Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

All right. The Joint Hearing of Budget Subcommittee 1 and Budget Subcommittee 4 will start in 60 seconds.

All right, the Joint Senate Committee and Budget Fiscal Year Subcommittees 1 and 4, Joint Hearing will come to order. We're holding our hearing today here in the State Capitol, Room 113.

Ask all the Members of the two subcommittees who are not here to please join us in Room 113 as we begin our hearing. We have only one item that we're taking up, which is today for discussion only. We're not taking action on it.

This is to prepare us, but it's a key item that is located and within Budget Subcommittee 4, but which is of great interest, of course, to all of the Budget Subcommittee 1 and all of the programs that Budget Subcommittee 1 oversees as well.

So, I'm pleased to be joining today my distinguished colleague and mentor, Senator John Laird, the Chair of Budget Subcommittee 1.

Thank you. That was overdoing it, but I appreciate it, and we look forward to this. We appreciate the fact that there's a Joint Hearing because the overriding question is what people intend to do with this and that's what we look forward to vetting on a housekeeping matter.

I just want to also let anybody know that Budget Subcommittee 1, which was listed as upon the call of the chair, will convene in its regular hearing in the swing space, Room 2200, roughly 10 minutes to 15 minutes after the adjournment of the joint session. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And also, Budget Subcommittee 4 will be meeting in this room immediately upon adjournment of our Joint Hearing as well. As we go for the 10-hour record for Sub 4 this week. Okay, so we're here today to take up the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency item that is regarding.

I'm sorry, I'm looking at our other agenda. Let me put that away. That the California Education Interagency Council and the trailer bill Language associated with it. So, we'd like to invite the Department of Finance and GovOps to please come forward to present on the item.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Justin. Fellow Committee Members, my other Chair, Mr. Laird. My name is Justyn Howard. I'm the Deputy Secretary for Fiscal Policy and Administration at the California Government Operations Agency, and I'm here to present on the California Education Interagency Council proposal.

So, the Government Operations Agency is requesting $5 million in General Fund in 2025 and 26 and ongoing to establish the Office of the California Education Interagency Council to bring together TK-12 education, higher education, and state economic and workforce development agencies to improve planning and coordination across the state government.

As way of background, in August of 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom launched the development of the California's Master Plan for Career Education. This initiative aimed to promote equitable access to high-paying jobs by addressing structural barriers and strengthening the education and training pathways.

The development of the Master Plan included extensive public input from across the state. The public submitted written comments, more than 30 interviews were conducted with key interest holders, including members of the Legislature and legislative staff, and eight design sessions were held in various regions across the state.

One of the primary recommendations consistently echoed in these various forums was the need for state and regional coordination in this space.

More specifically, the need to regularly evaluate the changing nature of work and the economy, to define career pathways in which the sectors should respond and to enhance collaboration and decision making between education systems, workforce providers, employers, community organizations, and interest holders were some of the most regularly requested outcomes in the master plan process.

This proposal is in response to those efforts. I want to take a quick minute to just answer probably one of the questions, why GovOps? As you know, we are not an education-based agency.

I think there's three reasons that GovOps was selected to kind of host this council, and one is we're seen as a neutral third-party entity who doesn't have any preconceived policy notions or opinions in this policy area. Two, we are experts at standing up new state entities.

We literally wrote the book on how to create a new department from scratch many years ago within our agency. And then three, we are also experts in terms of cross collaboration across different agencies who are separate and unique, and standalone.

We have the control agencies underneath us who report to us, and we have a very unique ability to cut through red tape in an expeditious and efficient way. So, with that, I'm happy to answer any more questions that I can possibly answer at this time.

I will note that this is a proposal, and we look forward to working with the Legislature on feedback to the initial trailer bill and as we move forward and hopefully getting this approved as part of the budget. So, with that.

Natalie Griswold, Department of Finance. Nothing to add at this time, but available for questions. Thanks.

Thank you, Senators. Alexander Bentz, Legislative Analyst Office. We recommend if the Legislature would like to prioritize this initiative that they approve it with limited-term funding of three years.

We concur with the assessment that the state's workforce and education activities are spread across many different agencies and in a rapidly evolving economy, this may create challenges for implementing a statewide workforce and education strategy. And there's currently no one body that takes on all of the functions of this proposed council.

However, two existing statewide entities, one in workforce, the California Workforce Development Board, and one in education, the Intersegmental Coordinating Committee, take on many of the functions and the task of this proposed council. Additionally, various entities at the regional level provide venues for regional collaboration, as the Department alludes to.

Ultimately, it's difficult to know whether a new statewide venue for collaboration between both workforce entities and education entities will lead to better outcomes for California workers.

This is because we don't know whether the primary barrier to collaboration in this area is the lack of an obvious venue or to differences in the respective agencies'f and entities' priorities and incentives. So therefore, as I said, we might recommend, if you would like to prioritize this initiative, that the Legislature provide limited-term funding of three years.

This will give time for the new council to lay out a vision and to give examples of initiatives that will lead to better outcomes. Thank you.

Thank you and welcome to. We should've welcomed our two Vice Chairs at the outset, Senator Niello, the Vice Chair of Budget Sub 4, and Senator Ochoa Bogh, Vice Chair of Senate Budget Subcommittee Number 1. Are there questions for the Agency or for Finance, or for LAO? Senator Laird, go.

The Legislative Analyst basically saying it's difficult to predict the outcomes and wants a finer point on them. I know that in your opening comments, you said this is a starting point.

How if this moves ahead, do you refine it to measure outcomes, get to outcomes, and convince us when we have to deal with this in June that this is a worthy proposal?

I would say that, you know, the way that the trailer bill is laid out and what we are proposing to do is there are objectives and goals that are at a high level established here.

Once we get going and we staff up, we'll be able to refine those fine point goals that you're asking for that we can report on what those deliverables are going to be.

My only point to the LAO is that the workforce of the state is constantly changing and that new industries come and go, and so that there's always going to be a need to look and evaluate the efforts that the state is undertaking in this space. Hence, the need for ongoing resources to continually to evaluate.

So, there is required reporting to the Legislature in the trailer bill that will occur on a regular basis, that will allow you as the body to evaluate whether you think we're being successful. But I can't tell you what the specific objectives are because we'll need to bring everyone together, we'll need to bring the council together, hire the Executive Director to lay out those goals and objectives.

And I get that you wouldn't have the specifics, but you would have the framework and you'd convince us that the framework works.

And we, later in the Budget Sub 1 hearing, for example, are considering the streamlining of all the related programs like this that are in all these different funding sources, and we're trying to put them together in one. And it seems to me this is sort of a fit.

But even with that one, we want to know that all the different reasons for those programs are going to be met by the consolidation, and that in that case, all the application deadlines are going to be synchronized. And so, we can have that discussion now in the budget process about whether that makes sense.

And I get that this is the flip side of GovOps not having worked in this before is you hope that the process will help guide you in a way that you haven't done this.

But I would suggest, just on behalf of our budget sub, that we would like a little more clear direction about where you're going, what the goals are, whether they're measurable, and of course, it's going to change as the workforce changes, but the overall structure won't change. The overall structure will be trying to address this.

And I think I would like a clear demonstration that there are goals, this is how we're going to meet them. This is the value in this. Because that's the question we will be evaluating when this comes back in May and June.

I don't know if anybody wants to comment, but I think that's just a clear statement I'd make.

No. And that's a fair statement. And the legislation proposed trailer bill does lay out a requirement to develop a strategic plan and submit that. And many of those goals and things would be outlined in that plan, and how to go about implementing the plan.

Well, when I was a cabinet secretary, the suggestion of a strategic plan was a sort of an invitation to jump off the top of a building. And in part because you can do a strategic plan one of two ways.

You can have the laundry list of everything everybody wants and there's no prioritization and no money attached to it, or you can involve everybody in a way that they're bought into the outcome and you have a joint outcome and everybody sees the value and you mediated between those interests in the process and then had a strategic plan that really gave you a way to go forward.

So once again, I would hope you would choose the latter option for a strategic plan rather than the former.

Yes. I don't want to jump off the building.

Yeah. I don't want to hold hands and be jumping off with you. Thank you very much.

Senator Niello.

Thank you. Senator Laird used the term starting point. And this Governor has less than two years left in his term. And this is just a starting point of a rather significant sort of reorganization. He's been very active in the effort to reorganize things in state government generally.

And one would hope that a Governor would come in at the beginning with his strategic vision, and if it requires any significant reorganization of the government, that that happen early on so that he or she can shepherd the results of those things. That's not going to happen in this case. And that's probably my biggest concern.

We are embarking on a significant organizational initiative without knowing what the next Governor is going to think about this. The other issue that troubles me is workforce development. And that's the ultimate objective of this right, is to have a developed workforce for the economy that we have.

The problem is the economy that we have is not all that great. There was a survey that came out by CNBC just yesterday or the day before. That cited various aspects of all states in the union, and California rated very high on certain things like access to capital.

I don't have it in front of me, so I'm going from memory, which is a scary thing for me, but access to capital, technological development, quality of life. Actually quality of life was eighth. I think it should be first. But whatever, those were all high.

What was low and really low are the things that contribute to the consumption of the developed workforce. That is, employers, businesses, to actually put people to work. That the objective of this reorganization is that's the product that it is presumed to develop. We have the highest or second highest unemployment rate in the country.

And by all measurements, including this CNBC poll and NBC not being exactly a radical right-wing organization, cost of doing business was 45th and cost of living is 50th. And the rating of the state as a friendly place to business was somewhere around 40 or something like that. That's really the problem.

I would suggest if we spent more time on true economic development issues and I talk about an economic development ethic which is just quite simply weighing equally the cost to the obligor on regulations, to the benefit on the protected class, if you will, of regulations. And we don't do that.

And so, California being a very difficult place to do business, I would say that before we go on a significant reorganization of our educational system from cradle to career, which is another initiative that actually I think is a good one, but that before we do that, we ought to make sure that the consumers of that initiative, meaning employers, are ready and able to take that on in a productive way.

And from a macro perspective, in my opinion, we're not. And I think that's a much more important endeavor for us than a significant reorganization that our current Governor has about a year and a half to shepherd.

Maybe just a quick comment. You know, I don't know the surveys you're talking about, but just in general about the reorganization and the effort of the council here. This council, through the work that it's going to be doing, it's going to be coming up with recommendations and things that it suggests its partner entities do.

It doesn't have the authority to force that upon those agencies. They will have to come back to the Legislature to the extent there's any legislation that might be needed, to the extent that say the UC wants to do something, they'll have to go through their process to ultimately get it done.

What they're going to be doing is cross-collaborating, coming up with these recommendations. And then those entities will have to go out and implement should they agree with them.

So, there is no mass, I guess reorganization in terms of this entity is now going to set firm the policy that everyone has to follow, only to the extent that they come back and it gets adopted by its partner entities in the Legislature.

Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, it's an interesting topic because as I have sat on the Committee on Education, as we've sat on budget, as had the opportunity to sit on Rules Committee for one year and having conversations with the folks that are in, you know, the highest form of leadership within our UC or CSU and the community colleges.

You know, it's interesting because one of the questions that I've had throughout my tenure here is the fact that there's some intent with certain educational entities communicating as far as like our ROP programs, who communicate with the local workforce to ensure that they have programs are matching the workforce locally, right?

We have efforts on that point already with ROP programs, our community colleges, our career tech, they're communicating with the companies.

The companies to ensure that they match the workforce requirements and the training in that end. So, we have it in certain points. Where I noticed that we had some discrepancy was at the higher, at the UC, CSU level, you know, as far as the communication that went on on that.

And we, and I have during our committees actually expressed that concern. So, it's interesting because to a certain degree I can see where this would be needed. I always talk about, you know, are we providing the courses, the majors that are actually going to match what we need in the State of California.

Because as I have met through with several entities in our state, I realize that they're not fully employed, they don't have the workforce. And my question was, we're graduating thousands of students every single year, and yet we don't have the workforce.

But then again, going back, there are other factors that are impacting the ability for these graduates. One, whether or not they have the actual skill sets to meet the demands of the workforce for today, or number two, they're not able to stay here in this state because of affordability. So, they're leaving our state.

So, there's other factors that are also impacting the ability for our graduates. So, there's multi factors that I think are based on decision making that the Legislature has put in place, which I think goes to the point that my colleague Senator Niello has expressed.

But I am kind of curious because although there is some need, I am not sure that a whole organization is actually needed with an investment of $5 million every single year to get that done.

When and if our current systems, our educational systems, would actually just start collaborating and communicating a little bit, which is an effort that they can already do, to try to make sure that they actually have the programs needed. And especially considering the fact that, you know, this won't have quote, unquote teeth. Right?

You're not going to mandate that the recommendations are actually enforced. They're going to be recommendations. So, I think it's a bit of an endeavor, especially when you consider, you know, and I love the way that you expressed Senator Niello, you know, the ability to shepherd the program moving forward by our current Administration.

So, I'm kind of split on this because I can see the need. But then again, our current systems should already be doing that. And I'm not sure that creating an organization or an entity to do that is actually the best use of time and financial means.

Second to that, my additional question is, do we have examples where this has actually worked in other states? Do we have anyone this idea, this notion? Is there somewhere other than California where it has been implemented and it has actually been effective in its goals and intentions?

Good question. I can't answer that right now. I'd have to go back and do that research. I just don't know. I don't know if the LAO knows from their experience.

Other states have somewhat similar bodies. We do not know the details of that. We'd be happy to work with your staff to more further assess that.

I just hate, especially considering the budget that we have to consider. I would hate for us to be reinventing something at this time when we have systems in place that could already do that, you know, communication within our educational systems. And number two, if we don't know if it's going to effectively work right now.

I think I see exactly what you're saying, and it's a fair comment. I would just note that, you know, through the development of the master plan and all the meetings and plannings and stuff that came out, this proposal is in response to that.

So, somebody feels that there isn't this effort that's going on and it's desperately needed within this state, hence the proposal. So, we wouldn't be bringing it forward if we didn't think it had value. We didn't think it would, you know, achieve, you know, certain objectives to help the state.

So, the stakeholders are the ones who suggested it through the whole process, and that was one of the main recommendations that came out of that.

So, my final comment with that. Mr. Chair. Sorry, I apologize. So, my final comment to that would be that also in my tenure here, which has only been, this is only my fifth year, but what I've seen is that we are continuously expanding agencies and entities and umbrellas to basically deal with.

To deal with the consequences of what, in my humble opinion, has not been effective legislation or proposals. So, I mean, and that sounds a little biased, maybe a little partisan, but in reality is we have systems right now that are the result of literally policy. Right.

And we're trying to fix the policy with creating bigger or bigger, I'm sorry, additional oversight. And it's not actually addressing the root of the problem, which is a lot of the policy that we've actually passed.

And so it's almost, it's almost like a band aid, you know, it's to make us feel better that we're doing something rather than actually admitting, okay, did this actually work? And so that's just my humble opinion that as I'm, you know, coming in and looking at, you know, because I haven't, I didn't come from politics.

I didn't come from. I came in from the outside. And I've been observing and listening, watching and bringing that critical mind.

And this is what I'm actually seeing, that we continuously put band aids rather than actually analyzing what has worked and not worked and just addressing it legislative and being humble enough to say, hey, you know what, this doesn't work. Let's see if we can redirect our attention.

And that's, I hate to say this, but this isn't what I feel with this partition. But I do see why this would be a recommendation.

But I'm not sure that at this time it's something that I think there's a better way to address it in a more systemic and coordinated effort with our educational systems already in place, because we already see it in place with some of our educational systems already. So I hope. I didn't want to sound partisan.

I don't want to sound. I want to be just really objective because I really do care. I really do care.

Thank you, Senator. And let me start by saying that that wasn't partisan at all. I'm about to say very similar things to what you just did. Senator Laird, or the State Library can correct me. I believe I am the first ever Legislator elected who was the former chair of the Intersegmental Coordinating Council.

So I have some knowledge of this area and I've served for the since 2010 until my swearing it here on the Western Interstate Commission. So I've spent a lot of time with, with the heads of the similar councils and agencies in every other state in the west, including Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

So a lot of background in this space. And then like Senator Laird, I've been working in on these policy issues for, for some time. And the problem statement that has been described here by every Member of both subcommittees and by the Department and the agency is correct that we have inadequate coordination.

We don't have a mechanism just for execution for operations of higher ed programs. It's an odd duck, except for during the Schwarzenegger Administration when there was a Secretary of Education whose portfolio included higher education. There has never been a state operating entity for higher education programs.

And so the Student Aid Commission sits out by itself and the Bureau for Private Post Secondary sits out by itself. But when the Legislature and Governor have new programs and initiatives to implement, we've been just randomly placing them in different agencies, celebrating their lack of bias but really they're also lack of any expertise whatsoever.

And so when, when the Legislature appropriated the half $1.0 billion for the regional K14 partnerships ended up in DGS or OPSC or. Yeah, and I was a private citizen at the time working in our own region here in Sacramento to put an application together.

And they did an excellent job at dgs, but they had absolutely no content knowledge whatsoever. And so we were repeating the same mistakes that we were trying to solve. Because of that, Cradle Careers is already in the data system's already in govops.

And so I really first appreciate the work that Zep1 is doing to try to make some sense of this from a state government perspective. So. And to me, there are two distinct issues here. The sort of the coordination, the big picture up here, and then there's. But who delivers our programs?

Is there any connection or coordination between them? And so it's great that Sub one is tackling that as well, because when I took over this Subcommittee, I was excited because it had all these higher ed things in it. That's my career.

But it also just reminded me how nonsensical our approach to higher ed has been in state government for generations, with the brief exception of the Schwarzenegger interregnum. So we had a coordinating agency. It's the agency that's in law. When the master plan was created and California became.

Became the, you know, the leading state in the leading polity in the world for higher education, that coordinating agency was created to do exactly what we've talked about today and to align the various institutions. That coordinating agency utterly failed. And it failed because it was comprised of essentially these people that are proposed today.

There was no labor and workforce agency, so it was just the institutions themselves.

But the first coordinating council was in some sense like the Articles of Confederation, like a good first draft, but absolutely did not work for the same exact reasons that it had no authority, leverage, and you were asking people to come together to coordinate that had no reason to do so.

They had no more reason to coordinate sitting around a table than they did before when they could just pick up a phone and talk to each other directly. It's not as though the President of UC and the Chancellor of CSU have never met each other. They don't need a table created for them to introduce one another.

So that failed. And we created the California Post Secondary Education Commission in 1972. I think it was with the intention that it would have some. Maybe not teeth, but some, it would at least have gums.

And the Legislature at the time Said, look, we're not going to consider the creation of new academic programs or if you want to create a medical school at a University or what have you, you can't do that unless that this court, this cpac, the Post Secondary Ed Commission has looked at it first and they're going to weigh in on, they're going to be the ones that evaluate eligibility to the universities to see how we're actually doing.

When UC says we're admitting the top one third, what does that really mean? And go check. Somebody needs to check independently. And they did. And they found out we were admitting a lot more or a lot less because UC wasn't actually charged with reporting on that. So they were given real responsibilities and the resources to do it.

And, and they were. I would say they were wildly successful for some time. But I think the other lesson from that period was the heads of that agency just happened to be the former, the former consultants to budget sub.

What was budget sub 2 in the Assembly and the Ways and Means Committee, which was the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

And so that agency, in addition to its formal power, had the incredible informal political power of everybody in the world knew that they were the Legislature, had a deep sense of ownership over their work and that when they made a recommendation, you better listen because if you didn't, you were going to get, you were going to get, you're going to get raised up the poll in the budget Subcommittee or in the full Committee or in the budget conference Committee.

So it had real impact, but only, but largely because of that. And when those folks left, CPEC became less and less and less relevant because just information alone, data alone and a common table alone doesn't produce these outcomes. So I'm very supportive of the need to address the problem.

I even have a Bill on the topic that's not out of whack with this, but I do think the design is really important and I don't know what the right one is exactly because the other states, except the states that have consolidated systems, you know, where everybody, it's all one Board of Regents for all the system or something like that.

They're not, most of them are not highly effective coordinating bodies. There are a couple, but many of them have these other political considerations. So there isn't a lot of evidence that this kind of a system can work. Now we have other cognates and state governments.

Strategic Growth Council is a great example, you know, that resources has touched as well. But those are different entities. Those are the. Where people who are charged with. They are the Executive.

The actual executives of their agencies and departments coming and who have formal decision making powers can come together and the head of Caltrans and the head of resources can actually collaborate.

I'm making it sound easier than it really is, but they are the heads of their agencies and the people who implement the programs report to them up the chain. That is not the case for any of the public systems as of higher education, far, far from it. I was vice chancellor of the California Community College System.

No one worked for me in any college or for the chancellor. And so we have this idea in our head that if we had this council, the late Martin workforce secretary would say, hey, there's a real need in Inland Empire for folks who are trained in, you know, in medical imaging.

And it would be great if we had an associate degree that leads to a bachelor's degree program. And everybody around the table says, yeah, that would be great, wouldn't it?

And we imagine in our heads that then the Chancellor of CSU will go and make Cal State San Bernardino offer such a program and that the community college, Grafton Hills or Riverside will offer such a program. And that is impossible. That cannot, it's not that it doesn't happen. It cannot happen.

That's not how academic or workforce programs emerge from the campuses. So it creates a, this, this, this, this illusion, this theater of coordination that isn't real. And I, I believe we do need real coordination. But, and this is an important start.

So I appreciate that you're, you're, you're, you're, you're telling us that this is the, the first steps, but I do think if we're going to, if the Administration wants us to, to spend money here when it's proposing such substantial cuts to UC and CSU and zero money for housing and for homelessness, that it better be, we better be getting as, as much out of this that we are giving up in those other domains.

And I'm not convinced we're there. We're there yet.

The last thing I'll say about, because I know I've talked about this for, for, for a bit is just that if you, in my own humble opinion, that if you look at the arc of higher education, entrepreneurial policymaking, innovative policymaking over the last, since the Master Plan, so since, since 1960 or at least 1970, that the most productive period of higher ed policy innovation has been the last 10, the last 10 years, maybe the last 15 years, the enactment by the Legislature and the Governor of the associate degree for transfer program, the sweeping reforms to the Battery of assessment tests that we used to require and send Everybody to take 17 years of remedial math before they could take their first college class that we erased and have replaced.

Replaced with much more effective systems.

The rise in dual enrollment, the bachelor's degrees in career and industry certifications that some community colleges are offering, the expansion, unfunded as it is, but the expansion of the Cal Grant program and the advent of the Promise programs throughout the community colleges, CCGI and the creator of the Career data systems, over and over and over again, these were all, all these ideas were on the table for the three decades before this past one.

They never went anywhere because every time someone would propose them, the Committee or the governor's veto message would say the great idea, we should ask our coordinating body to take a look at it and never to be seen again because the institutions weren't interested in advancing change. And so my biggest worry is two of them.

The first big worry is that it's money that we should be spending on UCNCSU in housing and homelessness and other key priorities.

But the second is that, not that it won't be as effective as what we've, what some of my colleagues have said, but they will actually become a sink for important breakthrough initiatives and innovations that we need to be undertaking in California higher education in order to advance exactly what the Career Master Plan and the Governor have proposed.

So I'm open to the idea. I'm deeply skeptical that at the moment, but I've got my name on a Bill, so I definitely support the concept here.

But I also just know from experience how important is it if we do it, that we have to design it really smartly and really tight in order to really assure that the objectives are accomplished that my colleagues have described.

We definitely look forward to working with you and your staff and the rest of the Committee Members on improving the proposal. Like I said, this is our initial proposal proposal. And then we'll be happy to have further conversations with you. I will just. Quick plug for Cradle to Career.

They are doing very well and they're getting very close to releasing their first dashboards and we have, as an agency helped them to achieve what they have to date.

So, yeah, it was no knock on cradle or regional K14 partnerships. I actually think those, those were implemented well, but we just got lucky that the agency was, you know, was well led and well managed to do that and that the partners and stakeholders that came together to make those successful did so.

So it's not, it's not a knock on those programs, but Those won't be the only things we ever do in higher education ever again. So having having a framework, a strategy, a leadership that can be coherent and this is is wise. Let me just say one other thing about the Lao recommendation.

If you were here yesterday, you know I'm a total Lao Stan. You know I love Lao. I'll fight to the death to protect your honor. I don't agree on this particular issue for the reasons that event said.

If we're going to do this, we should be planting our flag, that we're going to be doing this, it's serious and that there will be consequences. And if we say it's limited term, then my worry is that that really announces. We're just preparing a plan for the fun of it. There's going to be no accountability.

We're not going to follow through. And so I think in this particular case, although the concerns are well founded, that we're better off with permanent positions here. So. All right. Anything else on this Chairman?

Of course I want to say what he said. I think it was articulate. It was right on the point. And, and I, as a Member of the Cradle to Career Board, did not interpret his statement as a dis. And it is just about to.

And I'm even doing a bit to try to open up one additional place of information that has been closed off. And I think it truly is about to work, given all that. And then for your amusement.

I'm not supposed to be checking emails while I am in a hearing, but I just got an email that said I might be a good fit for the California government Operations Deputy Director of Water and Communications. And, and I just, I, I know you're looking for expertise. I'm very happy in my current job. It just. That's good.

All right. Any other questions or comments? All right, thanks. Appreciate it. We're going to hold the Item open in sub 4 for, for that may revise period. But appreciate your joining us today. Thank you very much. And, and that was our only item to conduct jointly with Subcommittee number one.

It's been an absolute joy for somebody from my background to spend one hour as a associate Member of budget Subcommittee number one. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

No, it's clear that we should have you on our side in great hearing. And Budget Subcommittee 1 will reconvene in about 10 minutes in Room 2100 in the swing space.

All right. And we and Budget Subcommittee 4 will convene in the same room as soon as we can get rid of all the Budget Subcommittee one folks. Thanks very much.