on that particular proposal or not?

Yeah. Kevin Clark, Department of Finance. So in terms of LAO's recommendation to have users of BFS partially support services, we do believe there's a disincentive for locals and state agencies to utilize. It'll create a disincentive to utilize forensic services testing, and it could require counties to share those costs that would result in disparate utilization of services across the state. So we're thinking a lot rural counties who may not have access to discretionary revenues to pay for these services.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. It's not every day I agreed with the Department of Finance, so appreciate it, but you do excellent work, of course. Thank you.

There's a lot of first happening in this room today.

Something's wrong with the Budget Subs. Too much agreement.

Too much agreement. Ms. Gómez Reyes. Assembly Member.

Thank you. I appreciate the fact that this was brought or created because of inequities, to be able to have those rural counties also have access to the very evidence that would help to either convict or to exonerate somebody. The first thing I wanted to ask is in the literature that was provided to us, it talks about those ten regional labs that provide free services and says generally at no charge for law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies. When I think of law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies, I don't think of exoneration. Is it also provided to public defenders?

No, it is not. The example that I have there is when we have some of these cases where somebody like the Innocence Project gets involved, we will take evidence from that local law enforcement agency that holds the evidence. The public defenders don't usually hold the evidence, and so the access is from the people that have the evidence that we need to analyze.

We will take that, and we have had cases where we took the evidence, we analyzed it, and it provided a mechanism for them to exonerate someone. So the idea there is that we still take evidence back in to reanalyze in the event that there's new or emerging circumstance or technology from cold cases as well or in the event that we need to relook at something that they ask us to relook at.

It happens, as I tried to state before, Ma'am, that law enforcement is the usual conduit because they are the ones that call and have access to the evidence that they're turning in.

Wonderful. The second, and I know there have been lots of questions on this, I recognize that it would be a disincentive if we asked someone to pay for a service, but I think the LAO's recommendation that there be partial payment and then going back to what Madam Chair was talking about, that it be on a sliding fee scale, so the counties that can more afford this would be asked to pay a little bit more, but for those counties who absolutely would just say no to any of this, if we were to ask them to pay a portion of it, well, then we look to see exactly what they can afford.

And I think that that particular recommendation is something that perhaps should be explored. And so the second recommendation is to develop a plan for calculating user share. Again, I think that something that I find comical sometimes in our former Attorney General Becerra would come to the caucus and say, 'you guys are passing all these laws, you're asking me to do all these things. I'll do them. Just give me the money to do them.' And Attorney General Bonta, I'm sure, would say the same thing. We will do what needs to be done, but just give us the money to do it.

But I think that if we can find other ways to be equitable in this, quite frankly, to find ways to ask those counties that are receiving the services not to pay for the full service because there was a reason, equitable reason why this was implemented, but to pay a portion of it, and that portion would be determined depending on their ability to contribute. So I would ask if this is something then, that, should that be part of the recommendation finally, something that can be implemented, I would imagine, or researched?

Absolutely. We always work with our partners to try and figure out solutions.

Wonderful. My last question is, what has caused the decline in the revenue in the DNA Identification Fund?

Anita Lee with the Legislative Analysts Office. So it's part of a broader decline in criminal fine and fee revenue. It's due to various reasons. So it started back at the tail end of the Recession. You did have fewer tickets being written, and I think at that time, some of the thoughts were related to fewer law enforcement officers potentially being out there. But over time, there have been other actions that have taken.

So, for example, there have been some fines and fees that have been eliminated to deal with kind of people's ability to pay. We have a whole ability-to-pay process that has now been implemented at the judicial branch. And so there's a whole range, and I don't think we are able to actually silo out this particular action led to this because it was kind of a confluence of them. The reality is just that across the board, the revenues have been coming down. And based on the state's really complex distribution formula, it means that some funds bear a greater impact than others.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I just have some clarification that I would like just to better understand sexual assault kits and the overall backlog. So Orange County, which has its own lab, was 30 years behind in testing, right?

So I'm curious as to where we are and now that we pass legislation that allows a survivor to be able to track their sexual assault kit online, which the Department of Justice oversees, what's it looking like, if you can give me a projection as to some counties and the backlog and how quickly we get to a faster response, I would say, in ensuring that the sexual assault kits are tested and that survivors have answers?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn't familiar with that statistic for Orange County. As far as the Department of Justice, we work within that timeframe for sexual assault kits that come into the Department of Justice. And so we do not have a backlog of sexual assault kits. We've focused on it.

Madam Chair, just for your reference, the Commission on State Mandates has looked at that requirement, and I believe at a subsequent hearing when you hear the Commission on State Mandates, we'll be hearing kind of that issue where the Commission on State Mandates determined that it was a state reimbursable mandate, and so the Administration has included funding for locals to meet that requirement.

LAO?

I don't have the specific numbers in front of me, but I thought I would just mention it, given your interest and kind of note for you that that discussion is probably forthcoming in a future hearing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. The backlog in Orange County actually--once those kits were tested--actually resulted in six cold cases having a resolution. So just as we look into that, I'm just, for my own knowledge, want to know where we stand with the Department of Justice in the 46 counties that receive services. So thank you. We are going to move on to Issue Number Five, which is the fee increase to maintain operations of the missing persons DNA. Let's begin.

Madam Chair, Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice. This is a proposal that is requesting resources and also includes a fee increase. We're requesting 1.5 million and one position in 23-24 and approximately 1.4 million in 24-25 ongoing to maintain the operations of the Missing Persons DNA Program.

This proposal also requests trailer bill language to increase the death certificate fee issued by local agencies and by the state from $1.63 to increase it $1.63 from two dollars to $3.63 to support the operating cost of the program. Barry Miller is here to answer any questions you may have about this program.

Thank you. Let's continue on with the panel. Let's go to the LAO, followed by the Department of Finance.

Anita Lee with the LAO. No comments.

Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. No comments. Happy to answer questions.

Thank you. Can you confirm whether this will require a two-thirds vote?

I believe we're looking into whether this is a fee or a tax, and whether or not it would require two-thirds vote. So we were asked that, and we're still looking into that, but we can provide that to the staff.

Great. And I have a question specifically to the Department of Finance. Based on what you just said, Mr. Ryan, can you give us a sense of how the Administration determines what types of fees or programs warrant a General Fund backfill and which ones are proposed for this kind of fee increase?

Kevin Clark, Department of Finance. I can't speak overall how Department of Finance determines that. I will say that for this particular proposal, the legislative intent was to cover the program costs with a fee, and so we think that being consistent with the guidance and intent of the Legislature and increasing the fee to cover program costs which have increased over the last 20 years since the last fee, since the fee was enacted.

Okay. So as you all do the work necessary to establish whether this is a fee or a tax, it would be important for us to--prudent for us to understand whether this is going to require two-thirds vote to ensure that it gets out. So, following up question, I know that the program that this fee supports is an important one. Does the Department of Justice believe that this free increase will be sufficient in the long term?

Once again, Barry Miller from the Bureau of Forensic Services. To meet current workload, yes. We set the fee in order to meet our determined workload at current state.

So, yes, this will be long-term planning.

Well, Madam Chair, Chris Ryan, Department of Justice. I think one of the things that we want to caution against is when you say long-term, there's going to be cost pressures that happen year to year. So the cost of doing business goes up, the general salary increases, and they all have an impact on these programs.

So to say long-term, that we won't, I doubt that we would let this fee sit idle for another 20 years, but I think we're sensitive to these cost pressures, and we would bring the issue up. So I think this will last for several years, but again, there are a lot of external pressures on the cost of doing business to this program.

And that you bring up some valid points, I'm thinking more like, how do we strategically plan so that we're not having to increase every year, right? So if you're looking at projections for the next five years, ten years, what does that potentially look like?

Got it. Yeah. Thank you.

Sure. No other questions or comments, we're going to move on to Issue Number Six: resources for legal work. For Issue Six, the LAO will provide a general overview of the legal workload of the Department of Justice, which is provided in a handout, and we will hear from four sub-panels that will each focus on specific legal work of the Department. After each sub-panel, I will stop for questions from the Subcommittee before we move on to the next sub-panel. This is a big, chunky part of our agenda, so we will begin.

Great. Anita Lee with the LAO. As Madam Chair mentioned, we have a handout for you. We will first start off with some key background, briefly touch on the Governor's proposal, and then provide some overarching comments and recommendations for your consideration. So if you turn to page one of your handout, the Department of Justice Division of Legal Services is generally responsible for most DOJ litigation. In 2022-23, this division received about 53 percent of DOJ's total budget, about 645 million dollars.

The division is then further split into various subsections and sections at the Attorney General's discretion. If you look at the figure before you, you'll see that various fund sources support this workload, ranging from the General Fund to special funds, which does include litigation proceeds, reimbursements, as well as federal funds. DOJ litigation workload is really initiated in two key ways.

The first method is that state agencies can request and are generally billed by DOJ for services to initiate legal action, defend or represent them in cases brought by others, or to provide legal advice. The second way that this workload emerges is that DOJ self-initiates it and then they pay for it from their own budget. DOJ does have flexibility over this litigation workload within their existing resources, particularly over the self-initiated workload.

If you turn to page two of your handout, the state has a special fund called the Litigation Deposit Fund, also known as the LDF, and this is where litigation proceeds, in which the state's a party to the claim and there's no other state law kind of dictating where the money would go would be deposited. The primary purpose of payments from this fund go to businesses or people or entities that have received harm or transfers to DOJ special funds that then support DOJ litigation workload.

If you look at the figure before you on this page, you'll see that the fund balance has increased over time and will reach just under 1.1 billion as of the end of December 2022. The key thing with the LDF is that it is set up as a trust account, so it is not considered as part of the annual budget.

Instead, state law places it under the Control Administration of DOJ, which includes decisions about when payments are made, but there are requirements for some limited statutory required reporting.

If you turn to page three of your handout, tens of millions of dollars are regularly transferred from the LDF to four DOJ special funds, the Unfair Competition Law Fund and the Antitrust Account, two funds that you're going to be talking about in more detail in your sub-panels, as well as the False Claims Act Fund and the Public Rights Law Enforcement Special Fund. State law dictates what types of litigation proceeds can be transferred into these special funds, as well as how they can be used.

If you turn to page four of your handout, at a very high level, the Governor's budget proposes a total of 24.5 million dollars in 23-24 of which 15 million of that comes from the General Fund to support 18 BCPs related to legal workload, including that firearm one that we talked about previously. They really fall into two pots. 14 of the proposals, totaling about 11 million in General Fund support, is to implement recent legislation.

Some of that legislation requires DOJ to take on certain actions, and some authorizes, but does not actually require DOJ to take action. The remaining four proposals deal with other legal workload in the housing, antitrust, and other arenas, and those are going to be the ones that you're going to be talking about in more detail in your sub-panels on this issue.

And the amount of funding requested is 13.4 million in 23-24 with four million from the General Fund, and then the remaining 9.5 million from various special funds and reimbursements. So if you turn to page five of your handout pages five and six are going to provide our overarching comments across all of these proposals.

And so our first comment for you is that the legal workload would increase to implement the enacted legislation where they have to do things, and DOJ has made a case where there could be additional efforts in housing, antitrust, in some of these other areas. But the other recent legislation kind of authorizes but does not require DOJ to take action, and so the ongoing workload is a bit unclear.

But the Legislature really currently lacks information on how DOJ currently prioritizes its workload, how it uses the funding that's been appropriated over time, as well as the extent to which there are LDF litigation proceeds, as well as resources that are able to support this workload. And so without that information, it's really difficult to determine whether additional resources are truly necessary or if resources could be redirected internally. And I'm going to focus in on a couple of those points in a little bit more detail.

So if you move down the page on page five, I do want to focus on this issue about it being difficult for the Legislature to monitor how funding for legal workload is used over time. Since 2009, 10, funding is appropriated to the legal division as a whole. And so that does provide a lot of flexibility in terms of then how the resources are allocated within the divisions, how the division is organized by section and unit, and there's also flexibility in terms of what cases are initiated, how they're pursued, and how they're settled.

The flexibility can be a pretty major benefit because it does allow DOJ to pivot quickly or to make sure resources are where they need to be appropriately. It also does allow DOJ to test kind of activities before coming to the Legislature, what they've done in the past, and is in a couple of the proposals that are coming before you.

But if you turn to page six of your handout, the flexibility also does mean that it's difficult to monitor how the funding has been used over time. Particularly when funding is provided, it's usually provided for a particular purpose, but over time, it's unclear if it's still being used for that purpose or if it's been redirected to other higher priorities or used for other purposes. And so it makes it difficult for the Legislature to determine whether resources are truly needed.

Moving down the page, in terms of the LDF, it is unclear the extent to which LDF funds could be transferred to support DOJ workload. And we had a 2021 report in which we looked at the fund and we found that state law and DOJ practices really limit legislative oversight of those litigation proceeds.

And so, for example, the statutorily required reports included little meaningful information, and DOJ had little incentive to transfer monies from the LDF where there's limited legislative oversight, to its special funds, which there is more legislative oversight because those funds are considered as part of the budget. Based on our limited review of high level kind of DOJ data, we estimate that about 60 percent of the LDF could potentially be transferred to DOJ special funds.

And so to the extent that we maximize the use of these proceeds, it does mean that less General Fund would be needed, and so that would reduce General Fund cost pressures in both the budget and future years. Our final finding for you at the very bottom of this page is that it is unclear how DOJ accounts for offsetting revenues. So some of the enacted legislation allows DOJ to pursue civil penalties as well as reasonable attorney costs and fees to then offset their costs.

In conversations with DOJ, it was not quite clear to us in terms of how those penalties or fees would be sought, how much they expected would be retained, and how they would then use it to offset the General Fund that they're asking to support the workload as part of their requests. So in light of that, if you turn to page seven of your handout, we had two recommendations, overarching recommendations, for the Legislature.

And the first is that we would recommend the Legislature direct DOJ to report annually, beginning January 1st of 2025, on its planned legal workload, position count, and allocation of resources for the upcoming fiscal year and the actual amounts from the most recent preceding fiscal year and how it compares to its initial plans. So you could see what changed.

This type of information could include broad descriptions of the types of cases or investigations or workload that was being pursued when they were initiated, the amount of time that was being spent on them, or the amount of time that would be available for new workload, as well as what types of remedies were being sought or actually achieved. So litigation proceeds or injunctions, et cetera.

Our second recommendation is, while you're waiting for this report, we do recommend the Legislature provide the requested funding on a two-year basis so that work can kind of move forward while that report is pending. We would note that that recommended report, if you combine it with our recommendations on the Litigation Deposit Fund, could really increase legislative oversight.

And so our LDF recommendations, for example, included requiring DOJ to transfer funds from the LDF to its special funds within a specified period of time, as well as to report on the actual amount of funding that would potentially be available for DOJ workload.

So, in combination, those really would provide the Legislature with the necessary information to conduct meaningful oversight of the legal workload, make informed decisions on what level of funding was appropriate, as well as from what fund source, to monitor how the provided resources were used and what outcomes were being obtained, and finally, to determine whether additional ongoing funding was truly necessary. We're going to pause our comments there because those are our overarching comments.

The final two pages of our handout are specific comments related to proposals that you'll be discussing in more depth in your sub-panel, and we'll bring them up at that time.

Excellent. Thank you for that. Let's continue.

Good afternoon, again. Thomas Patterson from the Department of Justice, the Government Law Section. I'm going to be providing an overview of the four requests, placing it in context of, again, the work of the Attorney General's Office, and as we began our discussion this afternoon, I summarized the importance of the Attorney General's ability to exercise his discretion under the Constitution to determine the best way to meet the Department's key mission: that is to do justice.

We address the distinct benefits that the state and Californians realize when the Attorney General has the resources he requires to effectively exercise that discretion, specifically, flexibility to address emerging and often systemic issues as they arise, the capability to obtain compliance with California's laws and reform when necessary, and the ability to discourage violations from occurring in the first place.

As the Attorney General determines how to use the Department's resources to its best ends, a nimble and well-resourced Department gives him flexibility to identify the greatest areas of impact for California, which often include one or more of the following: issues of broad importance, protection of vulnerable populations, leveraging California State law to address unique problems, and filling in the void in enforcement by other agencies, including federal agencies, in order to protect California's consumers and economy.

The Department's Legal Division, specifically the Civil Division and the Public Rights Division, is working to address these very types of issues, and its four requests here clearly reflect these types of important goals.

In summary, they address needs for the following: one, legal resources to defend the Covid-19 Tenant Relief Act of 2020, which established protections against evictions for those facing hardships from the pandemic, two, an augmentation to enhance the Worker Rights and Fair Labor Section's robust enforcement against the most egregious violators of workers' rights, including serial violators and those who engage in labor trafficking, three, additional positions to bolster the Department's antitrust enforcement concerning gasoline pricing, agriculture, and tech enforcement, work that not only protects consumers but nets large summons for the state and facilitates additional consumer protection work, and fourth, an augmentation for the Housing Strike Force, which has expertise from diverse legal backgrounds in land use, consumer protection, civil rights enforcement, and environmental law to address the housing crisis and to alleviate its effects.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these requests, and if there are no immediate questions, I'm happy to turn it over to the first presenter.

Department of Finance?

Yeah, Kevin Clark again with the Department of Finance. Just wanted to comment on a few of LAO's overarching comments. In terms of requiring DOJ to report on legal workload annually, we just note that the Administration does publish galleys which include position counts, as well as proposed General Fund and Special Fund revenues and expenditures by DOJ Division, and that's accessible to both the Legislature and the public, though we're open to having conversations about reporting requirements and we'd be happy to provide our perspective if specific reporting language is recommended.

In terms of the requirement to request funding on a two-year basis, so within this case, the Administration is committed to promoting the requested resources on an ongoing basis. The resources support state entities as well as DOJ and prosecutions violations of state law, and also respond to legal allegations against the state. So we do think ongoing resources are necessary at this time. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that. Mr. Ryan, you are all alone, and we have so many questions.

I think there's some panel folks that might join me at some point.

Well, we'll start with this just really quickly, and I know we have several questions. Can you please elaborate on what factors the Department of Justice considers in determining whether they pursue a case?

So I would turn that over probably to one of our attorneys, but generally speaking, I think it's a priority process internally. DAGS or the sections will identify a need for litigation or investigation, and we'll work up an estimate or a plan, and then there's determining priorities within a section or the division. So Mr. Wolff is the Chief of our Civil Division and Thomas Patterson works in our gov law section, and they're very familiar with the process.

Don't mean to throw you out here, Mr. Wolff, but it is a process with a lot of thought that goes into it. In terms of resources, we then look at--we do forecasting to determine whether or not the Department has internal resources or needs to ask for a BCP. So there's a workload assessment that goes into this process. So hopefully that answers your questions, and we have a few attorneys that can be more specific if needed.

That's helpful. Thank you. If statute provides the Department of Justice to pursue civil penalties or attorney costs, how frequently does DOJ do so?

I would have to look into that. I think that there's a variety of litigation. So for public rights, there's one aspect or type of litigation, and in civil there are others. So we would have to look into that and we could get back to you.

Well, just a follow-up, actually, in the overall question, and in these cases where you pursue penalties and attorney costs and you prevail, does it typically cover the DOJ's litigation costs as you think about your costs and resources?

So broadly speaking, I'm familiar with cases where it does, and I'm familiar with cases where we don't get anything in return. So there are some instances several years ago where we invested time and energy in a given case and we didn't get any settlement funds to reimburse us for those costs. So we've seen it happen on both sides of the equation or both outcomes, but hopefully, more often than not, we prevail.

And to the point of the Legislature having an understanding as to what the DOJ prioritizes, would you be open to reporting annually to the Legislature regarding your annual legal workload?

I think our response is more similar to what Department of Finance shared earlier, and I think our biggest concern is the volume of cases we manage and process on an annual basis, and specifically what is the language and the requirement that would be on us.

And so, for example, when we see the description of broad descriptions, many of us are thinking about the 20,000 cases or so that are going through the office on an annual basis and how we might characterize those in such a way that could be useful or would even be allowed to do. So I think we're concerned about the volume of workload doing the reporting, but also what we might be allowed and whether that information is going to be useful in this process.

So I think we have a budget process. We kind of align ourselves, I think, with Department of Finance's comments, but we are open to working with the LAO, and we do on an annual basis several times a year.

Thank you. I personally love reports. I love to see where things are moving, what things are successful, what things need improvement, and sometimes you need that in order for us to be effective in how we allocate funding, especially as we get into a crunch within the budget, trying to see what works for everyone. Assembly Member Gómez Reyes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to ask some questions about another Department, if I may, Madam Chair, the Environmental Justice Bureau.

I think we have someone here that can answer some of your questions, and she'll join us.

Come on down.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I'm Christie Vosburg, Supervising Deputy Attorney General for the Bureau of Environmental Justice.

Thank you. I want, well, my first question, what's the current status of the Environmental Justice Bureau since its inception in 2018?

The Bureau of Environmental Justice was created in 2018 with four lawyers, and since then, we've expanded to have 12 attorney positions in our five years. We just crossed our fifth anniversary. The mission of the Bureau is to use the Attorney General's independent law enforcement authority to further environmental justice, and so the Bureau has a portfolio of actions and investigations that cover a wide variety of laws and types of pollution and community issues.

So given the broad scope of the subject matter that the Bureau covers, it's difficult to measure the successes that we've had. However, I could provide a list of examples of types of actions that we've taken. Can't share any information about ongoing investigations that are confidential.

And I'm familiar with some of the work that you've done, some of the successful work that you've done, and I appreciate that. What are the primary challenges that you see over the next five years for the Bureau?

Do you mean environmental justice challenges that face the state?

No, challenges for your Department as you deal with the environmental justice issues that come to you.

Well, we're a pretty lean team of 12 lawyers dealing with a wide variety of different laws and issues all across the state, and so I think we have our hands on many different issues and different topics that require a lot of research and investigation into determining what tools the Attorney General has to address those issues and whether we can take action to further environmental justice.

In addition to the 12 attorneys, what's the staff? How many staff members do you have?

That's our staff.

That's it?

No support staff?

Yes.

Not directly assigned to the Bureau. We rely on support staff that's provided to the Public Rights Division generally.

And I'd like to quote our Attorney General's warehouse guidance document for warehouse compliance with CEQA. And I quote, 'this trend of warehouse development has only accelerated with e-commerce growing to 13 percent of all retail sales and 2021 being a second consecutive record year for new warehouse space leased. The latest data and forecasts predict that the next wave of warehouse development will be in the Central Valley.'

My first question here is, are 12 full time attorneys enough as you see the proliferation of warehouses in various areas, the Inland Empire, of course, being one, but now the Central Valley being the other?

As you know, Assembly Member, the Bureau has been very involved in reviewing for CEQA compliance, warehouse projects, and various other CEQA projects. We've commented on over a dozen local government--I'm sorry--we've submitted CEQA comments on dozens of projects, including warehouse projects, pushing for CEQA compliance, and we've been involved in several cases enforcing CEQA's requirements. We've also published the guidance document that you quoted from. We've been very active in this area.

We intend to continue enforcing CEQA compliance of warehouse projects, as well as a myriad of other types of CEQA projects that are presented going forward, as we've done in the past, but we've not requested additional resources at this time and we don't currently anticipate a need to increase our capacity due to the increased development of warehouses.

Thank you. Has the Bureau considered regional point of contacts for impacted regions like the Inland Empire, Central Valley--and Central Valley?

Do you mean attorneys that are available for the public to reach out to?

Yes.

We have made a lot of contact with communities across the state in the Inland Empire and various regions, and we intend to continue developing those relationships. We also have an email box. The public can email us directly any concerns that they may have in their communities.

Wonderful. How does the Bureau track and identify industrial projects that are out of alignment with CEQA?

We receive information from a variety of sources. Our office receives notice of all CEQA lawsuits that have been filed in Superior Court pursuant to Public Resources Code Section 21167.7. We review project notices that are published in the State CEQA Clearinghouse called CEQAnet, and we also receive tips from a variety of different stakeholders and members of the public through direct communication to our office or through the email box that I mentioned.

Thank you.

Is there. If somebody went to the website, would we be able to have access to that, to all of the information, all of these projects that are not in alignment with CEQA.

What's on our website are actions we've taken, including comment, let letters and lawsuits filed. We don't maintain a database of CEQA lawsuits that have been filed across the state. That's on our website. And CEQA Net, of course, is something different. It's its own database maintained by the Office of Planning and Research.

Sorry, can you repeat that last part? Who has the database on the CEQA lawsuits?

It's the governor's office of Planning and Research, OPR.

When the Attorney General's Office DOJ files a lawsuit against a particular entity for violation of CEQA, how does the bureau decide which mitigation measures to include as part of that settlement?

That's a question that I'd have to take back and think about what response we can provide publicly.

I ask because clearly Department of Justice has their list of the guidelines, and so it's easy to see what each of those has not been complied with, although they are guidelines only. So I would appreciate receiving that response then.

Yeah, and just a little. I mean, in the warehouse guidance document that we've published, we provide a menu of mitigation options that can be selected to mitigate impacts of warehouse projects. And each individual warehouse project, based on its size or environmental impacts, might require different items from that menu to be selected to mitigate the environmental impacts. And so it's not meant to be an expression or a requirement that all warehouse projects would need all mitigation measures that are listed in that document.

Wonderful. And what does interfacing with local organizations in the committee look like?

We engage with a variety of stakeholders in our investigations and actions, including community organizations and residents that may be impacted by a given project, both in our CEQA matters and in our broader work.

So then my final question is, are there opportunities for direct communication then, between our community groups, our environmental justice groups, community environmental justice groups, and Department of Justice?

Yes, we engage with organizations.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I recognize that this was not part of today's list, but I sincerely appreciate the availability of having you here so that we could get some answers. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair.

Of course, we are going to move forward now to subpanel one outside co council. Let's begin. And again, thank you for the opportunity to be able to ask those questions that needed some answers for our majority leader. Thank you. Let's begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice. I have John Wolf and Bruce McGagin here to answer questions. The Department of Justice requests $3 million General Fund augmentation to acquire external legal services to assist with a discovery phase in two cases, GHP management versus the state and Casa Green versus the state. These cases relate to COVID cases and condemnation claims, also known as takings, in 89 residential property owners based upon alleged limitations on evictions in the COVID-19 Tenant Relief act of 2020.

The estimated exposure to the claims is $70 million, subject to any offsets from the rental assistant funds received. The outside cocounsel will assist the Attorney General's Office with the anticipated extensive discovery of the basis of each plaintiff's allegations and dispositive motions against each plaintiff's complaint. We are here for questions, if you have any.

We're going to hear from the LAO, followed by the Department of Finance, please.

Anita Lee with the LAO. No specific comments on this item

Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. No comments at this time.

Any additional comments or questions? Reading here, just Bruce Bruce McGagin. Did I say that?

Great. Good to meet you. I see here you're the supervising deputy Attorney General for Civil Law division, Torts and DOJ.

Yes.

Correct, It's the Torts and condemnation section within the civil division.

It's bringing me college flashbacks like, ah, Torts. Okay, but thank you. No questions on our end.

I'm glad I could provide some flashbacks. Hopefully they were positive.

Well, that's it for debate. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We're going to move on to our subpanel two on wage theft criminal prosecutions. Let's begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice. This is the workers'rights expanded enforcement and criminal prosecution, or the wage theft.

The Department of Justice requests a permanent augmentation of four positions, an unfair competition law Fund authority of 1.1 million in 2324 and 1.1 in 2425 for ongoing to address current workloads in the workers rights and fair labor section, as well as to facilitate the required investigative work associated with these cases and to address the need for robust enforcement of the most egregious violations of worker rights, including those who are serial violators, who utilize fraudulent transfers and other schemes to evade civil judgments, who willfully risk the health and safety of their workforce, or who engage in labor trafficking, as just some examples.

And so we have Mr. Evan Ackiron and Satoshi to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Let's go with the LAO, followed by the Department of Finance, please.

Anita Lee with the LAO. No specific comments on this item.

And Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. No additional comments at this time.

Thank you. I do have a question. Can you provide us, please, with a sense of the volume of wage theft related cases you receive, and how do you prioritize which cases to pursue?

Satoshi Yanai, I'm the special assistant Attorney General of the worker rights and fair labor section at DOJ. So in terms of volume. So we get quite a few because we have a lot of inquiries come through a public inquiry unit. I believe in the last year, that volume was into the hundreds of inquiries. Now, not all of these are.

I'm sorry, can you speak a little closer to the mic, please?

I'm sorry. Yes. I'd have to look to get the exact number, but it was into the hundreds that we received. Now, not all of these are really viable complaints that we'd want to pursue in terms of prioritizing. The goal of the worker rights and fair labor section is to utilize the powers of the Attorney General to try to address systemic business practices by employers that undermine the rights of workers and also undermine the ability of legitimate businesses to operate.

It's kind of a case by case determination as to how that mission plays out in terms of a specific case. But whenever we look at a case, we are trying to examine not just in terms of that specific employer and its effect, in its kind of local effect, but more, is this representative of business practices that are being exercised across the industry or something that's affecting workers throughout the state and making decisions about what kind of impact we can make with our limited resources.

Thank you. That's helpful. If there are no additional comments or questions. Yes, go ahead, Assembly Member.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think for this section and for each section, I'd like to ask how many attorneys in the section, how many support staff in the section, and annually, how many cases you handle, and specifically in this one? Since we're talking about wage theft, I would like to know, in the end, we don't win every case. I get that.

But what is the amount of settlement that you are able to do because of the work that the Department of Justice does?

So, in terms of staffing. So we have 14 line attorneys and three paralegal staff and two investigative auditors that are on our team. In terms of workload, a lot of our works right now are in confidential investigations that I can't really discuss the details of. We do have ongoing litigation, major litigation against Uber and Lyft having to do with independent contractor misclassification. Wage theft is only part of our portfolio.

One of the major cases we did that conclude in 2021 was against Amazon and had to do with COVID-19 notices that were provided to workers. And we felt that they were inadequate and not in compliance with recently passed California law. And so we achieved a stipulated judgment there to ensure that public health authorities and Amazon's workers were fully apprised of COVID-19 conditions at the work site.

Because we're talking about wage theft, do the settlements include wages for the workers, for the employees?

So generally speaking, when we do a wage theft suit, our civil suits are normally filed under the unfair competition law. And so they involve an injunction, civil penalties and restitution, and the restitution portion is paid to the workers as unpaid wages. Under the law, the civil penalties are a mandatory part of the remedy. But for us, it's always in kind of taking in that money. We're always prioritize, making sure that there's as much restitution as we reasonably can goes to the workers.

And do you require or do you suggest to the workers that they seek independent counsel also, or is that provided to them as an option? I should suppose it would be a better way to ask.

So we can't provide legal advice to the people we work with. So, I mean, for the context of our cases, they are witnesses. We bring our cases on behalf of the people of the State of California. So, yes, we don't engage with the individuals with respect to that kind of advice.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

If there are no additional comments or questions, we're going to move on to sub panel three. Thank you very much. This panel is on the, on antitrust, gasoline pricing, agriculture and technology. Let's begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice. The proposal is for 20 positions and increased spending authority of 7.9 million from the Attorney General antitrust account and from the Unfair Competition Law Fund to address the gasoline pricing, agriculture and tech enforcement workload. The need for greater enforcement of antitrust laws has increased in recent years. Mergers and acquisitions have grown significantly as market investment has increased and companies seek to expand on the increase in their market shares.

We were available for any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Let's go with the LAO, followed by the Department of Finance, please.

Anita Lee with the LAO. If you'd like to follow along with the comments we're going to make, it's going to be page eight on the handout that we provided to you previously specifically related to this budget proposal, DOJ was able to identify both recent and potential workload in particular sectors that could benefit California.

Particularly of note, DOJ temporarily redirected six unfunded attorney positions totaling about $1.4 million to conduct one new major technology investigation. As part of our analysis, though, it is also unclear to us whether the antitrust account and the Unfair Competition Law Fund, which are both funds that receive litigation proceeds, would receive sufficient of those types of proceeds from cases pursued specifically by the antitrust law section to support the ongoing workload on an ongoing basis.

And this is really because antitrust cases are typically really complex, resource intensive, technical, and can take some time to resolve. And so the amount that's being requested would effectively increase the section staff by 56%. And so that's just something that we wanted to flag for the committee's consideration. Thank you.

And Kevin Clark with the Department of Finance. In terms of responding to LAO comments about whether or not it's unclear whether sufficient revenues are available to support antitrust work. So the administration did take this into consideration. When looking at the proposal and the litigation deposit fund, we determined that the litigation deposit fund does have sufficient revenues to cover this particular workload for antitrust.

Complete. Thank you. Just a couple of questions on my end. So, if the federal enforcement agencies are the primary entities that review these mergers and acquisitions, can the Department of Justice explain how and when they get involved? When you get involved, if the DOJ is working independently, how does that work? Sure.

Hi, I'm Paula Blizzard. I'm the senior assistant Attorney General for the antitrust section. So, mergers are reported under a federal statute to the federal agencies. That's the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, and then one of them investigates.

However, they very often reach out to the states if there is a particular state focus, and we will work closely with them from the beginning, meaning that we will receive the party's documents, participate in the investigatory process, and then join them on the complaint as co plaintiffs. If we are trying to block a merger, that being said, it doesn't always happen, and many times we will decline or step back simply because there is not an adequate California nexus.

There's not a reason why we are going to add something to be there. So we try to focus on mergers that have a particular California nexus, and then we litigate right next to our federal counterparts. And I will say if the Federal Government decides not to pursue, to let the merger go through, but we think it's a problem, we can sue to block it without them.

Thank you. And so is that the portion in which the DOJ works independently?

The Cal DOJ works independently, so we can work independently on the mergers, but we also do a great many other types of antitrust enforcement.

So when there are large concentrations of market power, so you have monopolies or you have illegal restraints of trade where a company with market power is trying to control the market and raise prices to consumers, we can investigate completely independently, and we have the ability to bring cases both under federal law and the California State laws, the Cartwright act and Unfair Competition law, and we can proceed in state court or federal court.

So we have a full plethora of options, and we try and make it fit the case and what will best serve the people.

Thank you. And what is the average length of time it takes to resolve these types of cases?

Sure. So a merger tends to go much more quickly because the parties cannot proceed if there's an investigation according to certain statutory requirements or if we sue to block it. So even in a quick case, a merger can take anywhere incredibly fast. Would be six months. More likely would be 12 to 18 months. A full blown conduct based antitrust case, looking at just an illegal bad actor can take easily three years, perhaps five.

We have some cases where we are continuing where we succeeded, and we are continuing to refund money to consumers. It can take 10 years, so they can really drag on.

And would you say these cases require a disproportionate level of resources compared to other legal workloads?

Generally speaking, compared to other legal areas, antitrust is one of the most complex. And the US Supreme Court has remarked that it is the famous burden of antitrust discovery, because it can concern everything a company does. And so we routinely get document productions that are millions and millions of documents, incredibly large databases, showing all the algorithms that companies are using these days. And so they are very resource intensive.

However, our system, which has been set up for 150 years, is based on nonetheless, incentivizing these heavy lifts by providing attorneys fees and providing treble damages that can be refunded to consumers, or in the case of a private plaintiff, can Fund private counsel as well, as well as we get penalties under our UCL. So it's a big expense, big reward sort of system that is set up.

Thank you for that. I'm just going to ask, is this a priority to the Attorney General? And can DOJ redirect other legal resources for this work? And I want to preface by saying that I'm asking this question, as I asked earlier, about priorities to the Department of Justice. And there are so many types and numbers of cases that the DOJ can pursue. How are you ultimately prioritizing the legal.

Workload so I can answer as to antitrust. We prioritize our workload based on where we can get the most recovery for consumers or where we can actually open California markets and reward California consumers. So cases with a particular California nexus, with harms to Californians, with California companies at issue, bad actors, places where we think the Federal Government is not doing what we think it needs to do. And the Federal Government changes over the years. And sometimes it's a wonderful partner and sometimes it's not.

And we always have to be prepared to defend Californians. I will note that this proposal is completely self funded, meaning that we're not asking for money because we are in this situation where we have money, in the LDF, we have many cases, and in the natural course of things, we expect those will continue to bring in more cases. As we get more people, we can bring more cases, which will bring in more cases.

And so this is our assessment of a level that we can sustain and that we can continue to self fund. But you can probably answer in the broader would just.

Madam Chair, Chris Ryan, I would just add that as we look at this proposal, it is self funded. It's funded out of the litigation deposit fund. And typically the litigation deposit fund can fund consumer protection, antitrust, false claims, and then the PRD Law Enforcement Fund, which is kind of a broad Fund for the public rights division. So litigation deposit is not widely available to the agency as a whole. It's really specific to these types of cases.

So as the LAO indicated, there's four areas where it can be used, and that's typically where we use it. So consumer protection or this UCL and antitrust combination is something where we look to leverage our own internal funding versus asking for additional General Fund. There's also settlement funds that come back to the state as a whole. Sometimes the General Fund will benefit or consumers will benefit through other settlement agreements. So again, this is really a self funded program.

Thank you. Yes, LAO.

Anita Lee with the LAO just wanted to supplement kind of, or add to the context and discussion from Madam Chair's question. So the question about priority, when we're having this discussion about self fund related to the unfair competition law fund, for example, that does raise questions about priorities in terms of whether they're antitrust related cases. But there's other unfair competition law work as well in terms of unfair business practices, et cetera.

And so that is why that broader question of how prioritization works and is important and why we make our overall comments. The other thing, when we were looking at the LDF in terms of thinking about kind of legislative intent, we would note that for the antitrust account, state law does require that any monies in excess of $3 million be transferred to the General Fund. So that's something that we would just introduce as part of this conversation.

Thank you for that. We're going to retitle this panel to. We're not asking for money. We have a lot of money. We're going to transfer it to the General Fund. Just kidding. Thank you. No additional comments or questions on this particular panel. Thank you very much. We're going to move forward to subpanel four on the housing strike force. And it just so happens we also have the chair of our housing policy committee as a member of this budget subcommitee. So let's begin.

Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice. And the request from the Department of Justice is for permanent augmentation of four positions and 1.4 million in funding, 973,000 from the General Fund and approximately 402 from the legal services Revolving Fund. This is authority to address the workload related to housing production and planning. And I have two experts here to answer your questions.

We're going to go first to the LAO, followed by the Department of Finance.

Anita Lee with the LAO. If you'd like to follow along with comments, this is page nine of your handout that was provided previously. When we did the analysis, DOJ was able to identify both recent and forthcoming workload that could justify additional attention.

We would notice part of this conversation, part of the work is going to be billed back to the Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD, and then a other portion of it is in DOJ's independent capacity. And so keeping that in mind, it was sort of unclear to us whether the ongoing workload would remain high enough to justify the workload on an ongoing basis.

In addition to that, activities by HCD's new housing accountability unit, which was initiated in 2000 and 122, as well as the Civil Rights Department, formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, we would note, could have implications in the future on DOJ's workload. It could be higher or lower depending on sort of what workload that they are taking on.

So given kind of that uncertainty, the Legislature might want to consider whether annual reporting to monitor DOJ work would be beneficial to legislative oversight to make sure that legal housing related workload is being pursued in the most efficient and effective manner so, such as ensuring that there's sufficient coordination and that the right entity is sort of taking the lead or is involved. Thank you.

Kevin Clark, Department of Finance. Just to respond to LAO's response on workload and outcomes for the housing strike force are unclear. The Administration is taking increased action in this arena, and we're seeing, and DOJ's data indicates, increased action on their part against violations of housing laws across the state. And so the Administration is committed to supporting this work on an ongoing basis. Thanks.

Thank you. This Subcommitee is obviously very interested and has a strong interest in ensuring that the state is doing everything we possibly can to maximize housing availability for all Californians. I also happen to sit and serve on our policy housing committee. So it's a great way for us to not only work on the policy side, but also work on the funding and departments and agencies that actually do the coordinated work.

And we want to ensure that the state's goal to build more housing isn't affected by anyone who tries to circumvent the law. I'm grateful, actually, for the existing collaboration between HCD and DOJ in housing enforcement related activities. We saw the most recent lawsuit in a coastal town in LA County. I know that the DOJ meets weekly with HCD, and a great deal of coordination happens to ensure accountability over our housing goals. It's our number one priority across the state.

My question is related to the Department of Justice priorities for housing related enforcement. Since the constitutional authority for the Attorney General is much broader than the HCD's statutory authority with the proposed resources, will we see additional enforcement support occur in collaboration with HCD, or does the DOJ envision that more of their efforts will be focused on issues outside of the HCD's authority? And if that's the case, can you give us a sense of what those priorities would be?

Sure, I can take that. Hi, Eleanor Blume, special Assistant Attorney General for economic justice for Attorney General Bonta. The proposal that we have here is really intended to supplement the attorney general's housing strike force work, which does both our work in the attorney general's independent capacity and works with HCD. But where the bulk of the resources will go here is toward additional actions in our independent capacity. That all will be, as you referenced, in coordination with HCD. We have a weekly meeting.

We take a great deal from HCD as a client. We take referrals from HCD, so have a very close working relationship. But the bulk of the resources that we are requesting here will go toward additional work in the attorney general's independent capacity. And our objectives there are to support the development of additional equitable, affordable, environmentally responsible, and equitably available housing across the state.

How many cases do you currently have from HCD, and how do you prioritize which ones you go after?

Christina Bull Arndt supervising deputy Attorney General in the Land use and conservation section and chair of the housing strike force in terms of active litigation, I believe we have eight cases right now, and we have some more in the pipeline. But that doesn't entirely encompass all of our work with HCD because we work very closely with them, collaborating on matters that before they ever get to litigation. So we work in an advisory capacity with HCD.

We work to understand what's in their pipeline and vice versa. And as an example, we review their notices of violation, so we help them take proactive steps so that litigation doesn't have to be filed.

Thank you for that, Assembly Member Wicks.

Thank you. One, I want to applaud DOJ and the Attorney General for putting forth the strike force as the chair of the Housing Committee here in the know, we pass a lot of laws here, and so it's nice to see them actually implemented in accountability. No longer is it an option to say that housing is someone else's problem.

And I know when the Attorney General and DOJ has taken swift action, whether it's to Encinitas or to Woodside, around the mountain lion situation, or Pasadena, basically saying they are not subject to SB 9, swift action, I think, has reversed a lot of that and has enabled the state to ensure that our local municipalities are good partners in allowing for the housing that I know we all desperately need. So thank you for that.

The funding that you're looking for, will this match or meet your needs in terms of the longer term goals of the strike force?

Look, I think that California's housing crisis could, we could use a lot more funding. Frankly, there's a lot of housing laws that need to be enforced. We need to make sure that the laws that the Legislature is passing, that there's a cop on that beat. And so what we have here, I think, is a fairly modest proposal as we ramp up our work in the housing strike force, but we could certainly use more money over time.

Yeah. Though we do see action taken when you all weigh in pretty quickly, often.

Well, and I think that the action that we take is important not just for that individual matter, but for everyone else who's watching what we're doing.

And I saw in here it was 1684 emails that the DOJ has received but are unable to pursue those tips and complaints due to insufficient resources. I know you've done a handful of things, but it sounds like there's a lot out there that you could be doing if you had the resources to do that.

And those tips are, that's what we get from the public. But we also learn about violations of housing laws from all kinds of different sources. Right. So we might read about it in the paper the way that you do. We might hear about it from our partners in the community. We might hear about it from other colleagues or from the other co sections of the housing strike force. So those violations come to us in a variety of different ways.

But it sounds like there's an abundance of folks who are saying, here, come look at this. It's just a resource constraint issue in terms of allowing you to then act on a lot of that. It sounds like.

Yeah. As someone who has authored a handful of streamlining bills, and I know actually everyone here that's with us also, I think is in a similar ideological boat around the need to be building more housing and wanting our, and many of our cities do cooperate. I want to say that, too.

Absolutely.

The enforcement is so critical and the implementation of these laws is so critical, we can sit up here in Sacramento all day long and do laws, but if they're not being enforced or implemented the right way, then what's the point? And so that is very important to us.

So I would just love to have an ongoing conversation with you all to making sure that we're supporting you in your needs to ensure that you have the resources that you need to help with the implementation that we're doing, because I think it's just as important as the law itself is that it's implemented correctly. So thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate that.

Assembly Member Lee.

Thank you so much. I just want to concur with everything that Senator Wick said, of course, and really applaud DOJ for taking this on and giving teeth to our housing laws. Of course, all our housing laws live and die in implementation mode. Right.

As Senator Wick said, change rules as much as we want. But if cities are getting in the way of the provision of housing for their own people, it's not working out very well. And I also want to concur with the comment that LAO is.

I think it would be important to have more of a sight and understanding kind of your caseload and what you're working on, because while we might hear the news about mountain lion town or Huntington Beach more so I can't even fathom what the other six are. And your cases could be.

And it's important, I think, as legislators, to as put pressure back in our local communities to know that if they're acting out or if they might be flying under the radar, it is important for us to know, because we want to have that kind of feedback of what we're passing up here is how do they then try to circumvent it or get around it? It's also important for us to plug those holes. So I think that is important.

The chair did ask a question about how do you prioritize which housing laws to go defend. I didn't quite understand your answer about it. So how do you prioritize which ones? Because you have production laws, the zoning type laws, and you also have renter protections and tenant protections and mortgage laws, too. So how do you kind of decide which ones to go after and defend or enforce? Sure.

So first I want to set aside for just a moment the mortgage and tenant protection pieces. Those are very much a part of the work that we are doing in the strike force not specifically included within this BCP. This is looking for four additional people that would be housed within our land use and conservation law section. So very important work. One of the reasons that we have the housing strike force set up is to bring together all pieces of that.

But for the most part, our tenant protection work and our mortgage borrower protection work is happening out of other sections that are not specifically contemplated in this four person BCP. So happy to have an ongoing conversation about that, but that is a somewhat separate area. The remainder of the work that we're contemplating here is, as part of this BCP is focused on our land use and housing production laws. And there we have a couple different buckets. Right.

We have the cases that are referred to us from HCD, and Christina may want to speak to that a little bit more. Then we have the cases that the Attorney General pursues in as independent capacity. And there we look for a couple of things. One is where we can essentially get the most bang for our buck. Right? So some of the matters that you've referenced so far in this conversation have involved disputes where we haven't had to file a lawsuit.

And I personally think that is really very powerful, particularly in our work with local governments, where we can come in early and say, hey, this raises very real concerns and get a City Council to course correct before we need to file a lawsuit. And that is, I think, a pretty efficient use of our time. Everybody's time and can have a very strong deterrent and informative effect for other localities. We look for opportunities where we can have essentially a strong impact for what we're doing.

We look at how many units and what type of units are involved in a particular case. We look at the legal merits of a particular case, at whether there is an important role for the Attorney General in his independent capacity. So where we have a distinct and complementary authority next to HCD. So all of those go into a consideration for whether we, out of the housing strike force, take the lead in pursuit.

Thank you.

Welcome, Assembly Member Lee. I appreciate it. I know you were chairing another committee as well related to the recent litigation filed against Huntington Beach, which I preferenced earlier. I know that the DOJ's housing strike force is involved in that litigation. On the same day, the City of Huntington Beach filed a lawsuit against the state. Will that lawsuit be handled by the attorneys on the housing strike force?

I believe.

Check, check. One, two. One moment.

Yes. Okay. I am Dan Olivas. I'm the senior assistant Attorney General for the Land Use and Conservation section. The defense of the federal lawsuit that you mentioned will be led by our section with our team, in fact, several of the same attorneys who are in the state suit that we filed. But we'll be working in consultation and teamed up with the government law section so that staffing was actually just completed today.

Perfect timing. Thank you for the public interface that was created when the housing strike force was first announced in 2021. Can you give us a sense of how you will be helping the people who send their complaints or their questions?

There are two parts of the public interface that live on the attorney general's website. There is a landing page that has information for renters, for homeowners, and for landlords across the state. So we have a lot of public facing information so that people know their rights and their obligations. And I think that landing site is a very useful resource. We update it to reflect changes in state law and provide an ongoing resource there.

And then the second piece is that we have a housing mailbox, and that is an email address that Members of the public can write into. That is where we've received those notes. Some are complaints, some are tips. That mailbox is monitored by a team at the department and referred to attorneys across our housing strike force for review as well as coordination with our public inquiry unit.

Yes, Assemblymember Wicks.

Thank you. Just one more question, Madam Chair, just on the tips line, how does the public know about that?

Good question. So we push it out a lot. We push it out on social media. We push it out as part of every press release that we do on our housing related work. The Attorney General talks about it. It is part of our overall effort to get the public to engage there.

We also hold quite regular conversations with tenant groups and advocates across the state, as well as others who are interested in engaging with the department, either myself, attorneys who sit on our housing strike force, like by Christina, or folks within our external affairs and care offices within the office.

Thank you.

I'll share some concerns and Assemblymember Wicks, I actually really liked how you put the resource constraints conversation earlier in your comments with regards to process and how the strike force was created. So, surprisingly, considering that the Attorney General is a former member of the assembly, the housing strike force that was announced in 2021 was done so without conversations with the Legislature. So now we find ourselves trying to figure out how is it feasible, possible, how could we make it work?

And my concern with the website and the conversation that we're having and the comments being made is that it could potentially cause confusion with the public as to where to submit any questions or complaints. And so the legislative process is important, the budget process is important. And so I'm concerned that the process is being circumvented in terms of when the Legislature gets involved and when we approve. So you've moved forward with this proposal without the conversations needed to ensure that it gets funded.

And so now it creates, I think, a false narrative that if this doesn't move forward, it was the Legislature that didn't do it versus the Department of Justice and the Attorney General. I have concerns with that.

So I leave that on the table as it is something that we will continue to discuss as we continue to prioritize the need to build more housing, the need to address some of the biggest challenges that we face around Cequa and other issues, and really in cities, counties, municipalities that aren't doing the work. I see that in Los Angeles.

I live in a district that is high urban population, while there are other parts of the City of Los Angeles that have a lot more land yet refuse to build. So it's just something to consider in terms of how we will make decisions and hopefully how we come to a resolution on this particular subpanel.

But it is very important to me, and I think the chair of budget and all of the members of the assembly, that process is followed and at least that conversations are had before certain things move forward because we find ourselves now trying to backfill it. So thank you for that. Thank you for the conversation. We're going to move on now to, is this our final one? Issue seven. Great. And we will have an additional issue following issue seven.

So let's begin issue seven with new conviction review unit.

Madam Chair Chris Ryan with the Department of Justice, and Lance Winters will be providing comments. And Michael Redding is available for questions as well.

Hi, my name is Lance Winters. I'm the chief assistant Attorney General in charge of the Division of criminal law for the Attorney General's Office. The concept of our post conviction justice unit has three main goals to it. One is traditional conviction review unit work.

We would be doing this in a space where DA's offices need assistance, either because they may be a small office and lack the resources to do conviction review work, or they may come across cases where, although not technically a legal conflict, the circumstances of the case might make it difficult for a DA's office to objectively review a claim for conviction relief. And then, of course, we have our own cases.

We do trials, we get convictions, and we would be open to doing conviction review of our own cases. A second portion of the unit would be that they would develop best practices around conviction review. So we've already done some research, and we would do more reaching out to our district attorneys partners, as well as other states and other agencies across the country to develop best practices so that all DA's offices and ourselves could follow those best practices practices and implement them.

And then the third and final piece is resentencing. As you may be aware, under Penal Code Section 1172.1, prosecutors have the ability to recall cases for resentencing. A lot of Das are interested in working in this space. We are interested in doing, in working in it in our own cases. So we are examining those issues and the best practices around resentencing and the data to be collected and how it should be used in terms of making decisions around resentencing.

And so we would be doing those in our own cases, as well as working with our DA partners to develop best practices and assist them with implementing those practices.

Thank you. I appreciate the leadership of the Attorney General in working on cases where potential miscarriage of justice may have occurred. My question is related to the resources for this work. Two additional positions. Should we title this "We're not asking for money either, but we may ask for money later?" I don't know. Have you performed the initial workload assessment to figure out the level of resources you will need, and will the two positions you are redirecting be sufficient? And so to my point is, while you may not be asking for resources now, do we anticipate that you may later?

It's possible. It's really hard to assess, which is why we're not asking for any money at this point in time. Until we develop criteria and work with our partners, we don't know what's going to come in the door in terms of workload and cases that we might review. And so we felt it best to develop the concept first with a two person unit using existing resources from our criminal appeal's writs and trial section to get the unit up and standing, develop those criteria.

I anticipate that they will certainly need support resources in terms of an investigator, a paralegal, the degree. I don't even know if those would be full time positions though, and so we might share them with other parts of the criminal law division, or there could be a flood of cases that come in and we are back here a couple of years from now saying we want to build out a full team. It's really hard to assess at this point, which is why we thought it best and most prudent to develop the concept at a small stage initially and then go from there.

I think that's really great to hear that, being prudent, I think it's important and trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. So I appreciate that. I think, I don't have any additional comments or questions on this panel, but I will rewrite it as we're not asking for any money right now. Just kidding. Maybe later.

Fair enough.

We are almost done. But before we conclude and go to public comment, we have a question from the Subcommitee on issue eight of the nondiscusion part of the agenda, item 12, which is the California age appropriate design code act as a courtesy to the chair of housing, will allow it. Please, Assembly Member Wicks.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know this is in the nondiscusion section, and appreciate DOJ for hanging out with me here a little bit longer. So I wrote this bill, AB 2273 the age appropriate design, which is sort of first in the nation, a bill really aiming to ensure that our products that children access online are created by design and by default with them in mind. And a lot of what comes up in conversations around this is the implementation of it and the enforcement mechanism in particular.

So I have a personal interest in making sure that the enforcement is done well. And I know that it mentioned here in the document that the proposed request is for four positions for implementation of this. And I know we're still early in the implementation of this bill, so maybe you don't have all the answers, but what's the vision for those four positions?

So I don't know if there's anyone here. We have some staff that work in that public rights division, so they may be able to answer those questions.

Thank you. You will not be tested.

It's early in the process. Right. So we're still working on that vision.

Hi, this is Danielle O'Bannon. I'm the Public Rights Division Chief. In regards to those. Sorry, is that better? Sorry. In regards to what are we going to do with those positions, those positions are going to be used to assist in the investigation and the development in this particular area. We're asking for those positions in order to do that particular type of work.

Okay, great. Do you have any thoughts or estimates on how the penalty fee could be used to offset the cost of enforcement or have you not gotten to that yet?

Haven't gotten to that yet. We can get back to you on that particular question.

Okay. Yeah, I just would love to keep the conversation going as the implementation of this is one that I'm going to be particularly mindful of as we move forward.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

We'll keep you posted. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for that. I think we are almost about to conclude and we're going to public comment. I want to thank my colleagues and budgets of four and all of the panelists today for the discussion. Very grateful to the Department of Justice for taking time and this new budding relationship that we will have in sub four. And for any follow up requested during this hearing, please make sure that the information is shared with the Committee staff.

I know we have some follow up and we will now turn to public comment. And I want to thank our consultant. New relationship for us, too. And I really enjoyed this oversight budget hearing. We will start with public comment in the hearing room. Anyone in the hearing room? Going once, going twice.

Mr. Morante, Lewis Morante, with Barrier Council. Here today to support the Department of Justice's request in panel four of item six, the housing strike force augmentation rather. In my previous role, I was heavily involved in supporting the creation of the Housing Accountability Unit, which this Subcommitee saw. And I just want to report that has, from the advocacy standpoint, been an incredible success. It's unlocked thousands of new homes. It's provided important technical assistance to local governments struggling with the implementation of state law.

And the Department of Justice has been integral to the success of the Housing Accountability Unit. I'm here today in part because I'm either directly or indirectly the source of many of those complaints the Department of Justice is working through with local governments. But I want to just emphasize that one of the most important tools the Department of Justice and the Housing Accountability unit at HCD have available to them that advocates do not is that technical assistance piece.

We really just have the hammer of lawsuits where the state has the ability to work with cities that just genuinely do not understand how to implement state law in the context of their complex local codes. And that is in and of itself an incredibly valuable role for the state to be playing. So here today with strong support for making the housing strike force permanent and really enabling the housing accountability unit to accomplish what it has been in the past year. Thanks.

Thank you. No additional comments in the room, like a sacrificial volunteering tribute to come up. We will now go to the phone lines and a friendly reminder for those on the phone, you will be limited to your public comment to 1 minute. The phone number is to connect on the Committee website and should also be on the screen if you are streaming this hearing online. The toll free number is 877-692-8957 and the public access code is 131-5447. Operator, you may begin.

If you would like to provide public comment today, you may do so by pressing one, then zero. And that command again: one, then zero. We will now go to line 50.

Madam Chair, Katelyn Baker for the California Federation. I want to thank you for a great hearing today. We want to express strong support for not only the requested funds for labor law enforcement, but even for an additional investment in both civil and criminal labor law enforcement. This is a top priority issue for the labor fed and our unions this year as we're seeing workers struggle to get access to justice when their rights are violated on the job.

We think it's essential that workers have as many options as possible to take their claims when they are victims of wage theft or misclassification or other kinds of violations. And we think it's even more important that employers see consequences for violating the law and that's why the criminal enforcement is particularly important.

Sometimes a few high profile cases can have a very important impact on employers' compliance, understanding that the law is going to be enforced, there are consequences, and it's better just to follow the law and pay workers properly. So we strongly support increased investment to the Fair Labor Standards Division of the Attorney General's public division. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next caller, please.

And Madam Chair, there are no further comments at this time.

Thank you, Operator. All of the questions were answered. No additional comments. We are concluding with this Budget Subhearing. Thank you all for your participation today. We are done. We are adjourned.