Senate Standing Committee on Rules

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your patience. It's wonderful to see each and every one of you here. We have a full docket here today. This is the May 21st Version of our Senate Rules Committee. What we're going to do is we're going to call the meeting to order.

Then, we're gonna get into our administrative items for the day. We're gonna ask Mr. Board Member, Mr. De La Fuente, if you wanna be able to come forward at this time. Mr. De La Fuente, before we get into your panel, what we're gonna do is do some housekeeping and then we'll come right back to you, sir, and appreciate your patience.

Thank you so much. So, why don't we call the meeting to order? Madam Secretary, can you call the roll?

[Roll Call]

Quorum has been established. All five Members are here and present in Committee. Again, Mr. De La Fuente, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take up some housekeeping items. We're sorry for the delay, and then we'll come right over to you to be able to open up the panel. Yeah, absolutely.

And I wanna just let folks know ahead of time, I'm gonna be going back into another meeting here today and I apologize, but I will be back. It's a busy week and some of us are in and out for committees.

And I want to apologize in front, but I'll, of course, turn it over to our very capable Madam Vice Chair and I'll be back towards the end of the meeting. What we'd like to be able to do is start with Governor Appointees not required to appear. That's Items 2D through I.

We'd like to be able to see if there's discussion, debate, or a motion. Items 2D through I.

So moved, Mr. Chair.

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Is there any additional discussion or debate? Hearing and seeing none. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

5-0 vote, the motion passes. We're now going to close the roll. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, Committee. We're now going to be moving on to Bill Referrals. This is Item Number 3. Item Number 3, Bill Referrals. Discussion, debate, or is there a motion?

So moved.

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Final call for discussion or debate under Bill Referrals. Hearing and seeing none. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

That's a 5-0 vote. Motion passes. We're going to close the roll. Ladies and gentlemen, Committee, we're now going to be moving on to Floor Acknowledgments, Items 4 through 7 on our agenda. Is there a motion to approve?

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Discussion or debate? Hearing and seeing none. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

So moved.

[Roll Call]

As a 5 to 0 vote, motion passes. We're going to close the roll. All right, we're now going to be coming back to Mr. De La Fuente. We want to say, Mr. Board Member, welcome to Senate Rules Committee. We're grateful that you are here.

I'd like to talk about the run of show, if that works for you, sir. So, what we're going to do is we're going to provide three minutes for your opening testimony. We want to say thank you again for being here and thank you for your service to the people of California, especially to the students of California.

During your opening testimony, we're going to invite you to welcome and acknowledge any family, friends who may be here or watching online. After you've completed that, we're going to open it up for discussion or debate. Madam Vice Chair will be running the discussion or debate. We'll then open it up for public comment, take a vote.

And again, we are so appreciative of your service and grateful for your work here in California. Mr. De La Fuente, you have three minutes and I'll give you a 30 second prompt. And again, I apologize, sir, that I need to step out, but I will be back.

Thank you, Senator. The secret to a long life is gratitude—daily gratitude and service. So, I want to start off by saying thank you to my beautiful wife who is watching. She couldn't be here with us, but we're expecting a baby boy in July. The third generation of Californian to be born in this great state.

I'd like to thank my parents who have given me the courage, the value system, and the opportunity—and so many opportunities. I'd like to thank my Uncle Abe, who's here present, who is a local here in Sacramento, and I have to say he's been a great mentor throughout my life's journey.

I'm always grateful for our chats during chai and coffee and our breakfast chats are something I always cherish. I also am grateful throughout my education journey, I have a classmate here from HBS, Robert Rodriguez. So, thank you, Robert. I appreciate your friendship and one of the biggest takeaways I have through my education journey has been lifelong friendships.

I truly believe in, in two principles. One is lifelong learning and the second is service and having the opportunity to serve this great state. Nelson Mandela once said, education was one of the most powerful forces that can change the world, and to be able to serve the California community colleges is one of the greatest honors of my life.

I have to say that the values of the California community colleges, I consider them my own, while we work to increase access, affordability, and equity. Students from all over California, there's 2 million students, 116 community college all across the state, and I'll tell you a little story.

My first ever class was at Mira Costa Community College when I was a high school student. I did Intro to Psychology, and thanks to that class, it gave me the spark to continue. So, with that, I'd like to thank you, Senators. I would like to thank the Governor's Office. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for your consideration.

And I look forward to building that camaraderie, that collaboration, and to continue to serve this great state.

Thank you so much, Mr. Board Member. And again, it is an honor and a lifetime to be able to serve the students of this state. We are grateful for your role was—I think many of us attended a community college. I went to Santa Rosa Junior College. Go Bear Cubs. And incredibly grateful for that opportunity.

What we're going to do is I'm going to turn the gavel over to Madam Vice Chair. She's going to lead the discussion and I'll be back here in just a few moments. Again, Mr. Board Member, we're grateful you're here. Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Pro Tem. So, thank you. And it is a busy time, so the Chair will step out and I think one of us will step out to another Committee. But there's no disrespect to you or the other individuals before us.

So, the Senate Pro Tem addressed the introduction and I'm going to bring it back to the dais for any questions or comments.

Senator Jones. Senator Laird.

Senator Laird.

Yes. First, thank you for, for the meeting. I appreciate it very much. And I just thought I would ask you about a couple of things that we talked about. And number one is, there's been a big issue with enrollment that has not come back at community colleges to the level that it was prior to the Pandemic.

So, how are you and the Board of Trustees gonna deal with trying to continue to boost enrollment in the system?

Well, thank you, Senator. So, I've followed up and you know, I've been told that our enrollment numbers are almost up to par with pre-Pandemic. But most importantly, it's not the number of enrollment but the number of completion. So, the percentage of completion has increased since the Pandemic.

We do have our challenges with enrollment, with regards to fraud and there's efforts—in our last meeting, just yesterday, we were working to see how we can combat fraud. The fraud hits from enrollment, to admission, to financial fraud across the system. It costs the system millions of dollars.

So, we need to do a better job to work to stop the fraud. But most importantly, it also ruins the student experience. A lot of the students that I have chatted with expressed an inability to register for courses because there would be bots. So, as we navigate this challenge, we want to make sure we give you accurate numbers.

We do reduce fraud and we give students the opportunity to register for courses.

Well, I hope—and I know there's been some issues with financial aid and fraudulent things there that are a thing that needs to be dealt with. The other question I thought I'd ask is, we, as a Legislature, made a huge investment in housing for community colleges.

And it's—there are roughly 14 or 15 campuses that are in a place in the state where the district sprawls for two or two and a half hour drive and that there was housing so that people could be there. Now, because of the affordability issue, we're supporting housing across the state.

How are you committed to that and how are you going to make sure that that program is implemented and those housing projects move ahead?

Well, you know, my background is real estate. I think everybody should be able to have a roof over their head. I strongly believe in that.

You know, California community colleges are not typical of a four-year institution where they have dorms but giving that opportunity to have students—so they can have a roof over their head, so they can go to school, I think that's a great initiative.

Obviously, there's challenges such as, you know, and recently, if you're developing and projects take longer than expected or let's say some of the tariffs hit, some of the materials may cost. So, I would urge people to take that into account and make sure they have enough budget to make sure they can complete the job.

I do support, you know, affordable housing projects and creating more housing so we can, you know, it's a simple supply, demand. The more supply, the prices will go down. And lately, it's been pretty expensive here in California.

Thank you very much.

Senator Gonzalez.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for answering those questions. I know Senator Laird asked a couple questions that I had relative to the housing issue. I have a question. Long Beach City College is in my district, huge on workforce development. I'm also a community college student.

I went to Saddleback Unified while I was a working parent. And so, a lot of our students now we're starting to see, obviously are not going to be doing and completing the four-year programs anymore. They are focused on two years and are also career technical education and apprenticeships.

And so, I'd like to know, how can all interested parties, on a local level—the regional consortia, community college districts, industries, the Chancellor—be involved more so in better coordinating the workforce education programs, and then also, really allowing some of our underserved communities to know of these really important opportunities for them in the community college district, too?

Thank you for your question. On our most recent Board retreat in Santa Barbara, we had the Secretary of Labor come and chat with us about workforce development. I think education is a key role in, in shaping the future of our workforce. So, it's important we have all stakeholders on the table.

We need to talk to employers, what they're looking for, and we need to train our students to be ready to take the job. Trust is based on character and competence and California community colleges not only develops character, but also the competencies that are needed to do the job.

I think I've met a lot of, you know, I got a statistic recently that majority of students are taking three classes or less. So, that means a lot of them are actually working while they're studying. I think encouraging, you know, an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. So, encouraging apprenticeship, mentorship, is crucial.

Developing the workforce, also anticipating future trends, not only preparing the students for the jobs of today, but for the jobs of tomorrow. You know, there's a lot of talk about AI and what's going on and how that's going to create jobs or potentially take away jobs. But you'd be really impressed with some of the students.

I mean, they are so savvy and the things they can do with AI. I believe they're all experts and we can learn a lot from them. On our Board, we have two student members, and I am so impressed with both of these young ladies. One of them just transferred into UC Berkeley this fall. Love Adu.

And Casey Chang just did her last Board meeting. And I have to say, I learned as much from them than anybody else on our Board, and I'm really impressed. And if they represent our student population, then we're going in the right direction.

Thank you. And I would just continue to encourage you to look at the California Apprenticeship initiative and I know that there's a master plan for career education.

Having a backyard in Long Beach where we've got logistics, I mean, I know it's really tough for our ports right now given the tariffs, but the logistics and maritime industry, you know, really would be served with even more robust programming and career technical education at our community college districts and a real focus on why our ports matter here and why they're so important for California.

So, thank you for stepping up and thank you for answering those questions.

Thank you for your question. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Senator Jones.

Well, first, I want to thank you for being willing to do this position. I'm looking at the compensation and a whole $100, you know, so thank you for, you know, taking the time out of your family life and career time.

I did have a couple of questions. I wanted to kind of dig a little bit deeper on the conversation with Senator Laird, regarding the fraud on the scammers posing as fake students. I think the number that we're pinning that at right now is $10 million or $3 million in state aid this past year.

Your Board discussed it yesterday, in your Board meeting, I believe, and just was wondering if there was any conclusion to that, any vote, or what's the continuous conversation going to be on that?

Yeah, so the first motion didn't pass. And the second motion, we, we were all in accordance that you can use AI and different fraud detection technologies. Where we had a little bit of butting heads was an application fee. I think fraud does cost 10 millions of dollars, but I don't think the student should pay for it.

I think the first impression is very important. And when that impression is, let me take your credit card. So, there was discussion of maybe using the fee as a deposit and credit for, for classes. There was some opposition. We had a lot of students come and share their, their opposition to the application fee.

You know, if we're going to be true to our mission, we need to remain open and increase access however we can. So, I think we, we have a lot of work to do to see what we can do to avoid the application fee. It wasn't necessary, but it was a possibility. But it's costing the system a lot of money.

And there's, you know, different community colleges are doing different things, and we're trying to see what they're doing. What's successful, what's not working, and see how we can implement it all system wide.

Okay, thank you. And then, just wanted a little bit on your background. It looks like you've ran for Congress a couple of times, in Florida, Texas, and California, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to discuss that and if you had anything that you wanted to—I don't have a specific question other than to give you an opportunity to address that.

Well, I think it was Winston Churchill that, "Failure is losing enthusiasm." So, I've ran a few times unsuccessfully, but I haven't lost enthusiasm to serve. So, serving the California community colleges is my way to serve and give back. And I think in such a powerful way, the desire to want was the desire to serve.

So, in my current role, I feel that the service that I have—education is one of the most powerful, transformative things in my life, and I hope it can be for others. So, my, my heart is in service.

Okay. And is your permanent residence in those states or in California?

In San Diego.

In San Diego. Oh, you're in San Diego County? Okay, great. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I have a couple of questions. I'm going to dig deeper on the fraud, I guess. It was—most of the fraud was substantiated by fake students. How do you become a fake student? Don't you require an application process? Don't you verify who these students are?

Isn't there a way to make sure that they register for class? They're in class? Because you talk about the students being punished for reimbursing or paying this back, but these fake students are taking slots.

Not just the aid that is appropriated to them, but they're taking slots where other students, that are real students, would be able to have those classes in the community college setting. And so, it's $10 million in federal funds and $3 million in state funds. That's $13 million. It's not pocket change.

I know it is probably to your entire budget, but how does somebody scam $13 million out of the community college system being a fake student? And take a slot that would go for somebody else and take the resources that would fund somebody else's education?

Okay. I think cybercrime is on the rise. They're very sophisticated. So, you know, one of the two motions was to do ID verification. There's a special system for that. And you have to do several things, but, you know, first, we'll all try to figure out how to find the weakness in the system. So, we gotta be proactive.

We gotta bring them to justice and figure out which—if the Justice Department cybercrime, you know, I mentioned it yesterday. How, are we doing anything to talk with the Department of Justice? Have we spoken to them to see if we can hit the fraudsters at the roots? If you prevent them, that's one thing.

But we also have to take action and bring them to justice. It's a shame to see—every dollar wasted is a dollar that could be used for productive purposes to support our students, our teachers, and our community colleges. So, I'm all ears to see how we can work together to find solutions.

Because it's a shame, every dollar that's lost to fraud is a dollar that could have been used for good use.

So, I—what's the explanation of how it happened? I run a business in the real world in the state of California. When I hire somebody, fill out application, we get their IDs, you move forward, they get placed on a job, so on and so forth. The lady sitting next to me runs this building on the Senate side.

She hires, she—and I realize that you have a larger capacity of individuals, but it just seems that the same process is put in place, regardless of the size of your organization. And I realize it's a community college, but I don't know.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but I bet money she's never hired a fake person and employed them and paid them and filled a slot that needed to be filled for this institution to operate correctly. So I guess my question is, how does that even happen and why was it allowed to go on for so long?

Well, I've only been serving less than a year, and that thing gets my blood boiling, Senator. So, we had a vigorous debate yesterday, and I shared my views, and we got to stop the fraud. Very, very clear. They got a combination of ID verification, you know, different AI tools that can find fraud and stop the fraud.

And then, we got to take these fraudsters and we got to bring the justice system to prevent cybercrime. It is a crime.

So, this $10 million and $3 million, respectively $10 million from the Federal Government, that was match dollars or dollars given us to by the Feds, and $3 million of state taxpayer resources, that money is only for one year. What's the estimated value and how long do you think this has been going on?

And has there been discussions about that? And if have—if so, when will we see the dollars that were expended or fraudulently taken from previous years?

That's a good question. So, I may have to follow up with you on that. But, you know, I'm trying to get some numbers and data, and we need to start tracking these metrics. It hasn't, I don't, I don't—I think we need to be more proactive in getting these numbers.

I asked a lot of questions and I didn't get a lot of answers, so I'm as frustrated as you, Senator.

Okay, so I guess my question is that you're going to ask these questions to individuals on your Board. You guys didn't know what was going on in the first place. You don't have a way to track previous students and if they actually attended classes, so you have no metrics to balance this on.

How do you think you're going to come up with an accurate number if you didn't even track the students that were not really existing students, and then, come back to us and request more money because you have an overload of students? You're getting above 2020 numbers for COVID, and you need more resources.

But what percentage of those students are fake and not even attending the class?

Approximately 31%.

31% are fake.

And that's the estimate that I was given.

Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Is there any more questions from the dais? Senator Gonzalez. So, we'll open it up to public comment. Thank you for your responses. We'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. We'll open it up first for those that are in support of the confirmation of Mr. De La Fuente.

And please come to this microphone—right mic—come to this microphone and, and designate support for the conferee. Seeing no one approaching, we'll open it up for opposition. Again, seeing no one approaching, I'll bring it back to the dais for a motion or additional conversation.

Please approve this appointment and send it to the Senate Floor for full confirmation.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Thank you. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

So, that's 2 to 0. And so, we will have—Senator McGuire will be back shortly, and we'll open the roll and he'll cast his vote. So, thank you for being here today. We really appreciate your opportunity to have a conversation with you.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you, everybody.

Have a wonderful day. We're going to take a brief recess while we transition into Dr. Pon, who's here, and she'll be the next conferee.

Doctor Erica Pan. She is a governor's appointment for... We're going to give you an opportunity for just a minute to welcome your family, your friends, or make a brief comment. I believe you get, you know, one to two minutes. You can go and I'll give you a warning if you get a little long. But just introduce yourself, and we'd be glad to hear from you, ma' am.

Great. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Vice Chair Grove and Members of the Rules Committee. I'm Dr. Erica Pan. I'm your State Public Health Officer and Director of the California Department of Public Health. I am honored and thankful to Governor Newsom for entrusting me with this opportunity.

I would also like to thank former Secretary Ghaly and Secretary Johnson for their support. I also want to thank my husband, who's here in the room with me today, and my two daughters and my brother and my parents and other friends and family who are watching.

I'm also grateful for the incredible team at CDPH who work to serve our mission to achieve a healthy California for all. After leading Alameda County through the first few months of the COVID 19 pandemic as their Health Officer, I joined state service as your state epidemiologist and Deputy Director for the Center for Infectious Diseases a few months into the worst pandemic in a century.

I was eager to bring my extensive clinical and public health experience and expertise in infectious disease emergencies to help steer our state's public health response. That role as State Epi over infectious diseases was my dream job even before the pandemic.

The COVID 19 pandemic tested all of us, and I'm proud that our work together, delivering those first COVID 19 vaccines through October 2021 are estimated to prevented over 72,000 hospitalizations and saved over 19,000 lives. As the pandemic ended, we developed our Smarter Plan to help incorporate Covid into our broader work and broaden the public health tools we gained to better respond to Mpox and our recent bird flu response.

With 22 years of experience, I am well positioned to lead California's public health community to remain vigilant and ready for the next public health emergency. Like my fearless dad, who took an 18 day boat voyage from Taiwan as a teen without knowing how he would fare in the United States, I seem to run towards a challenge.

Whether it's jumping off a boat from Alcatraz to swim to San Francisco or taking on more responsibility during uncertain times. I'm ready to take on the current public health threats of shrinking federal resources and trust. If I'm allowed the honor of continuing to serve in this role, I have two major priorities given our rapidly changing world.

First, public health must rethink how we communicate. As a pediatrician and your State Public Health Officer, I see all Californians as my patient, and it is more important than ever to use my stethoscope and to listen carefully to our diverse communities so we can engage and empower them and rebuild trust. Second, we must use our data for action.

We'll embrace technology and innovation to continue to provide evidence based policies and interventions for positive health impact. I'm proud to be a leader in California where we uphold our values of equity, innovation, and data driven approaches, and we will continue to set examples for the nation. Thank you for this opportunity to share my approach and my vision for navigating the largest state public health department in the country during a critical and transformative time. With that, I'm happy to take your questions.

Thank you, Dr. Pan. I'll bring it back to dais for questions. Senator Gonzalez.

Thank you, Dr. Pan. And I remember working with you. I had just gotten into the State Senate in 2019, and all of a sudden there was a pandemic in front of all of us. So I really just first and foremost want to say thank you for all of your good work on behalf of so many residents of our districts respectively, but for the state. You did an incredible job and so very informative with many of our questions back then. And I thank you for this ongoing work.

Obviously, lots of this chatter on lots of issues relative to Medicaid, Medi-Cal, and what that means for residents in California who may be taken off or disenrolled of programs. How do you feel? What does that look like to you? And I know that's a big question. But what I am afraid of is if we should have another pandemic, what that looks like and what other, you know, issues that are consistently out there, what that means when folks are left uncovered.

Thanks for your question. I think I also want to clarify too that in the Department of Public Health we definitely look at healthcare access as part of what's important for public health and other social determinants of health, certainly including healthcare access. And we work closely with our partner agency, the Department of Health Care Services, who determine the coverage.

I think as far as being ready for the, and it's not if but when, we have our next public health emergency or next infectious disease emergency, I think if we can sustain a lot of the investments we've made and the tools we've made that will really help us. And we were able to mobilize resources when there was a large emergency to deliver services to people where they are.

A lot of what we do do in public health is provide mobile community services, providing vaccines in the field rather than asking people to come to health clinics and things like that. So I think as far as an emergency, we can definitely mobilize resources and, again, really deliver them to where people are rather than having them come to sort of the pull model.

Yeah. And since you were so intimately involved with the vaccinations, how are you dealing with cuts to those programs and cuts to programs that would help and call out, you know, specific communities like black maternal health or, you know, I had a bill on Latino and indigenous health disparities. How are you going to be navigating in this very uncertain time while these cuts are impending and while there's communities that might be really very scared?

Sure. Our Department, the core of what we do is to address where there's the highest disease burden, where there are disparities, and really try to address those. And that is one of our top strategic priorities, part of our strategic plan. As far as vaccines specifically and funding, we did have a notice of termination for some supplemental grants at the end of March. Thanks to partnership with the Attorney General's Office, we're thankful for that, and the litigation, we just heard on Friday that there's an injunction on any termination to those supplemental vaccination grants.

Our core vaccine grants for vaccines for children and other vaccines are currently, we've not seen threats of federal funding for that. But we are, of course, and this is top of mind for me, and I think the biggest priority in what I was alluding to as a critical and transformative time is monitoring what happens with our federal resources and our federal technical assistance.

45% of our budget is actually federal, and we do rely on a lot of those funding. And then 60 to 75% of that gets passed through to local partners for local assistance. So we're monitoring it closely. But again, this is sort of core to our work, and we are working to think about how to prioritize and optimize our work and make sure we can maintain critical services.

Well, thank you very much. You have a very impressive resume. It's two pages back and forth, so a lot of preparation, emergency focus, vaccination focus. And so I think you're absolutely ready for continued work on the job. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Senator Gonzalez.

Thank you, Senator Gonzalez. I'd like to remind everybody on the dais and our witness that we have every word being taken down by our court reporters, so we have to speak a little bit slower so that she is able to track every word that we say. Senator Laird. Senator Jones.

Hello, Dr. Pan. I am a little conflicted today because I highly respect you and think that you are qualified for the job. The challenge I have is in some of the procedures and policies in handling the COVID situation. You may remember we spoke on the phone several times back in August of 2020, and I do truly believe that you handled those conversations with me well and professionally. Unfortunately, after that, several things were put in place.

I think one, personally, but more importantly, the closing of schools, the closing of small businesses, the government deciding, taking upon itself. I know this didn't come from you specifically, it was more at the national level, but the state implemented it and, under the direction of the Governor, doubled down on what businesses are essential and non-essential.

And you know, so I think what I'd like to find out, and, you know, maybe I should have asked this question sooner than today, but now is the opportunity. Just kind of, you know, wondering what analysis CDPH has undertaken following the pandemic to develop lessons learned and best practices.

You know, what were some of the glaring gaps in preparedness that maybe you could talk to that maybe you noticed, what are some lessons learned that maybe you would have done things differently than were done? I think one of the most disappointing things across the country now is Dr. Fauci admitting to Congress that the six foot social distancing guidelines were not based on science.

And if you remember back then the mantra was follow the science, follow the science, and we all kind of just leaned into what Dr. Fauci was saying on lots of issues that now we've discovered weren't based on science. And that's just one of the examples. So it's kind of a, I'm kind of just opening the, I think the conversation to just hear from you some personal thoughts on lessons learned and, you know, maybe what are some things that you would have done different at the time?

Sure, I think that's a very understandable question. And I think we've been doing a lot of reflection as a department, as a public health community. I think it's important to remember that the science continued to evolve and that may happen with any new emerging infectious disease.

I think there are a lot of policy decisions that we all make along a spectrum and we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere for implementation, and then we might need to rethink that. I think one of the most important things, and then I'll circle back to the six feet is communication.

And I think that's why I highlighted it in my opening remarks. I think it's incredibly important, and actually in conversations with Senator Grove, that we continue to work on, not only our outgoing communication, but trying to explain about the why and also being able to listen to how things are landing.

How are people able to implement these policies? Where could we, you know, rethink things? I think we also have a lot more tools now. We know for sure that this is an airborne disease, that we were learning about that at the time. And I think with any respiratory droplet or airborne disease, there's a spectrum of the closer you are, the more infectious you are. That is true for a lot of work we do in the hospital, in public health in general. And then you need to make these decisions to have a line for implementation.

And we certainly, just back to schools, need to think and we did as a state and at different levels around how do you fit enough children in a classroom to also do that and do other things that are mitigating, whether it's masks, indoor air quality, and air purifiers and a lot of other mechanisms. So we have a lot of tools now that we didn't have at the very beginning. Even testing, as you all may remember, we had very limited testing to even know where the disease was, much less how to then contain it. So we have both a lot more tools.

And I think really importantly is just continuing to work on communication. And I certainly understand that the way people receive information now is different. And I want us to really think about how do we work with trusted messengers and across, I do mean it when I say I consider all 40 million Californians as my patient. And I want to hear from different diverse perspectives about what your challenges are. What are you hearing? What do you need to know to understand and empower you and your communities to be healthy?

I'm glad you picked up on the communication. And in your written response, you did talk about networks of trusted messengers. Do you want to kind of maybe expand on that a little bit on, and you just mentioned we're communicating different. So what are some of those things that you would like to see CDPH do or your office specifically or however you think that comes together?

Yes. So I know that even across our Department and across the over 200 programs, there are a lot of different relationships with different communities, different organizations. Some of them are overlapping, some of them are not. But we haven't really pulled those together. And we know, again, that I might be doing a public service announcement, but the person that's going to be trusted is the one that people know in their own community.

So working closely with local partners. But as a Department, I'd like us to sort of pull together our trusted messenger network and be more coordinated around how we know who that is, how we push that information out. And even more importantly, again, how are we going to listen better and working on some tools now and some partners?

And how do we listen and understand, you know, again, what messages are people hearing? Where is there information that we hear people that we consider misinformation and try to get the information they need in a way they hear and understand, again, so that people can empower themselves to take care of themselves and their communities.

I do want to circle back on one thing that you said about learning and the science evolving, and I appreciate that, and I know that that's your attitude. I think one of the things that I'm probably, in addition to how I opened. But California didn't do that. California, through the pandemic, didn't learn from other people or other states and what other things were doing. It seems like to me... And look, the Governor's at the top of the heap. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

So I'm going to place most of the responsibility on him and how he managed that because I'm sure that you were giving advice and the other folks at the time were giving advice. But as other... So I guess where I'm going with this is you're probably going to get confirmed today.

I would hope, certainly, first of all, we hope that we don't ever get another pandemic or another medical situation like this ever again. Let's start with that. But if something were to happen, I would hope under your leadership that the state would learn from other places around the country and around the world.

As we watched other states reopen, we doubled down on the closures. As we watched other states move in a positive direction for their citizens, we watched California double down on what I believe are bad policies. And so I'm just hopeful that those are some lessons that we can all learn together. I know what I've learned is that I'm going to communicate more boldly in situations like that and make my opinion based on the science that I understand more clearly communicated.

I think we all could have done that back then. But we also have to be sensitive to what our constituents are struggling through at that period of time and strike a proper balance. And I don't think California did that at that point in time. So you're welcome to respond that. That's just some comments that I'm hoping moving forward that we'll consider in these types of situations. And I'm done. Thank you.

Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. Thank you for making the time to meet with me. And I think some of the things I wanted to go into were asked, but I think I have a follow up question to try to get at the heart of that. And it's, you and I talked and we met because you have a history of dealing with HIV. And as that developed and there wasn't full knowledge, there was pressure to do things that might be counterintuitive for public health. There was a big push to have mandatory reporting of who tested positive for HIV.

And the net effect wherever that happened was to drive people out of the system, to get them away from public health. And the idea at the time was to have them in so that you could educate, you could engage with people on transmission. And yet the public political thing seemed, well, why is there a question about mandatory reporting? That just makes sense, let's know where this is. And yet it was not the public health thing. How do you deal with sort of a sense of what the right thing is to do public health wise that might be very charged politically?

Because even though it was about a slightly different issue, that's exactly what was the question was, is you're in the middle of trying to do the right thing, public health. And it might not be what is perceived to be the right thing politically. How do you, in addition to the fact that, as Senator Jones said, the Governor takes the heat, that's who does it. But how do you in your job navigate that?

I think that's what is both most interesting and most challenging about the work in public health is trying to do those balances, looking at those risks and benefits. And even as a clinician, right. Every decision I make when I prescribe a medication, there are going to be benefits to that medication and there might be side effects.

And you have to determine if you think the benefits outweigh the risks. And I think certainly with other policies or other interventions, that is always part of the consideration. And I think what I'm hearing from both of you is that we also need to be thinking about, as we roll these things out, what are the challenges for implementation. And I do think that my local public health experience and clinical experience really helps with that too.

I think the further you are away from implementation, sometimes it's harder to understand what some of those challenges are and where maybe we can try to rethink and be willing to rethink and be flexible. I think that is a challenge in government as well. Right. Being flexible. But that's certainly part of my nature is to really constantly be evolving and thinking and having that dialogue about what are the challenges, what are the risk benefits, and can we, you know, do we feel comfortable that the benefits outweigh the risks?

Thank you. I really appreciate that. And if you fast forward to now, there's an audit going on about the Office of AIDS and some of the things that happened there. How are you on an administrative level going to stay on top of that and make sure some of the issues that that were at the center of that audit don't recur?

Yes. As we discussed the other day too, I think very aware of the audit from the situation that occurred a few years before I joined the Department. And I know that our Office of AIDS did not only an internal audit but took a lot of measures to add accountability, add more checks and balances.

And some of the work that they've done for their policies and procedures, we've started to share with other parts of the Department. The other thing I think it's important to highlight, and I want to give credit to my predecessor who started to implement some of what we call lean quality improvement.

The plan, do, study, act and having checks and frequent check ins at the directorate level. And we're doing that with contracts now. I know we started to talk about that well. When things come to our attention, when those checks and balances are not following up, that we investigate and follow up as immediately as we can and really open to always becoming better. We can all always become better. So when we do have those audit results, we welcome discussing how we can improve.

Okay, I'll look forward to that. And then lastly, and ironically, this came up in the person that's going to come after you. You are statewide, but there's 58 counties and there are health officers in virtually every one. And there's conflicting opinions about how to deal with public health on the ground.

How do you as sort of the state officer that then has to reflect state policy to 58 counties, how do you see your role in doing that and making sure that they're educated in a way that you feel like they're getting the trends of the way something is going, and if they need resources, you're channeling them there? How are you going to make that work?

Sure. And actually a small clarification. There are actually 61 local health jurisdiction.

Because there's three cities. There's three cities.

Three city health departments. Exactly.

Berkeley, Long Beach, and what's the third? Pasadena. Okay. For those of you watching at home.

I think that is, again, where I have a strength, having that local experience in two different large jurisdictions and then coming here at the state level. And back to an unprecedented time, I think I've been talking to a lot of my local and state public health colleagues around this.

The pandemic was the first time that there was state public health officer orders issued that really applied statewide because really for many things it was up to the local health authority to determine what they were going to do. But it became also really important to have some consistency.

And in these times of evolving science and evolving uncertainties, when there wasn't a perfect answer, just trade offs, it was important to have that consistency in certain areas. So I think we continue to balance that. And I think we've really strengthened our partnership between the state health Department and local health departments. We now meet with all of the leadership, the public health directors and health officers. Now it's every other week. It was weekly for a while. In the peak of the pandemic, it was daily sometimes.

And then we also work closely with our County Health Executives Association and our city and county local health officers and Health Officers Association as sort of formal partnerships as well. So I think we've really strengthened our partnerships. We've also created a regional public health office that really tries to focus in on the different regions and works with the different local health departments in each region because, again, each region has their unique issues. So it's another...

What regions? Like, give us an example of one of the regions that fits in that.

Sure. So there's the Rural North area and then there's a Sacramento area. There's the Bay Area, Southern California, and then I think it's the Central Coastal areas. Anyway, I might remember, but those are sort of examples of our different regions. And happy to follow up with a map to show you how we've...

That'd be interesting. And I think the one thing is in the first hours and days of the pandemic, the local health officers were so on the front line. It's a question of how they were supported. Because I was watching some of them where I felt like they were just out there figuring it out. I think that would be important backup, particularly in the first stages of something like that. Well, I feel like you're eminently qualified. Thank you for your willingness to serve, and I look forward to the deliberations.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Thank you, Dr. Pan, for being here. Just for clarification, there's also a Central Valley area of the state. We provide all the cement, we provide all the food, majority of the food and the fuel for everyone else in the state. Bit so there's Central Valley state.

I want to follow up on a couple comments from my colleagues. My colleague from Long Beach was talking about the uncertainty for that's coming out of the federal government. That's something that's happening in DC. I want to focus on what's happening here. Yesterday I was in a Budget Subcommittee hearing where the Governor has instituted a proposal for the asset test of under $2,000, not being able to have more assets and $2,000 for seniors to obtain Medi-Cal.

The question was asked by my colleague in the Committee, what happens to the individuals who get kicked off of Medi-Cal that have excess of $2,000 in assets. With Medi-Cal in the SNF units, say they have a home, a car, I mean a refrigerator, washer and dryer and grandma's diamond ring. It exceeds $2,000.

What happens happens to those people? Do they get wheeled out? The Department of Finance response was they'll lose coverage. It didn't say they'd get wheeled out, but the response was they would lose coverage. So I guess my question is that how do you foresee making sure that we have a safe and healthy senior population?

As we were discussing yesterday, if seniors that have over $2,000 in assets and the assets that dollars are reinstated, how are you going to keep them safe? Or how are you going to Institute policies that make sure that they get the care they need to be healthy if they're going to be kicked off Medi-Cal based on the Governor's proposal in the budget?

So thanks for your question. And again, I want to just sort of clarify the roles of the Department of Health Care Services that determine the coverage and eligibility and reimbursement. And the Public Health Department, we certainly work closely in partnership with our sister agencies, and we really look at the full life spectrum as far as health certainly.

And we work in partnership for the Master Plan for Aging and a lot of our other work in our Center for Healthy Communities works on different diseases for the aging and certainly chronic diseases. And so I think we will have to continue to partner closely on how do we work on... You know, in public health, what we also do is really try to work on prevention and promotion to help prevent disease downstream, and we'll continue to work on that as well and look to our partners on how we will work on safety net and access.

So I understand that that's not completely in your purview, but you are responsible for making sure that individuals are protected and have health. You're the public health officer, right? So you have to make sure that policies, I guess you would have to have weigh in on policies that would negatively impact your ability to do your job.

Obviously, if every senior has over $2,000 in assets in the State of California, is kicked off of Medi-Cal and they can't afford private pay insurance because they don't make that kind of money, it's going to affect your ability to make sure that they're safe from the health risk.

And so I just wanted to bring that up that, although there is a debate going on on the federal government side, there is also a huge debate where the Governor has proposed this information as well. So the asset, actually I think the Legislature eliminated the asset accountability piece because it's so hard to determine.

Like do you have, you know, washer and dryer? Is that included? Is it a second car? Is it the value of your home? And that $2,000 asset limit hasn't been, hasn't been adjusted in decades. So just food for thought. There's also a $1.3 billion MCO tax that were planned for reimbursement for rate increases for providers.

Again, not in your direct purview, but you are responsible to make sure that we have a healthy community in the State of California. And if you don't have access to care because we don't have providers or we have financially distressed hospitals, how is that addressed with working with partnering agencies?

I think one area I can speak to is that we have been working closely with the various managed care plans in addition to Medi-Cal on a state health improvement plan and state health assessment. And then there's a corollary at the local levels as well for county health improvement plans and county health assessment, and really, again, trying to look at the spectrum of health.

And that's where we really try to work together on how do we on the public health side work on prevention, promotion, and linkage to care and then working with the partners on healthcare access. So that is for sort of where we can work and try to hold in partnership accountability for ways that these different plans can help with healthy communities.

Thank you. And I realize that. And I do apologize. I should have said that first that we didn't have an opportunity to discuss that. I had a meeting with you in the morning, and then I went to this Committee that afternoon and it was just a pretty tough Committee day.

I do want to follow up a little bit on the 2020 pandemic, which we did talk about. In a 2023 Politico article, the Governor had said, quote, we would have done everything differently. I'm not asking you to commit to that statement, but there has to be things that we would have done differently.

Following up on what Senator Jones says, you know, restricting individuals from operating, who was essential, who wasn't essential. Why did movie film stars or films be able to continue operating but the restaurant that provided the food to the film crews could not operate? You know, for some reason there was a complete blatant, like a hierarchy example to say, you know, you're worthy of doing your job, but you're not. You can keep your business open, but you can't.

And to me and a lot of people in the state, there was no rhyme or reason, especially when the policies kept changing on a consistent basis. You know, wear your mask when you walk into a restaurant. But apparently sitting down and having food separates you from the virus from some reason.

You know, so just the information, and again, telling us that it was all science based and science led and science decided. Are there things that if we did, God forbid, have another pandemic, are there things that you have learned from the previous pandemic?

Shutting down our schools, forcing vaccines and parents to even vaccinate, you know, vaccine injured children from the past. Telling them they can't have, you know, you can't, you're not entitled to an education, or you can't open your business, or you can't leave your home if you're not vaccinated. I recall... And we were laughing about... Not laughing. That's the inappropriate comment. We were talking about it. It might be funny now. It wasn't funny in the beginning. We were talking, Senator Jones and I meet before we come to Rules, just to confer on what's going on.

And we both reminisced about getting the letter from you that said we would be arrested if we left our place of business because we... Our place, our home or residence here, because we tested positive. I go, oh, I remember that. I didn't remember that when I talked to you earlier in the week. But there's things that could be done differently for trusted advisors and trusted messengers. I mean, I guess, you want to elaborate on that? And then are there things that you would do differently, God forbid, if we have another pandemic?

So that there is some type of rhyme or reason or science based evidence that says opening a restaurant would be not appropriate. But I don't know. I don't know. I just think that there was not a lot of science based information that is all coming out now to verify what we were saying back then. What's your thoughts about that? If we get in that situation again, I do want to know what you think.

Sure. And I do want to say, I hate to say this now, that there are pandemics every 20 or 30 years. It's just this one was the worst one in a century. The 1918 was the last one that was this severe. But we had, many of you may remember 2009, we had a pandemic. And of course it was much milder. It was a flu pandemic and many of us did work through that, and it was much less severe and much milder. So there will be.

And we do know, and I'm so sorry to forget about the Central Valley because that's where I've been a lot of work and effort with the avian flu response most recently. As far as what I would do differently, I think what really, you know, in both my conversation with you other day and even now is to really bring people together sooner.

A lot of these decisions are definitely had to be made very quickly, and we should bring more people in earlier to explain what we know and what we don't know and what we're thinking about and how to make these hard decisions and better explain things like principles around harm reduction.

We talk about it a lot in HIV, but I think the restaurant example is an interesting one. Around the harm reduction is if you can have the mask on for as much as possible, except when you have to eat, that will reduce the amount of virus in the environment. So that's just one example.

But having that conversation so that sort of you and the restaurant owners and others are really understanding where the rationale is coming from. And then I think having more of that feedback loop of, okay, here's where our challenges were. And I think we did evolve that over time with different sectors.

But certainly some of those very early decisions had to be made very quickly when we were worried and were seeing health care systems becoming overwhelmed, when we saw crematoriums overwhelmed. You know, I think as we saw our life expectancy decreased actually over the years of the pandemic. So we were truly attempting to save lives.

And I think we have a lot to learn around reopening. I think the other thing I say a lot around this is that we knew there was really good evidence from the 1918 pandemic that cities and jurisdictions that closed down quickly and earlier did better and bounced back sooner, but there wasn't a lot of data.

And it was a different world as far as the different kinds of restaurants and indoors and outdoors and the different kinds of spaces and really taking a more space based approach rather than sectors. But then again, you get to implementation. So there are a lot of challenges.

But I think the biggest lesson to me is how to engage more people earlier so that everyone can... And in some of the smaller jurisdictions, I think early on you were talking about the local health officers. They were able to do that at a smaller scale and get that engagement early and then everyone had more input into those policies.

So, and I understand what you're saying, and I realize it was something that we had to, you know, it's like fixing the plane's engine in the air while it's flying. And I get the situation that we were in. That's why I think all of us agree with the Governor in the two week shelter in place. Two weeks.

Two weeks ended up to be a year, which was not what was conveyed to us. And then the constant change in the rules saying you're following science, I think that was the biggest issue. And then creating the distrust for government, forcing mandated vaccines or you basically had no existence, you couldn't leave your home, you couldn't send your kids to school, you couldn't be out in public.

And I think that, and with not having a lot of background on the vaccines, but yet things that we did have backgrounds on, Ivermectin that had been around for a while, lots of things that had been around, those things were considered not something that was available for use and wasn't even considered.

So the whole premise of the way it was handled, I think should be handled much better if we encounter another pandemic in the future. Like I said, in 2023, the Governor said he would have done a lot of everything differently. I don't know if that's like everything. I think he was kind of frustrated at that moment. But I do think that he would do a lot of things differently.

And so I would hope that you would help follow that lead and at least communicate with the public and create policies that make sense for all Californians, all 40 of your, 40 million of your patients. Versus, you made a comment, versus just, I don't want to say just San Francisco. But you know, when I asked you about the school closures, you said San Francisco Unified closed.

And so therefore, you know, that created a, like a little bit of an effect for the rest of the schools to close. The Central Valley is not San Francisco. We have the ability to walk outside, not encounter another person for, you know, miles sometimes. And so I just think that regionally things are a lot different.

And I mean, I just keep thinking of things like arresting the surfer out in the middle of the ocean. You know, those things don't make sense and they just, it creates a huge distrust with the public. So I think there are things we should be doing differently. So thank you for listening to my soapbox.

I'll end that, and at this time and lift... Any other questions? No. I'll bring it to public comment. If there's individuals here who wish to have public comment, please come to this microphone and make your comments brief. We're not going to hold you to just identifying yourself and, you know, but if you have good things to say, say them, but make your comments brief.

I do. Eric Dowdy with the California Dental Association. We're here in support of the confirmation. We appreciate Dr. Pan's work in oral health and on community water fluoridation and certainly support the confirmation. Thank you.

Thank you. Ma' am.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. Cathy Senderling-McDonald for the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. CPEHN is dedicated to equity and inclusion, and we see that same dedication in Dr. Pan. We're pleased to support her nomination today and believe that she brings a dedication to ensure a robust and equitable public health for all in California. Appreciate your support of her confirmation today.

Thank you, ma' am. Thank you for your testimony. Yes, ma' am.

Thank you very much. Vanessa Cajina with KP Public Affairs on behalf of the California Academy of Family Physicians, California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative, the Nurse Family Partnership, Maternal Infant Home Visiting Partnership, and the Mosquito and Vector Control Association. All very diverse clients who all believe deeply in Dr. Pan's confirmation and her collaborative approach to improving public health. Thank you.

Thank you, ma' am. Yes, sir.

Yes, I'm Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola from UC Davis. I'm a professor of internal medicine, and I'm the founder and director of our research center as well. And I'm here on strong support for Dr. Pan, and let me tell you why. She invited me back in October of 2020 to be a part of a committee that is called COVID 19 Vaccine Drafting Guidelines Workgroup. And it was a 14 member committee, and we also worked closely with another committee that she was co-chairing as well, the Community Vaccine Advisory Committee.

And we coincided in those two committees on several occasions. What was very, very impressive to me was that the Community Advisory Committee had over 70 organizations all over the state. Just to let you know that what I saw on Dr. Pan was a servant leader who really was very thoughtful and approached things in a humane manner, professionalism and integrity, and also with humility, which was a tremendous example when people were dying left and right.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your testimony. Yes, ma' am. Brief comment.

Thank you. My name is Lena Workman on behalf of the California WIC Association. We offer our support for Dr. Erica Pan's confirmation for the Director of the California Department of Public Health. Dr. Pan's leadership will be critical as we navigate both progress and pressing uncertainties at the state and federal levels that directly impact the health and well being of California WIC families. Thank you

Thank you, ma' am. Yes, ma' am.

Good afternoon. Yvonne Choong with the California Association of Health Facilities. We represent skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities for the developmentally disabled. We are pleased to support Dr. Pan's appointment. She has a broad range of experience, her impressive achievements during the pandemic as well, and most importantly for us, her willingness to work with healthcare providers and really provide a common sense approach to regulations for the state. So we urge your support. Thank you

Thank you, ma' am. Yes, ma' am.

Buenas tardes. Dr. Seciah Aquino, Executive Director at the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. We are here in strong support. In a time when Latinas and indigenous Californians are still recovering from a global pandemic and are facing other public health threats, LCHC is excited and confident to have Dr. Pan as the next Director of CDPH because of her demonstrated bold and reliable leadership, commitment to equity centered policy and strategy, and a judicious stewardship of resources to ensure all Californians are healthy. Dr. Pan has dedicated her career to improving the lives of Californians, particularly those that have historically faced health disparities like Latina and indigenous Californians. Thank you.

Thank you, ma' am. Hi. Yes, sir.

Hey. Matt Lege with SEIU California. Proud to stand here in support of Dr. Pan's appointment. SEIU represents all sorts of workers that are impacted by the work that is done by CDPH, including the workers there, and so happy to stand in strong support of her appointment. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon. Michelle Gibbons with the County Health Executives Association of California, representing local health departments across the state. Here in strong support of Dr. Pan's confirmation. It is not every day that you all have the opportunity to confirm somebody that is already battle tested.

She already stood the test of time, led us through a very difficult time in a lot of coordination with local health departments. She faced scrutiny, she faced harassment amongst as well as other local health officials, and really did, in every conversation that I was privy to, had communities and the people that she's serving at the forefront. And so for that, we are here in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you, ma' am. Remember, we have a court reporter taking down every. Yes, ma' am.

Good afternoon. Vanessa Gonzalez with the California Hospital Association. Proud to support Dr. Pan's confirmation today as a Director of Public Health. Dr. Pan has helped lead the state through the COVID 19 pandemic and multiple infectious disease outbreaks. Throughout these challenges, she's been a collaborative partner to hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the state, and we value her commitment to improving the health program that serve our most vulnerable communities. And we look forward to further collaboration. Thank you.

Thank you, ma' am. Yes, sir.

Stuart Thompson on behalf of the California Medical Association, here in strong support of Dr. Erica Pan. Physicians across the state during the pandemic saw firsthand the leadership that Dr. Pan exemplified in developing the state's plan in response to that pandemic, which saved countless lives.

Dr. Pan's expertise, both in the medical field and her communication style, makes her an incredible messenger to the physician community. And we want to thank you for your partnership on the ground and look forward to working with the Department in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Ryan Spencer on behalf of the American College of OBGYNs District 9, the California Society of Pathologists, and the California Radiological Society, who all have members who interact quite frequently with the Department of Public Health. And for all the reasons stated by my colleague at CMA, we're honored to support the confirmation of Dr. Pan. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Yes.

Good afternoon. Dr. Aimee Sisson, Health Officer of Yolo County, here representing the California Conference of Local Health Officers. On behalf of the health officers in 61, California's 61 local health jurisdictions, want to stand in strong support of Dr. Pan's nomination and confirmation and offer particular applause for her coordination, collaboration, and transparent communication with local health departments.

Excuse me, can I have you state your name? And again, one more time.

Yeah, Dr. Aimee Sisson.

Okay, thank you. Hi. Yes.

Hi. Kat DeBurgh with the Health Officers Association of California, here in support of Dr. Pan. We've worked with her since she was a local deputy health officer and we've always been impressed by her expertise, her integrity, and her willingness to speak truth, even when it's not popular. So we really appreciate her nomination and support her today.

Thank you, ma' am. Any other individuals in support of Dr. Pan's confirmation? Seeing none. Are there any individuals in the audience or in the room in opposition of the confirmation? Seeing none. I will bring it back to the dais. Senator Laird.

I would move that we approve the nomination of Dr. Pan as Health Officer and forward the nomination to the Senate Floor for full consideration.

Thank you. Any other comments? Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

It's two to zero, ma' am. Senator McGuire, Pro Tem McGuire will be back. We'll take his vote, and I'm sure you will be going to the State Senate Floor very shortly. Thank you for your work.

Thank you.

We are going to take just a brief break. Ms. Ganter, please take a seat. We are going to give our court reporter just a moment, and we'll be reconvening in five minutes.

Welcome, Director Ganter. You have the opportunity, just like the previous appointees, to share a few minutes about your personal journey or why you're here, or introduce your family or any special guest, and then we'll bring it back to the dais for questions.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you. Members of the Rules Committee, I'm Alison Ganter. It is my honor to be here as our state's first Director of in custody death review. I'm humbled and grateful that Governor Newsom chose me for this role.

My husband Jeremy, my son Ian are here today, and my son Emmett is here virtually. My mom and my dad and lots of people on the East Coast and in the Southwest are here as well, and I'm so glad that they are here.

I also want to thank all of my fantastic BSCC colleagues, some of who are here today, including our board chair, Linda Penner, and our Executive Director, Erin Mcguire. And I can't individually thank everybody, or else we'd never leave here today.

But I want to recognize Katie Howard and Ginger Wolf, two people who have bolstered me for over a decade and continue to do so today. I also really want to thank my new ICDR team members, especially Michael Lee, for your bravery in joining this new team and putting your trust in me.

I've been conducting local detention facilities for nearly 30 years. I sought this position because I have a unique opportunity to focus my expertise and skills on a single really challenging subject. I care about doing what I can to make our local detention facility safer. I have a deep understanding of local detention facility operations.

I have relationships with community members and law enforcement members and can navigate between them both. I know how to do this work. I'm able to hit the ground running.

And at the BSCC, I've brought transparency to our processes, significantly raised the bar for minimum standards for our local detention facilities, and more than doubled the amount of inspections we do of local detention facilities.

I've spent much of the past few months listening and learning, talking with families and community members who experienced dreadful loss, talking with members of the law enforcement committee who work to keep people housed in their facilities safe. I want to say thank you to the family members who have shared their pain and their stories with me.

I'm really in awe of the courage it takes to share these stories. One of the earliest statements I made about taking this role is that it would be a difficult, difficult job with emotional impact, and this has proven to be true. It's really hard for people to talk about death, but it is in my comfort zone.

It's my vision to continue to have these hard conversations and understand the causes of in-custody death in order to prevent them in the future. My goal is to make a positive impact at both the facility and the statewide level. Will be a resource for family Members and for law enforcement.

Creating strong regulations and best practices through our reviews and recommendations, data collection and careful analysis. And we will be transparent, caring and compassionate as we do this work. Thank you again for this opportunity and your consideration. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your friends and family and the individuals that you mentioned for being here today and supporting you. I'm going to bring it back to the dais for questions. Senator Gonzalez.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And thank you so much, Ms. Ganter, for doing the work that you do. And I, I agree with you that I'm sure it's got to be very difficult, but your expertise provides value there. How would you describe the working relationship between the division and local detention facilities?

And then do you think that the board should have a mechanism to enforce regulations and statutes to compel a local facility to act on the board's recommendations?

It's a really good question. The relationship the that we have, I would say are pretty strong. We spend a lot of time in local detention facilities having gone from biennial to annual inspections in the last few years.

And although we don't have a mechanism for enforcement right now, I think there is a really strong understanding that there's not a lot of value of not being in compliance. Being in compliance, it raises, you know, raises minimum standards, it helps prevent risk at the facility level. It is providing information to other sources in local government.

So the work that we do at the BSCC, we see strong, we see compliance for the most part in our agencies. Of course there's agencies that are out of compliance and will work together with them as they work to achieve compliance. But we've been able to do that without an enforcement mechanism.

Thank you for that. And you know, I come from Los Angeles County, so unfortunately there have been, I think the in-custody deaths ranged around 421 between 2006 and 2020.

And per the Vera Institute reported that on April 1st that there was, I believe of this year that 15 deaths have already occurred just this year, which is really quite astounding. Those are 15 lives.

How do you think that the public, especially given I love to hear that you doubled the inspections of local detention centers, how do you think that the public understands truly the of what you do, and the mission, the authorities, the limitations. You know, this is a huge undertaking that you have upon you.

So how do you think the public views you and how do you think you can do more to educate them?

I think we've done a good job since I was appointed in October of being responsive to the public. We've had three listening sessions. We've participated in town halls. We've done our best to explain what our role is.

The things that we do do vers versus the things that we don't do, the things that the state has authority over versus the things that the local detention facilities themselves have. I think we've worked to provide more resources, more education to the public.

I think we're never going to achieve what people want in terms of, you know, being able to take away the pain of losing a loved one. But I think we've worked really hard and gotten some good understanding about what it is we do.

There's still work to do, and we'll continue to make information sharing and being a resource a really strong pillar of this division.

Well, thank you, Director Ganter. I really appreciate those answers and I do thank you for doubling those inspections and continue to being on the ground.

Sometimes what we do is so theoretical and to be there in person, talking to families, talking to law enforcement is exactly the type of role we need and the type of person is you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Gonzalez. Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. Thanks for the meeting. And we did note that we approved, I think, one meeting ago, two members of the board, and whenever we asked about in-custody deaths, they just brought you up and as if that was totally you. So here we are.

Let me follow up on Senator Gonzalez's question and do it backwards. She was asking if you needed more enforcement authority. We talked in our meeting about how you try, I don't know if the word is enforce, but how you try to get the local facilities to follow your lead.

So right now, and I know you're setting this up, there's just a desk manual for the first time, and there's all these things. Now, without any additional enforcement authority, how do you take what you do and try to leverage it into action at the local facilities that have been identified as maybe having a problem?

Well, we will be writing reviews, writing reports rather, with our recommendations. The sheriff's departments do have to, according to the legislation, respond to those recommendations. They need to respond with which recommendations they will or will not be implementing.

But we also have an opportunity at the BSCC to take every piece of information from our reviews, from those recommendations, from the data that we collect and analyze, we will be turning them into better, stronger minimum standards that are based in data that reflect the best practices.

So whereas we can't necessarily compel an agency to do a particular thing, those reports will be available, we will be making them. You know, there will be transparency, they will be available.

And then anything we learn from those reports are going to be turned into action in the form of better and stronger minimum standards and better best practices across.

But what it means is that you're at the start of this process, you go through a year or two and we decide whether actually people are responding in a way that this is meaningful. You believe that you'll lay the groundwork to be able to do that, that right?

Yes.

We were talking in the previous confirmation.

So you have all these decentralized and the one that brought this to the attention was San Diego and there was an audit done and I think the legislation came out of that situation. Just with regard to that particular situation. What are you doing to sort of address in custody problems at San Diego and potential actions?

So the audit that happened in San Diego several years ago was focused on the increasing rate of in-custody deaths in that Department. The BSCC was also called out for our standards were called out for not being strong enough in two particular areas. That's safety checks and people doing intake screening for mental health.

Some of the things that we did is that we strengthened our regulations for safety checks to require that people doing the checks, making sure that they're looking at the well-being of the people being checked, they're doing that. Supervisors are auditing, making that regulation a lot stronger in response to that.

This, as many people know, also generated a lot of grassroots efforts in the San Diego area to create SB 519. So we're going to take all of that and move it into a place where we're not just reading about deaths in an audit.

We're going to be doing reviews of those deaths and again at the facility level making meaningful changes based on our recommendations and then being able to take everything we learn from those individual reviews and raise the minimum standards statewide.

Okay. Well, I think after our meeting in here and reading, I feel totally comfortable with your confirmation. And I think it's clear that over the next couple of years we're really going to have to see how this plays out to decide if it's working or there's something else we have to do.

But your appointment and the bill is the right step for now and then in my view, we'll just see where that goes. So thank you and thank you for your willingness to serve.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Senator Jones.

Thank you again. You know, even for a position like this that's compensated, I still have the highest respect and admiration for people that step up to do this kind of job.

There was in preliminary conversations, it came reading through the background material to my attention that there's no post certified physicians in your department, sworn police officers doing these investigations. Do you have some concerns about that and is that something that maybe should be fixed through legislation or.

I'd like to give you an opportunity to kind of talk about that.

Sure. So the people that, the team members that can conduct our inspections, it's a classification called field representatives. And to become a field representative you have to be above second line, have to have certain number of years experience as a second line supervisor in a law enforcement facility.

So the people that come to us to do this job, they either have a post background or they've gone through core training, which is the correctional, minimum correctional training for working in a detention facility. So the people that will be doing these inspections do have that experience.

They've worked in law enforcement, they've worked in local detention facilities and they, and they come with that training.

So if I understand correctly, then everybody who's going to be applying for those positions will have that, but it's still not a requirement. So there might be a situation where somebody could apply that doesn't have that.

As the Director, would you be more comfortable if that was stated emphatically in the requirements or are you comfortable with the current vagueness of the requirements?

One of the reasons I'm comfortable is because we already have a plan and we have spaces allocated to our team members to start doing some of the required post training for death investigations, for basic investigations, those sorts of things.

So they might not have explicitly have that post background, but we are going to send our inspectors with that experience background through those specific post trainings. Yeah.

Do your investigators have subpoena power?

No, they don't.

Okay. Is that something that should be considered? You can get back to me on that. We're just having a conversation. These answers are not based on.

Yeah, it's so important that we're going to get good information from our local detention facilities.

And as we're starting to get that information in, it is clear that there is some pushback agencies that see us as a public requester rather than an agency that's doing a review so, again, we are just trying to determine how much information we can get at this stage, and we're working on that quite hard.

Okay. And I recognize that this is a new position in a new, I don't want to say Department, but new group. And there's going to be some learning lessons and growing pains.

And so I think, knowing my colleagues, I'll speak for myself, having an open door, and I think all my colleagues do as well, that if you know something's coming up that you need addressed legislatively, that you would tell us sooner rather than later so that we can be on top of that.

So with that, and I agree with Senator Laird that moving your appointment forward is the right thing to do. So thank you.

Did you. No, you're good. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And it is a new position and just reading about you and who you are, you are very well qualified to do this.

And I love that you're going to approach the situation not heavy-handed with the hammer that you're doing this wrong and you're going to make you fix that, but in collaboration with both the detention facilities and the families and the things that are happening with the fatalities that you will.

I would hope that you wouldn't need subpoena power. I hope that with your personality and the way you're approaching this, that you will work together with all sides to be able to solve this. I don't have any questions. I'm very impressed with your background and resume and very happy to support this appointment.

So if we're done at the dais here, I am going to open it up to public comment. Those who wish to come and support and make brief comments and support, please come to this microphone. It'll be on. That's anybody who would like to come and support the confirmation of Allison Ganter to move forward? No one.

I know you three ladies. The one in the yellow, that one in the middle, and you, you guys are like, who's going to do it? Somebody do it? You want to do it? Okay. You guys are like, you guys are overly excited. And I'm like. And you're not coming to the mic. Okay. Seeing no one in support.

Is there anyone in the room in opposition to this nominee? Seeing none. I'll bring it back the dais for comments or a motion. Thank you, Senator Jones. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call] 4 to 0.

Thank you. And we look forward to your full confirmation on the Senate Floor. It'll be up there shortly.

Thank you so much.

Seeing that Senate Pro Tem has just arrived back for his chair position, we are. I'm going to give it back to him, but I think we are going to. We're going to open the roll.

Can we do that first?

Yeah.

Okay, so we're going to go ahead and since he's back, we're going to open the roll on all three items the Governor's appointees required to appear. The first one, Madam Secretary, is Ricardo Delafuente, the Member of the California Community Colleges Board. The current vote is 2-0. Please call the roll.

[Roll Call] 3 to 0.

That vote is 3 to 0. That nominee is out going to the full Senate Floor. Item number B, Erica Pond. Dr. Pond for the Director of Public Health Officer, Department of Public Health. That that is on call with 2-0 as well. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call] Three to zero.

That vote is three to zero. We'll close the roll. And that individual, Dr. Erica Pond from Public Health Officer for the Department of Public Health will be moved to the full Senate Floor. And item number C is the confirmation or the move to the Senate Floor.

A motion to move Ms. Allison Ganter, Director of In-Custody Death Review Board and State Community Corrections to the full Senate Floor. That vote is currently four to zero. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

That conferee has five votes to move the Senate Floor. And I will close the roll and turn it over to Mr. Pro Tem.

Thank you so much, Madam Vice Chair. Very grateful for your work today. To all of those who are here and to recently appointed, congratulations with the look forward to seeing you on the Senate Floor. We're grateful for all the public comment that we had today.

And what we're going to do now is adjourn this public statement of the Senate Rules Committee and convene in our Executive session. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, please round of applause. Thank you so much.