Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 6 on Public Safety

Well, good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to our first hearing for the Assembly Budget Subcommitee Number six, which covers public safety. I'd like to welcome Assemblymember Lackey, who's on his way, but also to our newest Member to our Subcommitee, Assemblymember Schultz.

In this difficult and uncertain fiscal climate, it's imperative that this Subcommitee provide diligent oversight as we review the most critical needs for the state in this moment.

In future hearings, we will be covering issues such as the implementation of Proposition 36, programs and services for victims, and issues facing incarcerated women in the State of California, as well as others that we'll announce later today. We will be covering issues from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

All public comment will be taken at the end of our last item, and each person will have up to one minute each for public comment. We will not be taking any votes today. I'd like to take a moment to thank the staff of CDCR, Ms. Cynthia Mendonza and

Ms Sarah Larson, for their timely responses and assistance to the Subcommitee in the past few weeks. Your partnership is critical to our budget process. Speakers are listed in speaking order for each of the items. Please keep your remarks within the allotted time communicated to you by my staff and remember to introduce yourselves prior to speaking.

I do want to make an announcement of the role of the issues that we will take up. First, we will take up item six as it's a non presentation item and see if Members have any questions for those that are there. Then we will go into issue number one and follow the order at that point.

Is there any concerns with that hearing? None. Thank you for that. And any of the colleagues on the on the dais would like to say any words before we get started.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just want to say I'm excited to be here and look forward to working with you this year.

Thank you so much for that. As now we move to item issue 6 of pills workload. Is there any questions on this issue? Thank you for that. We will now move on to issue one. Issue one we have with us to present. Kathy Jefferson, Deputy Director of Office of Research, CDCR. Caitlin O'Neill, Legislative Analysis Offices.

Patrick Plant, Department of Finance. Justin Alderman, Department of Finance. We will start with Kathy.

Hello. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. I'm Cathy Jefferson, Deputy Director of the CDCR Office of Research, and I'll be providing an overview of CDCR's fall 2024 population projections.

So CDCR prepares projections twice per year in alignment with the state budget cycle for the past four cycles now, so that would be fall 2022 to spring 2024. Our projections have performed very well over a 12 month period with an error rate of just 1%.

To predict future populations, CDCR utilizes historical trend data including data on court commitments. The fall 2024 projections are provided through June 2029 and the estimates include actual data as well as the estimated impact of policy, legislation and process changes through June 30th of 2024.

Based on recent trends, we expected a net 5 year decrease of 9% to our institution population from June 30th, 2024 to June 30th of 2029. However, after those estimates were developed, Prop . 36 passed. So to capture an estimate of the Prop 36 population impact, we provided a below the line adjustment in our population estimates.

Though we had limited historical data, we felt it was important to provide a preliminary estimate for the Governor's Budget. To provide an estimate of the Prop 36 average daily population, we looked at the admissions from fiscal year 2013-14, which is the fiscal year prior to implementation of Proposition 47.

The estimates are based on limited data and it's because we couldn't account for all of the impacted offenses. However, we are working to make adjustments in the May revision. The assumptions for our fall estimate include admissions beginning in January 2025 that sentencing would be similar to pre

Prop. 47 penalties, less those that have enhancements that are no longer valid, good conduct credit earning rates would remain as they are currently and then we assumed a length of stay of 11 months. We anticipate impacts to the parole population if individuals have specified prior offenses or if they are charged with certain enhancements.

As with the institution population, we will adjust our estimates in the May revision for the parole population, our total incarcerated population as of February 28 was 90,934. With the Prop 36 estimate included, the institution average daily population for current year is estimated to be 91,672 and 93,278 for budget year.

By fiscal year 2829, the institution population is expected to decrease to 88,787. Our total parole population as of February 28 was 34,583. The average daily parole population for current year year is estimated to be 34,490 and 34,671 for budget year. By fiscal year 2028-29 the parole population is expected to decrease to 34,241.

I'd like to emphasize that there are still a lot of Unknowns with Prop 36 being very new. CDCR is monitoring Prop 36 implementation very closely and we will update our impact estimates to provide a more accurate projection as the data becomes available.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be updating our estimates as part of the May revision to the Governor's Budget. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you for that. LAO

Thank you., Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst Office we have a few comments on the administration's estimates of the impact of Prop 36 on the prison and the parole population. So starting with the prison population, we found that the administration's methodology to estimate the population impact includes some flawed assumptions that likely result in overestimation.

For example, the methodology effectively assumes that Prop 47, which was approved in 2014 and reduced punishment for certain theft and drug crimes is entirely reversed by Prop 36 when in fact Prop 36 only partly reversed the punishment reductions in Prop 47. So that's an example of an assumption that causes overestimation.

Happy to go into more detail if the Committee would like, but sort of just going back to the high level, our estimates suggest that the impact the actual impact could be less than half of the magnitude of the administration's estimates.

So that would mean that the that would cause CDCR to be over budgeted in the current year by millions of dollars and by tens of millions of dollars in the budget year.

In terms of the parole population, most people that are affected by Prop 36 will based on the crimes that are that Prop 36 effects will be released to county supervision after they release are released from prison. There are a couple ways that somebody could be caused to be released by released to parole supervision by Prop 36.

However, those crimes would typically carry relatively longer sentences. So so we don't think it's likely that someone would be able would have enough time to have committed their crime, been sentenced, serve that relatively long prison sentence and be released to parole by the end of the budget year.

So we don't think that it's likely that there will be a notable parole pop impact. So that would mean that CDCR is over budgeted by a few million dollars in the budget year. So we recommend directing the Administration to address these flaws when it provides updated estimates at the May revision.

Thank you so much for that.

Justin Adelman, Department of Finance no comments, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Bringing it back to the dais. Any Questions? Comments?

Yep. Mr. Chair, if I might. Yeah. So this question is directed to the LAO. On a very high level, how would you recommend that the Administration go back and try to bring forward a more accurate reflection of the prison population? Because I, for the record, I do agree. I think it's a significant overestimation.

Sure. And we have been talking with the Administration to try to get some clarity between us on how we can go about how they can go about making estimates. But, but at a high level, I think a key place to start is just noting the areas that Prop 36 isn't a full rollback of Prop 47.

So the treatment mandated felony is one of those areas. And basically before Prop 47, drug possession could result in a felony conviction. Prop 47 made that simple drug possession and misdemeanor. Prop 36 allows people who have two prior drug crimes and then possess certain types of drugs to be charged with a treatment mandated felony.

But to ultimately get, they have to be offered treatment. And so they would only get to prison if they decline treatment or fail treatment. So we just think that the hoops to get to prison on a drug possession conviction under Prop 36 are greater than they were prior to Prop 47.

So that's a key area that could be where a reasonable assumption could be made. We know that there really isn't actual much actual data at this point on Prop 36 implementation, but we think that there are some reasonable assumptions that could be made.

Another area is that there are some crimes like receiving stolen property, for example, and some lower level theft crimes that were not that were affected by 47, but not 36, so that those could also be carved out.

And then there's some areas where there were crimes that Prop 36 did affect that 47 didn't affect, like enhancements and things like that. Those are not included at all in the administration's methodology, which is a problem. If it were to continue using this methodology going forward.

We think it's a little bit less of a problem in the near term because a lot of those are crimes that have smaller admissions numbers but longer lengths of stay. So their effect really doesn't matter quite as much until we start looking out into the longer term.

And also when we're talking enhancements that doesn't affect that again, doesn't have an impact until you get to the point where the person where we're now talking about that added piece on their prison sentence, which may not be until after the budget year. Hopefully that was enough information for you.

That was very good. I guess you know, my question to the Administration would be, I agree with much of what the LAO has just outlined is that a revision to the assessment that the Administration would be prepared to look at bring back for the May revise.

So as Ms. O'Neill said, we have been in conversations and you know, sharing information and everything that we are learning and collecting up to this point is going to be part of, you know, our Spring or May revision, I should say. Thank you.

Wonderful. Mr. Chair, one final question and then I'll be done there. I was just wondering if you could speak to it. When I was, when I was preparing for today, I saw that there will be the initial increase in anticipated prison population.

I'm using your current methodology, of course, but in the long run you are seeing a return to this downward trend that we have been seeing. Could you just speak to why we anticipate that to be the case in the long term. A continued downward trend even in spite of the passage of Prop 36.

Right. So just overall the trends with admissions and releases is all part of our simulation model. And so we have seen this downward decrease or trend in our projections for several years now. And Covid played a big part in in that trend. Right. But it's continued and has never really gone back up.

The emissions have never really gone back up to the pre Covid levels. And so that is really what's playing a part in that return to the downward trend. So you'll have the Prop 36 and it will just continue to go down.

Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you for those questions. And diving a little bit deeper into the data, Mr. Deputy Director, when we look at Prop 47 and Prop 36, can we identify what it is we're actually going to be looking at to make sure that it's in parity of with what 47 is there?

Because not everything was taken out with Prop 36. So we want to make sure that we're looking at that ahead of time to see what it is that you'll be looking at. So then when the May revise comes forward, we're all on the same page.

Understood, sir. The data that we have is very limited. Right. So we're looking at the offenses that are in our system and just trying to make an estimate. Again, it was preliminary and as we receive more data we can refine that estimate or improve it as we collect more data.

And you know, our spring it'll be refined but may not still be what it should be. And we will just continue to improve our projections by talking to our, you know, the LAO and, you know, learning from the counties and how they're actually implementing Prop 36.

Well, thank you. And I do know that it's new and some of the projections were based on prior numbers.

But one of the questions also, along with Assemblymember Schultz, is the decrease in that population, making sure that we are looking at the correct data that's there with Prop 36 being implemented and how that continues to go in that direction, provided that there's things that we haven't seen yet from the outcast of Prop 36 and how that's truly going to affect us in the coming years.

And I'm looking forward to the May revise, but I like to get an update along the way to make sure that we're on the same page getting to the May revise on the data that we're looking at. Any other questions on issue one? Moving on to issue two.

Thank you.

With Budget act reductions Caitlin O'Neill, Legislative Analyst Office Orlando Sanchez Zavila, Legislative Analyst Office Duane Reeder, Deputy Director, CCHCS Cynthia Mendonza, Deputy Director, Office of Fiscal Services Justin Adelman, Department of Finance Lynn Ishimoto, Department of Finance hopefully there's enough room for all of you up here. Start with the Lao.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members, my name is Orlando Sanchez with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'll be providing background on what was assumed in last year's budget briefly, and then I'll tailor my comments to the administration's approach to this exercise for CDCR.

As a reminder, the 24-25 budget assumed that there'd be savings about roughly 10% of the General Fund for state operations expenditures across nearly all state departments. The budget also assumed that these savings would be achieved through identifying efficiencies and eliminating vacant positions.

In General, the budget didn't reflect how these savings would be allocated across state departments, but it did reflect an agreement with the Administration that CDCR there'd be a target of 392 million in savings, and that represents about 3% of the CDCR budget.

In addition, there were there were limitations established in provisional budget language that there'd be no reductions to rehabilitation programs or re entry programs, and the Department of Finance was given the responsibility on how to achieve the savings both for CDCR and other state departments and was required to report to the Legislature by January 10th of 2025 on how those savings would be achieved.

So now where we are now, the proposed 25-26 budget assumes a lower level of savings that could be achieved and specifically Statewide as of January 10th it's about 2.4% of the General Fund for state operation expenditures.

And similarly for CDCR it reflects a lower level of savings and that specifically is about 2/3 of the 392 target that was assumed in the current year and about half of that target in 25-26 and ongoing.

So compared to the statewide, CDCR had a smaller target as a percent of its overall spending, but it also came closer to meeting that target. In addition, when compared with the amount of information that the Legislature received for across the state, CDCR provided more information on where those savings would be achieved.

But some key information is still missing. For example, it's not clear which classifications would be eliminated and which programs those would be in. But based on our review of the information provided and some of the that list can be found in the website as well, this appears consistent with the language and restriction and General limitations and reductions.

We yeah, and the identified savings seem to be a mixture of true efficiencies. So meaning the department's able to offer the same level of service at a lower cost. But some of them do affect service levels. There's cost delays within there and then there's some savings that are scored that would have happened on the natural regardless.

Some of the savings are one time and some are ongoing, but most have already been implemented by the Department. The Legislature may want to pay closer attention to the savings that affect service levels and make sure that those are consistent with its legislative priorities. And based on that list, I'll highlight two of them.

One of those being the third watch standardization. This is a reduction that would affect the housing the time that people can spend outside of their housing units for recreating.

In addition, there's a Golden State legacy contract elimination and that appears to affect a small number of people that could have been placed in a nursing facility out in the community through the state's medical parole program who is now would remain in prison.

And then just to help the Legislature provide a little bit more oversight, we've prepared some questions that Legislature could ask the Department. Some of those include how did the Administration settle on these savings? What service level impacts does CDCR expect from these savings? What factors were considered?

What other alternatives were there and what would it take to reach that 392 target that the Department has now reported it's not able to and what classifications or programs are affected. And yeah, happy to answer any questions as well on the reductions. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that. Now moving on to Duane Reeder, Deputy Director CCHCS and then Cynthia Mendonza, Deputy Director, Office of Fiscal Services, CDCR.

If you wouldn't mind if I can.

Go ahead.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee. I'm Cynthia Mendonza, Deputy Director of the CDCR Office of Fiscal Services and I'll be speaking to you today about the CDCR reductions. CDCR is a 24/7

statewide operation that not only provides provides housing and food for the incarcerated population that provides the full complement of health care for over 90,000 incarcerated persons. CDCR also provides academic and employment opportunities, rehabilitative programs and restorative justice programs.

While the 2024 enacted budget already provided 358 million in identified reductions over the three year budget window, it also specified the Department identify another 3,392 million in savings to further reduce CDCR's overall budget and through provisional language that CDCR should, to the extent possible, not reduce rehabilitative and reentry programming, community based organizations or programs related to family connection, including phone calls and the frequency or duration of visitation.

Additionally, the provisional language require the CDCR reductions during not violate any court order to jeopardize the health and safety of staff, the incarcerated population or the public. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation made concerted efforts to identify those reductions and adhere to the provisional language to not make any of the cuts that were specified at Governor's Budget.

CDCR outlined state operations reductions totaling 267.6 million million in 24-25 and then 185.8 million in 25-26 and 193.6 million ongoing the Department has worked throughout the fiscal year to identify ongoing efficiencies while protecting vital medical, mental health and rehabilitative programs and maintain the safety and security of staff and incarcerated persons in our institutions.

Additionally, CDCR abided by those requirements which without impacting existing state employee labor agreements or collective bargaining rights. CDCR made difficult decisions as illustrated in the CDCR handout with reductions to gatehouses, multiple housing unit conversions and deactivations, and reductions to the academy and efficiencies found within contracts.

However, due to the previous reductions made in prior years, the need to improve conditions in the institutions, cost increases, staff costs and health care costs, further cuts were not attainable. CDCR has made historical reductions in recent years outside of what was specified. In the Last year since 21-22, the Department has taken significant reductions.

The Department closed four prisons, the Division of Juvenile justice and several facilities reduced resulting in ongoing annual savings of almost 700 million in 22-23 and 23-24. CDCR also reduced several operational areas resulting in roughly 315 million, including reductions to the Comprehensive Health Program and a reduction to the off site training facility and shadowing job shadowing program.

In 24-25, CDCR initiated an ongoing administrative step, staff reduction associated with prison closures and an additional baseline reduction resulting in approximate savings of 26 million and 139 positions. Staff costs have also increased with CDCR, but operations have actually decreased.

An analysis of CDCR's budget was performed where the 2 billion in increases related to bargained agreements since 22-23 was excluded. The department's operational budget actually declined by 12% or 1.6 billion. With health care, it's difficult to do any health care cuts. Roughly 80% of the health care budget is salaries and wages.

It's very challenging to reduce those positions timely in order to generate savings. And much of the health care is under court oversight, making it a challenge to reduce expenditures without jeopardizing care impacting litigation. CDCR is working to improve environmental and correctional practices.

The Department has worked to improve conditions for the workforce and incarcerated with efforts to improve various rehabilitative program initiatives like integrated substance use disorder treatment, the bachelor's degree expansion, returning home well, restorative justice programming, reduce and investigate staff misconduct, improve ediscovery, improve video surveillance and improve business efficiencies.

And then CDCR has also experienced higher inflationary costs, just the cost of doing business. And those costs are with food, utilities, waste disposal, gas and General cost of supplies. Everything's gone up. Similar issues exist with overtime utilization for medical guarding and medical transportation, legal settlement costs and lump size on payouts.

The Department takes the need for reduction seriously and will continue to evaluate departmental operations to identify potential additional reductions. Moving forward with the cuts that the Department has made, it's reflective of our serious efforts to achieve efficiencies while prioritizing expansion of programming and services for the incarcerated.

With me is Duane Reeder, Director of Fiscal Services for CCHCS's healthcare services and he's available for questions as well.

Thank you. Thank you for that. So, Duane, you're here for questions. I can see why you changed around the order. Well, thank you for that. As now we move to Department of Finance.

Thank you. Justin Adelman, Department of Finance. To kind of echo Ms. Mendonza's comments, I kind of want to put CDCR's long term reductions in context of the overall General Fund. In 2011, when realignment occurred, CDCR was about 10.7% of the General Fund budget. In this 202526 proposed budget, it's roughly down to about 5.9%. So long term, there have been kind of these ongoing reductions to CDCR's operating budget.

Thank you. With that, bringing it back to the dais. Any questions? Comments?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So I think I'm going to direct this to Department of Finance, but obviously, if it's more appropriately answered by LAO or CDCR, feel free to take it. Your point is well taken. About the proportion of the total state budget that is comprised of CDCR operations. Totally agree with you there.

But by my count, many, many years ago, many moons ago, when the prison population was substantially higher 50, 60, 70,000 more inmates, if I'm not mistaken, we did spend about four or $5.0 billion less. So, I mean, both things can be true. While proportionally it may be a smaller bit of the budget.

I mean, the budget has, it has grown significantly. Four to $5.0 billion is not inconsequential. I mean, am I getting that wrong? Am I mischaracterizing anything?

Absolutely not. And to that point, I don't want to step on CDCR's toes because I'm sure they'd like to talk about it too. But a lot of those investments that have been made that have grown that budget, again are things like education, health care that if you go back to 2011, didn't really exist.

It was more of a warehousing operation at that time. So a lot of those investments have been made on the incarcerated population.

Okay. Does CDCR want to comment on that?

Yeah. I mean, over time we had a much larger population and its decline, but various factors have come into play. So a, as I mentioned before, if you take out the reductions associated with bargained agreements, CDCR's operational budget has declined by 1.6 billion.

Additionally, the inflationary costs that every one of us feels CDCR has felt on a larger scale. Additionally, CDCR has made efforts to improve rehabilitative programming and really trying to change the correctional nature and how it goes about business. So there are costs associated with that and other efficiencies that we'll see over time.

And then lastly, CDCR's population doesn't equate to like a specific dollar amount in reduction. So just because it's not a one for one. So for instance, we maintain fixed costs regardless of whether a housing unit is full or it's 3/4 full or a quarter full. We still have to turn on the lights.

We still have to keep stuff. We still. So there are, it doesn't just automatically equate to like a specific reduction, but we, we do take note and we are trying to find those reductions.

I appreciate that. That leads to my second and final question. Mr. Chair, so before my time, but my understanding is last year's Budget act, there was this agreement, or maybe maybe another way to characterize it, is an aspirational goal of $390 million in reductions, notwithstanding the work that you put into this.

And I don't discount that, we did fall a little bit short of that goal. So what is CDCR's approach? Because, I mean, speaking very bluntly, both in the context of this Subcommitee and on the larger Budget Committee, we have a significant deficit that's increasing in the out years and every Department needs to look at cost savings.

So what is CDCR going to do? Because while the work that you've done to date is helpful, and I applaud you for that, there's still more to do in the years ahead. So what's going to be your approach to finding more cost savings and cutting costs where we can?

Good afternoon. I'm Duane Reeder, Deputy Director for California Correctional Healthcare Services. From the healthcare perspective, we're going to continue to look for efficiencies. We're going to continue to look to bring services in house as much as we can. As mentioned, a large portion, 80% of our budget is tied to positions, which makes it challenging.

And we also have to balance the core oversight as well. So we're continuing to work with our different program areas on creative ideas and different ways we can reduce expenditures. We fell short, but we had a lot to cover in a short amount of time.

And especially if we start to get into staffing adjustments and such, you know, layoffs would take a significant amount of time. We hope not to get there. We hope to avoid that as much as we can and, and look to other areas for savings. But yeah, just it's a challenging time for the state as well as the Department.

Thank you, Member to the Department of Finance, you mentioned as far as not being able to reach our reductions goal of the agreement that we did get Into Place in 2024, are we looking to make sure that we are complying with that reduction or what is the thought of the Department of Finance?

Thank you for the question. So to your point, we are ongoing and continue continuously looking for efficiency savings.

The savings before you now, though, we are presenting as what we have been able to find so far for Governor's Budget recognizing that we fell short but again trying to maintain rehabilitating programs and healthcare services and all those other essential requirements. But we are looking ongoing for additional.

Efficiencies because part of that agreement was so that we could be in a stronger fiscal situation moving forward. But yet we're at a point to where we haven't reached that goal and yet we're going to be looking in the may revise to find out how we're going to reach the agreement that was done in 2024.

So it would be good to know where our Department of Finance is moving forward in and the expectations there because we are going to be asking questions of CDCR to start to comply with some of those reductions to make sure that we are in the position that we wanted to be in and considering the out year outlying deficits that are there.

Question now to CDCR will we see what will we see in the may revise? Will we be able to get closer to that agreement or we see ourselves getting farther away from that?

CDCR continues to look into the reductions and efficiencies that we can get. It is an ongoing effort and as I mentioned mentioned previously, it's, it's become a much more difficult climate just economically and you know, for all the reasons. But we are committed to continuing to look at this. We are on point and doing this regularly.

I just want to make sure that when we're, we're asking to make sure that we're complying with what was agreed to and getting as close as we can to the 2024 budget agreement that's there that we have partners that are actually looking for the same goal with that I do know and Assemblymember Schultz brought it up, we constantly get told in this Committee of a population within CDCR but yet less, less beds and different population there.

So we are always under the gamut as far as reduction within this CDCR budget. So we did come to that agreement in 2024. We would hope to get as close as we can to that with partners in the room. Thank you for that. Any comments anymore, Mr. Reeder?

I'll just say we, we take this seriously and we are continuing to look for additional efficiencies and we'll do our best to come forward at the appropriate time with anything additional we have. But we, we don't take this lightly and we continue to, to work on ways to reduce costs as much as possible.

Thank you and please keep the Committee updated on any progress on making that that goal. All right, thank you so much. As now we move.

Mr. Chair, I'm so sorry. May I add just one more brief comment?Really appreciated your remarks, Mr. Chair. I echo your sentiments. The one thing I wanted to ask CDCR, the next time that you come before us, one thing that might be helpful. I understand that labor is a significant cost driver for the Department.

Mr. Reeder, I liked where you were going about maybe bringing things more in house. I mean, we have, at least as of now, roughly 15,000 vacant beds, and we still have a lot of personnel in place. So what more can the personnel be doing in house to reduce costs that maybe we're contracting out for?

So that's the kind of information I'd really love to hear more from CDCR about in terms of how we're going to help save costs down the road.

Definitely. Thank you for that. Any other comments? No, thank you so much. As now we move to issue three. Jared Lozano, Deputy Director, Division of Adult Institutions and Facility Support, CDCR Cynthia Mendonza, Deputy Director, Office of Fiscal Services. Alyssa Cervantes, Department of Finance. Kimberly Harbison, Department of Finance.

Caitlin O'Neill, Legislative Analysis Offices and Orlando Zavala, Legislative Analyst Office. Well, thank you so much. As we start with Cynthia Mendonza, good afternoon again.

The Budget Act of 2024 included a Class action litigation reporting mandate for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which required a report on expenditures for class action lawsuits against the Department and presented to the budget committees of both houses and the Legislative Analyst Office by January 31st of each year.

The report most recently released includes spending for each lawsuit in the 2023-24 fiscal year on all litigation activities, including, but not limited to, the cost of the Department legal staff, time payments to outside court counsel for legal services, and payments to plaintiffs monitors and court experts.

In the report, CDCR noted the class action teams were comprised of 26 attorneys and 10 administrative staff at a cost of approximately 4.4 million annually for the various class action cases. CDCR paid a total of 45.8 million in fees for that time.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jared Lozano, Deputy Director, Division of Adult Institutions, facility support, and Dr. Amar Mehta, Deputy Director of the statewide mental health program, to speak to the mental health components.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. Jared Lozano, Deputy Director, Facility Support. As a little background of our compliance or court compliance, we have, as of Today, we have 12 punitive and certified class action pending class actions pending against CDCR. Of those 12 cases, four cases are in the remedial and monitoring phase. One is settled in. The remaining seven have not been certified yet by the courts and I'm available for any questions.

Thank you so much for that. As now we move. Department of Finance.

Alyssa Cervantes, Department of Finance. Nothing further, but happy to answer any. Questions the Subcommitee has.

Thank you so much. LAO, Thank you. Any questions from the dais, comments, go ahead.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Still gathering my thoughts, but I guess the one question that I do have the for the Department, I understand that most of the work is contracted out to Department of Justice to defend corrections officers in Federal Court section 1983 claims. What kind of work are staff attorneys doing at CDCR? How are they supporting that defense?

So from an operation side, I deal with some of our CDCR staff attorneys that assist the Department of Justice attorneys in gathering information, working with us, doing tours, liaisoning between the department's programs, which were considered a program as and the attorneys that represent us within the court cases.

Thank you so much. And thank you, Mr. Vice Chair Lackey for being here. Any comments, questions, concerns? Thank you so much.

One of the things, you know, that we wanted to get some, some clarity on is the update on the fines that have been levied against the state for inadequate mental health staffing and how those court cases are, are coming forward.

I know you mentioned some haven't been decided on yet, but how is that affecting the fines that have been levied against us?

Yeah, so as far as the fines for staffing levels within our mental health, I'll pass it over to my partner Dr. Mehta, and he can speak about that.

Hello, Chairperson and Assembly persons. Thank you. I'm Amer Mehta, Deputy Director of Statewide Mental Health for CDCR. So I don't know of any correction system in the country or federal that has solved the problem of staffing their mental health Clinicians.

There's just really a national shortage and we're all competing for smaller and smaller pieces of the pie as more people retire, especially during COVID a huge number of people retired out of the medical profession.

So it's been a real struggle and we, we do our best to keep up with all, all of the court orders and the requests that are put on us. But it's something that we are eager to work with the court. We have the same goal obviously as the court, right.

Is being able to staff our Clinicians to help our patients. And we're just unable to find our way there. So we're hoping that this gives us an opportunity to work with the court to find a solution that we haven't been able to. No one, I should say, has been able to achieve on their own that I'm aware of.

Thank you for that. But we continue to be fined for these situations from the court. So is there any forward thinking of how we could comply with the court or maybe get ahead of the court with some of the, some solutions or thought process so that we would start to curb the fines that are coming our way in CDCR.

Yeah, that's a good point. So the fines are basically like double the mid range salary for all those vacant positions up to 90%. What we, what has helped a little bit, but we have a limited ability to do by ourselves has been that labor piece that I think people were talking about earlier.

Salaries can only get you so far and they have to be negotiated. In the labor environment though, it's not something we can do unilaterally. We do have a fair number of registry which are contracted physicians and Other doctors that come and work with us, but they're also very expensive.

We really do our best to go civil service and where the labor contracts are up for renegotiation this year, but it's always, it's outside of our reach to be able to affect any of that directly.

Well, thank you for that. And just to put this in context, do you know the updated total of the fines for this one case for Coleman specifically?

Yeah. So for the staffing it's been put on pause as the Ninth Circuit considers an appeal that's still pending. When it went on pause, I believe it was about 100. zero, and actually I might pass it over to our HR representative to speak to that. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon Members. Thanks for having me. Andrea Carter, Assistant Deputy Director for Human Resources for California Correctional Healthcare Services. So to echo on some of the things that Dr. Mehta mentioned is yes, we are facing a nationwide shortage and it's not for a lack of trying.

So just to kind of highlight some of the things that we've already put in place that have improved our hiring and staffing efforts is we came up with a one day hiring event. So if you know how it is to work with the state, it takes months to get on.

So we have put these events out where you can come in that day, interview, even take a job, get on, get it on exam, become reachable, interview and receive a tentative job offer that same day.

So with that, in 2024 we hosted a total of 12 of those events, resulting in 442 new employees in various classifications and over 1,444 attendees in 2025. In January we held our first one in Stockton where over 605 individuals attended, resulting in 348 interviews and 275 job offers.

It was such a good event that we had to schedule additional days for interviews where we held another 250 for this upcoming year as well. We have additional events scheduled in April 8th and 9th in Hanford, May 20th in Lancaster, and July 20th, 22nd and 23rd in Vacaville.

In addition to that, we added to our staffing plan the marriage Family therapist as well as the clinical counselor classifications which again we begin recruitment and we also have people eligible on the list for the fines amount as of January it was 7.52 million and total accumulated over this time is 197.35 million.

Well, thank you for that. Do you believe that by having these job positions that we'll start to be able to comply with the fines and they'll ultimately have effect on the fines that are still facing CDCR.

Yes, I'm happy to report that with all these additional efforts for psychiatry, we're at 95% filled right now and clinical social worker, 92%, and then also our recreation therapist at 96%. So those three classes are already meeting it and we're trying to work on the others to get there. Obviously, psychology is being a harder one.

Can you again let us know the actual total of fines for this one case?

Coleman accumulated for total is $197.35 million.

Okay.

And on the record again, since the stay is in place, nothing's been paid.

Thank you for that. Well, thank you for bringing some light to the jobs and retention that's there, but also coming up with some ideas of how we could get ahead of the courts and some of these fines in the future. Any other comments from Members on the dais? Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just in the aggregate, we have these cases that have been going for decades on a very high level. What are the impediments to their resolution? What is it that is continuing to be an obstacle to getting these cases resolved in federal court?

Yeah, so as an example, our Coleman case, the case that deals with mental health, our primary example is what we were just talking about today. Right. Our level of staffing. But also we have an increased percentage in our population that qualifies under that case.

So higher acuity mental health of our incarcerated people versus, say a decade ago or two decades ago, our Armstrong case, or also known as like our Americans with Disabilities act case. A lot of it is we're in a remedial phase with these.

So compliance with audit tool processes, things that we put in place, electronics technology solutions to prove our compliance with the court's expectations in our audit tool and also with our developmentally disabled disabilities case, which is our Clark case. Thank you, sir.

Well, thank you so much. Hearing no other questions, comments or concerns. Thank you for your presentation. As now we move to issue four. Dave Lewis, Director, Division of Facility Planning, Construction and Management, CDCR Cynthia Mendonza, Deputy Director, Office of Fiscal Services, CDCR Caitlin O'Neill, Legislative Analysis Offices. Lynn Ishimato, Department of Finance. Kimberly Harbison, Department of Finance.

Amanda Garcia, Department of Finance. And Phil Osborne, Department of Finance. And I believe we'll start with Cynthia Mendonza.

Thank you. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation requests 23.61,000,001 time in 2526 and 45.41,000,001 time in 2627, which will be available for encumbrance or expenditure until 6-30-20 for a pilot program to install and evaluate air cooling alternatives to improve indoor environments at the Central California Women's Facility, California Medical Facility, Kern Valley State Prison, and California State Prison, Los Angeles. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Dave Lewis, Director, Division of Facility Planning, Construction and Management.

Hello, Dave Lewis, Director of Facilities for CDCR. When I took this job about two years ago, this was probably one of my highest priorities in the Department. As we face climate change as a state, and we've seen the impact of climate change, increased temperatures, and the number of extreme heat events in our institutions, we as a Department, unfortunately, are not really able to meet that challenge.

And, you know, along the way, we've also experienced some issues around our ability to meet the state's indoor heat regulations related to the Department of Industrial Regulation and those heat regulations. We're looking at this as an issue around litigation as well of temperatures indoors in our housing units.

Our standard indoor for cooling for our housing units is 89 degrees. I think we could all probably agree that 89 degrees is not really a reasonable temperature for living environments. And if you look at the Department as a whole, approximately 52% of our housing units use evaporative cooling.

24% have some sort of mechanical cooling, and about 19% have no cooling option but have an air handler to be able to push air. And about 5% requirements rely solely on fans within the housing units to provide any level of cooling.

So it's difficult with those systems for us to even meet our temperature standards of 89 degrees in many cases, especially on extreme heat days. And on top of that, our construction methodology we used, which is non insulated concrete, also results in a great deal of heat gain in many of our housing units.

That's difficult to overcome with the systems as they exist in our housing units. So that's what led us to examine options around providing more adequate cooling in our housing units, given that it's a lived environment. And we're starting to see some research really around the impact of heat on violence in institutions.

There's starting to be some research in that arena that shows that heat can be a driver of violence, which, if you can imagine a housing unit, which we certainly have, where the heat gain during the day is such that it's very difficult even at night when the temperature is cool, because of that uninsulated concrete shell that just holds heat and then radiates heat at night, that sometimes we can have housing units that will Stay in the upper 80s and even into the 90 degrees all night long, and then just continue to accumulate heat.

So it's very important that we examine options. We've chosen to do this modality just because the Department has experience around doing renovations. That's not particularly positive. And we're trying to find all of the solutions up front.

We're trying to find all the problems up front as opposed to rolling out a deeper program that maybe would experience delays and cost increases because we haven't examined all of our options.

So it was found best when we started discussing this to do a smaller scale pilot to really identify the issues and resolution to issues around cooling in our institutions.

Thank you. We recommend approving the pilot given the significant health risks associated with heat for both incarcerated people and staff, as well as the potential for litigation. However, in reviewing this proposal, we did note that this pilot alone is will provide cooling for a relatively small share of the overall portfolio of housing units.

And to scale this statewide could potentially be a very significant undertaking, both in terms of cost as well as the amount of time it would take and just sort of the overall project management and operational implications. So we wanted to make the Legislature aware of that.

Essentially, this may be the tip of the iceberg and that given these challenges, we think it is important for the Legislature to have information that it will need to provide oversight of this issue as well as CDCR's efforts to address heat. So to gather this information, we recommend the Legislature require the Department to provide two reports.

The first is to have the Department actually submit the evaluation that it is proposing to conduct through this pilot program as well as a statewide strategy based on the results of that evaluation for scaling air cooling.

And given that it will take a few years to install these cooling pilots, we and then some time to actually see how they work. We recommend requiring this evaluation and strategy by January 10, 2031 to inform the budget, the language requiring that evaluation, and to make sure the Legislature knows what it's going to get back.

We recommend using Budget Committee hearings to clarify how the Department plans to evaluate success in the pilot. So we identified some areas where it hasn't provided a clear plan evaluation plan at this point, and those are how will the Department measure temperature in the pilot?

For example, will it be done with sensors that continuously monitor and collect data, or will it require staff to manually measure temperature in housing units? In addition, how will it compare what will it compare these pilot housing units to?

For example, will it compare them to their own temperatures in prior years or will it compare them to housing units that may be similarly situated but don't have, didn't receive the intervention. So that's the first report we recommend. The second report would be due. We recommend requiring to be due January 10, 2026. So much more near term.

And the purpose of that report would be to gather information that we think would help the Legislature understand the scale and scope of the problem, as well as to provide oversight of and to simply be informed of what steps CDCR is taking in the near term to mitigate the problem in addition to pursuing the pilot. So we detail that information in our publication.

But some examples of things we would recommend requiring them to report on are a full inventory of the the housing units in the state and their design type, as well as what information, if available, about the temperatures that they have reached in recent years, as well as a plan for how CDCR is going to be investigating cooling options for housing units that are not represented in this study because it only is looking at four design types and there's other types of units out there that are different design types.

So what how is CDCR moving forward on those, as well as what kinds of steps is the Department taking to address heat immediately, which could include changing summer uniforms or looking into portable air conditioners or painting roofs or things like that that might be able to provide bring some relief before the state can actually implement more long term solutions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Department of Finance

Lynne Ishimoto, Department of Finance, we don't think reporting language is necessary, but we definitely respect the Legislature's desire for information. We're open to discussing ideas for what information you might be interested in, though.

And we'd want to evaluate what data the department's currently collecting, take into account any impact, fiscal impact, as a result of reporting requirements. We know that they can often be resource intensive, so we would just want to take a look at that.

The Department remains committed to implementing this pilot successfully and developing a plan to expand air cooling on a larger scale. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that. Bringing it back to the dais. Any questions? Mr. Vice Chair?

Yeah, I'm a bit alarmed, especially at the heat that we're talking about here. I have a question. Is there any kind of thermostat control or any kind of measuring device to indicate how hot it's actually getting?

Generally, because these are evaporative cooling, they're not controlled like that. They're just turned on or off.

I get that, but I'm talking about a way to tell how hot it is in the room.

Yeah. So generally, temperature is measured when it exceeds 90 degrees outside on an hourly basis. Generally during that entire period, it's measured by hand by someone with a wall thermometer to determine what the temperature is. That's part of the litigation around Coleman is requiring us to monitor temperatures when the temperature exceeds a certain threshold.

Because I live in the desert, as some of you may know, I live right next to that Lancaster facility. Life is even hotter. So I can't imagine how hot it must get in those buildings. And that's borderline cruel in all truth.

I mean, that kind of heat and you have no way to escape it as a form of punishment, I don't think is appropriate. Secondly, I also had a concern about the cold. There are certain parts of the state where it gets darn cold, and I'm sensitive to cold myself.

And your body starts to shiver, and I'm sure you might give them a blanket or something, but might be seeing your breath in some of those rooms. I don't know. Is there any indication of how cold it gets?

Cold. The cold temperatures aren't necessarily subject to the same reporting requirements. That heat is, however, the same temperature. Fix that. Yeah. The same temperature control situations exist with cold as well. We're better able to handle that because, you know.

But the cold heating will be part of this as well because we generally have package units that do both heating and cooling. So replacing will have to consider the heating as well. Also, insulation obviously will have an impact on. On the need to heat in the winter as well.

Or so we'll be studying both cold and hot temperatures as part of this effort.

My other question would be, when we're making this adaptive change to these prison areas, are you going to have to move the inmates? Because that's a whole other drama.

It depends on how we deliver the cooling options. And, you know, the Department at this point has more flexibility to move inmates than we've had in the past and empty housing units as we're working on this type of environment. But we've also. It depends on how it's delivered.

That'll be part of what we examine on the delivery method because we've also made switches in cooling and done repairs on existing and open housing units. That's certainly possible, but there's a timing issue that comes with that.

Obviously, you don't want to do that in the deepest heat of the summer where you're sitting down cooling for several days. So that will be part of. As we examine how to move forward with this pilot program.

Then we'll also examine how we deliver and whether we feel that it's necessary to completely shut down the housing unit the insulation option doesn't require because that will generally be applied in no man's land. So that's outside of the secure perimeter. And so we can generally do that without any impact on the housing inside.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Assembly Member Schultz.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your remarks, everybody. For what it's worth, I agree with the proposals for reporting that were provided by lao. So in that vein, I did have three questions I wanted to start with. The first really is I just.

I know you may still be figuring it out, so this may be a continuing conversation, but what is your methodology for determining success? What are you thinking?

Well, I mean cooling, we can determine the level of success because I mean we can install large enough houses, I mean units that you can cool to any temperature if that's what you want.

So we're not really looking at this as a pilot, as in we're trying to measure the temperature success because that's really kind of a mathematical equation really relatively easy to figure out. This is more about what is the complexities of installation that we face.

And largely also around like the phasing of any future efforts will largely be determined on our success in reducing temperatures with these different modalities.

So if we're able to reduce temperatures significantly with an insulation only option, maybe not to the degree we want to, but we may start with just insulation in a lot of places because it will be able to get us closer to our goals and then look at rolling out like the mechanical cooling at a later option.

So we're kind of really looking at the success of insulation in various components and then also the complexities of installation. You also need to look at electrical draws and your infrastructure needs related to this. Obviously, mechanical cooling requires a significantly greater electrical load than evaporative cooling. And that will need to be examined also.

Generally the Department, when we figure used mechanical cooling, has used central utility plants to do that and use circulating water through hydronic loop to provide cooling to individual spaces. This we're looking at doing individual housing units. So it's a different approach than we've used in other cooling proposals in the past.

So finding out what the strengths and weaknesses of this relatively to other cooling proposals will be what we're looking at.

So we're really looking at this from more of an engineering standpoint than a statistical analysis per se, because your statistics can, you can depending on the Size of unit, you can achieve almost any temperature, but that will also drive your electrical usage pretty dramatically as well. And that needs to be part of the analysis.

So it's really looking at it from an engineering standpoint rather than like a purely temperature, pure temperature goal.

I definitely appreciate the explanation. Did LAO have any comment or response to that?

Yeah, I would just note that the Department has indicated that it expects, while its goal temperature goal is 78, to keep temperatures under 78.1 of the pilot options is insulation only, which it has acknowledged is not expected to reach meet that goal. At least that's what we were told.

So it's unclear, particularly unclear in that case how they will be evaluating success since it's not as simple as checking the temperature and looking at what it is. I mean, so it could be, if it creates a 5 degree improvement, is that worth it or is it trying to achieve a 10 degree improvement?

And if it's an improvement relative to what? That's kind of a key question.

When there's not a clear benchmark of 78 degrees, what are we measuring relative to, I think the other piece on the 70, on the pieces on the air conditioning and air conditioning plus insulation, where the Department has set the goal of meeting a 78 degree threshold.

It sounds like the Department is saying that, believes that that is pretty much guaranteed from an engineering perspective, which I'm not an expert in, but I guess I would just note that there's.

It's not entirely clear that, for example, we would know if, say on the second floor of the unit, it's not fully meeting 78 degrees or in parts of the unit, again, not an engineer, but just kind of highlighting some of those areas that still jump out to us as kind of lacking clarity just.

To speak to that. I agree. Part of what we're trying to examine is the particular weaknesses of our ventilation systems as they exist today, provide very little discrete control of how air is delivered throughout a housing unit that was really exposed during the pandemic and our problems related to ventilation during the pandemic.

So part of what we need to examine is related to options of actually delivering the air to the cells.

That's going to be particularly important because you can deliver as much air as you want, but pushing more air through a small tunnel is going to create like really other impacts as well related to noise and the various spread of the heat.

So I think all these things are, again, we're not looking to necessarily look at it from whether you can meet that temperature or not, because you can just Size a unit to meet the temperature. That's a mathematical equation that you don't need to study.

It's more around how do you actually deliver the air within the buildings themselves and the particular weaknesses of ventilation as they exist in our housing units today.

I appreciate the dialogue. I'm just going to say for the record that I echoed much of what the Vice Chair had to say about the conditions in the prison. So I am tentatively supportive of this pilot project. But the questions that have been raised by Lao I very much share.

So I'd love to see that flushed out before we get to the full budget process and have to start casting votes. Two other very quick points. Outside of the pilot program, what other things are CDCR looking at to help control temperature in cells?

Well, actually controlling temperatures, that's very difficult to do just due to the nature of our systems. We do have requirements, especially related to Coleman and people that are on heat sensitive medications around various programmatic efforts to address heat as they exist.

The temperature threshold starts when it reaches 90 degrees outside and you start having to take some actions, especially around people again that are particularly sensitive to heat and then they ramp up from there. But at a certain level, the efforts become difficult to address, especially in a situation where you have evaporative air cooling.

As the relative efficacy of cooling reduces as the temperature increases and you're dumping more humidity into the air, it can become even less comfortable even if the actual temperature is reduced. So a lot of those things have to be addressed operationally.

And that's something that we will continue to need to look at options around providing relief in those environments, which could include allowing people to go to places that are air conditioned. So generally, like program spaces are air conditioned in allowing and dealing with things that way, especially in extreme heat events.

Thank you. And my last question, and thank you for all the time, Mr. Chair, is for the four facilities that are going to be the focus of this pilot program.

I just have to ask, has CDCR looked at whether it makes sense to go forward with a pilot program that could involve significant capital upgrades that these facilities versus tearing down and rebuilding some of these facilities? I know they're old. I know that they're not all in the same great condition as other more recent construction is?

So are those things you have looked at? If not, are you committed to looking at that?

You know, the relative cost of improvement or adaptive reuse is something that we will always consider. You're right. This will not be an inexpensive approach to things. Obviously there's a lot of cost associated with this. And I think that you will automatically have to look at that relative cost of improvement, relative incremental improvement versus replacement costs.

But it's not cheap to build prisons either, so.

Well, thank you for that. Thanks for your questions. Certainly we're looking at a pilot program. So this is just one component of the issue that still exists within CDCR. So within this pilot program, what do you, what percentage do you think this is actually addressing versus the total 100% of the problem that's out there?

It's a very tiny percentage. We're talking less than 20 housing units out of 1500 overall. So again, this is an attempt for us to make sure as we roll out some, potentially roll out something much bigger that it makes sense and that we can actually accomplish our goals. So this is it.

I mean, we can have a relatively, a good impact on a relatively small portion of the population. We'll definitely look at how we roll this out to make sure we affect the, the people that are housed in these are most sensitive to these kinds of issues.

But relative to the overall system, it's a real, it's an almost negligible impact.

So looking at and hearing that as far as the pilot program and looking at the overall issue with CDCR, wouldn't it be wise to look at what's making sense through some type of data matrix with, if you will, this model that's being presented to address a larger problem in CDCR for cooling that potentially could prevent future liability lawsuits coming our way?

We just talked about one that was in excess of 197 million.

So I think there is some, there's some merit to looking at some type of data matrix to look at how we move forward in the future, especially given through the testimony that this is 1%, 1% of the larger overall problem that we're going to be facing here coming up in the State of California.

That's what we're trying to do is develop the data that can be used to expand this in a way that actually makes sense. I think the LAO rightly points out the difficulties in scaling up a program to any significant size is going to be one of the difficulties that we face.

Just the capacity in the market for even contractors to do this level of work is going to be a barrier that we face face this is, as we roll it out is going to be something that will take a long time to implement.

In the long run, it's not something that we're looking at any type of short term solution. We have to look at really long term solutions here.

Well, thank you for that.

And coming back to LAO, you did bring up as far as some type of study and reports coming up one later on in 30311 as mediate as 2026 and looking at the severity of this problem and trying to get ahead of liability and dollars to the State of California, what would be some of those areas that we would look at as far as creating some type of matrix around this situation?

We are recommending requiring of course the report to be submitted so you can the Legislature can review it as well as require requiring the Administration upon completion of the pilot to provide the Legislature with a strategy for scaling those long term solutions, those permanent solutions that will be costly and take time to implement, but some kind of a strategy to ensure we can do that in the most cost effective manner.

And as we note in the report, we also recommend that that include discussion of potentially ways to expedite construction as well as ways discussion of how to manage the impacts on population if they have people have to be relocated, potentially the impacts on staff. So there's that long term piece that we recommend requiring a report on.

But in the near term, given that this is an issue for people as soon as this summer, as well as you know, there's potentially a risk for litigation before the pilot is completed. We recommend the Legislature go ahead and begin collecting data or requesting the Department to provide information and data so that it can better provide oversight and so pieces.

Examples we recommend requesting include a description of how the Department currently monitors temperature and that could be useful for the Legislature and the Department in thinking about how to prioritize the future scaling of statewide of air cooling intervention statewide.

We also recommend the Department report on the existing infrastructure and a strategy for addressing the types of infrastructure that are not that is not handled in the or covered in the pilot. So we can make sure we're moving forward on that on those set of units as well.

And then we recommend getting information on what strategies can be done in the short term to address heat. One thing I'll flag as an example is requiring the Department to report on its policies around. As you heard, there are already policies in place related to the Coleman litigation.

So the Legislature may want to get a better understanding of those which frankly are a little bit hard to understand and follow and I believe only apply to class Members or at least in some cases only apply to class Members.

So it may want to get information about what the Department is doing for people who are not part of the Coleman class, including staff, as well as just getting information about what steps are being taken to address this issue.

Given that it's currently an issue and as was noted earlier, some portion of the units rely on fans only. It's our understanding from reading some research on this topic that fans, while they can be helpful in many situations, in certain situations can actually speed the onset of heat related illnesses.

So it could be helpful for as we highlight in in the reporting language recommendation to get the Department to actually report on its policy around the use of electric fans to ensure that they're being used appropriately. These are just examples. I hope that that helped answer your question.

If I didn't answer it, please let me know so I can try again.

Thank you for that. And it really is getting to the data that's there and even bringing up the different trickle effect from just the cooling system itself and how it weighs on the engineering system, the whole antiquidated system that's there and how that needs to bring up be brought up. But again, the pilot program is not dealing with 100% of the problem in the State of California Department of Corrections.

So being forward thinking and heading off any future liability litigation, I think it really would serve this Committee to get that information especially starting to move forward for the may revise to start to show that this isn't solving the problem. This is just starting to discuss the problem of how we move forward.

I want to thank you for that. Any other comments? Mr. Vice Chair?

Yeah. I have a question on what the selection process for this pilot program program would actually entail and I would hope that they would pick some of these extreme areas where the extreme heat would be. And I don't know what process you're going to utilize, but I'd love to know how you're going to make that determination.

Well, we determined based on where we saw the biggest heat impacts that again. So lac, which you mentioned is one of the sites because it's in the desert, has particularly evaporatively cooled Kern Valley State Prison. We're also looking at different types of housing. So LAC has 270s that we'll use. Kern Valley is 180s.

It's a high security institution and it's also in an area that is one of our institutions that has the most extreme heat days that's not mechanically cooled. The other desert institutions are all mechanically cooled.

So they will fall in a different area of what we're going to look at still have the same temperature control issues because they were all built to the 89 degree standard, but that you can probably address largely through insulation only. And then CCWF because they have a different type of housing with their crosstops. It was important to consider that in CMF because of the sensitive nature of the people that are housed at CMF. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments, questions before we move on to issue five? Thank you so much for that. As now we move on to issue number five, Dr. Amar Mehta, Deputy Director, Mental Health CDCR. Duane Reeder, Deputy Director, CCHCS Fiscal Management Services. Orlando Zavila, Legislative Analysis Offices. Alyssa Cervantes, Department of Finance and Kimberly Harbison, Department of Finance.

We will start with Dr. Amar Mehta. Will or did we switch it around? Well, we're going to switch around again. All right. I tried starting with Mr. Reeder.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Duane Reeder, Deputy Director of California Correctional Health Care Services, Fiscal Management Section. With me today is Dr. Amar Mehta, Deputy Director of the statewide mental health program. We're here to Talk about the CIM 50 bed mental health crisis facility.

The Department is requesting a net of 13.4 positions and $3 million in General Fund in 25-26, expanding to 20.4 positions and 4.4 million General Fund in 26-27 and ongoing to staff a licensed 50 bed mental health crisis facility at the California Institution for Men.

The increase in positions are for the medical, mental health and custody programs and it's largely driven by the increase of 16 beds. So there's an existing 36 bed unlicensed facility that will be replaced by a 50 bed license facility and that's critical to the courts as well.

The Department has worked diligently to reduce its unlicensed bed cost footprint and replace those with license beds. The facility is also critical as we need more mental health crisis space in the southern region.

Well, thank you so much and thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you for that. Now we go to Dr. Amar Mehta.

Yeah, I'm mainly here to answer questions, but I can speak a little bit about the licensed versus unlicensed issue. That's at one of the core issues here, but I leave it open to questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. LAO.

Yeah. Given that this new facility would allow the Department to convert from unlicensed beds to licensed beds and reduce the time it takes for people to transfer in the Southern California region to these crisis beds. We recommend approving the proposed activation of the mental health crisis facility.

We also recommend directing the Department to seek approval from the Coleman Court to reduce capacity. The Coleman Court requires a bed need study that gets submitted twice a year, both in the spring and the fall.

And based on the most recent bed need study, it appears that CDCR is operating over 680 excess inpatient beds which include some of these crisis beds that will be activated. This is in addition to the corn requirement that there that there'd be a 10% buffer in case of their unanticipated increases.

So to ensure excess capacity does not accumulate in the future. We further recommend provisional budget language requiring CDCR to regularly seek these adjustments to the inpatient bed capacity based on the updated bed needs standard. And finally, we recommend that the proposal account for potential savings since it did not account for the reductions in transportation. And together these changes could reduce CDCR costs by more than 100 million.

If all of the excess beds are deactivated, then to the extent that the Coleman Court denies a plan to deactivate some of the beds, it would benefit the Legislature to understand what criteria, buffer or threshold the state would need to achieve under the Coleman Court in order to deactivate some, if not all of this excess capacity. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that. Department of Finance

Alyssa Cervantes, Department of. Finance no additional comments at this time. But happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much. Bringing it back to the dais. Any questions, comments?

Just one, Mr. Chair. I think this goes to the Lao, but again, if anyone else wants to answer, feel free to jump in. When the initial budget proposal for the beds came forward, was there any indication at that time that there might be an overestimation of need when it first came forward?

So this January budget is the first time we're seeing these proposals and these are part of court required plan and they get submitted by a private contractor who then submits it to the Department.

So we're some of what we're seeing is has been there that we're seeing it has been sorry, but that's this is the first time kind of we're seeing some of this long term that we're highlighting this trend, but it's likely been there for several years. Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for that. And you know the justification for the operation, nearly 700 excess in bed inpatient beds. Is there a best practice regarding how many excess beds a system should maintain for population fluctuations?

Amar Mehta, Deputy Director of Mental Health it is a tricky thing. It depends on the system that you're running. So we can't compare apples to apples with outside facilities that run inpatients. We have cells of different types, so single cells or multi person cells or dorms.

And then we also have some beds at DSH Department of State Hospitals where they have unlocked dorms and we have to match the patient to the right housing type available, the right level of care within that boundary. We also need to match the security level. Sometimes patients may have enemies on certain units that they can't go to.

We have to make sure there's enough group treatment space. We take cells down quite often for renovations. Part of the problem is that our licensed beds, we have to make some upgrades and updates to them over the years as licensing standards change, but not all of them.

And if we were to close any beds right now that are currently licensed, then they could never be relicensed. They would never be able to meet the modern first time licensing standard.

And in my experience the court has been very conservative about that, saying that you guys have had a shortage of beds for many, many years and they don't want to undershoot so that, you know, so that we have to build some new beds in the future which are, you know, astronomically expensive.

So we do definitely speak to the court about this at least twice, three times a year when these, when the projections come out. And I think we're actually all on the same page, we do our best to try to make it as efficient as possible.

Thank you for that. Any follow up comments?

I'll just add that some of this excess capacity has been accumulating for some time. So part of the budget Bill Language would help seeking regular adjustments. And as mentioned, the court requires a 10% buffer. So these are beds that for unanticipated use could be activated at any time and are fully staffed. But what we are highlighting that's in excess of that 10% buffer that the court requires.

Thank you, thank you for that and thank you for bringing to light some of the parameters we might not even be thinking about when we talk about excess meds. We just see those with there's different areas that need to be addressed when trying to deal with situations like this. Any other comments from the dais? No.

Well, that concludes issue five. We'll now move to public comment. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much. Please keep your remarks within the allotted time communicated. Go ahead.

Danica Rodarmel on behalf of the GRIP Training Institute and initiate Justice Want to thank the Legislature for the work to. Ensure that the cuts to CDCR's budget. Don'T impact programs and visiting and the department's work to make sure that that's true.

Still encourage the Legislature and the Executive branch to Fund rehabilitative programs as much as possible in the coming session. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments.

Natasha Minskr Smart Justice, California Echoing my. The colleague's comments, we urge Legislature to. Support funding for programming, specifically the right grant programming. Thank you.

Norhan Abolail, Advocacy Manager at TPW we strongly urge the Legislature to support the Wright grant funding which provides community based rehabilitative in prison programming. This programming is proven to reduce recidivism rates from 41% to 21%, enhance public safety and reduce state spending in the long term. . Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much. My name is Katie Dixon. I am with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and we're a part of the Curb Communities United for Restorative Budgets. I would like to comment on the proposit. Excuse me, I haven't had any water since I got here. The Prop 36 implementation presentation we heard.

I strongly would like to encourage the Legislature to continue to Fund the rehabilitative programs that was recommended. And then I want to comment on the air pilot cooling program. We strongly encourage the Legislature to continue to encourage CDCR to monitor these rooms and these temperatures. We were grateful to hear that.

We all recognize that that pilot program is not really solving the larger problem. And we would love to continue working with the Legislature to help craft a better plan to assist CDCR with this. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

How you doing today? My name is Eric Abercrembie. I'm a staff Member and past participant in KALW's Public Media's Uncuffed Prison Radio and podcasting program. Our program was featured in a California Model Report as a cornerstone rehabilitative program. I'm requesting your support of the Rehabilitative Investment Grants for Healing and Transformation.

In my experience, I've observed and experienced firsthand the transformative impact rehabilitative programs can have on a person, drastically changing the trajectory of a person's life while incarcerated, as well as after returning back into society.

Not only can an individual grow in ways that can increase emotional intelligence, develop soft skills that can improve navigating employment efficiency, one can also find stability and purpose, ultimately improving themselves in ways that can impact their households and communities.

And the Wright Grant has funded over 100 communities based on organizations working in all CDCR prisons, significantly enhancing public safety and reducing recidivism rates. Thank you.

Hello. Thank you. My name is Richard Cruz. I'm the Executive Director of the Ahimsa Collective. And I want to just say your agreement to keep funding the rehabilitative programs or restorative justice programs, the reentry programs and all these rehabilitative programs.

That agreement to not cut those, I would love for you to not do that this year because those are the programs that help people come out, help people like me. I was inside, I went through these programs. That's what really helps. And as we get out here, we don't go back.

And so you don't have the same problem housing us again. So those programs are the basic, the right funding, the victim impact funding, the RJ programs are having a significant effect as when we meet the people coming out and we have them with a warm welcome and we support them out here.

So those programs, I would, you know, the air conditioning everything out, but once they get out, we're holding them and they don't go back in. And so please don't cut those programs. Don't cut that funding. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon. My name is Leonard Rubio. I'm a former lifer that spent 23 and a half years incarcerated. While incarcerated at San Quentin, I was able to take the Insight Prison Projects Victim Offender Education Group known as Vogue back in 2005. I was asked to co facilitate the third cohort.

I've been facilitating ever since I was paroled in 2010. Since I've come home, I've gotten married, earned a bachelor's degree, became a homeowner eight years ago, just last week celebrated 15 years of freedom. I'm also the Executive Director of the Insight Prison Project now, the very program that I was able to take programs from.

I've been in this position for seven years now and I'm now responsible for our Vogue program in seven prisons here in California. And we're looking at expanding to additional. The previous Wright grant has been crucial in allowing us to expand to additional prisons.

With funding in the upcoming budget, we will continue to make fundamental opportunities for people to change who will eventually be all of our neighbors. My story is just one example that these programs don't just benefit the individuals inside. They lead to safer communities, lower recidivism rates, long term savings for taxpayers and additional taxpayers like myself. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Mr. Chairman. Coby Pizzotti with the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians. I would just like to point out a few things from the aspect of a clinician or a nurse operating on the mental health crisis bedside.

If you took in consideration all the money that's been paid out in fines as well as contracted out work, you could easily have made a wage that was going to incentivize people to come in and be civil servants.

Right now, what is being paid out to the outsourced contract staff is so excessive that you cannot get somebody to come in and be a civil servant. It's creating a barrier. So that's one point. Additionally, streamlining the hiring process would be extraordinarily helpful.

We've heard stories of it taking upwards of six months from the time somebody applies to getting them boots on the ground.

Why would you, as a state employee or as somebody trying to be a state employee, want to wait that long when you can go and get hired on within two weeks of an outsourced contract staffing agency and be inside CDCR? So. And then finally, on the considerations of the CIEM bed expansion, we fully support that. That's.

It's wonderful news to get more licensed bed on board. More licensed beds on board. However, one of the things we need to consider when we hear the term excess beds, all these facilities were designed for single bunking beds. Beds. The excess bed capacity in large part is due to the double bunking of beds.

So in reality, and especially when you're talking about an individual who's suffering from mental health issues, a lot of times you cannot put people in places where it's going to create a hostile treatment environment and that means having them double bunked, in our opinion.

And we're the people that treat them on a day to day basis, we're the ones providing the individual care to these people. We believe that it's certainly more beneficial to have a little more space to ease the tension from somebody who's dealing with psychosis to have that kind of burden lifted.

So we believe that that will provide better treatment options and have Shorter time frames in which they're in these mental health crisis beds. With that, thank you.

Thank you so much for your comments. Any other public comment, Want to thank you for all the presenters bringing up the information in front of us to Members that are here. This concludes Public Safety Subcommitee number six on Public Safety budget.