Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 5 on State Administration

Good morning and welcome back to Assembly Subcommitee 5 on State Administration Day 2. I have my big tall coffee here. We got lots of smiles. Are we ready? Okay. Today's hearing we will review the May revision proposals, have an update on Gen AI and an update on the Governor's return to work order on the J.

Gen AI issue. I am very worried that this Administration is not allowing the Legislature enough oversight over these projects. Well, they may in the long run be good for our efficiencies.

We without proper oversight and input from the Legislature, we could have severe impacts on our state workforce, impacts also on personal privacy and more costs than were initially stated. I've been very clear that the Legislature needs more oversight and involvement on all the IT state projects.

I'm also worried about the timing of the Governor's return to work order and these last minute cost saving measures at the cost of state employees that have had no input from the Legislature and stakeholders.

I understand there's a need to find savings, but this should be done in good faith and cooperatively with a fine scalpel, not what we have before us, which takes a sledgehammer to the state's collective bargaining process and the trust of the state employees who are the backbone of our government.

With those initial comments I will say this is an in person hearing with all panelists testifying in person. Our hearing is informational today and open to all Members of the State Assembly. We will take questions from Members of this Subcommitee after each panel. Public comment will be taken at the end with 30 seconds or less.

If you are unable to attend this hearing in person, you may submit your comments via email to Assembly. Asmbudgetm.ca.gov we do have non presentation items. Staff have suggested the following items do not receive a formal presentation from the Administration or in order to focus more time on more substantial proposals.

Members of the Subcommitee may ask questions or make comments on these proposals at the time designated by the chair of the Subcommitee or request presentation by the Administration at the discretion of the chair of the Subcommitee. Members of the public are encouraged to provide the public comment on those items at the designated time.

I would like to pull the Mission Critical and Office of Data and Innovation proposals and hear them with the Gen AI update. Do we have any other Members that want to pull any items on non presentation? All right.

With that we are going to go ahead and begin our presentations and we are going to start with item number one. Gen AI update. Okay, before we start, do we have any comments by our Members? Opening comments no opening comments Want to thank our Member From San Diego and is it Palm Springs? That's what I thought.

Thank you. Thank you for attending. We appreciate your attendance. All right. With that, please make sure you introduce yourself as you make your remarks. Welcome.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Can you hear me? Okay. Is this on? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. My name is Justin Howard. I'm the Deputy Secretary for Fiscal Policy Administration at the California Government Operations Agency. With me is Jared Johnson, who's the state's Deputy Chief Information Officer of the California Department of Corrections.

We're going to just quickly provide an update related to the state's gen AIEO implementation. Since we last had a hearing on this particular matter, there has been some updates to some of the POC projects that are currently proceeding within the state.

In particular, we've had a couple contracts that are been executed and are moving beyond the proof of concept phase into the minimum viable product phase. And those include projects at the California Department of Tax and Fees Administration as well as Caltrans.

We also have another project that is looking to move to the MVP phase and that there is a particular budget change proposal request that is pending as part of the governor's may revise for the California Department of Public Health.

To date, all deliverables within the governor's Executive order have been met except for one, which is still pending review within the Administration related to impacts on the state workforce. And with that, I'm happy to answer any particular questions. I will note that throughout this particular fiscal year, we've been meeting regularly with staff. We've had monthly meetings.

There are. There was budget Bill Language that was included as part of last year's budget that directed both the Assembly and Senate to designate people to attend monthly meetings with the Administration so they can get regular updates as to the administration's efforts in this space.

And if there's any questions related to the new product Delivery Life Cycle, I'll leave that to my colleague at the Department of Technology to answer. And with that, thank you.

Appreciate. Department of Finance. Danielle Brandon, Department of Finance. You can move that just. There you go.

Danielle Brandon, Department of Finance. Nothing to add, but available to question with the team of folks.

All right, Any of your. The rest of the team, any comments? No. All right.

Brian Metzger, Lao. As noted in the agenda, our office published a preliminary analysis of the new Generative AI project approval process called the Project Delivery Life Cycle that is set to launch in July.

Our analysis largely focused on our concern about the pace of implementation of this new process, particularly given the current status of the first round of proofs of concept for Generative AI projects or POCs.

One of these first round POCs is the Department of Public Health's Healthcare Facilities Inspections POC for which the Governor's May revision requests up to $8 million in 25-26 to scale up the contract for implementation.

We're still in the process of reviewing this proposal, but would note that we do not have the scaled up contract to review and do not know how demonstrations and tests during the first round informed the administration's decision to go ahead with a broader implementation of this technology.

This issue of a lack of information about decisions made during and the outcomes of the first round POCs is not limited to DPH and informed our recommendation for the Administration to publish a report detailing at a minimum what IT learned from each pocket, whether a contract resulted from the POC and the amount of the contract and its terms.

We also recommended the new process for Generative AI projects be limited to this and the second round of POCs as a pilot in 202526 not only for the Administration to better evaluate whether this new process works, but also for the Legislature to determine whether changes in oversight through the budget process are warranted.

Lastly, we recommend continuing monthly meetings with the Administration that were mentioned on the EO to evaluate and refine this new process and for continued conversations about some of the ongoing work to ready the state workforce for this new technology.

In conclusion, we agree with the staff comments that the Legislature may wish to consider the requirements for generative AI projects that are requesting funding through the budget process and are happy to work with staff and others to make that happen. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions can you speak to the comments related to the LAO's comments?

I can provide a high level overview of the new process. Project Delivery Lifecycle My name is Jarrett Johnson. I'm the Chief Deputy. I'm sorry, Deputy State CIO and Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Technology.

Our role is to bolster and successfully deliver IT projects on behalf of the State of California and ensure that the investment in those technology projects is done efficiently and effectively. We collaborate with state entities to make sure that is done. We are responsible for approval, procurement and oversight of the State's IT projects.

We also provide consultative services to state entities in the planning and delivering of those projects. Project Delivery Lifecycle prioritizes an iterative, value driven approach to generative AI project planning, leveraging proofs of concepts and minimum viable products and iterative phasing to reduce risk and confirm business value before scaling into production.

With this new process, we are trying to avoid the lengthy planning and years it can take to implement IT projects and we want to be able to evaluate the technology as quickly as possible.

And what we have done first in the nation is establish sandboxes on state technology infrastructure developed by state engineers to be able to host these proofs of concepts so that the state and the departments that are interested in participating in these projects can evaluate the technology long before we have made that significant investment.

So with this process, the oversight will remain very similar to what we do today with the Project Approval Life Cycle or palm.

We will ensure that when these projects are approved that the LAO and other stakeholders are included on those approval letters and the status of these projects will be added to our project portfolio dashboard on CDT's website.

In addition to that, any of those that come through the Legislature as a budget change proposal will be non delegated projects and will receive CDT's oversight and also the typical oversight reporting that you may expect from other types of technology projects.

We're taking a very thoughtful approach retroactively applying what we have Learned with the round 1 proofs of concepts to develop this process which was released in February, we are going back to the original POCs and doing the planning documentation and will provide oversight for those projects that scale up to an MVP or into production.

And in addition to that we will be looking at the round two POCs doing the planning and providing oversight to those and the Legislature and the LAO can expect to receive the typical oversight reporting on those projects.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I just, I'm wondering why the 8 million for the CDPH request. Why, why wasn't that presented to us in.

Christine Cherdboonmuang, Wheeling Department of Finance. I can't hear you, sorry. Christine Cherdboonmuang, Wheeling Department of Finance this we received a budget change proposal request in the spring.

I'll just add Justin again from GovOps is at the point in time they were doing the original POCs and the POCs were basically being done for $1 and there were a bunch of proof of concepts, right? Which Department then need to evaluate.

You need to go into negotiation with the vendor who ultimately gets selected based upon the criteria and they didn't have the estimate at that particular time at Jan.10 budget. So they now have a better estimate of what they think the cost would be to move from the POC phase into an MVP phase.

Sorry, I don't mean to use the acronyms proof of concept phase into the minimum viable product phase. And hence now you have your proposal before you because this is a cost that the Department cannot absorb within their existing resources and therefore they're coming to you to ask for that resource level.

So we have the, the new 8 million plus we have 7.5 million in the special Fund in about 350,000 in another Fund which is close to 16 million on this AI in different categories. Is that correct?

I would note that. Danielle Brandon with Department of Finance. I'd like ODI to come up and speak to their proposals. I do not believe that they're Genai based in themselves so we can give them a second and get ODI to come up.

I just, just sticking to the Genai for a second. I think the CDPH proposal is simply for 8 million from that one particular Fund.

There are some other proposals in the budget that aren't related to Gen AI where there's a technical adjustment for the Office of Digital and Innovation where they are requesting an appropriation out of the Data and Innov Fund for, for work that they that they normally do and was inadvertently left out at the time of the Governor's Budget.

And so I just want to make sure we're not conflating the two issues here.

All right, I get that. I just want to make sure that we realize that we have asked for more oversight on this and we want to make sure that the Legislator legislative body gets that information.

Yeah, and one other thing to the Laos earlier comments where you asked us to respond to, you know, the part of the budget last year or current year budget included that language to meet regularly and I don't think, I mean I'll have to go back and validate but I mean we have no concern continuing to meet regularly with the necessary folks in both the Legislature and the Lao on how the Administration is implementing Gen AI.

In fact, we came to that agreement to include that language last year and we actually had a big part in insisting on certain participation and the Legislature to ensure that they were getting included so that there wouldn't be any lack of transparency for you guys.

Brian Metzger LEO, I would just note that the provisional language does include a provision at the end that says that all provisions related to generative AI would apply only to 2425 and so would need to be placed back into whatever budget language would be ultimately adopted on Generative AI.

So again, happy to hear that the monthly meetings are still something that are under consideration, but something that the Legislature would have to affirmatively put into the budget.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions?

Topic yes, so just just to clarify, the Administration funded five POC pilot projects with General in last year's budget and only one's going through. Only one's moving forward. No.

So currently there are several PLC projects. About four of them have three of them have awards where they have executed contracts. And those departments are absorbing those costs within their existing resource levels.

Only one Department at this time has come forward asking for additional resources above their base to Fund the minimum viable product that they are currently in negotiation with the vendor on.

Okay. Fantastic. Thank you.

All right. I don't think we have any other questions up here. We'll open up to public. Anybody wanting to speak from the public on this item. Seen a nun? We appreciate you being. We do not have any additional speakers. I want to thank you for coming. And we are going to move on to item number two.

Labor and Workforce Development Fund.

Welcome and if you can, introduce yourself while you speak.

Sure. Jay Sturgess, Labor and Workforce Development Fund or, sorry, labor and Workforce Development Agency. Okay.

Grace Henry, Department of Finance. I'm going to introduce the item and then hand off to Jay. Okay. So to achieve a balanced budget, the May revision includes a loan of $400 million from the Labor and Workforce Development Fund to the General Fund with resources that are not projected to be used for operational or programmatic purposes.

The loan is proposed to be repaid in 2029-30 with provisional language allowing for earlier repayment under specified conditions. The solution is proposed within the broader context of closing the projected budget shortfall. Factoring in the proposed loan and all expenditure requests, the projected 2025-26 ending balance for the Fund is approximately $119 million.

I will hand it off to Jay, Deputy Secretary, Fiscal Policy and Administration for labor and Workforce Development Agency, to provide additional context, noting that we look forward to discussing this proposal with the Legislature as part of the main revision process.

Thank you, Grace. The fund's primary revenue source is civil penalties recovered through a civil action brought by an aggrieved employee. In recent years, the level of revenues to this fund have fluctuated significantly given the higher than anticipated civil penalty revenues. In recent years, this has resulted in accumulated Fund balance sufficient to support the loan.

Existing statute limits the use of these funds to furthering the enforcement of labor laws and education of employers and employees about their rights and responsibilities. Within this scope, the fund currently provides some ongoing operational support to the Labor Agency, Department of Industrial Relationship, and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board for this purpose.

Additionally, the fund is also supporting one time funding appropriations across a variety of grant programs, including Workers Rights Enforcement, Domestic Workers Rights Education and Outreach, California Workplace Outreach Program, and the Rural Strategic Engagement Program. The most recent iterations of these grant programs are still in progress, with funds available through June 30, 2029. Thank you.

Thank you Chair, Members. Alexander Bentz, Legislative Analyst Office. We broadly concur with the assessment in. The Administration regarding the fund's ongoing revenues and expenditures. I do want to. We do want to note that there were recent reforms to the funding source. For this fund, the Private Attorney, Private. Attorneys General Act in 2024.

We do expect that this will reduce future penalty revenues of the fund. We do not yet know exactly how, by how much, but we do want. To flag that for you. So thank you. Happy to answer any questions.

Questions? Assembly Member Ward.

Thank you for the presentation and obviously we're all looking for creative solutions to be able to help support general fund needs.

It does beg the question how the fund has grown to such a size and recognizing there are some unknowns in the incoming years based on some of these changes that LAO had identified that and you know, for what we have here today, that it would continue to sort of net grow in the 2025-26 horizon with anticipated revenues of 126 million, expenditures of 91 million.

So that still is a net growth of 35 million just in that year alone. And this might be more apt for the next panel, given that we're going to talk to DIR under issue 3, but with the backlog of work that we have for people to have some of their issues resolved for through complaints of DIR.

I just question whether or not there might be, you know, a need for a new analysis or new attention maybe to the surpluses within this fund for the purposes that it was established.

If I could make one note, while that is a viable use of the fund, we would also note that the Labor Commissioner's Office is primarily funded with the Labor Enforcement Compliant Fund at this time.

Primarily.

Primarily. So this would be an allowable use. But the given the structure of that fund source and DIR's fee sources and.

The source of this fund, again is sources, sources back to where civil penalties.

Essentially for violations of the Labor Code brought by individuals.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Once this balance is taken or moved over, I should say to the general fund how much, how many, how much will be left? In essence.

The projected fund balance would be 119 million.

190.

119.

19.

And I think I have a similar question, which is I just have a fear that once I know it says it will be paid back, but sometimes in government we hear those promises and then two years, four years down the line, what kind of assurances do we have that this will be in fact put back where it's coming from?

Allison Hewitt, Department of Finance we have budget bill. We've structured it within the budget so the repayment is scheduled within our budgeting system for the 29-30 fiscal year. We have provisional language that dictates that that schedule certainly. Could the provisional language be amended in the future? That's a possibility. That's not what the Administration is proposing.

So at this and there's this is a dynamic fund. There's been recent reforms that are going to change the revenue picture. So will we don't have any reason to extend beyond that timeline right now.

And there'll be an ongoing assessment annually to make sure that the Fund is well supported to make sure that it can sustain the loan and repayment isn't needed early.

Why is the fund accumulating so quickly?

As we noted, the revenue structure is somewhat volatile. It's based on the derivation of those civil penalties that are not easy to project. And there's been a rapid increase in those revenues in recent years. A handful of years ago, we were collecting about $15 million a year annually.

So the current level of revenues in 2023 was approximately $200 million. So that rapid escalation kept ahead of our ability to project that level of revenues and spend at a level in accordance with that.

Any other questions? All right. Seeing none, we will go to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item. Item number two. Labor and Workforce Development Fund.

Madam Chair Member, Sarah Flocks, California Federation of Labor Unions. We echo the questions that were asked today. This fund is funded by PAGA basis civil penalties through PAGA, which means that is when an employer has violated labor law. We know that workers lose about $2 billion in wages to wage theft every year.

Our question is, why is this $400 million or almost $500 million not being used for outreach and enforcement as it is supposed to?

And so we just pose that question because we have such a crisis in wage theft in the state, and we want to make sure that the labor agency is doing everything they can to enforce labor law. So that is just a question that we would pose as this loan is being made. Thank you.

Thank you. 30 seconds or less, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Jorge Medrano, representing Valley Voices, a nonprofit through the California Outreach Project. We have been able to engage directly with dairy workers by hosting know your rights workshops and the distribution of PPE. Directly to these workers.

During these outreach efforts, we have revealed numerous of workplace violations, including wage theft, discrimination and harassment issues that impact our frontline workers. We asked the Committee to reject the governor's proposal to take 400 million from the Labor Workforce Development Fund. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Jose Mesquita Morales, with a nonprofit called the Ring of Democracy. We're also a CWOP grantee. We specifically focus on outreaching to young workers, like people entering the workforce for the first time. So we've educated them on their workplace rights and ensuring that they're not being taken advantage of excessively. Right.

As they're entering and they don't know what they're doing, getting themselves into sometimes. Right? So we also echo, like, Please reject the $400 million loan that the governor's proposing because that would just mess with the with our work. So. Thank you.

Thank you. You can pull the mic. Yeah. There you go.

I work for Filipino Worker Center. I. I work with caregivers and I am a caregiver myself. Our work is very isolated. Up to this moment. There are a lot of caregivers receiving $120 to $140 for a 24 hour work.

But because of CWOP, we were able to educate the caregivers and reach out to them so that we will be able to file wage step and other workplace violation. So please don't loan. Don't approve the 400 million loan. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Kimberly Palacio. I'm the lead field and campaign organizer with the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council. We're also CWOP grantees. We. We serve over 136 unions and over 200,000 working families across the southern border region.

CWOP allows us to fund a position in the Imperial county that is criminally underfunded and so often overlooked. As a union member myself, I specifically work with marginalized workers, including farm workers and other essential workers in Imperial Valley already facing displacement and replacement with the potential for Lithium Valley, which I'm sure you all are familiar with.

And I urge you to reject the proposed labor and workforce development loan and instead further fund CWOP to empower our working families. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Ellen Bazanson and I'm with the Sacramento Central Labor Council. We have also been a CWOP grantee since its creation. And through CBOP we've been able to hold workshops and resource fairs to teach on workplace violations and workers rights.

Thank you.

And so we're asking the Committee to retain funding for CWOP so we can maintain and being trusted messengers on workplace rights. We also asked the Committee to reject the governor's proposal to take 400 million from the Labor and Workforce Development Fund as this is essential for enforcing California's strong labor codes. Thank you.

My name is Oscar and I work with Salva. I'm the lead organizer there. We're part of the SIWA Fund and I just ask you to reject the Governor proposal because we need to maintaining our presence, our communities, teaching our workers their right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Romal Vasquez from Valley Voices, Kings County Area, Central California. Lately we've been dealing. CWOP has been real important in our area due to the barriers. And not only that, the closest location is Fresno for the Labor Commission's office. So that's one of the biggest impacts. So we've been able to help file complaints.

Not only that, we've been able to help identify different, you know, different areas of work where there's discrimination, where there's wage theft. And we're able to help them out and file complaints. Not only that, but also educate the dairy owners and educate other source other employees.

So we're able to save money and help save money for like the state funds and stuff like that. So it's real important for us to keep that program so that we can continue to help families and especially in agriculture areas.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Tiffany Faulkner and I'm with United Forest back. We support Walmart and Amazon workers learn and enforce their rights. I myself used to work work at Walmart so I know all too well what these workers are facing including safety hazards, unpredictable work schedules and retaliation. For speaking about these issues.

Through the California Work Workplace Outreach Project program we have been able to hold workshops training workers to identify safety hazards at work. We're asking the Committee to Committee to reject the governor's proposal to take 400 million from the labor and workforce development community.

This fund is is dedicated to making California's workplaces a stronger place and funding co op and essential programs make work workplaces safer.

Thank you.

All right, bring it back to Committee. I'm. There was a lot of comments about CWOP. This, this proposal is not proposing to cut CWOP. Is that correct? That is correct. All right, any other comments? All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it. We are going to move to Department of Industrial Relations.

Item number three, Public Work Information Technology Systems Enhancements. Welcome.

Thank you.

Please introduce yourself when you speak.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Committee Members. My name is Josh Iverson. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Industrial Relations. Good afternoon.

Ben Bonte, Chief Information Officer, Department of Industrial Relations.

The governor's May revision included a budget change proposal for our Department Fund another year for our public works information technology system enhancements. We are requesting 19.1 million in 25-26 for this for phase two of the project. This project has been in the works since fiscal year 2020-21. Happy to take any questions you may have.

Finance. Nothing more to add. LAO.

Chaz Alamo, with the Legislative Analyst Office. Nothing to add on this item. Thanks.

Questions again, the same question I've had before, which was why wasn't this presented in January?

Sure. I can start off and Ben can chime in. There's significant oversight of the project by both the Department of Finance and the California Department of Technology. That oversight requires periodic reporting of project activities and project costs.

And a special project report required by CDT was submitted and under CDT's review, it was not approved by CDT in time for inclusion in the governor's January 10 proposed budget.

It has recently been approved by CDT, so the Administration thought it was more prudent not to include it in the January 10th proposed budget because it wasn't technically approved by CDT. But since CDT has approved it, the Administration thought it was appropriate to include it in the May revision.

If this is approved, how long do you expect this entire project to be until complete?

So we're currently expecting the project to be completed in October of 2020.

And again, I don't have any disagreements with the project, but it is another 20 million we're adding to an incredibly tight budget. That's my concern. And when we go back, even on this agenda, we have 8 million that was added. So these numbers are ticking up when we're looking for dollars for things like housing and so forth.

But any other questions?

Yes, sorry to belabor it as well. You know, it's something not unlike so many other issue areas where we're looking at technology projects right now that we are continuing to put a lot more money into and just wondering, when will this all end?

Obviously, we want to have, you know, a modernized system that's going to effectuate the goals of what you're trying to do through the technology.

And, you know, it's more of a General question, but maybe if you can answer in the context of your this particular project, you know, at what points do you realize that something is going grossly over budget that we have to keep coming back?

And why is it that that wasn't predicted when you at the outset of the RFP or the initiation of this project?

Can I add one piece of context? Allison Hewitt, Department of Finance so this is budgeting for IT projects. This isn't an increased cost to the project. This is this year, fiscal year, the 25-26 alloc that will support the project implementation. Okay, what?

When projects are going through the Powell process, we typically budget one year of funding for that year of the project. There's some deviation for different reasons, and I'm not the IT expert. Okay, and I'll hand it off to here, but this isn't an increased cost. This is just the 25-26 allocation.

It's a good point and it's fair. But to the Chairwoman's question, that's something that probably should have been incorporated in the January draft budget.

Because if you're thinking two to three years back to the project inception, you know, what you're estimating for in the next three budget cycles, it feels like it's a, you know, something that was not foreseen, that resulted from unanticipated cost overruns or the need to have more put into it.

Well, so I can speak to what changed on the project. We completed phase one of the project successfully in June of 2024, and we went through a procurement process under the oversight of CDT, conducted by CDT, to procure a vendor for phase two. But unfortunately, that procurement process didn't result in a successful award of a contract.

So we have to go back through the procurement process again to award a contract. We're anticipating that that contract will be awarded sometime this fall in 2025, and then we will execute that contract and expect to complete the project in 2026.

Are you saying that. So the initial bids, there was no responsive bids, so we are having to pay more.

There were no responsive bids. And so we have to do the.

Procurement again and pay more, authorize more. We have to up our pricing in order to be more attractive.

Well, so the budget request is slightly higher, I think a few $1.0 million higher than the previous request was. But the majority of the $19.1 million, the vast majority of the $19.1 million is just appropriating into the 2025-2026 budget, the funds for the system integrator in that year.

Okay. Yeah. And I recognize that it's so far along that obviously, you know, with sunk costs, we want to see you be successful in this.

But I also mean to underscore and not to specifically pick on you, because I see this happening in several different items that we're considering as well, that when we're putting more calls for technology improvements out there, they do seem to run over time and over budget.

It feels, you know, frequently enough that it begs the question kind of what is systemically going on around there. And I'm just asking, as one example of your experience there, to maybe try to get a handle of that within Department technology for the management of these projects.

The predictions and the budgeting of that would be helpful, especially as we're facing a crunch that we are right now. That's all I have. Did you. Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry I walked in late. I apologize. But had a chance to look at this, and I, as was stated, I have several concerns with borrowing all this money from this Department for this IT enhancement system. So I guess I have a question. How is this additional money going to save lives and get wages into people's hands?

Sure, I can take that. Thank you. This funding is for the second phase of our public works IT system enhancement, which is focused on two key areas, labor law enforcement and apprenticeship registration.

The system will be used by the Labor Enforcement Task Force which inspects public works construction sites to ensure labor laws are met and is a coalition of California State government enforcement agencies that work together and in partnership with local agencies to combat the underground economy.

The Labor Enforcement Task Force includes Cal, osha, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, and other departments like EDD, Contractors, State Licensing Board, Insurance, cdtfa, bar, DOJ and Abc.

The project's next phase will create a core database from all the individual public work systems to enable automatic flagging, data mining and strategically insights for priority enforcement for the Labor Enforcement Task Force.

And the system updates here will also improve functionality for the Division of Apprenticeship standards by combining prevailing wage databases and building in flexibility for expanded data capture on trades and projects not currently tracked.

That was a beautiful statement. I, I, I actually want to see it put into practice. I still have a lot of concerns. I, I didn't answer the question. I mean what I took from that is that letters might go out fasters when someone dies on the job.

But while I'm dealing with other priorities and you're taking $419 million out of being able to do some of this stuff on hand, on the ground, it's really concerning. But I'll stop there.

Two areas. The 400 is yeah, right. But I think you're going to hear it, especially as we head into the next issue, which is we've been sitting on this Budget Committee. For me now it's the second year and when we individually look at all of the requests under technology G, just technology.

I think we're very close to $1.0 billion, if not more on various projects, some of them going on for literally years and are not complete.

So it is not U2 or it's just that as a state, I think we're almost to a point where we need, to be honest, some type of audit to find out exactly how much money we're spending spending on these technology systems because they're large and they're expensive and we know how fast technology is moving and we also know that we could even be in a case, obviously we just had AI where by the time we complete some of these systems, there could be a whole other system that we need to update.

But again, it's costly. It's how we work in the workspace. And so we have to be competitive. So I understand that. But it is the 19 million here, the 16 million under the AI. And now when we go into the next issue, we are going to see many, many more million.

So it is not an attack on you. It's just our concern to try to find every dollar in areas that were trying to fill in some gaps. But with that we appreciate. Do we have anybody from the public speaking on this? Thank you. We appreciate you coming. All right.

Speaking of big technology system EDD Next a reappropriation item number four. Hi. Hi. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members of the Subcommitee, I'm Caleb Horrell, the chief financial officer for the Employment Development Department. Thank you for inviting me here today to talk about this issue.

So as noted in the agenda, the May revision includes reappropriation language which makes a technical adjustment to the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund appropriation for the EDD Next modernization effort. This makes funds available for an additional year through June 30th of 2026.

This adjustment is needed to correct the technical error reflected in the 2024 Budget act and aligns the encumbrance availability with this corresponding General Fund appropriation that supports EDD Next as well. I should note that these funds are critical for the ICMS contract that EDD does expect to award in this coming fiscal year.

And with that, happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Cartman of Finance.

Again, Chaz Alamo with the Ledge Analyst Office. I'm going to try to add a bit of context to the request that's before you here. EDD Next is customarily funded with a split 5050 between general fund sources and the UI Fund itself. The 2024 Budget Act.

So last year provided EDD with a two year sort of grace period for spending the funds that the Legislature allocated for EDD Next. The technical language in the budget bill for the general fund portion corresponds with that two year. The technical language for the UI portion of the funding just had a different date.

So that's all this specific request is doing. With that in mind, we have no issues. This is a clarification piece.

What I do want to bring in is drawing this request to our office's earlier comments about granting this Subcommitee and the Legislature additional oversight tools of eddwood at this point because the project is going into its most critical phase and its most expensive phase with the ICMS integration.

One of the reasons why the current year, the January proposal for EDD Next was a smaller dollar amount was because much of the funding for the first vendor contract for this ICMS integration comes from last year's budget act because it was not approved or not used during this current fiscal year and is available to be used in the budget year.

That's convenient for the project to move forward smoothly now. But we wanted to draw to your attention that that kind of flexibility does inherently limit your oversight.

And so going forward with this budget act, irrespective of the request that's before you, we think that eliminating the two year encumbrance period would provide the Legislature tighter fiscal oversight of EDD Next. And sure it might create some hiccups for the department.

There won't be quite as much flexibility in how they're moving funds from one fiscal year to the next. But we think the benefits of legislative oversight outweigh those costs.

We're happy to work with staff on constructing some budget bill language that would go for the next year as this proposal is having to do with last year's budget bill language. We're now in the process of crafting the budget bill language for this budget act looking ahead. So it's a contextually complex issue.

No specific concerns with this, but just wanted to raise that for you all. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm going to just jump in here. Can we back up a little bit and can you explain what EDD Next is? How long the project has been in motion and how much is the total cost?

Yes. So generally speaking, EDD NEXTNextis basically a top to bottom modernization to completely transform EDD from both the customer and the claimant's perspective. We're updating online applications, our contact centers at EDD across our UIDI paid family lead programs.

The overall claims process which as Chaz noted, heading into next year, the integrated Claims Management system is the major component of eddnext modernizing edd's benefit systems that support UIDI and PFL in addition to policy procedural updates, forms and just overall generally making the customer experience better. That's overall what EDD Next is doing.

We started down this path in 22-23, so we're now in year three of the EDD Next modernization total.

I think your other question total appropriation to date supporting the project has been is about 660 million and so and then heading into next year with the 25-26 BCP that this Subcommitee previously heard, we're requesting another 124 million to support EDD Next heading into next year we which would make the overall project cost, if that ultimately is approved, a little over $700 million heading into 25-26.

So you can see my remarks from the Last Committee of how much are we in fact spending as a state on technology upgrades, although we know they're necessary? We know, of course through the pandemic the usage with EDD and also the complaints.

So you certainly don't have any complaints from me about making this more user friendly and this. But the cost is staggering. And the timeline, to be Honest, if it's 2023, when is your expected date? So to be completely finished.

To be completely finished. As of, as of right now, what was identified in 25-26 BCP is we would continue ICMS implementation through June of 2029. That's the current target date. But I did want to note, I know that's a long Runway.

Again, the point of being next is there's multiple work streams and there are already things that EDD has implemented along the way. And that's been a major.

One of the major approaches that we want to do with this project is to implement things along the way to improve the customer experience, like the shared customer portal that we implemented back in 2023, many forms changes that we've already done and continue to do.

So there's a lot of things throughout the course of this project that we continue to receive quick wins on and to implement. And then again, the main goal is that ICMS phase that we head into next year.

And I know that I've had a briefing on this just individually and the ICMS is the most complicated. I would go back to what I did say in some of those meetings.

There are already some new parts of the system, like the paid family leave that I know constituents are having a very hard time accessing because I think I already shared this. So it shouldn't be a surprise. We're getting calls in our office about getting support through that.

So if you can relook at that part, just getting just constituents that have nothing to do and see if they can navigate these. Because if we're going to spend almost $1.0 billion on tech and have some of the same issues, then I'm not saying we are. I'm just saying that's what we've heard from our constituents.

But that being said, I once again want to say the oversight from our legislative body needs to be timely and regular.

I know sometimes that feels like it adds even more of a layer, but we are spending what will amount to billions of dollars and technology and we have to do everything we can to streamline that and make these projects more timely. Any other comments?

I just want to maybe second what Chairwoman was saying as far as for something of this size being able to have regular engagement to make sure it's going well because we are also, you know, hand in hand with the end users that are trying to get their benefit and get on with their lives and sort of make ends meet.

Thank you.

Also a second and I'm encouraged to not know it's not just me in my district that we do have a problem with PFL right now.

And so just want to leave that with you since I got the microphone and you're here that you know, thank you again for all that we've been through over recent years on helping to correct some of the backlog in Unemployment Insurance and other areas of assistance.

PFL for some reason has in recent months seen an uptick in unresolved cases. I don't know if you're welcome to respond to that. If there's anything you've heard about or known or investigated. And if not, I welcome you to take that back to the office and try to ask around and help us solve those.

They just seem to be taking a little bit longer to resolve. On the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund, I remember this item from last year. Is it best practice that we have been splitting the cost of EDD Next in sort of a 50-50 ratio or is there any kind of statutory or other legal requirement?

No statutory or legal requirement as far as I'm aware. Since the onset of this project, as you noted, the 50-50 Fund split has been because the the two major programs being UI and DI that are benefiting from the ENX modernization. The 50-50 split made the most sense.

Got it. And so is there if that has it ever been considered to alter that ratio and would. Is the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund the same Fund for which we are having a substantial repayment toward. I know that that's a bigger question. Or am I confusing that with ui.

That name because it has unemployment. Right. That is a better way. That is our disability insurance Fund that supports DI and paid family leave. Got it. The unemployment trust fund is the fund that has that.

Thank you. Thank you for that correction. And what would the balance of this fund be?

The disability fund? I don't have that number in front of me, but I do know that I believe as of Governor's Budget, I think the fund balance is at least around a couple $1.0 billion.

I will note that the funding structure for the disability fund, unlike our unemployment trust Fund issues that we have is One that it's funded through employee contributions. But the formula in statute that funds that fund, it always looks at what the fund balance is from prior years, how much we've paid out in disbursements.

So it's always self correcting to ensure there's a sufficient amount of funding in that fund to support DI and TFL.

Okay, but you're saying there's a balance of a potentially couple billion. Yeah, I believe, I believe it's around a couple billion. What are sort of your average annual distributions for that fund? So I mean we pay out, are expected to pay out 6.

About 16 billion between DI and paid family benefits heading into next fiscal year. I get the ratio there.

So you got to have some reasonable. Yeah. Reserve. Not, not suggesting we rate it the form.

It's a big number. I was going to say the formula in statute that that funds the fund for the contribution rate, there's a 30% formula in there that effectively tries to drive the adequacy rate of the fund to around having around a 30% reserve. So that's always what that formula intends to do.

Okay. That's a standard of 30% Reserve. I'd love to see maybe a five year history of the fund balance and payouts and revenues into the fund just to kind of see some trend lines there and study this a little closer. Thank you for the presentation today.

Did you want to make any comments? Nope. Okay. See no other questions from the Committee. We will open it up to the public. Seeing nobody running down the aisle. I think we are done. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, we are going to head into item number five, the Department of General Services. New parking facilities.

Hello and welcome. Good morning Madam Chair and Members. My name is Jennifer Osborne. I am the Chief Deputy Director at the Department of General Services and I'm here to present and answer questions that you may have around about our May revision BCP for two potentially three additional parking facilities.

One parking garage that we're going to reactivate and two service lots near the May Lee Building. We have as you know, the May Lee building opened a few a couple of years ago and it's in a different part of town than downtown Sacramento and there's not as much street parking available.

It was designed to lean heavily on public transit. There's a light rail station right across the street from it. But but as a result, because it's in a different part of town, there's not as much street parking available.

So the parking garage there parking garage plus surface lot that is currently associated with the building has about 1600 spaces. We know that there are is a need there.

This has has been kind of there's always been a parking need in in state government generally because though we operate a moderate number of parking garages and lots, we were never intended to kind of provide this solution for the entire state.

We're focusing primarily on the mainly building in this case just because of the lack of street parking available. And as the as the agenda notes, we're requesting $1.5 million from the motor vehicle parking facility money account in the budget year and then about 1.0 a little over a million ongoing to support those parking facilities.

I did want to correct one item in the agenda. It states that we are planning to purchase the lot that is kind of kitty corner to the Melee building. We are proposing to lease it. It will provide about I believe about 300 spaces.

And then where there's a secondary vacant lot that we're also in negotiations to add that will provide an additional 170 spaces. So we're looking at about 470 spaces near Melee. And then the downtown garage was mentioned in the previous hearing is will be about 690 spaces.

There is a question in the agenda about how the demand will increase when return to work order takes effect in July. And I assume that that question is pointed at all of our parking garages.

We don't really have a way of determining or predicting that because we don't know how many people will choose to drive their vehicles versus take some other form of transportation.

So with that I Department of Finance Kayla Layman Department of Finance Nothing to add available for questions.

Okay.

Jura Soderborg Legislative Analyst's office. Nothing to add. We didn't raise any concerns with the proposal but here to help with any questions, Committee Members, thank you.

I was also just handed the budget change order. So to if most of this certainly in the out years, not necessarily next year is covered by. Will be covered by revenues from receipts. So it's almost going to be paying for itself.

Right. So currently the way that funding source is structured is it pays for the costs associated with operating the parking garages and it's paid for by Parkers. So monthly Parkers, generally state employees who have a payroll deduction and they are. And the lot right now, our current garages, they are about $85 a month.

Okay. So yeah, that helps I think mitigate a little bit, you know, the, the true impact that, that we otherwise are seeing here.

I think it does sort of thread in the issue though about the return to work orders and the increased demand say that we don't know or we can't measure or predict that we know it's going to be more than zero.

There's probably going to be an increased demand for more people needing to park downtown or in central Sacramento more days. Whether that's a significant or absorbable amount is to be determined. But maybe even a simple representative survey would at least help give you a sense to be able to predict that demand.

What we do know, and we actually were working on this, this really is not a result of the return to return to office order. We know that downtown in the region we've traditionally had about a 5,000 person waiting list for our downtown garages.

And we know that because there's only 1600 spaces available at mainly currently and potentially up to 5000 employees in the building, we likely will fill those spots pretty quickly. So we're not concerned about that. We're not concerned about overbuilding or not having someone show up. Right. For sure.

Okay, thank you. So just talking about this parking lot, how many spots do you see with these additional spots will the state have total? zero, total.

Gosh, I don't, I don't know if I have the total. We operate 15 garages. This will add about a little over 1100. But I'd have to get back to you on how many total spaces.

So an additional 1100. But you said that there's a waiting list of 5000. Is that what you said?

Yes. And that waiting list of between 4 and 5,000 has, has been the number going back. I've worked with the state since the late 90s and that's been.

So the state definitely knows that there's a lack of parking, but it's not the responsibility as an employer to make sure people have parking. Correct. Okay. Some of us live downtown just because that's where we live now.

And I know that this is my 11th year in the Assembly and when I first parked downtown and got some tickets. Yes, they were about $12. Now they're. How much do we know?

Parking ticket, parking ticket. I got one a couple years ago for bus 40 and that was. This was like probably in the mid 2000s. So that's just a guess. I don't know what they are today.

They're about 60 or $70. Because I know, because I got one not that long ago that that is something that will really return. Discuss more in the return to work. But if we have a lack of parking and we have other issues with transportation, we're obviously going to have tickets. But again, I think you answered the questions.

Any other question on the parking? All right, anybody wanting to speak? Just on parking. Just on parking. Not return to work. Just parking.

Only hearing parking. Yes, I understand that. Okay. Hi, my name is Susan Rodriguez. I'm the chief negotiator for SEI Local 1000 and a state employee for the past 23 years. This item here on just parking alone shows that it's an additional cost to the state for bringing people back to the office.

It's returned to office, not to return to work. We have been working since at home just fine, doing just the appropriate things that we need to do and getting the work done.

For California, this is an additional cost to the state, especially in the time when you're going to be talking about item number six in a few minutes in regards to what it does on employees. Sorry I had to rush from the other room over here.

That's okay to be able to make sure I can have my public comment. But understand that this is additional cost to the state, especially with the return to office. Why are we doing this now? Especially when we have a budget that we have and where can we make savings? And this is where we can make savings.

Thank you. Thank you. zero, and additional costs also on the employee because it just. Just because they're buying or getting parking spots, we still have to pay for those parking spots.

Thank you. Hi, thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Haley Liuzamo. I just wanted to provide a little bit of additional context and my personal experience. For context. My work site houses 1500 people and we have 200 parking spots and there's a years long wait list.

Some of the people at the top of the list are close to retiring. That's how long they've been waiting for a parking spot. There's also difficulty parking on the street in downtown, not just at the Mei Lee complex. And also they mentioned close to transit for the main Lee complex.

That light rail stop is going to be closed for construction, so they won't even be able to take light rail to the building. 1,000 spots over two years, only 600, which in downtown is fiscally irresponsible and it doesn't come close to addressing the need that will be created by rto. Thank you.

Thank you. You can pull that mic up. Thank you. There you go.

It says don't touch microphone. I wasn't sure. Hello, my name is Alex Lizamo. I'm a proud SEIU 1000 Member and I've been a state employee since 2016. I strongly oppose the proposal for DGS to spend over two and a half million across two years for only about 1,000 parking spots.

Yesterday, DGS sent out a memo statewide memo about daily parking reduction and that will begin on July 1st. So taxpayers are going to pay over two and a half million across two years for who knows what net amount of parking spots.

This is wasteful, shortsighted, hurts taxpayers and cost state workers money twice, both by them paying taxes and then again when we have to pay $85 a month to park. Please do some sort of cost benefit. Excuse me, cost benefit analysis and see if we can do something about that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Francesca Wander. I work for the Department of Housing Community Development at Mayle and I just want to set the record straight on a couple of minor inaccuracies. The $85 per month parking that was referenced, two points. Number one, those are highly in demand and very difficult to come by.

In fact, they are no longer available. So everyone else who's going to be forced back to office and pay for parking will be paying the full daily rate. Plus, there is no in and out privilege. So if anybody needs to leave for any reason during the day, they get to pay twice.

Secondly, I did the math as as you did as well and came up with the same 1100 additional spaces on top of 1600.

So roughly, these three parking lots on which the state is spending more money it doesn't have, it's still only going to address about half the demand of the 5,000 employees that need parking rather than the entire demand. And again, we're still being forced to pay for parking. I currently telework full time. I pay zero for parking.

And that's how it should be. And then finally, I would beg to differ. These three parking lots that we're spending money on just to service mainly is directly tied to rto. So please do not allow that to be disassociated. Thank you.

Hello, my name is David Egan. I also work for the Department of Housing Community Development. Since 2021, I've been fully remote up until July 1, probably. We're still short 3,000 parking spaces. And this is a brand new complex. This should have been thought out ahead of time when the building was planned. So it's disappointing that the.

From the dgs, it's basically not our problem. Even though you work here to have parking for you, number one. And number two, for somebody to have to get a parking ticket to break the law, you know, get a parking ticket to have an added cost. That's almost the cost if you get a parking pass.

I put my name on the. The wait list because I am supposed to be at Melee. I'm a mile away, and I believe they're building that stadium where I'm on a wait list. So I don't think that's acceptable. And I think we can do better for state workers, the public. So thank you.

Thank you.

Says don't touch the microphone. So I'm trying to, like, follow directions. Hi, my name is Melissa and I also work at the May Lee building. I don't. Currently we have about 27% of our labor force being able to park. And as I understand it, our parking lot is public.

So that means anybody can park there and pay the daily rate, even Members of the public, because it's public parking. And as I understand, there's a lot of construction going on. I believe there's a hospital going on and there's a grocery store coming in.

So I think it is the responsibility of the state to provide parking for their employees, and I don't think we should pay for it. And I don't think that anybody who can telework should be in the office. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Seeing no others at the mic and no additional question. Thank you for coming. We appreciate it. And we're going to move to item number six. Department of Human Resources may revise trailer Bill Language. Going to do all these together or how we want at a time.

Okay.

All right. We're going to do the May revised trailer Bill Language.

Good afternoon. Noel Fakaji, Department of Finance. I'll give a brief overview. We have two trailer bills before you today.

The first is regarding the State's Telework policy so the Department of General Services and the Department of Human Resources proposed trailer Bill Language to update the government code related to the Administration's ability to set state work statewide telework policies.

Specifically, the proposal would move the responsibility for the policy from DGS to calhr, place the language under the Personnel Administration section instead of the Department of Transportation, update the terminology from telecommuting to telework, and make other changes to remove requirements that have since been completed, are out of date, or are duplicative.

And we have the second trailer Bill Language is related to non industrial disability insurance. So the trailer Bill Language is to ensure all career Executive assignment position employees are eligible for non industrial disability insurance or ndi.

Under the current statute, CEA employees that do not have prior state service are not eligible for as they are not considered permanent or probationary employees and thereby this disadvantages CEAs who are new to state service.

We believe that this is an oversight due to a 2015 change that expanded the ECEA exam to all applicants, including those who do not have prior civil service employment. And we have the Director here from CALHR for any questions.

Good afternoon. Ortega, Director of Cali Char I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Members I Does the telework policy undermine the DILLS Act?

It does not. So this trailer Bill does not amend the statewide telework policy that's in place today, nor does it have any impact on the Department level telework policies that the employees are operating under.

It is a statutory switch to move it from the DGS body of law over to the CALHR body of law, largely due to the fact that the DGS program that had existed to support its portion of telework policy was the funding for that was sunset last year and so there is no longer a program at DGS on telework.

So it's more consistent with the actual functions of CALHR to move it into our body of law. It is not intended to be a substantive change. It does not change the policy that the telework agreements are under today.

And obviously this trailer Bill Language. Were you able to consult with any of the parties that are going to be affected by this?

I'm not sure if there has been any consultation with anyone on a trailer Bill and I'm sorry I didn't ask the lao.

Do you have any comments?

Nick Schroeder with the LAO we're still evaluating the tbl, but at this point it seems like the TELEWORK TBL is something that might be better considered through the policy Committee process.

And we talked a little bit about this last year and I think it was related to the telework last year. About some of this is actually should be negotiated through policy. So that is a concern of mine here. Any other questions?

I'm sorry, can you explain to me why this is necessary right now, why we need to make this change in the budget?

Sure. The main reason why it's being proposed now is because the program that existed at DGS for I think there was two years of limited term funding that was approved during the sort of the height of the pandemic and the when employees were originally sent home.

And there was a lot of tracking of what was happening, making sure everyone had a telework policy. This was at a time when telework was being implemented across all departments. At the same time there was a unit set up at DGS to monitor and track some of that.

Once the hybrid kind of telework environment became a steady state, the DGS funding was eliminated as of the end of last year's budget. So there is no longer a unit at DGS monitoring or tracking telework. So for that reason, we, DGS and CALHR concluded it made more sense to move the body of law into CalHR's purview.

Making this HR policy more about the personnel issues, the interactions with the employees is more consistent with the functions of CalHR than with DGS. Again, the statutory change doesn't have any impact on the model telework policy that exists for statewide reference and then the individual policies that are issued by departments. It wouldn't change any of that.

But you just said there's no. So there's no money attached to this. This is a Budget Committee. Why is this being proposed here and now and not through policy?

Hi, Jennifer Osborne again, Chief Deputy at dgs. We actually, as Director Ortega noted the funding that was provided to DGS to do this work sunset it. It was provided on a two year limited term basis. It expired June 30th of 2024.

Arguably we should have done the trailer Bill, then we should have removed it out because we view this as cleanup. We no longer have a program or resources for a program.

But there's still a desire obviously to reference how Telework operates and CALHR as the state's employer that deals with all of the employee issues and benefits and things like that. The decision was made to move it into their body of law. So it's really just picking it up from ours and moving it over.

That's why you didn't see it last year. But arguably we should have done it last year.

And I would argue that we should do it through policy and not in this Budget Committee right now when we're dealing with so many other issues that are extremely critical to I mean we're facing life and death decisions.

So it's really hard for me to put my mind around having to vote on something that could have could wait or we could do to policy. So I'm thank you.

Seeing no additional questions. Do we have anybody from the public that wants to speak again? Only this item.

Hello again. I've like I said, I've been state employees since 2016. I strongly urge the Committee to look into the abuse of the trailer Bill by CALHR in this situation. Please listen to the LAO and make this go through the policy legislative process. Changing the definition of telework to what we currently call hybrid is a substantive change.

Telework is already defined in SEIU Local 1000 contract sections 21.1 and 21.117 and we want the Legislature to honor the bargain contract including our definitions. We don't want a change to the language at all. And just again why are all these changes feels like suddenly being rushed through at this time? Please look into this abuse. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Haley Liuzamo. Calhar is attempting to alter the definition of telework which they did not describe just now to you. They want the definition of telework to be, quote, a flexible work arrangement where employees divide time between remote and reporting to a designated workplace.

State workers have proven for half a decade that there are tens of thousands of us capable of doing our jobs effectively, working 100% from home, the safe taxpayers money and reduce carbon emissions. Telework is defined in SEI Local 1000 Contract Sections 21.1 and 21.1.17 and we again want the Legislature to honor the bargained contract.

I echo your questions. Why are they trying to force this through before the RTO audit findings are released and why are they doing this as a trailer Bill? Thank you.

Hey me again. So I would strongly ask the Committee to look at the original language of telework and the language that Cali charter is proposing. They're changing the definition of telework to a hybrid model which would then force taxpayers to pay for additional leases as the state as the state workforce may get larger. Thank you.

Hi Good afternoon. Daniel Sherl with SEIU Local 1000. We've raised these concerns with Committee staff.

Wanted to thank you for the discussion today and let's just add that, sorry, we agree with the Lao moving this to a policy Committee would be the appropriate step, but also wanted to add that the current language and statute under DGS states that it's the intent of the Legislature to support, to encourage, excuse me, state departments and agencies to promote telework policies and we very much agree with that.

Thank you.

Susan Rodriguez Chief Negotiator SEA Local 1000 Again, in regards to this particular item, we yes, encourage or you take the advice of the LAO office in referring this to policy, but also the fact that this is being come through in this way is kind of discerning and a little bit of concerning, especially when it's returned to office.

And the telework issue, it seems kind of a little bit suspect at this point. Usually normally CALHR gives a heads up when they're going to be changing something in our in the laws so that we can have comment on that, etc. To date we have not received that. So thank you very much. Bye bye.

Omika Brewer Gonzalez, Government affairs Director for SEIU Local 1000 want to echo the concerns and also highlight very concerning, I'll say deeply concerning theme that items that really should be brought to the local in the bargaining aspect are being brought here to the Legislature.

I'll talk more with the future items but I it's a it's definitely something to give pause to and we urge you to support to we support the the LAO's recommendation. Thank you.

Yes, hello. Francesca Wander, HCD, SEIU 1000 bargaining unit Member. Again, I echo everything that has been said today. This should be a policy decision and discussion, not a budget decision and discussion. I echo the fact that 100% telework has been working for five years for many of us.

I still work 100% remotely and I'm one of the most productive people in my unit. There's no reason to force change that and this change in definition paves the way for removing 100% telework as even an option.

So I strongly oppose the change from 100 from I strongly oppose this recommended change and the way that it is trying to be forced through. Thank you.

Good afternoon again, Madam Chair. This is I'm Al Austin with AFSCME Council 57 want to express our sincere concern with the proposed change. We do support the LAO recommendation.

We do think this would be a policy decision and I will just say that several years ago there was a Governor that in another state who through a budget Bill sought to eliminate collective bargaining. This doesn't eliminate collective bargaining, but it seems to usurp collective bargaining, the spirit of collective bargaining here in California.

I would urge the rejection of the proposed proposal to eliminate telework through an administrative decision and ask the Legislature to again respect collective bargaining. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Katie and I'm an early career state scientist with Department of Water Resources and Member of CAPS uaw. I'd like to fill in with some of the language in question posed earlier regarding the DILs Act.

Many unions and my comrades here, we have filed complaints with the Public Relations Board specifically regarding their refusal to meet and confer with us on this policy.

I strongly support the movement of this through a policy route and collective bargaining to be able to continue to serve the public and the work that we do that's so critical to the economy, workforce secession planning and the importance of our role with environmental stewardship, public health and movement forward. Thank you for your time.

Hello, my name is Evelyn Beauchamp. I'm a clinical social worker with bhr which is Behavioral Health Reintegration and we're under the umbrella of the Division of Adult Parole Operations. When I was hired for this position because I transferred from DSH Coalinga, I was interviewed and it was.

I was informed that it was a telework position and I was glad to receive that information and accepted the position because my mom is recently. zero, she has end stage kidney disease and she was recently placed on dialysis so I could assist with transportation to the dialysis center.

With this return to work directive, it would greatly compromise my ability to assist my mom with transportation to dialysis. I was working effectively at home with the telework days, two days a week and currently there's not enough space in our office to accommodate the people that are my colleagues that are working from home.

We alternate days so this will greatly compromise my ability to, to function and to assist my mom as well as create hardship on my colleagues going back and forth or I'm sorry, maintaining position in the workplace. Thank you.

Thank you. 30 seconds or less and we're focusing on telework.

Hi, my name is Evie Rodriguez Strong. I am a licensing program analyst in San Diego. I'm part of AFSCME and we're here to support this being policy as a program analyst at this time. We. The return to office order would take a substantial amount of money to provide our, our staff with workspace.

And at this time, we're being asked to fit up to four people per cubicle, which would threaten the privacy of our investigations. And we do conduct investigations that have to do with sexual abuse to the elderly, to children and children's residential facilities. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's just talk about the telehealth or, sorry, telework. In this time we'll talk to return to work on item number seven.

Abdul Johnson with ASPE District Council 57. We represent over 5,000 health and social service professionals. Telework is extremely important to maintaining adequate staffing levels within Department of Corrections state hospitals.

We have some departments that have closed offices as a result of COVID and they're being forced to be placed inside of areas with space that wouldn't even be legal for two dogs to share. So this. This is definitely dangerous. And we're asking that this Committee support the Laos recommendation. Thank you.

Hi, I'm John Downs. I'm a senior environmental scientist at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A little louder.

John Downs. I'm a senior environmental scientist with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. I'd like to suggest that this is a discretionary action and subject to ceqa, although it also ministerial triggers air pollution, increased vehicle miles traveled and other costs to the state. And. And I also encourage you to take into consideration Elio's suggestions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm short. My name is Catherine. I'm a state scientist with caps and I just want to say that this trailer Bill 100 % undermines the Dils Act. And you are asking unions to put their faith in CALHR when we have had to have multiple files of unfair labor practices against CALHR in the past.

And you are asking us to redefine telework, and instead of doing it through policy the proper way, they're trying to use this budget crisis to sneak something in. So please be aware of that.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Amanda Bartel. I'm an environmental scientist with the state. My understanding is that Government Code Section 3519 indicates that unions should have been conferred with prior to the initial RTO mandate. And this is per PERB findings dated May 12th.

Just two days later, this budget revision was released with the indicated changes in the definition of telework. So this does feel extremely disingenuous and I appreciate the questions on timing. It does feel like an undermining of organized labor in California with blatant Executive overreach.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Emily Ingram. I'm an education programs consultant at the California Department of Education. I'm a proud Member of SEIU Local 1000. I just want to say that this is devious to sneak something like this into the trade Bill without giving the public adequate time to comment and without consulting with our unions.

It is in violation with DEALS Act. And please, please, I urge you all to go through the policy process as you've been indicating. That is your preference. Thank you. Thank you.

Seeing no one else, we finish with public comments. Yes, we appreciate you being here. I will restate what I said. I think this discussion should be placed in the policy and the trailer Bill is not the place for it. Thank you for coming.

All right, now we are going to be speaking about return to work or return as was. Somebody said that we the employees have been working steadily so the return to office policy and we have our friends here. Thank you for being here.

And who is going to start? Good afternoon, Madam Chair Danielle Brandon with the Department of Finance. Governor Newsom's Executive Order N 2225 requires all agencies and departments within the Administration to default to at least four days in office per week beginning July 12025 establishing a four day per week in office expectation with flexibilities granted as needed.

We note that currently fewer than half of state employees telework at all and even fewer telework three days per week or more currently for office based positions. The Governor's Executive Order stipulates that departments and agencies should assess any exemptions based on operational needs.

Agencies will go through their own independent processes to determine these operational needs, including workspace needs to finalize the return to office plans. DGS and CALHR are working with agencies to help them understand those needs.

Because we don't yet know how vacancies and the aforementioned exemptions will impact final estimates, we do not yet have an estimate as to the fiscal impact. However, we are maximizing existing workspace as much as possible and developing creative solutions. Because of these uncertainties.

The Governor's May revision does not include any additional resources for the return to office order and with that I am joined by colleagues of the Administration to address any questions you might have.

Do you have any additional comments? No.

LAO Nick Schroeder with the LAO we have no comments on this but are happy to answer any questions.

Members, do we have an estimate of how much the return to office order is going to cost?

We do not have an estimate at this time.

All right, I'll jump in here. Or go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, let me just build on that. We had asked that question back in February, March when we last heard this item. And so there's just been no analysis done since the Subcommittee has last heard that?

DGS and CalHR are continuing to work with departments. So I would say analysis is ongoing, but it's not definitive as to the amount of funding or space needed at this time.

I mean, I can only predict that there will be additional operational expenses necessary to accommodate more in office activity at some level. And so especially now. I mean, in any given year, this is something that really should have started with more proper collective bargaining conversations that can really, first of all, meet the needs of the workforce, but also provide that analysis simultaneously.

That helps everybody look at the same set of information to together come to the most appropriate decisions on this. But you know, losing the last three months and now we're on the precipice of needing to decide some very difficult decisions under a state budget for next year.

To not have any analysis that's going to inform where we could be achieving cost savings over the coming year that would better directed towards programs that we're also trying to save is more than a bitter pill to swallow. It's very difficult for legislators to accept.

So I'm disappointed, I guess, that we don't have clarity on that information because numbers matter. Even well reasoned estimates would have been sufficient for us to start to frame an order of magnitude of what we're talking about here in a dollar and cents kind of situation. So we don't know about the dollars. Do we know what we need in the form of actual office space, office spaces, I guess? Do we have to rent more facilities?

Similar to what Danielle just stated, because we're not, we're still working through how vacancies and exceptions will impact that, we don't have an estimate at this time. We don't have exact numbers.

I think maybe a little context for what departments are doing right now as part of their own analysis. So the, to start with, the Governor directed employees to return a minimum of two days per week last year, so many of the employees are in two days. So it's a two day to four day change. That does I think help quite a bit with operational issues. So in my Department, the employees are back two days. I don't really anticipate any operational changes as a result of that. People are in and it's not like you have to have operations changed to accommodate four days.

The other part of what departments are doing is, shortly after the issuance of the executive order, CalHR issued some guidelines around what exceptions might be. So there's an exception process for employees who are 50 or more miles away from their headquarters facility. There are exceptions for different types of jobs that essentially require full time telework.

So we have telemedicine, we have inspectors, investigators, auditors, different types of job duties that essentially they're in the field at all times. Those folks are accepted from the, exempted from the four day requirement. Then we have reasonable accommodation requests that are coming in that departments are assessing on a case by case basis.

So departments are sort of taking in all of those facts at the same time that they're looking at, okay, how many new positions have been added during a period of time when we weren't here full time. All of that is going on to complete an analysis to say how many actual additional cubicles would I need.

That's where we're not complete with the analysis yet is to be able to say on a statewide basis what that total change is. And departments are working through their individual issues. So again, I could speak for my own Department. We are reconfiguring all the cubicles on our two floors of our building so that we don't need actual additional space, but we are working through a process of moving things around so that additional people can fit. So those are the types of things that are, that departments are dealing with on an individual basis.

I mean, I guess more generally, if I don't have all the information in which to make a determination from the analysis that has not yet been completed, why should we support this move? Notwithstanding process issues and not going through collective bargaining, which are real things that also need to be discussed.

Maybe that's, I'm sorry, that's probably an open ended question. I probably don't need a response, but that's where I'm at. If that, if a couple months have passed since we last talked about this as a Subcommittee and we still have no new information despite asking those questions, not even back of the envelope information. It's very difficult for us to decide whether or not this is a, from a budget standpoint, smart move. So.

Understand. I don't think I have an answer you want, but I just remind the Committee that there are no proposals or funding requests related to RTO in the May Revise. So.

Well, there's a big proposal in the form of the state budget and how this influences other decisions that we're making.

Understand. Yes, understand.

And we've also, just from earlier departments, you might not be asking for it now, but in a few months or next year we'll be back here and you'll have some numbers or maybe not. I don't know because we've been asking for this information since January and this is the Assembly Budget Committee.

So I'm really astonished by the fact that you still do not have numbers for us. I mean, you have a number. You're going from 2 to 4, 2 to 4 days. That's a number. We had numbers earlier. We need additional parking spots. That was, I don't know, $2 million. We're borrowing $400 million from one Department for another. There are numbers there. I don't understand why we don't have numbers today.

Assembly Member Haney.

Well, this is pretty bewildering. So is this, is this supposed to go into effect for everyone in July 1st and that everybody would be expected to come back four days on that day? It's pretty... Like six weeks.

Yes, that is what the executive order says.

And what is the process by which each agency or department is going to answer all of these questions and the timeline in the sense of... Obviously, we have a lot of, will it be all employees classifications and titles? How many employees will it be? What will be the office space? Are they submitting a plan to you all at some point before July 1st, or do they make these decisions themselves on their own? How do we get from today to July 1st in light of the fact it seems we don't have many of, if any, of these answers right now?

I think, broadly speaking, the departments are managing the change themselves. Where they would be working with us as if they, in particular with DGS, if they have identified that they may need additional space or they need to reconfigure space, anything that would be in DGS's purview, they would work directly with DGS. But broadly speaking, each individual department would be managing the return for their own department.

So each individual department would have answers to how many employees and which classifications and special accommodations as well? Or is that...

I think that's fair. But what, going back to my earlier comments, each individual department is still doing some of that assessment right now. I could tell you that not every department knows exactly how many people are exempted via reasonable accommodation or some of the other issues. All of those exception processes are not complete. And so I think that's where an individual department is responsible for that, but they may not have the answer for you right now either.

Obviously, within the context of the budget, this brings up a lot of questions because if there were to be really massive budget implications of this, and we don't have any estimate of that, that would be concerning in light of every other consideration that we have.

There's also a lot of policy questions and people questions in terms of how this impacts our state employees, who, of course, deserve our respect and should feel valued and heard in any decision like this, and some of whom have special accommodations around this.

Or even that this is just maybe for many folks, there are alternative ways that we can both accomplish the work they're doing and save resources. What does it look like? Is it each department is having conversations and going through some sort of process with their employees and individually? What is the role of the unions and their representatives? Have they been engaged? What does the engagement with them look like? Is it department by department or...

So the answer is, it depends. When the executive order was released, then CalHR was directed and as part of that process provided notice to all of the state employee representatives and the excluded representatives to notify them of the Governor's executive order and invite a conversation about the executive order.

The individual departments, to the extent that they have individual telework policies that need to change. So if an individual department has... Just stepping back for a second, there's a model telework policy, a statewide telework policy, and then every individual department has to have its own policy of how they implement telework at the local department level.

If that telework policy is changing on July 1, then that department would also notify their individual employees about that change. And this is, it's structured this way so that the individual needs of the department are reflected in their own policies. And some of them have different, you know, some of them may have different minimum days already. It allows that flexibility.

So essentially, each individual department is able to approach this as they see fit within the structure of the executive order. And we don't have anywhere that we can access all of that information with sort of broader set of answers around cost or number of people impacted, and this is going to affect a little over a month.

I think all of us are... I hope you can understand why that's concerning to us and is most importantly concerning to the many employees who will be impacted by it if they have lack of clarity or there's essential questions about where they're going to be working or how their lives will be changed or uprooted by this. So, yeah, I don't know what...

Whether there are other venues where this conversation is happening, but certainly would love to have not only the budget questions answered, but more information broadly about when these, when they do make these decisions, how they're reporting to the Legislature, how we know. I mean, the employees are one of our most important and essential resources as a state, and we all have an interest in making sure that they're able to do their work and respected in that process and that the budget considerations are also taken consideration. But I'll defer to the Chair on how to handle that.

Did you have another question? Because I have comments too.

Yeah, just a question. You keep saying that like each department is doing their assessment, so we have less than, I don't know, few days to decide on this budget. Do we need to have another hearing and bring each department to come in and give us some numbers? How do we get some numbers?

If you, if having another hearing is certainly your option. What I'm telling you is I'm not sure that every department will have an answer for you. I think many departments will tell you they don't have any needs. I will tell you my department, I'm not asking for any facility needs in the future.

I can accommodate the four day requirements. So I think the vast majority of departments would tell you that they could. Many others may be working through their exception requests and how they might reconfigure, use existing space, things along those lines.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I want to back up to the executive order. Obviously, the Governor makes an executive order. Was there information provided to the Governor that indicated that somehow the individuals that are working from home were not working and therefore that's why... What was this based on? What was it based on to go from two to four days?

Was there some revelation that came out? Because this was put down in January, Is that correct? March. So we, what led up to this, is number one. That's number one question. Number two, I am very concerned about the numbers because we did ask those specifically last time. I mean, do we know if it's 1,000 employees, 2,000 employees, 3,000, 4? Do we have any range of ballpark? How many people do we estimate?

Yeah. So on the first question, I certainly can't speak to information that was provided to the Governor.

And I know you are implementing the Governor's executive order, so I get that.

But I think the executive order really spells out, I think, the reasons for the order being issued.

Can you state those reasons?

I don't have it in front of me, but the executive order lays out the reasons being that, you know, I think generally there's a belief that we work better together, that we should be in the office together, that there's more creativity, there's more problem solving, there's more collaboration.

There's a significant concern about mentorship, new employees, people who maybe have never really experienced the workplace in a department if they were hired remotely and have never interacted with their colleagues. So there are a lot of things around workplace culture around really tied to the mission of a department. Those are the reasons that the executive order identifies for the reason behind the two to four days. So I think, you know, beyond that, I don't have more information.

I appreciate that though, and I don't disagree. But you can do that in two days if you're back to work and have, you know, there are ways to do both. So I would say that you certainly. I mean, we all have our own teams at the state and in the district, and there are things that we do together, and there's also things that we obviously have to do separate. All right, so workplace culture, all of that mentoring. All right, so I get that coming from the Governor. In March? March. All right, so can you just give me an estimate on a low of how many you think could be possibly returning?

Let me tell you the data that we have on the number of people who are teleworking today, and I will preface it by saying it's based on the expenditures for a telework stipend that is provided to employees who telework. So backing into that, we can tell who is receiving a stipend. So, and using a number of about 235,000-240,000 total state employees. About 52% of them do not telework at all. There is zero telework, 52% of the state employees.

All right, so how many did you say, 250?

So about 108,000 employees currently telework at least one day a week.

Okay.

What I can't tell you is, do they telework one day, two days, three days, four days, five days. We do not have the breakdown of exactly how many days each individual employee teleworks, but we do know that 108,000 are teleworking at least one day. We also know that about 88,000 of them are receiving the higher stipend, meaning they are teleworking at least three days a week. Those are the...

So I think that's the max universe of people who may be affected by the executive order. But again, I can't tell you for sure that some of those people are not already in more, are not, you know, changing the number of days throughout the schedule. Right. Yes.

And we are asking statewide for these employees to return to the their site closest to them, obviously. Do we have an estimate of how many are in the Sacramento area?

I don't have the number. I can tell you how many total, I can get you the percentage of total employees who are in the Sacramento area, so that could help narrow down on how many might be in Sacramento.

And the reason that's particularly important is, you know, across the state we have DMV offices, we have other. But most of those areas do not have the parking problems that we would see here in downtown Sacramento. I mean, when you layer the construction that is happening, huge amount of construction just in this vicinity.

We've already heard of the trolley and some construction work that's going to be going on there, the limited parking. That's why. So if we take 88,000, and even if we were to take a quarter of those people, about 25,000. That's the picture I'm trying to paint here is that's a huge amount of vehicles coming into downtown, a huge amount of people coming in. But let me go on, and I'll get back to that. Does this order apply to all employees at every classification level including directors, supervisors, managers, secretaries, cabinet secretaries, all of that?

Absolutely. Absolutely. The only classification based exception that I would mention, I mentioned previously, we have telemedicine that's being provided in a couple of our departments that provide health care. We have individuals whose job duties require them to be outside of the office.

Right. Aside from the exemptions.

Those types of exemptions will exist, but in terms of levels within the department or titles or anything like that, there is no exemption like that. It applies to everybody under the Governor's direction in the executive branch.

Including the Governor's team?

Absolutely.

And they would all be expected to be back four days a week in person?

Correct. Unless they are that there could be someone who has a reasonable accommodation request or has a 50 mile exemption request. They would be eligible for the same exceptions.

All right. Well, there's a lot to take in on this. As you know, and again, I've said this many times through these two days of budget hearings. We don't hold you personally responsible. We know that these orders are put down and you have to respond to them. So please.

But the number issue is an issue in the sense that, at this point, when we're less than six weeks away from people particular, it does seem as there should be some kind of, whether it's a survey from the department managers of who's coming back, how many people got exemptions, all of these type of things.

And that just seems like somebody should have that information, and we should be keeping track of this as we go on. And I know last time I talked a lot about recruiting. A lot of people, because telework was so highly promoted, that's how they want to work and we should be listening to our workers.

That being said, let's listen to our workers. But before you all come up, please, if you've already spoken, let somebody else speak because we do have remaining items on our agenda. Second, we're going to be respectful and listen. And with that, we welcome you up. 30 seconds or under. And please listen to the speakers in front of you and be creative so you all aren't saying the exact same thing.

Good afternoon again. My name is Susan Rodriguez, the Chief Negotiator for SEIU Local 1000, state employee for the last 23 years. I work for State Fund. I am trying to make sure that it is a return to office, not return to work. I'm a workers comp claims adjuster. I know the difference.

I want to make sure that, you know, there's a lot of ask about costs for departments and stuff like that. I just want to remind folks that it may not be an individual or they might be asking money for the budget on this, but it is the cost of departments. Departments are having to reconfigure desks.

Just for example, that desk right there, they're going to put two people in that same space right close to each other. Brings up issues on health. It's also, you know, I always make the funny things like they're going to increase their costs on telework or for toilet paper because now you got four days in the office versus two days in the office. Those are all costs.

It's a cost to the employees because now the employees who have been remote workers are going to have a reduced telework stipend that costs money to them, not only increasing their costs coming into work every day, four days versus two days. So yeah, so it's, yeah. Bad on all ends. Thank you.

Thank you. If you see me do this, it means wrap it up. 30 seconds or under please.

Hi. My name is Vanessa Evans. I work for the Franchise Tax Board as a Tax Technician. And I just wanted to bluntly say that, so the Governor wants us to return to work. Going to raise costs across the board. Gas, food, daycare, whatever. But then he also wants to cut our budget, so how does that make any sense? You're going to raise our cost and cut our budget? It just, it's not going to work across the board. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Kerry Riplinger. I work at Housing and Community Development and I can give you some numbers. While we were teleworking just the two days a week, our workload went from 80,000 to 8,000. So that's 90% reduction in the amount of work that we had and that was while working from home.

I do not think that we need to have any kind of collaboration in office. Like the chairperson said, you can do them while you're in office. As far as the more collaboration and morale and all of that, we're still having meetings. When I'm in office, we're still having meetings on teams. Why is that?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Julia. I joined the Franchise Tax Board during COVID. I never worked in the office four days. The statements that changes to operations would not change is inaccurate. At Franchise Tax Board we still don't have guidance or expectations from our executive team.

The most recent email said that they would have more information. More information for us in June. Regarding comments that the executive order is implemented as the agencies but agency by agencies as they see fit. This feels disingenuous. I personally approached Selvi Stanislaus, our executive officer regarding return to office.

Her response to me was that we have to follow the governor's order plain and simple. There is no flexibility. Civil servants are reporting that 50 mile exemptions are being declined based on the date of their telework agreements. There are reports that reasonable accommodations are being declined.

It feels like a cover for the governor and our executive officer to point the finger at one another. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Liz Reece. I'm an environmental scientist at the State Water Board and a proud member of CAPS UAW. In a challenging budget year, the governor's return to office mandate is blatantly fiscally irresponsible. There has been no cost analysis and no substantive or quantifiable reasoning provided for spending millions of taxpayer dollars.

This is all in addition to the governor's proposal to balance the budget by disregarding union contracts and bargaining in bad faith, which is disrespectful, discouraging, and demoralizing. I urge you to consider the costs of return to office to Californians and to California state workers and reject it. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Chelsea Hunt and I'm an environmental scientist at the State Water Resources Control Board and a CAPS UAW Member. I took this job for the flexibility of hybrid work and relocated across the state before starting on the 3rd of March. If the return to office mandate goes through I may have to uproot my life again.

I can't afford a daily commute and I live in an area without reliable transit. This mandate adds commute costs and strains those already struggling to afford to live where they work. It's not inclusive. It disproportionately impacts people with disabilities and lower incomes. State workers shouldn't be responsible for propping up downtown economies. We need flexible, modern policies.

Good afternoon. My name is Heather Olivares. I am a California State employee living here in Sacramento, currently teleworking five days a week. Most of my colleagues live more than 50 miles away. So when I return to the office, I will be collaborating by myself.

Francesca Wander, HCD SEIU 1000 bargaining committee. Operational needs 5 years of 100% telework taught us that telework works for California. We were more productive during those years. There is no operational need for RTO. That information was on the DGS website, which was scrubbed when the two day a week RTO mandate came down.

There were also cost savings associated with telework that was on the DGS website. That was scrubbed when the two day a week. Two day a week mandate came down.

If you want to talk about the cost estimate, SEIU will happily share its numbers with you where we're projecting that this will cost about between 850 million and $1 billion to the taxpayers of California.

To act like this is all going to happen for free, like there's some kind of Santa Claus here, is just insulting to me as a taxpayer.

Thank you for the comment.

I find it interesting that we still don't have a state audit. Thank you.

Abdul Johnson representing AFSCME 5000 health and social service professionals throughout the state. I just want to know where are the discussions about the carbon footprint that all the discussions that were happening prior to, you know, Covid and how that would impact. But that's a side note.

Even though the departments don't have numbers and they haven't noticed any of the unions regarding an order that's due to take place in about 40 days, I think the deals act says at least 30 days. We deserve a notice that will get it. Even though they don't have numbers. We have numbers.

The numbers how much the cost of gas rising, the forecasted increase in parking rates that have already been sent out for Sacramento area. And they're also calculating the cost savings to go to the private sector that respects its workers. So where we have high caseloads and vacancy rates in the 40 percentile.

This return to work order is dangerous. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Bill Kristner. I'm an environmental scientist with the State Water Board. The governor has recently demanded that we return to office without any justification. But we're hearing now. It's for collaboration and mentoring. Every year I get annually reviewed. I don't get reviewed on mentoring, collaboration. It's productivity.

And no one has said a thing about productivity being down because of RTO. Okay? I performed my job via remote since the pandemic and increased my productivity. RTO is costly, environmentally irresponsible, and unnecessary. The cost of RTO could be used to help pay for the budget deficit.

State workers deserve real solutions, not ones that make their lives more unaffordable. And I'll give you an idea of unaffordability. Not everyone lives in the Sacramento area. I live in the foothills. My homeowners insurance was just canceled and we went on the fair plan, which is anything but fair. Fire insurance alone now costs us $7,300 a year.

That's on top of my regular homeowners insurance. It's time to think outside the box and develop realistic solutions. Telework is a progressive, realistic solution. Please say no to RTO.

Hi, my name is Chris Dermer. I'm a state scientist proudly supported by CAPS UAW and I think RTO, and you're talking to someone who really doesn't mind going back to work and being in the office. However, we need the flexibility. Telework is the future, and I would ask that you embrace that future.

The cost that I heard about two days a week versus four days a week in my office, that doubles the amount of room that we need in our space. Because right now in our office, two days a week means that two people can share office.

If we go back four days a week, we're going to need more office space. What I hope that you would do is spend that money on technology and looking for better ways to. For, you know, web conferencing. That's. That's the future. And I would hope that you would look to the future in your decisions. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Haley Leguizamo. Today I asked the legislators to consider who this serves. The RTO mandate does not serve state workers who will be harmed financially and emotionally. This does not serve the California taxpayer who will be asked to foot the bill for unknown millions in unnecessary building leases and office equipment.

This does not serve non state workers who will be stuck in traffic with us on our roads and highways. And this does not serve our planet, which will certainly be harmed by all the pollution created by those vehicles idling in traffic. So who does RTO serve?

What big money interests want to see state workers back in their cubicles? And why? Why must this happen before the RTO audit findings are released? That's what we need to investigate. Thank you.

Hello. I'm sorry, but thank you. CALHR is definitely lying. They know that these changes will have departments. The majority of departments will be looking for more space or funding. That's completely true. The fact that the Department of Finance and CALHR pretend not to know and lie and say that they do not know the cost is unacceptable.

We know that this will cost more and this will. We will need more space. Mr. Ward, who was here earlier, is 100% correct. The order obviously needs to be bargained for, but also needs to be suspended until we have answers about the money and the cost, especially during this budget deficit.

And do you want to guess who is exempt with the 50 mile radius? Governor Newsom. Thank you.

Hello again. Emily Ingram. I work at the California Department of Education. I serve English learners, immigrant students, and migratory students. I will bring some numbers to you since this is in fact a budget meeting. In 2023, Telework reduced leased office space by 20%, resulting in an estimated savings of 84.7 million that year.

And we know bringing workers back into the office more than two days per week will require major infrastructure updates, the needs for additional office leases, and several relocations. And it will be detrimental to our state's budget. And as you all have acknowledged already, we don't even know what the cost will be yet to taxpayers.

Additionally, the Trump administration's proposed skinny budget directly affects the students that I serve. And instead of spending money on bringing us back into the office without a defined operational need, we should instead be making contingency plans to serve our most vulnerable students. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Joseph Martinez, Cap Scientist. Ma' Am. You asked earlier. Hey, isn't this possible to do in two. In two days a week rather than four? And yes, it is, because they do it at my agency. I work for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. We come in on Thursday.

That's in person day. And then in our smaller team, we've chosen to come in on Tuesday as our second day. So we get the benefit of collaboration, we get the benefits of in person work, and we don't have to come in four days a week.

The governor's order leaves no room to move for the department to say, hey, we're meeting the goals of this order as we are currently acting.

If four day RTO goes forward, you're going to end up spending money and you're going to get at best nothing or at worst detriment to your agencies because you are going to lose people. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Elijah Portugal and I'm a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. I just want to start this by just saying collective bargaining. Like why is this return to office order coming through as an executive order? I mean again, who does this serve? Who benefits?

And you know is, it's just Governor Newsom cracking his whip and we all get in line. I mean, nobody here wants this, you know. And you know, I'm a father of two school age children, you know, this is going to directly impact me.

It's going to be costing me hundreds of dollars a month for covering their care while I, you know, have to go into the office arbitrarily for four days a week. The office I report to, it's like 45 miles from my house. I took this job because I could telework from home four days a week.

You know, I don't meet the exemption, but you know, here I am and we don't have enough space. There's straight up, like when everybody is in my office in Fairfield, we're at capacity and that's half of the people that report there.

So, you know, you folks not having numbers, like any numbers to provide, I mean, that is totally ridiculous and unacceptable. I mean, I could come up with some numbers right now, like standing in front of this microphone. I mean, seriously, we got to do better.

You know, there aren't enemies here, but you know, we need to be looking to the future and supporting the people who work for the state. Now I'm, I'm a public servant for the state of California. I can barely afford to live here.

Hi everybody, my name is Madeleine Wieland. I'm a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. I'd just like to say that the state has yet to show an appropriate reason for employees to return to the office four days a week. Given that the cost of it will fall on our taxpayers.

We are already highly collaborative and experience mentorship while teleworking. So they won't actually provide any additional benefits that the taxpayers are paying for or to the state workers themselves. So what are the benefits the taxpayers are paying for?

Also, I would like to push back on the idea that the majority of departments won't need extra space if they haven't reported their needs yet, how can this be asserted? Thank you.

Hi there. Forrest Hansen, environmental scientist with Department of Water Resources. And I just kind of keep it on topic about budget here.

A meta analysis of about 7,000 research papers performed by Global Workplace and Analytics about the, you know, who, what, when, where, and why of telework and hybrid work estimate that it's about 10,000 per employee annually in real estate expenses alone that can be saved by telework and it can go up to approximately $14,000 per employee, including other support staff and resources and stuff like that.

I also just want to suggest that since the, you know, heads of, heads of DGS and finance here can't, you know, provide you the information you're looking for, the financial information, I suggest you request heads of the departments that they keep referencing to come in and they know the cost of this.

They know the real estate leases that they're looking at in downtown that they're going to pull and that look at the long term costs of all these buildings. It'll cost an incredible amount of money in real estate. Thank you.

Thank you.

Leif Jones, Department of Housing and Community Development, representing SEIU Local 1000. In an interview in April last month, Governor Gavin Newsom included language about this return to office mandate. He did not include in the executive order pertaining to it.

His justification was getting people off Facebook, getting people walking the city streets of downtown areas and patronizing mom and pop shops. He believes this is his contribution to society. Moral ambiguity is his contribution to society. Taxpayers have no idea this is happening. Not a clue as to how much damage is going to affect the state of California.

And further, not a clue as to how much it will impact our system. We as public civil servants, while we are going to be directly impacted, our constituency is hand in hand with us having no idea how much damage they're going to have to experience this interference with our work. We're going to be disrupted.

They too are going to be damaged and they have to foot the bill for moral ambiguity. There is no reason you can't come up with numbers. He can't come up with a justification. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Anne Hilborn. I'm a state scientist and I want to talk about the exemption process, which has been mentioned multiple times. In my department, we were told yesterday that there will be exemptions, but we're five weeks out and we have no guidance yet.

We have not been told how to apply for an exemption or what the criteria would be. So I can understand that they don't know how many employees will be in the office when they haven't even allowed us to apply for any exemptions that might be there.

I would also want to state that if there's no money in the budget for this, it means it's coming out. It's going to come out of our department's budget. My department has already had an 8% cut this year and we've lost 160 positions.

If we have to do take department funds to pay for this, we will take that money away from fulfilling our core mission, which hurts Californians. Thank you.

My name is Evalyn Beauchamp. I'm a BHR clinical social worker. I'm also a social work occupational chair for AFSCME Local 2620. I just wanted to indicate that when we have new employees, they get a six week orientation and it is around with each employee that's there and it's on site.

It's not that they work a couple or get a few days or a week training and then they automatically go to telework. With the social work occupational chair position, I oversee approximately 840 social workers.

In a meeting that we had last week, none of which have been consulted about extenuating circumstances, and most of us do have some extenuating circumstances. Specifically myself, I spoke to my supervisor about my extenuating circumstances and he said you can document something, but more than likely it won't be considered at this time.

BHR, my supervisor, is beginning a schedule for July even though there has not been a meet and confer with the union and it's already being organized with my unit, BHR Alameda.

Hi, my name is Amanda Bartel. I'm an environmental scientist of the State of California. I think that we as state union members are demonstrating here for you today that we know how to save money and time and we were never given an opportunity to voice that knowledge.

Our unions have a proven ability to come to rational, equitable, collective consensus and back it up with facts and data. Meanwhile, we can't even be told how much this is going to cost fiscally or environmentally. As an environmental scientist, I have to ask you to please question the environmental impact of RTO.

We are in a climate crisis and our data and labor doesn't feel valuable until it's time to cut our paychecks or campaign on it. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jerry Brunswill. I'm with the California Department of Public Health. I was here at the last month's hearing and disappointed to hear that we don't have any numbers to go on. So I hope there's some way that we can figure this out and let the taxpayers know how much this is going to cost.

My department, we're going back two days a week hotel stations because there's not enough room. We have no idea how much the hoteling cost redoing the cubicles is going to cost, but I'm sure it's not going to be cheap.

Hello, my name is Mary Reyes. I am an environmental sciences specifically a biologist for Caltrans. I work at District 3, but District 3 is part of North Caltrans north region. So I just wanted to state a couple things. We are being told that each department needs to report.

Everyone has been telling you all that each department needs to report their needs before this is actually implemented.

We need numbers and costs because even though we don't know that right now or everyone's saying that we don't have those costs right now, we know for a fact that it's going to be shifted onto us those costs as employees because we have to what's it called now understand that we have to allocate more money for transportation and everything that will as a result of return to office and not to mention also the public and then we're also living in inflationary conditions.

Cal Hire has also released guidance as to who will be exempted. But everybody in Caltrans, at least in my district and even north region. I'm sure this will apply those that live more than 50 miles or whatever. We were told that those people will not be exempted.

So even though that guidance has been released, it will not apply to us. I also wanted to state that one of the main reasons why people are the governor wants us to return to office and is being pushed on us is to promote collaboration and to ensure that new employees being properly I am an a new employee.

I have been with the state for a little bit over a year. I do have mentors and I always ask them how to operate when I have to do project delivery.

As a biologist, this will take away agency from our supervisors and myself to decide how many days do I need to be coming into office or to the field to fulfill my job duties. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Ami Olson. I'm a senior environmental scientist with CDFW and I would like to argue against the thought that being in office provides better collaboration and better work. I am a statewide coordinator for a conservation planning program and the majority of my duties involve meeting with groups statewide. I've been doing that very successfully in virtual meetings.

Those virtual meetings are not going to go away if I'm in the office. I have calculated over the last year with the two in office days, I've calculated my total time that I've spent in the office. Of that total time, I have only spent 3% of that time actually collaborating in person in the office.

The rest of that time is just a waste. I'm sitting in the office on virtual meetings with people in other parts of the state. I would also like to say that the office that I'm in, we've got about five to 600 people right now. All of us are in a headquarters role.

A lot of us are in the same position that I'm in. We're working statewide. We're statewide coordinators. So just consider that when you're thinking about this. Thank you.

My name is Nick Rasmussen. I'm a state scientist and Member of CAPS UAW. I just want to talk about a couple of the things that we've been covering here. One is the reasonable accommodation process.

I can tell you that those are being ruthlessly rejected and people are being told that telework isn't even eligible as a type of reasonable accommodation. So I'd like to see percentages of those that are requested that are actually approved. And also somebody else mentioned that Caltrans is even allowing for that 50 mile radius exemption.

I helped deliver a petition with over a thousand signatures of Caltrans employees on it. I don't know if Caltrans will even give any consideration that complains. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Bayan Ahmed. I'm a state scientist and a Member of CAPS UAW. The executive order does not lay out the reasoning for RTO other than, as was stated today, to supposedly increase training and collaboration. However, we are already collaborating efficiently and effectively from home and within the office.

This order will lessen worker productivity and creativity for the simple reason that state workers are feeling stressed, underappreciated and under surveillance. Thank you.

My name is Rob Rossi and I'm an environmental scientist with or senior environmental scientist with the Department of Toxic Substances Control. I traveled over 200 or around 200 miles today to voice my opposition to this four day return to office order. I would like to provide an example.

Contrary to this myth that in person work promotes career progression. DTSC, my department recently only offered two supervisor positions in two of their offices due to space concerns. Bottom line, telework saves money. We collaborate, we work together. Thank you.

I'm Britton Sarmento. I'm a digital composition specialist for the Office of State Publishing. As a General note, I print every single daily file that you guys receive as well as every bill that this office body produces. So I'm familiar with your names, even though I may not pronounce them correctly.

I do want to say this is my first time here and thank you for giving us the opportunity to present comment on these issues. I have never been given the option to do anything other than go into work. When the pandemic hit, we. We were forced to go in. We had to. There was no option.

I just wanted to say this, speaking for other folks. They can tell you on all the benefits of telework. And I can tell you right now, I don't want a worse commute. I am selfish in that regard. I'm already dealing with a lot of constructions in my commute and everyone can see what's going on here in downtown.

There's more than one ramification to these decisions and I appreciate all of you asking questions about it. So thank you for listening to me and my two cents on this matter. Have a wonderful day.

Hi, my name is Karen Atkins and I am a state scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and also a Member of CAHPS UAW. I work for a statewide program. I collaborate all day long and it's actually a highlight of my job.

I love that part of it, but I've done that for years super effectively online and we really don't need to be in office to collaborate on these statewide programs. It's totally unnecessary. So, you know, even two days in office, we want to get that office culture or whatever. Like two days is more than sufficient for that.

So it really is just taking away agency from our management who's trying to do what's right for us and trying to work with their units and really tying their hands together so they can't do that. And it really lowers morale overall. So thank you so much for listening.

Hello there. My name is Angela Dawson and I'm a registered dietitian. I work at the Department of State Hospitals Patton, and I am Occupational Chair for AFSCME Local 2620 bargaining unit 19. Under my classifications, I represent health education consultants, public health nutrition consultants, child nutrition consultants and registered dietitians.

I echo all the previous statements that have been made here today. No numbers were presented, no cost analysis shared reject the return to office.