Senate Standing Committee on Human Services

Good afternoon, I'm State Senator Jesse Arreguin, the chair of the State Senate Human Services Committee. I want to welcome you all to this informational hearing on the impacts of federal actions on our state CalFresh program.

I want to thank the many witnesses and members of the public who've been travel from throughout the state to be here for this really important and timely conversation. Especially now, as we learned, the Federal Government is reopening.

But we know the last month has been a very challenging time in California to make sure that we maintain essential access to nutrition assistance for low income and food insecure Californians. So, we're going to begin with a hearing, and we do not need to take a quorum—quorum call. So, with that, just want to welcome you all.

We're going to discuss how the Federal Government shutdown has added additional challenges as well as pain, fear, and hardship for many Californians, as well as discuss the impact of HR 1, which was signed to law on July 14th, which contained provisions changing health care coverage, taxes and the program that we're here to discuss, CalFresh.

HR 1 makes several changes to the CalFresh program that change the way our collective governments pay for it, the level of benefits we provide, and who gets those benefits. CalFresh, as we know, is not only our largest anti-hunger program, but also the anchor for many other anti-hunger efforts, from our farmers markets to our meal programs.

And it's a significant economic driver. It's estimated that the impact of HR 1 on California may result in a $17 billion hit to our state's economy and may result in the loss of 140,000 jobs. This impacts our farmers as well as our farmers markets, our grocery stores. So, there are significant economic impacts as well as the human impacts.

So, we're going to hear from speakers about how our state is responding, not only at the state level, but from our county partners, our nonprofits, and from residents who've been impacted not just by the shutdown but by the changes in CalFresh benefits. Put this in perspective around my—the counties—I represent, Alameda and Contra Costa County.

The impact of the changes to CalFresh eligibility under HR 1 will result in $70 million in cuts in Alameda County and 21 million in Contra Costa County. 179 million received benefits in Alameda County and 107 million in Contra Costa—or 179,000 received benefits in Alameda County and 107,000 in Contra Costa County receive these benefits, including 58,000 kids.

And so, the increased costs of millions of dollars on our counties on top of the shortfalls that they're going to be experiencing due to the cuts in Medicaid and Medi Cal our going to be significant. So, we're here today to discuss those impacts, how our state's responding, and how we can be prepared going forward.

We can't talk about CalFresh without talking about the harm that's being done by the federal shutdown and how we are responding. I appreciate the speakers coming here today to talk about how this crisis is unfolding in real time. So, we have a very packed agenda.

We want to begin with our panels, and we ask that speakers keep their remarks to roughly five to seven minutes, but we'll provide additional time if necessary. So, with that, I want to begin with our first panel which will discuss the impacts of the Federal Government shutdown on CalFresh.

And I want to invite David Swanson Holinger from the Department of Social Services, Carlos Marquez from the California Welfare Directors Association, Chris Navarro and Karen Ward, who are community members, are going to talk about their experiences due to the government shutdown and how that impacted their eligibility for CalFresh benefits, and Josh Wright, the Director of government relations for the California Association of Food Banks.

Welcome. Hi. Good afternoon. I understand you're from Contra Costa County. Welcome. Welcome to Sacramento. And so, thank you, Mr. Hollinger, for being here, and I want to turn over to you to begin.

Great. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Thank you, Chair and again, my name is David Swanson Hollinger. I am a Chief Deputy Director with the California Department of Social Services and the CDSS team, and I really appreciate the opportunity to share the latest information on the federal shutdown.

As you know, it's been moving quickly and specifically to talk about the impacts on the supplement Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as we all know, is CalFresh here and here in our state. As you indicated, this has been a really fast moving and unprecedented situation over the last month and a half, in particular.

And my goal today is to lay out where we as a state stand, what actions we have taken, and what this means for the millions of Californians who rely on CalFresh every month. And I realize I don't have the clicker. See if I can multitask here. Okay.

Before I give an overview of the current situation, I want to take a moment to emphasize what CalFresh means to California. As, as you indicated, it's the largest anti-hunger program in the state. It serves more than five and a half million low-income individuals each month, which is about 3.3 million households across the state.

And each month, California issues approximately 1.1 billion in federal CalFresh benefits to eligible Californians. Showing here a timeline that indicates what got us here today, it doesn't show what happened yesterday, when we know things the shutdown technically ended, but to start on October 1, the shutdown began due to a lapse in appropriations.

What that meant was for October, the Federal Food Nutrition Service, or FNS, was able to issue CalFresh benefits for the month of October, so benefits were not impacted during October 4th for recipients. Households who applied for CalFresh in October were determined newly eligible for those benefits and received their October benefits.

On October 10th, as you see on the slide, the FNS issued a memo that there would not be enough funds to pay for the full November 2025 SNAP benefits or CalFresh benefits.

October 23rd is normally the date in which our Department would submit our what we call our issuance files or files to our electronic benefits transfer vendor, the vendor that then gets the benefits loaded onto cards for recipients. This did not happen due to guidance from the FNS.

On October 24th, the FNS issued a memo explicitly stating that SNAP benefits will be suspended for the month of November. On October 28th, the California Attorney General and 26 other states filed a lawsuit against the USDA.

On October 20th, the Department CDSS sent guidance out through an all-county letter followed by a call with county Welfare Directors on October 22nd, and I'll do a little bit of an overview of that letter.

But as a reminder, CalFresh benefits are 100% federally funded and administrative costs for those benefits are split between the Federal Government and the states.

CDSS was able to cover the state and federal share of CalFresh administrative costs, known as the State Administrative Expenses or the SAE, as you see on the slide, and counties were able to continue normal operations for application processing including expedited service and recertification in compliance with federal and state policies, including application processing timeframes.

CalFresh applications did continue to be accepted during the shutdown. The guidance that was sent out talked about what was and was not impacted by the shutdown.

The California Food Assistance Program did experience delays because the accounting mechanism that is for the CFAP program is interconnected with the issuance of CalFresh benefits and the guidance provided applies to CFAP. The Supplemental Nutrition Benefit and the Transitional Nutrition Benefit were not impacted and were processed as normal.

The CalFresh water pilot was not impact and was processed as normal. Due to limitations of the EBT technical infrastructure, individual county welfare departments are not able to load county funded benefits onto beneficiaries' EBT cards, onto those cards, and we've tried to make sure participants and beneficiaries understood that throughout the shutdown.

In terms of messaging, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the multilayer communication efforts that helped ensure recipients knew what to expect during the shutdown. So, this slide provides a snapshot of the various communication strategies that were employed.

CDS has notified clients via direct text and email messages and I'll talk a little in a little more detail about those in the next slide. We posted messages on our homepage which included a new Frequently Asked Questions, and these were updated as circumstances were evolving, throughout the, throughout the shutdown.

We've also been posting information on social media channels, also working closely with our county partners, tribes, community partners, and others to help spread the word about the immediate impact of not being able to load food benefits onto EBT cards.

We also outreach to our food bank partners, letting them know that our messaging is driving folks to their doors, and I'll talk a little more about food banks in a moment as well. Trying to move forward. There we go. Okay. Diving deeper into direct messages from our Department to clients, we approached our messaging campaign in two waves.

The first wave delivered messages to households over five days from October 21st through the 25th. The second wave delivered messages over 10 days from the end of October 31st through November 9th.

Those messages sent out in both waves notified clients that their benefits would be delayed and they were sent out in seven different languages to our non-English speaking clients, also aligned with community partners so that households experiencing food insecurity knew where to go for assistance.

Just as an example, this is a flyer that went out with a QR code that we distributed to counties to help Californians connect with food banks throughout the shutdown. It's also on our website. Trying to move that forward. There we go. Okay.

As I noted, On October 28th, the California Attorney General, along with 26 other states, filed a lawsuit against the USDA for their inability to issue November SNAP benefits during the shutdown. And as you referenced and as I know we have all heard, last night Congress voted to reopen the Federal Government by passing a continuing resolution.

And this resolution includes three full year appropriation bills, including the Agricultural Bill. What this means for us is that SNAP is now funded through September 30th, 2026, under HR 5371. Going to transition now and talk a bit about our food bank response. On October 22nd—oh, there we go. Trying to go back.

I got jumped a slide there. There we go. On October 22nd, Governor Newsom announced that California is fast tracking up to $80 million in existing state funds, as well as deploying the California National Guard and California Volunteers to support food banks, in recognition that the ongoing Federal Government shutdown would delay CalFresh food benefits.

CDSS immediately began coordinating with food banks to ensure that they were aware of this new flexibility and how to access this. On October 24th, the National Guard and Cal Volunteers began to directly assist food banks throughout the state.

In a later slide, I'll talk—I'll show—those food banks that have requested support. Just as a little bit of background, we in CDSS partner with 49 major food banks plus their sub agencies. There's about 2,500 of these sub agencies throughout the state.

These include smaller food banks and food pantries, and they serve all counties throughout the state. Through this program, called Cal Food, funding is allocated to food banks for the purchase, the storage and the transportation of food grown and or produced here in California.

The food is then distributed in local communities through a wide range of distribution sites, including food banks, food pantries, and various nonprofit organizations. Since this began, we at CDSS have been working very closely with the National Guard as well as with Cal Volunteers.

We also did set up our Internal Disaster Operations Center to help facilitate and coordinate the acceptance of requests and helping to get needs out to food banks. Next slide.

Moving forward here, let's. Okay. We did establish a process whereby food banks that are in our network can submit a request for the additional support indicating how much they're requesting, both in the cash advance as well as additional boots on the ground support that they need, and have been working with our partners at Cal Volunteer and national Guards to deploy that assistance as we move forward.

The National Guard and members of the California service corps have supported planning, meal packing, distribution and delivery of hundreds of millions of meals to families in need of communities and communities throughout the state. And if you're interested, this is a list of the various food banks and it's an ongoing list as the program is continuing.

But food banks that we have heard from and who we're working with. Through this program, we've fulfilled service requests and volunteer support for these food banks representing 14 different counties. And some of these requests are still pending as we've had to go back and forth to clarify needs for. For some of those food banks.

We've also processed cash advances for 33 of the 49 food banks in the network, which has really helped with their cash flow during this time of need.

And with that, I will close by saying thank you to all of you for joining this hearing and especially for the collaboration throughout this really difficult period that we have been in collaboration with counties, with food banks, with our partners throughout the state, with Legislature and advocates, has been really critical to managing through this time and to really ensure that we are doing everything we can for those that are facing food insecurity throughout the state.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I guess we'll go next to Mr. Marquez and then we'll hear from our community Members.

Good afternoon, chair. Thank you for covering this critically important topic. Carlos Marquez, on behalf of the County Welfare Directors Association, really wanted to start where David left off and share some of the activities that our counties have helped coordinate.

So for six days between November 1st and the 6th, with the support and partnership of the Administration and the Department of Social Services, county human service agencies, with support from the network of food banks and CBOs throughout the state, came together to form the last line of defense against unmitigated hunger amid the federal shutdown, counties throughout every region of the state helped orchestrate a whole of community approach, trying as best we could to meet the tremendous unmet need of feeding millions of calfresh recipients.

Essentially, folks rely on and organize their household budgets on the same date that they're used to getting their benefits loaded. And so we wanted to try our best to make sure that there was no disruption in when folks had access to some food assistance.

Our agency directors worked with CBO networks, with their boards of supervisors, sister agencies, and philanthropic communities to ramp up the availability of basic food commodities through donations, food drives, and mass food purchasing. Our directors activated emergency response protocols to increase the coordinating capacity across school districts, cities and counties alike.

Some counties directed existing child welfare funds to emergency food assistance in order to stabilize youth and families in the child welfare and foster care systems who had been impacted by the delay in benefits statewide.

Before the issuance of benefits resumed, at least 10 counties authorized or were prepared to authorize a combined total of $63 million in county funds to support the continuity of some form of food assistance, whether through gift cards or contributions to their local food banks.

Counties raised an additional combined philanthropic match of $17 million for a total of $80 million in local funds organized by counties in response to the shutdown hunger crisis. The local response is something we can all be proud of, cutting across rural and urban communities alike from Mono and Colusa to Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco and LA.

Even as counties prepare for the convergence of both massive cost shifts under HR1 and the need to ramp up their staffing and operations in order to preserve CalFresh and MediCal benefits for as many recipients as possible in the face of new work requirements, counties throughout the state weighed the trade offs and delivered for our most vulnerable.

Throughout the final three weeks of the shutdown, counties remained in ongoing communication with CalFresh clients, layering in additional text and IVR communications to complement the communications that had gone out through CDSS. Counties partnered with schools and grocery stores, community centers to get out the word about the delay in benefits and where folks could access emergency food assistance.

And of course, counties made full use of the resources that David shared that were provided by CDSS. Looking ahead, we look forward to building upon our partnership with the state and CBOs in fully supporting CalFresh benefit recipients through navigating new work requirements under HR1.

Protecting program retention is going to take all of us working together through the same whole of community approach that we deployed during the shutdown, but sufficient funding will be essential to ensure that counties are in the best position possible to fully screen recipients for eligible exemptions under HR1 to reduce the incidence of self reporting and automate income verification wherever possible so that we can educate our CalFresh recipients about these new work requirements and how they can retain their benefits, and so that we can invest in the community and workforce navigation infrastructure necessary to maintain critical access to food assistance.

We look forward to partnering with the Legislature and the Administration to ensure we adequately fund a robust harm reduction approach to work requirements and revisit sensible policy that the Legislature adopted during the great recession and Covid like the match waiver to help defray the impact of administrative cost shifts onto counties under HR1.

Thank you very much. We're very pleased to have Chris Navarro and Karen Ward here today. And thank you for being here, coming to Sacramento and talking a little bit about the impact of the shutdown on your family. So I want to turn over to you and if you'd like to begin.

Good afternoon. Oh, he already did it. Good afternoon. My name is Chris. My wife Karen.

Give us one Sec. We want to make sure we can hear your. Your testimony.

Now. It's off. Try it again. Good afternoon. My name is Chris. My wife Karen. We're seniors living in Richmond. After a long career as an elementary teacher and a special ed teacher, I worked 35 years as a floor installer. And we've worked hard our entire lives.

Raised our families, paid into the system, now live on a fixed income. We're here today to share how the government shut down and the uncertainty surrounding has affected us and so many others in our community. The stress of not knowing whether or not we'll have CalFresh benefits to buy food has been overwhelming.

And even today, as we speak, we still don't know if our benefits will come through in December. That uncertainty weighs heavily every single day.

After we retired, our income dropped significantly, and we quickly realized that Social Security alone wasn't enough to cover our bills and still afford groceries. CalFresh became a lifeline, a way to stretch our dollars, plan, balance meals, and make sure we could eat fruits and vegetables and protein.

We also rely on the food banks to fill in the gaps when things get tight. But when we first heard about the closing in October, we went immediately into save mode. So we started rationing what we had, checking the freezer, making lists, buying what we could to stretch the farthest.

But unfortunately, that means that we rely on cheaper options like rice and potatoes and, you know, pasta, which will fill your stomach, but it's not the best food option for you. We even began skipping meals, sometimes cutting out lunch altogether just to make what we had last.

It isn't something that we ever imagined we'd have to do after working our whole lives. The hardest part has been the uncertainty. Some of our neighbors got their benefits and others didn't, and no one knew why. It feels like things are changing every hour and people shouldn't have to guess if or when they'll have enough to eat.

Meanwhile, we see the lawmakers getting paid, still traveling, still dining well, while people in the communities are worried about how to feed their families. CalFresh is a vital resource and we are grateful for our food bank has been there to help us fill the gap during this time.

But the truth is, while we're trying to manage this uncertainty, the problem is very real and we're talking about basic survival, not luxuries.

While we're trying to deal with the uncertainty of calfredge benefits, we are also dealing with very real day to day worries. If our benefits hadn't been paid, we would have to make impossible choices. Do we eat? Do we pay the electricity bill? And if we paid a Bill late, we'd be hit with fees and simply couldn't afford.

There's a kind of choices people like us are being forced to make because of these shutdown not about luxuries, but about survival. No one should have to think about this or make these types of decisions in a country that has so much wealth.

Without CalFresh we would have to learn, lean on friends and family for shared meals or worse, go without meals altogether. We've always lived within our means, but been careful with our money and done everything right. But it's getting hard every single day to make things, make ends meet.

Prices keep going up, our income stays the same and there's only so far you can stretch a dollar before it doesn't stretch anymore. Even with the temporary court ruling, the anxiety has gone away, has it? Hasn't gone away. Sorry about that.

We're still checking our accounts, wondering if the benefits will be there, Wondering if we'll be able to buy groceries next month or even the possibility that the government will try to take back our benefits. And even if the shutdown ends tomorrow, the fear doesn't just disappear.

We still remember that when families seniors need help, the Federal Government fought to block calfration staff benefits. Well remember that instead of protecting people, leaders allowed millions to go through unnecessary fear, hunger and confusion. We always believed the government was supposed to be there to support its people, not make them suffer just to make political points.

No one should have to wonder whether their country cares enough to make sure they can eat. We still don't know if our December benefits will come and living in the constant uncertainty take a real mental and physical toll.

And if we don't get the December benefits, we would be pretty much toast. I don't know what we would do at this moment. We're already preparing to stretch what we have through Thanksgiving and hope that we have the funds left over. Some funds left over for December.

Thanksgiving is normally an exciting time for us and we usually, you know, cook dinner and have people over. But this year we may be attending somebody else's or not having people come to our house to enjoy those times. Without CalFresh, we would lose access to the nutritious food that helps us maintain our health.

Luckily, we are fairly healthy, but we're just starting our golden years. And what happens if we have an unexpected medical issue that would impact our already stretched budget as the rising cost for producers make it nearly impossible to buy fresh fruits and vegetables on a fixed income, especially without CalFresh?

When we were younger, $100 used to buy a whole cart of food and now you can't even walk out with, you know, one of those little baskets for $100.

Unfortunately, our story isn't rare or unique. It's the reality for so many of our community members. We know a lot of people are in the same boat and facing the same hardships. Seniors, families, parents with kids, people living alone are all struggling to get by.

As a community, we're doing everything we can, sharing coupons, swapping tips on where to find the best deals, and letting each other know which stores have weekly sales. But we shouldn't have to rely on word of mouth survival strategy just to afford groceries.

We shouldn't have to stretch every dollar to put fresh fruit, vegetables and protein on the table. We worked hard all our lives. We paid into a system that promised security in our retirement. But right now it feels like seniors are being left behind, forced to choose between eating well and keeping the lights on or purchasing the medication.

Many of our neighbors are already stretched thin and this freeze in benefit adds even more pressure. Right as we head into the holidays when costs are higher and families simply want to share a meal together.

We want to send a clear message to everyone who has the power to change this. Please don't use us as pawns. You were elected to serve, to make decisions that protect us, not to leave us wondering where our next meal will come.

While you're debating policy and traveling for work, people in your districts are rationing food and skipping meals. We've worked our entire lives. We never thought we'd have to depend on a food bank. This should be the twilight of our lives, a time to rest and not struggle daily to survive.

We urge you to protect CalFresh, fund SAP, ensure no senior, no child, and no family ever has to choose between food, medicine or rent. As we've said many times we know we're better off than some, but how can anyone do this without help? And we are literally one medical, you know, emergency away. Please act now.

And people are waiting for hunger. People are waiting and hunger doesn't wait. And I have one final question, not really for you to answer, but think about the current administration keeps saying the price of food and gas are down, but we don't see it here in California.

So our friends in Tennessee, they're paying $2.50 for gas and we were excited to see $4.25 on our way up here. So how can we see those lower prices too? Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chris and Karen, for coming to Sacramento. Proud that you're my constituent from Richmond. I'm proud to represent Richmond in the State Senate and to really just center this conversation in terms of the fear and uncertainty and the hardship that this past month so many Californians had experienced.

You should not, you and our fellow Californians should never be in a situation where we have to wonder how we're going to feed ourselves. But that, that, that was the reality that we had to deal with.

And I just really appreciate you coming and very courageously talking about sort of how you had to struggle through this time of uncertainty. I think our goal is to make sure that we do everything we can here in the State of California to ensure that this does not happen in the future. So thank you.

And I'll turn it now to Mr. Wright.

Good afternoon, I'm Josh Wright with the California Association of Food Banks. Thank you to the chair and the Committee for convening this hearing today. And we also want to thank the Legislature as a whole, Governor Newsom, CDSS and CalHS for doing all they can to help put food on Californians tables during this unprecedented crisis.

We're proud to partner with you to address the need and ultimately end hunger in our state. The California Association of Food Banks represents 42 food banks that partner with nearly 6,000 agencies across the state. And our mission is to end hunger in California.

The latest data from the Census Household Poll survey shows that more than 1 in 5 households in California are facing food insecurity. And for households with children, that goes up to one in four households. These rates are similar to the peak pandemic levels of hunger that we saw in 2022.

We are also seeing an increase in Americans taking on debt to pay for food, with the Urban Institute estimating that one in four Americans are having to do so.

Federal actions have already impacted food banks across the state as California has seen a significant reduction in federal commodities in 2025, making it more difficult to help those facing hunger year to date, the Emergency Food Assistance Program TFAP, which helps food banks purchase and distribute U.S. grown and produced foods, is trending at 38% less food compared to last year.

It is likely that California food banks will continue to see less food from TFAP as we head into 2026. While food banks are receiving less federal funding, demand from food has risen significantly.

The recent government shutdown, the longest in history and the resulting delay to CalFresh benefits earlier this month, has caused a surge in demand at food banks.

We are working actively to build up our capacity to gather, compile and share data on food bank supply and demand via a public dashboard and that's intended to help inform the Legislature, Administration and other stakeholders about what's going on in our food banks.

And while every food bank is being impacted differently, we wanted to share an example of the impacts from the Alameda County Community Food Bank today. They saw the call volume for their emergency food helpline double week over week, increasing from 63 calls in early October to over 460 calls last week.

They've also been working with the Alameda County Social Services Agency to fill in the gap from the loss of SNAP benefits by offering four pop up pantries in their service area. These pantries provided between 250 and 275 households with food and about 10,000 pounds of food were provided.

60 to 70% of the households that were served were Calf Fresh recipients. We are grateful for the $80 million in cow food we received this budget year to help our food banks grapple with the increased demand which provided state funds to purchase California grown and produced foods.

This funding is vital and we are already hearing from some of our members that they are worried that the additional 80 million will run out before the end of this budget year as the impact of HR1 begins to ripple through our communities. Federal uncertainty persists into the new year and food prices remain high.

We anticipate an ongoing high need at Californ food banks. We are grateful for the Legislature's early action this fall to begin to mitigate that harm from HR1, and we look forward. As we look ahead, it will be critical for California to continue to protect and strengthen CalFresh, which is our first line of defense against hunger.

This could include using state funds to mitigate harm to those impacted by time limits and by the cutoffs for humanitarian immigrants, as well as to sustain the critical CalFresh outreach network which is affected by the administrative cost shifts in HR1. Simultaneously, we must ensure California food banks can keep up with the demand.

Both food banks and CalFresh are critical to addressing hunger and the reality is that people who are experiencing hunger often need both. These programs complement each other, and national data shows that over one third of CalFresh recipients also visit food banks. Because CalFresh benefits just don't cover a whole month's worth of groceries.

And for people who don't qualify for CalFresh, food banks are an even more vital resource. In our most recent Member survey, food banks continue to emphasize that additional food funding is the most helpful resource for meeting our current and future local needs. Yet what we are looking at in 2026 is a perfect storm.

A food bank is trying to serve more people at the same time that they are facing significant funding cuts and uncertainty. If new funding is not approved at the end of this fiscal year, Cal Food will drop from just drop to just $8 million a year. A 90% cut from the current funding at 80 million.

We urge you to sustain this vital funding at 60 million annually and approve an additional 50 million of one time funding in the 2026-27 budget year for a total of 110 million so that food banks can keep fighting to feed their communities and support the local food economy.

Strengthening the state's nutrition safety net must be a top priority this year. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to ensuring that all Californians have food on the table.

Thank you very much. I want to thank the panelists for being here today and for really framing this conversation around the impact of the shutdown. And just to put this in context, we started the year with an informational hearing on the State of hunger in California.

And here we are 10 months later and we had the longest shutdown in our Federal Government's history which resulted for the first time in over 60 years that Americans did not get their CalFresh benefits but in California and I want to really thank the Administration working to get those benefits out as quickly as possible.

So there was no interruption in the State of California. Not every state was able to do that. All the while the Administration was challenging federal court decisions that mandated that they have to use emergency funding to provide those benefits. And I agree with what our community member said that food and healthcare should not be political bargaining chips.

These are essential to people's lives. And so I think that I think really needs to frame our discussions as we come back in January around what we're going to do to mitigate the harm that is going to be felt by so many people in our state because of the impact of HR1.

But as we learned in that initial hearing that we had in February, even before the shutdown, even before HR1, hunger was growing in California. You know, obviously during the pandemic, food insecurity increased.

People due to losing their jobs and the rising costs of living, have struggled just to put food on the table, as well as students, seniors, families.

And I really want to lift up the work that California has done over the past couple years to increase the number of people that have become eligible for CalFresh, you know, expanding services to serve a variety of populations. But now we're just having to maintain what we have.

And so I just want to thank the Administration for working to try to expedite getting that $80 million out the door and talking to the Alameda County Food Bank. I know that that was. There were a lot of questions from food banks throughout the state around whether we can get that assistance on an expedited basis.

The work of the Governor to deploy the National Guard and Cal volunteers to assist in making sure that we can get food out the door at our food banks. And I want to lift up the work of the counties and in the two counties I'm proud to represent, Alameda and Contra Costa county really took unprecedented action.

$16.5 million was allocated by Alameda County and including a Fund that was matched by county and private philanthropy of an additional $1.5 million. And then in Contra Costa County, they decided to allocate $21 million to provide gift cards to people if there was going to be an interruption in those benefits. Fortunately, we didn't have to do that.

But I think that just illustrates the kinds of unprecedented steps that counties were willing to take and will need to take if this happens in the future.

And it was as confusing and painful of an experience as it was for so many people in our state and just the stress that it created to our state agencies and county governments and local governments and community providers. I'm really just, really gratified by how people came together during this difficult time.

How everyone really stepped up, whether it was our state agencies, our counties, our food banks, our faith institutions, our community based providers, and just individuals that just out of the goodness of their heart, donated to their food banks, volunteered at their food banks and bought groceries for their neighbors to make sure that they were not going hungry.

And so I think that is, that is as challenging as this was. I think there are lessons learned. If we are in this unfortunate situation in the future on how we can build on that incredible network of philanthropy and support that we were able to piece together in a very, very quick timeline.

So I have a few questions I'd like to ask our panelists and start with Mr. Swanson Holinger, what can this what I guess what has the state learned and what could the state do to protect ourselves from similar impacts if there are future shutdowns?

Now, we know we have until September of next year because of the continuing resolution, but what's very clear is that and if I may be political for a moment, this Administration does not think that nutrition assistance benefits are essential and was willing to let there be a lapse despite the fact that there was billions of dollars of an emergency Reserve that they could tap into.

So we hope that this is not going to happen again, but it is possible it could happen again. I'm wondering if you have any have any insights around what have we learned and what could we do if we're in this situation in the future.

Turn that off? I think a couple of things. And you talked about it eloquently.

I think it starts with the partnership and that very much was we felt it at the state and have been and continue to be so appreciative of the partnership with counties, with Legislature, with with all of the various folks that came together and did what we could as much as we could to mitigate the harm that was being caused.

And we'll talk more about HR1, but the impacts of that as well.

We do want to be and we do expect to be looking at the work we were doing with the food banks and the National Guard as we think about the other side of that effort and what we can learn from that and to help be prepared for the work going forward.

That is one of the areas, you know, obviously just beginning to have those conversations as we as we as the shutdown has ended, but we will be looking at that partnership with the food banks there.

And I know we've you know, Carlos and I've already talked a little bit about learning how we as state and county continue to learn about how to strengthen that partnership and the communication and the mutual work that we do together. So I do think there's opportunities to learn from that as well.

Carlos, if you have any thoughts on.

That topic as well, I agree that we learned a lot from this fire drill, so to speak.

And I call it a fire drill because what we saw in terms of chaos and fear and drop off I think very well could be just the beginning of what we see if we don't think creatively about a harm reduction strategy to the implementation of HR1 when it comes to helping our CalFresh recipients navigate work requirements.

So the partnerships that we forged throughout this shutdown will be the basis upon which we do that important work moving forward.

If you can touch upon some of the unique challenges that rural counties and high cost of living counties face during this time.

Yeah, absolutely. So very different conditions in each set of counties and yet I think all counties are navigating some. Some really challenging headwinds. I think counties have been engaged in what we've called a culture of coverage for the last five to 10 years, both on the CalFresh front and the MediCal front.

Trying our best to make sure that we're increasing access to both programs. And the county workforce, whether it be rural or urban, is experiencing some whiplash right now culturally.

Because what we're essentially asking of them is to go from a holistic approach, a pro access approach, streamlining and removing barriers to these programs to a more punitive compliance based scheme that we know from the literature doesn't work and only serves to throw people off of the rolls.

So we're very concerned, we would say, that both rural and urban counties are experiencing the same challenge, but for rural counties in particular, with regard to the implementation of HR1, they don't have the same CBO infrastructure that a lot of our urban counties have.

And so I think we're going to really need to think about how to scale all of the sort of CBO institutions that will help our CalFresh recipients meet the eligible activities under HR1 beyond just geography.

Thank you very much.

And Mr. Wright, it's been a very busy time over the last month with all of our food banks in California. Could you maybe talk about how the food banks are able to get access to and use the fast track funding and what concerns food banks have regarding the long term effects of HR1.

So for food banks, you know, part of what we do is respond to crises. And so our food banks are quick to step up and jump in. Our communities that supported us are also quick to step up and jump in.

And so as we get funds, we have, you know, contingencies in place to purchase food quickly and to have food ready to go quickly as far as.

And we want to kind of build up that capacity to know real time where the need is so that we can move resources around to those that, that need, those communities that are in the most need the most urgently as far as HR1.

I mean, we do expect increases in the lines at food banks as people lose access to CalFresh. I mean, these programs are directly related. They impact each other. Any program that takes away from people's ability to get food is going to impact food banks. Right. I mean, because people need food at the end of the day.

I mean, as our community shared like it's not. It's not a negotiable. And so as we have people that are losing access to CalFresh, we do expect increased need for food.

And our food banks have articulated that the main thing is we need funding to be able to buy food to get that food out to folks that need it.

Could you talk about just the increase that you've seen of people accessing food resources through our food banks over the last couple years?

So we are seeing levels of need that are rival that of the COVID or I'm sorry, not rival, are the closest that they've been to the COVID 19 pandemic currently. And so the increases are there absolutely across the board. We are seeing that.

As far as the kind of like speaking more generally to where we are, that's part of what we're working to gather as the information so that we can speak to that more. Every food bank is going to be different and their capacity to capture data to then share with us is going to be different as well.

And so we're trying to get that kind of up and running with this publicly available dashboard to be able to answer that.

You talked about the sort of proposal of 110 million in funding to supplement Cal Food. Yeah, so and we'll get to HR1 just in a few minutes.

You know, with the changes in work rules and eligibility requirements that may result in, you know, hundreds of thousands of people not being eligible, we're going to see an increased demand on our food banks. And so have you. Can you speak to just what are going to be the impacts?

So we. That's part of what we've calculated with our so we've received the last three years 60 million of baseline funding. The extra 50 million that we're asking for one time funding is meant to help us absorb. Absorb the approximately 800,000 people that we believe are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits due to HR1.

Some of that about 30%. We believe we can absorb under that 60 million baseline funding that we've gotten for the last few years, the additional 560,000 people that we expect to need to come to our food banks as a result of their loss of their benefits.

That's in that fifty million one-time funding that we're asking for this year.

Great. Thank you very much. And Chris and Karen, is there anything else you want to add?

Thank you for listening to us. Yeah. Just thank you for listening.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. So that completes our first panel. I want to thank our panelists for taking the time to join us for this important discussion. And we're going to pivot to our next panel to talk about HR1 got through one crisis. Now we're moving to the next.

And our panelists for panel two are Mr. Swanson Holinger. Again, thank you. Ryan Woolsey from the Legislative Analyst Office, Ryan Galette and Julia Erdkamp. And good afternoon.

And we have copies of the memo the LAO did produce, if any members of the public would like a copy of that. Our sergeants have a copy of that. So, I want to turn it over to Mr. Woolsey to kind of set the table about what are the impacts of HR 1 on our CalFresh program in California. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ryan Woolsey with the Legislative Analyst Office. As you mentioned, I'll be providing an overview of HR 1 and its impacts on the CalFresh program. HR 1 has some significant impacts in CalFresh that can be sorted into three main categories. First, limits on eligibility. Second, reductions in benefits and services.

And finally, third, shifting of costs from the Federal Government to the state and counties. So, following through the handout on page two, looking at the eligibility limitations, the first that I'll describe is expansions in the work requirements for Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents, who are often referred to by the acronym of ABOD.

The work requirement for ABODs takes the form of a time limit where affected individuals are limited to three months of assistance in a three-year period unless they work or participate in other qualifying activities for at least 20 hours in a week. Prior to HR 1, the time limit was not imposed on everyone.

There were a number of groups that were exempt from the limit.

That includes people over the age of 54, people that were in a household that had children, pregnant individuals, those unable to work due to physical or mental limitations, and more recently, adults through age 24 who aged out of foster care, veterans, the homeless, and critically, there was an opportunity for states to seek waivers from the requirement for broad groups of individuals based on either having over a 10% unemployment rate in an area or being able to demonstrate a lack of sufficient jobs.

And California, until recently, had an approved waiver for the entire state through January of 2026 based on a finding of insufficient jobs. HR 1 makes several changes to the ABOD time limit. First, it expands the limit to adults through age 64 instead of just 54.

It newly applies the limit to adults where there's a dependent that's 14 or older. It eliminates previous exemptions for former foster youth, veterans, and homeless individuals. It does add a new exemption for Native Americans and individuals eligible for Indian health services, but it limits waivers from the ABOD time limit to only the basis of unemployment over 10%.

That is eliminating the ability to get a waiver based on a finding of insufficient jobs. And as a result, California's statewide waiver ended on November 2nd. In place of this waiver, the state recently received approval for a more limited waiver in three counties—Calusa, Imperial, and Tulare—through October 2026.

The Department of Social Services has estimated that there are about 610,000 individuals who are not exempt from the ABOD requirement, of which about 115,000 are already working 20 hours in a week. So, the remaining 495,000 individuals would be at risk of being discontinued after the three months under the HR 1 requirement.

To give a sense of the potential impact on an individual, the average CalFresh benefit is about $190 a month, but it could be as high as about $300 a month depending on household composition and income and other factors. The next eligibility limitation has to do with immigrant populations.

Previously qualified immigrants, as defined in federal law, were able to receive federally funded CalFresh benefits. HR 1 limits the scope of that definition to exclude certain immigrants, including asylees, refugees, parolees, battered non-citizens, and trafficking victims, among others.

Department of Social Services has estimated that approximately 74,000 individuals would lose coverage—would lose assistance in CalFresh—as a result of this change. This particular change and the ABOD time limits are technically in effect with the enactment of HR 1 but have not been implemented in California, pending policy development and federal guidance.

But ultimately, once they are implemented, we estimate that they will result in lost CalFresh benefits in the high hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Turning to page five for reductions to benefits and services, the first change I'll highlight is that HR 1 changes the way that the Thrifty Food Plan is calculated.

The Thrifty Food Plan forms the basis of determining maximum CalFresh benefit amounts, and HR 1 caps growth in the Thrifty Food Plan at the rate of inflation, which has not been the case before. It also places a cap on the maximum CalFresh benefit for very large CalFresh households, and these changes were implemented in October of '25.

Next, CalFresh benefits are calculated with a recognition of a household's costs so that if a household has higher utility costs in general, they would receive a higher CalFresh benefit in recognition that they would have less income left over to pay for food.

In some cases, the state may apply what's called a standard utility allowance to streamline the calculation and, in some cases, increase the CalFresh benefit that the household qualifies for. Further, federal law has allowed for individuals that receive a utility subsidy funded by the Federal Government or the state to have the standard utility allowance used.

So, California has been providing and does provide a utility assistance payment to individuals where doing so would allow them to use the standard utility allowance and receive a higher benefit. HR 1 restricts the use of such subsidies in order to use the standard utility allowance only to households with elderly or disabled members.

Department of Social Services estimates that this will reduce benefits for about 444,000 people and that 18,000 individuals will lose eligibility altogether. This is equivalent to about $180 million in reduced benefits annually, and this provision took effect at the end of October.

Finally, with respect to utility costs, there was a new requirement in federal guidance that the state consider internet expenses. HR 1 rescinds that requirement and further prohibits states from considering Internet expenses when looking at utility costs. Finally, with respect to benefits, the state has historically received over $100 million a year in nutrition education funding.

HR 1 sunsets that funding with the federal fiscal year that just ended in September, and the state does have the ability to spend remaining funds through September of '26 but thereafter will not receive any additional funding. Turning to page 7, HR 1 shifts significant costs to the state.

As has been mentioned in the first panel, CalFresh benefits are fully federally funded. However, HR 1 imposes a state share of cost depending on the extent of error payments in the program.

So, for context on that, each year a sample of CalFresh cases are reviewed to assess whether or not the household received the correct amount of assistance, and the extent to which the household received more or less is counted as an error and the rate of that error is published.

HR 1 specifies that beginning in October 2027, states with an error rate of 6% or more will have a new share of cost. And as you can see in the table on page seven for California, that could range anywhere from $650 million a year to $2 billion.

Based on where California is at today, the error rate that was most recently measured was 11%, which would correspond to a state share of 15%, or about $2 billion. The way HR 1 is set up, the current federal fiscal year that we're in right now is really important for determining what the state share will be.

Technically, the state is going to have the option of using either the previous 12 months or this 12 month period we're in now to determine our share of cost, but it's likely that our error rate in the most recent 12 months is not significantly better than 11%.

So, the 12 months we're in right now are probably going to be decisive in terms of determining our share of cost.

On the admin side, as was mentioned on the first panel, currently, the state and counties are responsible for half of administrative costs while the Federal Government picks up the other half. Under HR 1, the state and counties together will need to cover 75% of the costs.

This is going to increase the state share from an effective 35% to 52.5% and for the counties from 15% to 22.5%, leading to estimated annual costs of about $450 million in a year for the state and $200 million in a year for counties.

Finally, on page 10, I'll summarize a few actions that the state recently took to respond to HR 1 in terms of funding in the budget.

The first is $39.9 million were provided to Department of Social Services to pursue data and technology changes and outreach to the CalFresh population to reduce the payment error rate and try to mitigate those increased state benefit costs.

As was mentioned, $20 million was provided on top of a previously approved $52 million augmentation for Cal Food to support food banks. And lastly, upon approval of the Department of Finance, an additional $15 million may be made available to implement forthcoming federal guidance related to HR 1 and to support county implementation of changes to the ABOD time limit.

That concludes my remarks. Happy to take questions when time comes.

Thank you very much. We'll now turn over to CDSS and thank you for joining us, Mr. Swanson Hollinger. I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you and I will do my best. I have some overlap in what I'm going to be talking about with Mr. Woolsey, so I'll try to go through some of that more quickly than I was planning on. This should not be repetitious.

And again, my name is David Swanson Hollinger, Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Social Services, and appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about HR 1 and the impacts on the SNAP or CalFresh program.

As with my last presentation, we have a slide deck to help try to pull together some of the complexity of this topic and to complement the remarks, and we'll try to do our best to to hit on the areas that were of interest to the Committee.

I'm going to start with a background on CalFresh and the anticipated impacts, both for the people we serve and for federal funding, and then an overview of our implementation approach, which includes partner engagement as well as a walkthrough of each policy provision, as well as an update on implementation of that provision.

Finally, we'll talk a bit more about CalFresh funding, as my colleague just talked about, including our efforts to improve CalFresh accuracy and mitigate the impacts of the cost sharing that he talked about.

Again, just as a reminder, CalFresh, as we've talked about, is one of the most effective tools to combat poverty and food insecurity and is of critical importance to our state in addressing food insecurity. And as we've again said, over five and a half million Californians or 3.3 million households, receive CalFresh benefits.

55% of those households include children, 36% of those include older adults or people with disability. Average benefit for CalFresh recipient is about $333 a month, which allows individuals and families to meet both their food needs as well as free up limited resources in their budget for other essentials that they may need.

In the most recent fiscal year, CalFresh benefits totaled $13.3 billion and administrative funding, which is split, as we heard, between federal, state, and county governments, totaled $2.7 billion. So, the scope of the program is very clear. Did I jump ahead? Yeah, jumped ahead of the slide here.

With HR 1, as we know, it was signed by the President on July 4th and has significant historic changes to both the CalFresh program as well as Medicaid program, which result will result in fewer Californians receiving those benefits as well as significant cost sharing to the state.

We estimate that as a result of HR 1, funding for SNAP in the state will be cut by 1.7 to $3.7 billion annually and as many as 400,000 people could lose their benefits.

So, these are unprecedented changes to the program that will have impacts for many for years into the future and require us to reimagine our path forward to think about how we remain committed to a vision of CalFresh that's focused on maximizing access to benefits for those individuals who are eligible and to ensure people have the food they need to thrive.

We appreciate the shared goal that you and the Legislature have on this topic. As we've looked at implementation of this significant Bill, we've got a few guiding principles I'd like to talk about. In collaboration with our partner, we've moved forward with these principles to guide the key decisions as we move forward, starting with mitigate the harm of HR 1 wherever possible and make timely decisions that minimize the negative impacts and ensure clear communication of those impacts for clients and counties.

A continuous improvement approach identifying opportunities to improve and streamline both existing and new processes to support and stabilize the safety net and to center client and county user experience.

Evidence-based decision making—using our data and our research to inform our decisions, to monitor progress and make adjustments as we need and to be engaging transparently in this work to actively seek insight from partners including counties that administer the program, people with lived expertise, and others representing a vast variety of perspectives at both the local and the state level.

So, several elements that we are in ways in which we're approaching our strategy for implementing HR 1. We're starting with a shared understanding of the challenges ahead and you heard with my predecessor's presentation, these are significant.

We've identified partners at the state and local level that we're engaging in implementation planning to establish that common understanding of the policy changes, the implementation challenges, and potential strategies to minimize impacts on clients and counties whenever possible and then moving towards implementation of the various policy provisions of HR 1 and so, issuing of policy guidance and training for counties and partners to support consistent statewide implementation.

This will include updates to the CALSAW system, the California Statewide Automated Welfare System, and we'll be hearing from my colleague about that in a moment. And finally, working with partners to develop an accuracy improvement initiative.

This will be digging into root cause analysis of payment error rates through enhanced quality control data analyses and feedback from clients and counties. This will be a multiyear, multifaceted initiative to improve accuracy through client centered automation and data integration and technology solutions that will focus on maximizing availability and quality of data, especially related to income.

And you'll hear more about that from my colleague, Ryan, in a few moments.

In terms of partner engagement, there are two primary ongoing opportunities for partner engagement as we work with our partners as well as ad hoc—a number of ad hoc meetings—that are continuing when various touch points and decisions are made are needed as we move forward.

We have All Partner HR 1 Implementation Advisory Group, and this meets regularly to collaborate and advise the Department on Implementation Strategies to improve accuracy.

And we have an HR 1 implementation county operation group. Also meets regularly to bring together counties to advise on the implementation of HR 1 provisions and on strategies to improve accuracy with special attention to the local implementation and operationalization of those strategies.

I'm going to now go through provision by provision walkthrough and I'll try to go quickly through things you've heard about and talk about implementation updates on each. So, starting on the reevaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, which you have heard about, and this, again, this is the lowest cost of food plans created by the USDA.

It estimates the weekly cost of a diet designed to meet nutritional needs at minimal expense and CalFresh benefit allotments are based on this plan.

It also doesn't just dictate CalFresh benefits amounts, but it also drives funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program that the food banks operate and that we just heard about, as well as benefit levels for the Sun Bucks Program.

The HR 1 mandates this program to be cost neutral and which prevents CalFresh benefits from reflecting actual food costs and being updated as dietary guidelines change. As you heard, we're estimating that an estimated 43,000 households with a household size of nine or more will have benefits capped. And we have estimated annual loss of 681,000 in federal funding.

We have issued guidance on this in early September to counties on this change and the changes were effective on October 1. The Internet changes, and we talked about this one as well earlier. There had been a final rule that would have allowed shelter expenses to include basic Internet costs.

We hadn't yet implemented this, but with HR 1 no longer allowing this, there's means that there will be no change to policy or benefit calculations for Californians on CalFresh and that benefit increases will not occur for those individuals. You heard this. The HR 1 also eliminates funding for SNAP Ed or CalFresh Healthy Living in California.

One of the things that has happened is many states, including California, have a significant amount of unspent funds from the prior fiscal year that just ended on hand.

And so, the USDA has allowed us and other states to continue spending those allocations through the end of this federal fiscal year, so through the end of September, to cover costs of closing out the program. So, this, our program, will end, in our case, in June 2026. The standard utility allowance. And you heard a bit about this.

This is the annual low income, about $20 Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, payment.

You'll also hear this referred to as the SUAS that ensures CalFresh households can claim the SUA and then this allows them to maximize the benefits they are eligible for without the burden of having to verify all the individual utility costs within that household.

HR 1 limits that automatic application of the SUA based on the LIHEAP payment to only households with elderly or disabled members. And so, that for people who are no longer eligible for the SUA, they will have to provide verification of their utility expenses.

Our estimates are showing that about 18,000 people will lose eligibility entirely and 444,000 people will see a reduction in benefits representing about $183 million in lost benefits. For those that are facing this reduction or loss of eligibility, they will be reevaluated at their next certification as they go forward.

Let's say we did issue guidance on this in August and got guidance from the Federal Government in August and then released guidance in September—two counties—to move this forward and as of the end of October, the policy has been fully implemented. So, it is now—this policy is now in effect.

There are a number of elements that are in process in our planning and our implementation, so I want to talk about these. These are ones for which we do not yet have an implementation date, but we are beginning to work on and to plan for.

As you heard, CalFresh has signed—there are significant changes related to work requirements, or these are Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents, or you'll hear the term ABOD. Prior to HR 1, as you heard, people were considered ABOD.

They were limited to 3 months of benefits in a 36-month period unless they met the work requirements and it referred to individuals between 18 and 54 who could work and did not have children under 18.

As you heard, most folks aren't terribly familiar with this rule because we have had a statewide waiver in place since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and even before that, we had not implemented this rule statewide since about 2008, so this is something that we're really ramping up from scratch in most cases—in most counties.

We—in the past, we had qualified for a waiver because of economic conditions across the state that allowed and that that rule is no longer allowable under HR 1.

As you've heard, the rule is incredibly burdensome both for those we serve and for local administrators in meeting ABOD requirements and has been shown to be ineffective in supporting economic stability and mobility.

We did receive guidance on these changes in early October and HR 1 changes; several components of the work requirement practically result in people being subject to the time limit and work requirement. I won't go over again the specific changes, but you heard those earlier.

There is one positive note with the changes is that there is now an exemption for American Indians meaning they will not be subject to ABOD time limit rules. The memo also reinforces that people can't be subject to work requirements or could be given countable months of benefits before they are screened at initial application or their next recertification.

Lastly, the FNS did rescind a revised one-year waiver, which we were under, which had been set to expire at the end of January of next year now expired in—on—November 2nd of this year.

In terms of impact, we're estimating more than 300,000 people will be subject to these new rules, representing a loss of about $500 million in CalFresh benefits.

We did release an all-county letter in mid-September which includes revised notices and forms to reflect some of the HR 1 changes and working internally and with partners to issue policy guidance as quickly as possible to move the other changes forward.

Also, know that we need to automate changes in CALSAWS and need to clarify the guidance so that we can do that. In the meantime, we have developed and released several county planning tools that we hope are useful for our county partners in preparing for local implementation and hosting regular touchpoints with counties to answer questions.

And then, lastly, on non-Citizen eligibility for CalFresh, as you heard there were many types of non-citizens previously that were eligible for CalFresh, but now, it's only lawfully permanent residents who have met the five year residency requirement, Cuban or Haitian entrants, or people who are in the US in accordance with Compacts of Free Association who are eligible.

So, many immigrant categories that had been eligible are no longer eligible. Estimating this will be a loss of about 74,000 non-citizens, equating to about $133 million in benefits. We just received guidance from this from the Federal Government last week on November 7th and we're beginning to analyze that guidance and develop our local guidance.

Going to shift now to the cost sharing before handing it over to Ryan to talk about the payment error rate.

As you heard, there are significant changes in cost sharing and at the administrative cost sharing level that shift currently within our county or within our state, the state share, the 50/50-state share, the 50% state share of the administrative funds are covered at 70% by the state with counties covering the remaining 30%.

With the shift in HR 1 to the Federal Government only paying 25% that increases the state share to 75% and those ratios then will apply to that 75% going forward.

We're estimating this to equate to about increased cost to the State of about $685 million annually, which equates to about 470 for the state and 211 additional million dollars in cost for the counties. And on the benefits' cost sharing, as you know, this this is a an incredibly significant shift in the funding structure for the program.

Moving from a program, a program that has been fully federally funded, as I mentioned, that's $13 billion in California in CalFresh benefits every year, and with this new tie to the payment error rate, as you heard, this will begin to impact the state cost sharing in federal fiscal year 2028 going forward.

At this point, I'm going to hand it over to Ryan Gillette. He's our Chief Data Officer at CDSS. He'll talk a little bit more about the cost sharing but in the context specifically of the payment error rate.

Hi. Ryan Gillette, I'm the Chief Data Officer, Deputy Director with Research Automation and Data Division here at the Department of Social Services. Get this over. So, before we go any further, did want to spend just a minute level setting on what the payment error rate is.

So, the payment error rate is a measure that all states use to measure the accuracy of CalFresh eligibility and benefits determination. And important to note, it represents the sum of both the underpayment and overpayments of benefits that have been issued to a sample of active cases that are drawn every month.

So, for example, an error when a client was receiving $300 more than they were supposed to based on their the factors at the time they were pulled through the sample is a bigger problem in terms of the payment error rate compared to someone that had a $100 error.

Also important to note is that errors below $57 are not counted towards the per, so there's a little bit of a grace period built into that. There is a random sample of cases that is drawn every year.

Over the course of the year, we draw about 1,020 cases which is a representative sample of the total caseload of about 3.3 million households. We've seen this table so won't go through this again.

We'll just add there is one other quirk to this that's not reflected here, which is if the payment error rate ends up above 13.3% then any potential penalties are deferred until federal fiscal—until FFY 2029—if that happens in in the federal fiscal year '25 or to 2030 if it happens in federal fiscal year '26.

This is a graph of where California has been over the past several federal fiscal years, in terms of the payment error rate and how we compare relative to the national trend. So, as you can see, California is in the gold color on the top. We track pretty closely to what happens at the national level.

You can also see that during the COVID 19 Pandemic, California, like many states, took federal waiver options which allowed us to ease access into the program. Sometimes, you know, a lot of times these access things also can contribute to higher air rates and that that was a bump that we saw during that time period.

In Federal Fiscal Year '24, the payment error rate was 10.98% and the national average was 10.93%.

We still do not know what Federal Fiscal Year 25's error rate is, as that's still being calculated by our federal partners. In terms of the leading causes of errors in California, there are some things that we already know contribute to our payment error rate.

Broadly speaking, we think there are two categories that we look at: agency caused and client caused. And I would just say these are federal terms of art. We did not come up with them. Maybe not the language we would have used, but currently, it is roughly 40% agency caused and 60% client caused, in terms of what factors into those.

For agency caused, the common drivers are the retirement savings and disability insurance. This is the sort of information that's known to counties, but for whatever reason, it didn't make it into the evaluation of the benefit that a client should receive in a given month.

And then, in addition, wages and salaries and other shelter deductions can often be causes of agency errors.

For client caused errors, common drivers are also wages and salaries, potentially information they didn't realize they were supposed to report or didn't report on time, other sources of unearned income, and changes to household composition. SNAP CalFresh households are defined a little bit uniquely in that it's based on people in the household that you cook and prepare food with.

And so, it oftentimes there can be confusion about who counts as part of your household. So, as you can see, areas related to income both earned and unearned are an area that we are particularly interested in since we know that they are common both in terms of agency caused and client caused errors.

Lastly, I'm going to share just a couple of quick updates around some of the work that we are doing around trying to improve accuracy. So, first off, I do want to thank the Legislature for the August special session budget session investments to comply with HR 1 and special attention to mitigating harm caused by this federal legislation.

We did hear already some of the investments that have been made, so I won't go through them in too much more detail again here, but do just want to reflect. We are actively thinking about how to make the most of these investments that you have given us.

In particular with the 47 million, this will be supporting the Department's work to improve the accuracy and lower our payment error rate using data driven strategies in the context. We are still analyzing trends and developing a comprehensive strategy.

So, for example, we are just beginning implementation of enhancing income verification and further engaged in a payment error rate root cause analysis with the funding that is made possible thanks to that funding. So, again, thank you for those investments.

In terms of accuracy and improvement, the CDSS research team is using case data to drive this enhanced root cause analysis to help us better diagnose the sources of error, drill a little bit deeper into those client cause, agency cause, the nature of those, and come up with a set of proposed strategies that will support a prioritization schema.

This is important because we have to optimize across a number of different factors here.

Obviously, there's cost of any intervention, there's the time it would take to potentially implement anything, but there's also a limited amount of capacity of change that all of us can absorb at any one time, whether that be at the state or our county partners or clients.

And so, we need to make sure that we're being thoughtful about only selecting those strategies that we're confident are going to have the greatest impact.

So, taking in all these income verification strategies, we do think can—or, well, we know that we are going to start with some of these income verification strategies since that is common across both agency and clients. We do think that these strategies can help reduce the...per and also reduce administrative burden both from clients and for workers.

Some examples of these could include consent-based client facing solutions that streamlines the client's ability to report income and broaden the breadth of the income that they report, from both traditional and now nontraditional sources.

So, gig work, self-employment, things like that that oftentimes we would otherwise miss and then enhanced utilization of third-party payroll services that identify reportable income of additional household members and identify income changes above a client's required income reporting threshold where they have to send more information. I think I'm going to stop there.

We've covered a lot of the other topics in here, so I'll close by just reiterating my thanks for your attention to all this and for everything that you're doing to support the lives of Californians in need. I'll pass to David.

Also, just to reiterate my thanks for holding this briefing, but even more broadly, the partnership of the Legislature and all the partners in the room as we try to mitigate the harm of HR 1, and these are the most significant changes in CalFresh and its history.

And we want to do everything we can to be thoughtful about implementation in a way that does everything we can to maximize access, mitigate harm, and support counties and our partners in implementing the changes that we need to move forward. So, thank you.

Miss Erdkamp?

Yes. There's slides, so I want to. All right, so as the largest integrated eligibility system in the country, we understand how critical CALSAWS is in the automating of the varied, very complex policy and operational impacts of HR 1.

For us, the priority is obviously access, as many of my colleagues have mentioned, but also mitigating the administrative burdens that HR 1 creates for our county partners in doing their work with enhanced eligibility determinations and more nuanced operational changes. So, what I'm here to do is just kind of talk about what CALSAWS is doing.

You know, my colleagues up here have already covered all the policy impacts, but obviously, we are the automation arm of all of these changes. We have several work groups that are underway. We started right along with CDSS in July to get ready and prepare for some of these changes.

What you see here are some of the HR 1—we call it HR 1 adjacent. So, there's policy changes that are fairly straightforward. We get guidance from the Federal Government.

But then there's also some of these adjacent areas that are a little bit more nuanced, where we have opportunities to create enhancements for our county partners and our clients in terms of eligibility determinations and the various processing of it. So, the first work group that we have is the CalFresh processing to reduce error rates.

Ryan just covered it pretty thoroughly and I think several here have talked about it. We face a $2 billion penalty. So, what can we do to bring that error rate down?

So, CALSAWS, in coordination with the counties, have been taking on, again, this evidence-based approach to looking at where the root causes are, where we can close those gaps, and what we could ultimately automate that is the most impactful, right, because there's a lot of areas where we can make changes, but we really want to move the needle in terms of the error rate.

And so, that work group is in process right now doing that work and it started in October, and it will continue to run as we get into some of the agency caused, again federal definition, agency caused errors. The second group is the income verification.

And this is what Ryan was referring to in terms of some of the enhanced income verification opportunities that we have. Wages and salaries continues to be one of those areas as more people take on additional work. The gig economy, we're not really thoroughly capturing that. And what can we do to create efficiencies around that so that people—it's easier for people to report that. Right?

So, that's what that work group is focused on. That one is the one that's county facing on this, but those two work groups have, one has kicked off, the other one will be kicking off in January as we work in partnership with CDSS on the right income verification tools.

So, really the goal there is we have work groups activated right now to prioritize some of these requirements, bring in the data that we have in terms of where the root causes are, and move forward in implementing these things as quickly as possible.

Now, here I'm talking about the county facing work groups, but we also have on the BenfitsCal side. So, for those who aren't aware, the public facing portal is our BenefitsCal side, there's also room for improvement there.

So, we have complementary work groups that are working with our community-based organizations, and our advocates and those ones are also looking at these same things and seeing where there's opportunities to help the clients to reduce errors. And what's the barrier, right?

What's causing them, you know, them to—is there clarification that could be provided, more guidance that could be provided, to help them provide us with the correct information so that the right eligibility determination is made. So, that's what those work groups are.

If I go to the next slide, I just want to show you that we're really busy with these work groups and so, don't just take our word for it. We are gathering and prioritizing requirements right now.

These represent engagement, heavy engagement, with the county's CDSS, obviously to figure out what the system needs to do to help reduce the CalFresh error rates. This activity is, you know, we use a lot of rigor around this activity and making sure we're ranking.

So, this is just to share and demonstrate all the due diligence we do to make sure that we're getting the right requirements prioritized. And then finally, one of the other areas that we had looked at is related to some of the areas where we could implement some system enhancements related to the CalFresh error rate.

We already had a number of system change requests in our backlog. And so, when HR 1 was implemented, what we did is look at that backlog and say are there some things we can pull forward that the counties have already asked us for that could help maybe close the gap?

So, these are really intended to help address the CalFresh error rates. What you see here is a long laundry list. It's an eye chart. You're not meant to look at any of these unless you can't sleep tonight. But what really what you're, you're seeing here is a couple things.

Eligibility determination enhancements, expense, you know, enhancements related to expenses, notices of action, income and verifications. All these are planned across 2026 releases in CALSAWS.

And really, the aim here for us is to reduce the CalFresh error rates and then, at the end of the day, improve overall program accuracy so that people can get the right benefits at the right time. So, ABOD has already been covered.

We are, you know, out there like with our catcher's mitt ready when we get additional federal guidance. We work really closely with CDSS on that.

And so, those system updates to plan and you know, we have plan to support and streamline that process will happen once we have additional guidance because we also don't want any unanticipated impacts to these changes where people are kicked off the rolls accidentally because of incorrect automation. So, with that, I'm done and open to any other questions.

Okay, thank you to all of our panelists and I just have a few questions. So, once again, putting this in perspective in terms of the impacts of HR 1, 395,000 Californians are estimated to be impacted by the new legislation which results in a loss of 1.7 to 3.7 billion annually. And there are many elements to this.

There's first the issue of the work rules and the implementation of those requirements. There's how the changes in eligibility impact coverage for undocumented Californians, which could impact 73,000 non-citizens and 133 million in funding. And if we want to continue to provide that—those level of benefits—that would be something the state would have to support entirely.

Then, there's the issue of cost sharing and then there's the issue of the error rate. So, I kind of want to dive into all those different things because those things are the key issues around implementation. So, around the work rules—so, I understand guidance may have been provided recently.

Could you maybe talk about from the Administration standpoint, how are we going to implement this? How are we going to make sure that people working with their counties are eligible for and maintaining eligibility? Because given the number of people that will be impacted, you know, there you can either work or there's volunteer opportunities.

I know that we're going to have some county representatives that are going to speak for later today, but just curious about what the administration's thinking with regard to how to—this obviously is very relevant to the Medi-Cal question too.

And I'll start and Ryan may want to jump in as well and you sort of hit up—we are looking at a couple of things.

One is to look at how we can maximize where there are opportunities to look at exceptions or various ways in which we can identify ways in which to meet those requirements under the regulations. Also looking at the steps that need to happen to bring counties up to speed.

Like as I mentioned, this is not something that counties have really done because we've had a waiver for so long, and so, we have a very significant need to train the workforce and make sure that we're working with counties to develop an approach, an implementation approach, that works for counties and works in the long term.

And these are—it's not just about what we need next week, but really about long-term success. Also thinking of where the payment error rate fits in, so we want this implementation to be successful. There are automation considerations as well.

And so, we're mindful of how to plan that because there are steps that have to happen to, for the changes that need to happen in council. So, we're in conversations with, with Julia and her team to, to make those, those elements happen as well.

And you alluded to it—also looking at where there are potential areas of overlap or opportunities to leverage what's also happening in the, in the Medi-Cal space, which has a slightly longer runway to, to rolling out but wanted to in the, to add to the challenges. The guidance isn't exactly the same across those two programs.

And so, looking at where the overlap in the Medi Cal, Medicaid, guidance is with SNAP and the opportunities we have to leverage the work that's happening in the Medicaid space as well. Ryan, if you want to add.

Yeah, I think that's all right. One of the other things I would add is we're trying to see where we can take advantage of information that we already know about people to sort of automatically qualify them either for an exemption or to be able to prove that they have work requirements, so—or that they've, yeah, are meeting work requirements.

So, for example, some of the work that we're doing around one of our income verification partners as part of the payment error rate work also collects hours worked, which is one of the fields that can help someone determine whether or not they've met work requirements for ABODs in particular.

So, we're looking for those sorts of opportunities where we either know that about them through something we're doing as part of per or through other verification batches that we have to do as part of their initial application to try to pull that information in and, and reduce the client burden.

I know we'll hear from a county representative very shortly. Yeah. Having good ways of tracking, you know, people's eligibility I think is really important.

But just how we can working at the county level with our CBOs, build out the infrastructure for people to meet those eligibility requirements I think is going to be a really critical piece of it. I'm also thinking about what role Cal Volunteers can play in this conversation.

As you know, we're working to make sure people remain eligible due to the new work requirements. I just want to put that out there as a consideration for the Administration and I know we'll talk about this shortly. Undocumented Californians. So, 73—73,900—noncitizens may be impacted.

And so, I think one question that I think we have to answer collectively as a Legislature and the Administration is people that are losing their federally funded assistance is to take a step in and continue to provide some level of assistance. And that's really a budget.

That's a budget question because we're talking about $133 million a year. Has the Administration been thinking about that? Is there anything you can share at this time? I know that we're developing the January budget, so I'm curious as what the conversations are at the Administration level about this.

Nothing. The budget is in development and really nothing I'm able to share at this point. But we definitely are looking at how to mitigate those impacts.

And then, on the cost sharing piece, 450 million roughly on state costs and 200 million for the counties, and let's just focus on the state costs because the county, you know, we have to focus on the state cost first before we even talk about how we're going to help the counties meet that cost share as well.

Same question as the, you know, what—is there anything you can share at this time in terms of what the Governor and the Administration is considering around picking up some of that, that state cost that was normally covered by the Federal Government. Because the alternative is that we're just not going to be able to serve people. Right?

So, I'm just curious as to what are the conversations at this time with regard to how we are going to look at picking up some of those costs to ensure that we can maintain some, some ongoing level of eligibility for health.

And at this point, similar answer is definitely part of what we're looking at as we as we think about planning both for next year and an ongoing basis, but nothing I can share at this point.

Well, that—I'll just say, as a Member of the Legislature, Chair of this Committee, that's definitely something that we're going to appreciate that want to work in partnership with the Administration to discuss and find a way to minimize the harm as much as possible. I know that that's a goal that CDSS shares.

I think that's a goal that we share and it's going to mean that we have to really prioritize this as part of our budget for this next year. So, it's, you know, we're talking, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars that we are losing.

And that is, that's going to have a significant impact on the state's budget, but it's going to have an even more significant impact on those Californians that are going to lose coverage. So, on the error rate, you know, that's obviously one way for us to also mitigate the economic impact of, of this new Bill.

So, on the sort of, this root cause analysis, I really appreciate all the work that the Administration is doing and really trying to dive deeply into the data to really identify how can we address those errors and reduce the error rate and make sure that, you know, benefits are going to the people that are qualified for those benefits.

So, are we looking at all the cases as part of that root cause analysis and then sort of identifying where the gaps are and then working on the county level to kind of address some of those disparities?

That's right. So, we're starting by looking historically at every year, as I mentioned, we pull about 1,020 cases as part of the QC review. And so, we get a lot of detailed information about what was the cause of error associated with those.

So, we're trying to do an analysis of historically, where have we seen those errors, what are the nature of them, the causes, client caused, agency cause, what can we learn from that that can help us inform where we should focus our attention?

Okay, well that, I think that's a very important and useful exercise to, you know, so we can dive deep into the data and work with the counties to fix those errors.

And so, I appreciate the work that that Administration is doing and obviously the investment that we made in the state budget to help support that work, which I think is absolutely critical.

Question for the Administration as well. So, obviously, CalFresh is like the biggest anti-hunger program in the state, but it's kind of the foundation of all of our other anti-hunger work in the state. And so, I'm wondering if the Administration sees whether there are any other policies within HR 1 that will affect other state nutrition programs that aren't explicitly mentioned.

Wondering if there's been any sort of.

Yeah, we're definitely analyzing that and assessing that. And part of this is HR 1, the Bill didn't have a huge amount of specifics. And so, as policy guidance is coming out, we're digging into that guidance to really get a better sense of what those, those additional implications of the guidance might be.

Has there been any sort of consideration of whether there are specific subpopulations that you think may be most impacted by various—we talked about undocumented individual noncitizens—are there other potential subpopulations that, that you've been able to identify that may be impacted?

I think we're thinking about it definitely in terms of work requirements as one example, and where there might be certain populations that, that we might, we want to look at in that larger context of work requirements is one example. We're beginning to do that.

Yeah. I mean that then there may be some focused outreach and work we want to do to help those particular sub populations to make sure they're aware what the new requirements are and that they can obtain eligibility if they're eligible. Trying to see. I think that summarizes all my questions.

I really appreciate the thoughtful work that the administration's doing. You know, this Bill was signed into law in July. You know, we've been waiting for guidance from the Federal Government. We're trying to understand the implications of this.

And I think this is a really good table setting conversation as we sort of begin the work of developing next year's budget and think about how we can address and mitigate some of these impacts, so I really appreciate you all for being here today. Thank you. Okay.

And we're now going to transition to our last panel to talk specifically about the impacts of HR 1 on CalFresh beneficiaries.

And we're very pleased to have Marla Stewart, the Human Services Director from Contra Costa County, one of the counties I'm proud to represent in the State Senate, as well as Keely O'Brien from the Western Center on Law Poverty, and Andrew Schein, the Managing Director of Public Policy at Grace and Poverty California, also a constituent as well.

So thank you for joining us, Ms. Stewart. You heard some of my questions sort of around county implementation. So, really appreciate you being here and really look forward to your testimony.

Thank you for the invitation to be here. I am going to talk a little bit about the impacts of HR 1 in our county and then I will talk about implementation activities that we are engaged in. So, I am Marla Stewart. I'm the Director of the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department.

We administer the full range of social services, including CalFresh. And I do want to thank you for the opportunity to testify. I also want to thank our Contra Costa CalFresh recipients, Mr. Navarro and Ms. Ward, for their very impactful testimony earlier. In Contra Costa County, we currently have 65,142 CalFresh households with 108,510 individuals.

55% are children and seniors. Our monthly issuance averages $323 per month per household and is a total of $21 million per month, which both sustains the health of our recipients and our food economy. In September alone, CalFresh purchases were made at 705 county retailers and supported the employment of 3,300 grocer employees.

We are deeply concerned about the eligibility changes, the new work requirements, and unsustainable cost shifts which we anticipate will result in approximately 20,400 individuals in our county losing these critical food resources, about 20% of our current caseload. And we believe that it will reduce critical revenue for our local grocery stores in the equivalent of 780 grocer employees.

Our first concern is the Federal Administration's choice to no longer provide SNAP for some of our most vulnerable legal immigrants who arrive in our country with almost nothing. Refugees, asylees, Afghan evacuees, those with temporary protection, humanitarian parole, and survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. This was effective upon enactment.

In Contra Costa County, we estimate this will cause 1,200 of our residents to lose their CalFresh. We are messaging this devastating news through our Community Wide Alliance to End Abuse, our Family Justice Centers, and our Immigrant Legal Services Providers, and we urge California to add these residents to eligibility for the California Food Assistance Program, CFAP.

Our second concern is the Federal Administration's choice to end the California ABOD waiver and eliminate several work exemptions. As you've heard today, SNAP requires that all able-bodied adults ages 18 to 54 without dependents either work, go to school, participate in work training, or volunteer for 20 hours per week.

If they do not, they can only receive snap for three months every 36 months. This is the ABOD requirement. California, as you also heard, already, has had a long ABOD waiver and this HR 1 eliminates the waiver except for counties with high employment rates, which we currently understand is only about three counties in California.

In Contra Costa County, we have 64,000 CalFresh cases that are considered ABOD. Just parenthetically, child only cases such as foster care cases are not considered ABOD. Of our 64,000 ABOD cases, 46,000 already have a work exemption, 72% of our ABOD cases.

These exemptions include individuals on SSI, parents with children, and anyone ages 55 to 64, among other categories.

HR 1 eliminates the work exemption for those ages 55 to 64, for parents with children ages 15 to 18, for former foster youth ages 18 to 24, at the very moment when they're trying to establish themselves as adults, for homeless individuals, and for veterans.

In Contra Costa, we estimate this is 11,000 of our current 46,000 cases with ABOD exemptions. 24% of our current exempted cases will now be required to meet the work requirement.

In total, with the changes in immigrant eligibility, the elimination of the ABOD waiver, and the reduction of those with a work exemption, we estimate that as many as 12,200 Contra Costa households could lose their food security—19% of our current CalFresh households, with total benefit loss of $3.9 million per month or the equivalent of 780 grocer employees.

Our third concern is financial. Robust screening of individuals for the limited work exemptions remaining under HR 1 is one of our greatest tools to prevent a major drop off, but this work is resource intensive.

To implement the ABOD requirement and subsequent monitoring of the three month ABOD clock, we have planned a full day training for each of our approximately 600 eligibility workers that provide CalFresh, our Medi-Cal CalFresh dual program workers, our CalWORKS workers, our IHSS workers, and our foster care and adoptions workers.

Our daily fully loaded eligibility worker cost is $1,500, resulting in a total training cost in Contra Costa County alone of 916,000, basically $1.0 million just to train to these changes.

We look forward to partnering—and we always enjoy partnering—with the Department of Social Services to learn how counties can access the 20 million in provisional funding enacted under the 2025 Budget Act for the purpose of ABOD policy implementation. Additionally, we estimate that the ABOD and exemption screening requires about 40 minutes per application renewal and income verification.

So, for our 64,000 active ABOD cases, the annual renewal and income verification is approximately 85,300 hours for a total annual cost of 27.6 million in Contra Costa County alone. This compares to our current annual allocation inclusive of our federal, state and local CalFresh funds, which is 67.5 million.

Reinstating ABOD and the work exemption screening results in a 40% cost increase. Reinstating ABOD and exemptions will require significant and sustained investment by the state to stand up the necessary staffing and operations.

Finally, as you heard, the federal share of SNAP administration will be reduced from 50% to 25% leaving the remaining 75% to be split between the state and counties. This means that counties will need to increase our share of cost from the existing 15% to 22.5%. This will increase our Contra Costa share from 10.1 million to 13.9 million.

Now, I know that this 4.8 million may not seem like a lot, but it is 16% of our total 29.2 county General Fund contribution across all of our social services programs.

We will be working with our Administration—I mean with our Association, CWDA—to advocate for a match waiver similar to the policy the Legislature enacted during COVID and the Great Recession that would help address the severity of these cost shifts to counties.

So, in closing, we, the Department, are working with our Board of Supervisors and Food Collaborative on plans to mitigate the CalFresh program drop off in the face of HR 1. And I think I have five activities to name here that we're engaged in. Number one is the training that I already told you about.

Number two is we have and we are expanding a very robust quality assurance infrastructure to manage and reduce the number of errors that our staff—that that happen in our county.

Number three is we are expanding our employment and training infrastructure to ensure—and to ensure enough work opportunities for everybody who will need now to meet a work requirement. In Contra Costa County, we already administer WIOA, the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act, and we have many training programs in place already.

We also run through EOA, the CalWORKS Subsidized Employment Program. So, we're expanding our employment activities. We currently also run 10—we administer 10 job sites in Contra Costa County in partnership with CBOs.

The next thing that we're involved in is we are heavily involved with CDSS and CALSAWS in work groups and we appreciate their leadership in pulling together these work groups to hear county input. And number five, we are really interested in automation through CALSAWS that can help us with this workload.

You may know that CALSAWS has been pilot testing in Fresno, over the last two years, an automated call summary. So, when our workers are on the call and they finish the call, they're required to put a summary in CALSAWS. What we've been pilot testing is an AI generated summary that the worker reads and signs off on.

So, it is their summary, and it's reduced the time it takes to do that call summary for something like 95%.

So although we are actively involved in preparing for the HR1 impacts, I want to end by commenting that over the past several weeks we have collectively in our county been distracted by the unnecessary threats to November SNAP during the government shutdown. Our board, our Food collaborative and our Department came together to in two strategies.

The first one was we purchased 10,000 food boxes from our food bank and distributed them from our lobbies, the food banks. The food boxes served a family of four for two weeks. Second, as already mentioned, our board authorized $21 million to issue in county debit cards to our CalFresh recipients if they did not receive their November benefits.

We are extremely grateful to CDSS and to California for getting our full distribution of benefits to all of our community members and we did not need to issue those county debit cards. We do abhor the unnecessary stress to our poorest community Members.

Thank you for your commitment to CalFresh, which is a literal lifeline for many of our CalFresh households, California households.

Thank you so very much. We'll now turn it over to Ms. O'Brien.

Thank you so much Mr. Chair. And thank you Committee staff for convening this important hearing. And thank you as well to my fellow panelists today. Hi, I'm Keeley O'Brien, a Policy Advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

As a result of HR1, hundreds of thousands of Californians will have their benefits reduced or will lose eligibility for CalFresh. Many will go hungry. We know this because most people on CalFresh are already hungry.

In a recent survey of over 600 CalFresh recipients, Western center found that almost 50% was were unable to meet their nutritional needs, 66% ate smaller meals or skipped meals because they didn't have Money for food, 75% ate less in order to save food for later and 75% have recently had to choose between buying food and buying other essentials.

And of these respondents, 63% were living in a home with children and 17% were elderly. The HR1 cuts to CalFresh will exacerbate this existing hunger crisis. While CalFresh recipients are at ground zero of this disaster, all of us across the state will be impacted. Local economies will struggle, as Marla very clearly indicated.

Food banks will be overwhelmed and other programs will be jeopardized. Every dollar in SNAP benefits generates as much as $1.80 in local economies, and many retailers, especially in rural areas, depend on SNAP purchases to make ends meet.

Local economies, rural retailers and small businesses will struggle and these cuts will endanger good jobs and make prices go up for everyone. Food prices have already gone up 30% in the last five years and many families are already going into debt to buy food.

25 nearly a quarter of consumers are now using buy now pay later loans just to pay for groceries and that's up from 14% last year. Every meal that the food banks provide, as they indicated, SNAP provides nine.

So despite all the incredible work that they're doing, our food banks have no way to keep up with the increased demand that is going to result from the cuts of HR1. In addition, HR1 imposes a significant cost shift, as the Department explained to states and counties.

State and county governments will be forced to find a way to contribute billions of dollars more for the program in future years, and we all know that means that other programs and services will be at of cuts unless we adopt progressive revenue solutions.

Some cuts harm everyone on CalFresh as mentioned, including restrictions to the Thrifty Food Plan that will cause the value of CalFresh benefits for everyone to decrease over time.

Millions of Californians will lose access to Nutrition Education in June 2026 as a result of the elimination of the CalFresh Healthy Living Program, and many people using the Standard Utility Allowance or the SUA are already being impacted and 18,000 people are losing eligibility and 440,000 people will have their benefits reduced.

In addition, there are very specifically targeted cuts. Several populations will be entirely excluded or cut off under racist policies that trace back to the failed 1996 Welfare Act and have now been made even crueler. 74,000 humanitarian immigrants in California, including asylees, refugees, parolees, battered non citizens and trafficking survivors will lose eligibility for food benefits.

These changes create a need for immediate short term relief and the expansion of CFAP as soon as possible to include humanitarian immigrants. We also need to maintain our existing commitment to expand CFAP in 2027 and work to eliminate all exclusions so everyone, regardless of status or age, has access to the food they need to live.

HR1 also made significant changes to the time limit work reporting requirements. Adults age 54 to 64 and those with dependent CH children 14 or older are now going to be subject to these requirements and exemptions have been eliminated for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people aging out of foster care.

As DSS indicated, area waivers were also drastically limited, so the rules will apply to 55 of 58 counties when the statewide waiver ends. This means that some 610,000 adults in California will be subject to time limits and without intervention, some 80% or 500,000 people will be at risk of losing their CalFresh benefits.

After using their three countable months, HR1 drastically expands the population subject to work requirements even though we know they're counterproductive and are shown to have negative impacts on employment. And unfortunately, people subject to these requirements already face significant barriers to employment.

A 2015 study found that over 50% lacked a current resume, 35% had a felony conviction, 40% lacked reliable transportation, 40% lacked even a driver's license and 70% had a physical limitation and 30% had a mental limitation. So people are really struggling. And this time limit ignores the realities of people's lives.

Unstable schedules, caregiving responsibilities and barriers to steady work. As a result, real people across California will be cut off from food assistance. A mom homeschooling her 14 year old kids, a 63 year old grandma who retired to care for her grandkids.

A 19 year old who just aged out of foster care and can only get scheduled for 10 hours a week at his part time job. A veteran recently evicted, living in her car and searching for steady work.

Given the risk that 500,000 people across the state may soon lose access to their food benefits, there is an urgent need to maximize opportunities to screen and exempt people from time limits, provide robust and coordinated work and training opportunities to help people comply and invest in food benefits for the people we know will inevitably be cut off.

We're very grateful to staff and leadership at CDSS for working tirelessly to get benefits out during the shutdown and we look forward to continuing to work together on solutions to the problems created by HR1.

As the Federal Government continues to mount attacks on our most vital hunger fighting tool, we have no choice but to step up with progressive revenue solutions and significant investments to protect to prevent hunger and protect the health, dignity and stability of millions of Californians. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you Chair, Members. I appreciate this chance to testify and thank you sir. As you mentioned the original hearing, but you also authored Senate Joint Resolution 3 and just appreciate that you've been at the helm of this issue the entire time. So do really appreciate it.

And just a little bit of context setting that as we're going into all of this. The California approach to fighting food insecurity has been working. We actually reversed long standing trends the last time that the USDA may ever produce the Food Insecurity report which is another shame.

California had lower than the national average and I've worked for so long in this space and we were always higher and so it was just so wonderful to see that including for child food insecurity and through the collective efforts, CalFresh participation rose to 81%. When I started doing this work, it was 49.

I mean, so when we talk about 5.5 million people, that is the work of that collective effort to maximize this program. And yet it's under unprecedented assault, as you've already heard. Just a little bit of extra information on the shutdown. You know, it was just unconscionable that the USDA pulled down the plan that they issued on.

At the beginning of the shutdown. Their own plan said to use the contingency fund. Then they said, oh, this is Project 2025, like fever dream, we're going to issue this two page memo that says that we couldn't possibly use it. And I actually learned a fancy word.

I learned what pretextual means, which is apparently a fancy way that judges say BS because they called the this is the judge, not me.

They called the administration's claims entirely pretextual because the President and the Administration were out there saying that there were obvious political motivations for this revision to their plan, that they couldn't use a contingency Fund, they couldn't transfer in funds as they thankfully did for wic. Right. And yet that these claims before the court were pretextual.

And so we really appreciate what the state has done, not only with illegal action led by Attorney General Bonta, but California was the first state to move benefits and acted under the judge's lawful order and the USDA's initial guidance to issue full benefits and just really appreciate what they did.

Because those six days, as you pointed out, were the first six days in 60 years that people went without their food benefits. And I just want to point out that while the funding package that Congress signed or President has now signed does fund SNAP through September 30, the contingency fund was only replenished at that $6 billion level.

And so that's not enough for a full month of benefits, at least at the current caseload. And so we just need to be on guard that we could be going through this again. And the actions of the Administration have made clear that it's entirely possible, as you already spoke to.

And so I just want to add to the steps that the state can take. We are urging the state as we did during this shutdown, but now we have the time to put in the infrastructure for a state benefit, so that is at least possible.

Obviously it's still then a budget priority conversation, but we should be building the infrastructure now while we have the breathing room of this federal fiscal year so that we are at least prepared to insulate Californians from that and then we can have different conversations around. Okay, so you know, grocery cards, all these other solutions. Right.

Well, what if we can just put a supplement on the SNAP card, right. And have a more direct solution? Kids, older adults, as we saw from Kristen Karen, they don't get those days back that they go hungry. So let's be in a position to act if necessary. All right.

Turning to HR1 again, I just want to thank the Legislature for the leadership and the additional resources as well as the administration's initial proposal.

It really boosted our spirits, just to speak personally, that the Legislature and Administration came together and said we are going to start to act right out the gate in the August, September budget by acting against these cuts to CalFresh. But we do encourage continued oversight. We need to, you know, as the January budget. Right. As things progress.

It's only been a few weeks, right. Since the, since the July, since the measure was signed, since that budget was done. We've all been through this shutdown which has diverted us as Marlon spoke to.

But we do want to see the authority used to expend the funds on the ABOD time limit and on the per as was spoken to. And we have to dig deep because the Federal Government, even during the shutdown. Right.

Continued to issue guidance as CDSS spoke to, with impossible timelines, unlawful actions to pull our waiver and an effective date that provides no wiggle room on quality control. Right. Going back the 120 days starting at July 4th. Right. Oh, but now you need to implement during the shutdown, you know, on November 1st.

This shows, I think pretty clearly that the Federal Government is not a serious partner in improving accuracy and that the provisions of HR1 are in fact to punish states. So on the payment error rate, we have to improve accuracy without limiting access or benefits.

And I want to thank the Legislature for the language in SB146 which clearly articulates that. And again, we've heard that same value expressed by dss. But that is going to be a work in progress. Right. As we're going through all of these measures to improve accuracy. We applaud the enhanced root cause analysis.

But just to tease that out, you know, we're so glad that that includes talking to eligibility workers, talking to CalFresh participants. But it's going to take time. And so we are going to need to come back and revisit how are these things going, what does the data show?

And just to be prepared for multiple years of investment on this because this is not something that we can just do right now. And while we don't have all the data, there are actually things that we know that we can do now because we know people are struggling to report.

And there are access barriers that we can improve upon. We can improve call center access and we can shorten those times. We can improve document upload and scanning. We can utilize the data we have, as was spoken to the top agency error is known data such as rsdi.

So let's improve those systems so that we're streamlining and improving access, both for workers, as I've spoken to these time burdens, and for recipients. And we can simplify the program, things like having one income reporting threshold for CalWORKS instead of having two.

And applaud the department's report in the CalWORKS space, which highlights that on the time limit it is really sobering. As someone who was a partner with the six Bay Area counties, we spent a year getting ready for six counties and now we have 55 counties in just a matter of months.

And so again, the feds are putting us in an impossible position. But we have to rise to the task because otherwise the Department has identified potentially 500,000 people in total. Right. The 300,000 are newly subject, but almost double that. That's out of the 5.5 million caseload.

We could be losing 1 in 11 of the entire CalFresh caseload because of the time limit. So we have to figure out ways to work across the flow, starting with screening, including the General work requirement, which is much more generous on the earnings that you can be exempt.

And then the time limit, specific exemptions, the ones that remain, the connections to employment and training. And I really applaud the discussion around aligning with Medi Cal Wioa. Right. What are the ways in which we can serve families through these programs? But there's more alignment that needs to happen.

And then we would encourage the Legislature to backfill and there's been proposals, Most recently by Ms. Wicks that would provide additional months so that people don't go hungry through the ABOD CARET program. We submitted a memo to DSS with a comprehensive list of recommendations on the helm, and we'll make sure that you get that as well.

And finally, on the humanitarian immigrants, I just wanted to point out that those folks are lawfully present. So that's a separate population than those who are undocumented. Okay. So in conclusion, in addition to those specific areas around HR1, I just want to applaud your comments. Chair about we need to prioritize the foundation of the program. Right.

If we are losing folks on the time limit, if we're losing folks, the humanitarian immigrants, you know, issues like farmers markets, which are so vital. Right. There's not customers because those incentives ride on core CalFresh. So we have to maintain that focus on the foundation.

While of course we need to sustain incentive and other really important parts of the program. And again, that has to include that state benefit infrastructure so that we have options during a shutdown. And then lastly to fully fund the program Administration. I really appreciate your comments about that. That's not overhead. Right.

We're talking about things like making sure that college students, higher education. Right. That there's good access for those really tough populations that have their own barriers under federal law. The restaurant meals program outreach. Right.

And so really excited to work with you and make sure that everyone understands what's at stake on that administrative cost shift and why we need to fully fund that. And I'll just end by echoing what Keely said that we are going to be putting before the Legislature and the Administration.

You know, the choice is going to be clear. You know, Chris and Karen are going to skip Thanksgiving if cuts are allowed to happen. Or we can adopt progressive revenues to grab just some of the resources that the wealthiest corporations got from the same bill. Right.

Food assistance and health care were taken away from low income people to fund the wealthiest corporations to have even more resources. So that choice is very clear for California.

Thank you. Thank you so very much. Just a few questions to Director Stewart. How is your county informing current beneficiaries about the new policy changes?

Thank you for that question. There we go. Thank you for that question. We're still working on how we will inform our current beneficiaries. We do have, you know, many communication channels and we really work to not overwhelm our beneficiaries with all different kinds of communication. So we're still working on that.

And could you maybe share what are some of the concerns that you're hearing already? I mean, aside from the shutdown? I mean, you know, HR1's been in the news, the big ugly bill, as it's been called. And people know that these changes are coming, the cuts are coming.

What have you been hearing from beneficiaries, your staff been hearing?

Just an enormous amount of anxiety in our county when our Board of Supervisors approved 21 million to provide debit cards. There was just a huge, you know, sense of relief in our community. But it was very confusing because the situation at the federal level kept Changing.

And so we were on board to start issuing those cards this past Monday, the day before Veterans Day. And thankfully we did not have to. But not having to happened over the weekend.

So we were doing a lot of media over the weekend and on Monday morning letting people know that they didn't need to come in, they had benefits. Check your card, you have your benefits. But we heard stories. We had many people come in anyways.

We had about three times our normal lobby traffic, even not providing any debit cards. We had one story of an elderly woman who came from an older adult apartment complex, rode her bike to our office quite a ways because she had heard that she could get a card. So communication with our community members is vital.

It's important and it is deeply hampered by the rhetoric at the federal level. It is hard for community members to understand what's happening and food is so vital for them that there's just so much anxiety around it that comprehending, comprehending the communication is difficult.

Thank you very much. Either Keeley or Andrew, could you maybe talk about what the potential ripple effect of this bill could be on other nutrition programs that the state provides? Because as you know, as we talked about, this is foundational to a whole host of programs and just sort of thinking about what the ripple effect could be.

Yeah, I appreciate the question because as I indicated. Right. This is certainly going to undermine several of the programs that piggyback on CalFresh. And we have to be clear eyed about that. I think have like multiple strategies to get back.

So you know, for example, the fruit and veggie work that we're doing in retailers and the farmers market market match type programs that are at the, as you mentioned, those rely on the underlying program. And so if we have declines in access, there are real equity concerns about who's left. Like you mentioned, certain populations. Right.

And as Keeley already spoke to, there are several populations with some of the deepest barriers who are the most at risk from the time limit to be cut off. Right. We've seen the racist attacks on humanitarian immigrants. Right. So that's why the state backfill, as you mentioned, is expensive.

But if we don't do that, then we have other programs that will have, you know, be building on, you know, the inequitable structure of CalFresh. So that forces us to think about, you know, the CFAT program. But we also know, for example, that the undermining of eligibility for SNAP and Medicaid or CalFresh and Medi Cal. Right.

That is going to have downstream effects on direct certification rates for schools. And school meals for all. It's going to have downstream effects on Sunbox because they use Streamline certified, but it's a similar concept. And so we've been pressing obviously for an online application for the Sunbox program.

Things like that are going to be even more important because now we have more paperwork coming at families ways. Right. And so for all the barriers and fears that Marlon spoke to so well, we're now putting more paperwork in front of families just to access the benefits that they're already entitled to.

I think that was perfect. I would just add that I think the. Just to make it really clear what trade off was made with HR1, you know, all of these programs are going to suffer. All of these people are going to suffer.

And it was really, you know, the Federal Government essentially gave massive tax giveaways to the wealthiest people and corporations in this country. I mean, when you think about the average millionaire in the US getting an $80,000 tax break from HR1, that would Fund food benefits for 20 families for a year.

So when you think about one person benefiting by $80,000 and 20 families getting cut off from food assistance, as that's the trade off, like that's the opportunity cost, that's the policy choice that's being made. So just to put that in context, thank you for that question.

I personally think that the ripple effect is homelessness. I think that CalFresh, CalWORKS and Medi Cal are our primary homeless prevention programs. And a break in any one of them is going to cause a huge increase in homelessness.

It is not an exaggeration to say that our families that receive CalFresh who live at 100% of the federal poverty level, which is $26,000 a year for a family of three, a mother and two children, every day they're making choices about where to put their money.

And if they don't have CalFresh, they're going to have to choose not to put their money into rent.

Forgive me, a very quick add for the record. Thank you for bringing that up. The cut to the Thrifty Food plan, the TFAP program and the Sun Bucks program also use the Thrifty. And so there will be commensurate declines in those benefit levels in the future as well. Sorry.

Thank you. Thank you to our panelists for coming today and all the critical work you. Do for our state. And so with that, we're going to complete this panel and I want to thank everyone who joined us today. We want to now open it up for public comment.

So if there's anyone who would like to provide any public comment if you can, please line up here. State your name and organization and please thank you.

Good afternoon Chair. Anieli Martin, with the California Immigrant Policy Center. As mentioned by the panelists, HR1 would have reduced CalFresh benefits and expand exclusions based on immigration status impacting 74,000 humanitarian immigrants who are lawfully present and have long been eligible for CalFresh benefits.

Losing access to food benefits for this population not only means increased food insecurity, but severs and undermines public trust, cuts off vital support and abandons them while under attack by our Federal Government.

In order to support this newly excluded population and support our immigrant communities who have been historically excluded from food benefits, California must hold the line for protecting our investments in CFAP for its planned expansion in 2027.

In addition, by eliminating the age based exclusions currently in the expansion, we would also ensure that all the newly excluded 74,000 humanitarian immigrants will have access to food and reduce the long term harms of HR1.

We can end harmful exclusions from our state's food safety net and ensure that everyone, no matter their status, has access to the food they need to live and thrive. Thank you.

Chair and Members. Kathy Mossberg with Nourish California, a member of the Food for All Coalition and want to associate myself and our organization with the remarks just made by CIPC and my colleague.

Want to just emphasize again, we've had folks who had access to SNAP who were kicked off the program because of a change in definition of their immigration status. These are lawfully present immigrants. The other thing just to also play off of is what we will lose is the momentum we've made on Food for All.

We are supposed to start in 2027 with the first cohort of those 55 and over. If we are not able to find a way to deal with the Federal Government and the way we pay them and the way we shift and deal with admin, it's going to be a problem for that as well.

So we want to just continue that momentum and go back and pick up Those folks, those 74,000 folks who've been cut off. Thank you for your time.

Justin Garrett, the California State Association of Counties representing all 58 counties. First, thank you for holding this hearing today, bringing attention to this VIT program at this really critical time.

I want to acknowledge the work of the Legislature in leading efforts to fund what we're facing with implementation and getting ready for everything and then also thank the Administration for their tremendous leadership during the shutdown and ensuring that the maximum amount of benefits will send out as quickly as possible given the critical time for counties.

You know, we had several panelists that. Spoke to the work that counties are doing, the significant issues and cost pressures that counties are facing as we work to ensure that individuals are and families can keep their benefits, can keep the nutrition assistance. And so we just want to continue that partnership. Thank you for highlighting today.

You know, there will be several policies that will be critical in making that happen, such as the match waiver so that counties can do the increased workload as quickly as possible and make sure that individuals can stay enrolled and receive their benefits. And so we just look forward to continuing conversations and partnerships on all that. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon, My name is Alma Wilcox. I'm speaking on behalf of Alchemist Community Development Corporation and the California Alliance of Farmers Markets. We are gravely concerned that HR1 will lead to many Californians receiving reduced CalFresh benefits, increasing hunger at a time of rising grocery costs.

The California Nutrition Incentive Program, also known as CNIP in General and Market Match in particular, are now even more essential as they expand grocery budgets at certified farmers markets and farm stands. These programs incentivize CalFresh recipients to spend their benefits on fruits and vegetables directly with local farmers.

We need to bolster these programs in order to help hungry families access fresh nutritious foods directly from small California farms. With current cnip levels, only 40% of farmers market statewide are able to offer market match.

And in the next budget cycle, it is our hope to see CNIP provided with increased stable routine funding so that it may equitably feed more Californians and provide an enhanced safety net for to family farms. This is a chance for California to demonstrate leadership in both food security and agriculture. Thank you so much for your time.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Arreguin. My name is Izar Paimantuan with Alameda County Community Food Bank. I would like to supplement the testimony from Josh Wright from California Association of Food Banks. Our preliminary estimates are that in the two largest congressional districts in Alameda County.

That's congressional district 12 and 14, up to 19,000 individuals could potentially lose their CalFresh benefits due to expanded time limits due to HR1. I'd like to make an additional comment on behalf of the Food for All Coalition. We strongly urge the Legislature to protect. And maintain the planned expansion of CFAP.

Benefits to older immigrants ages 55 and older currently scheduled for 2027, and to. Ultimately expand eligibility to CFAP for all. Eligible Californians who are currently not eligible for CalFresh due to their immigration status. Especially Those who are impacted by HR1. Thank you so much for your time.

Good afternoon Chair Arreguin. My name is Danielle Bautista with the United Ways of California here to express our sincere gratitude to California's Legislature and Governor for the 80 million in investments to food access this year and for standing up for our most vulnerable California communities who are most impacted by the recent Federal Government shutdown.

For the first time since the Covid 19 pandemic, requests for food assistance recently surpassed requests for housing assistance as a top need among many individuals calling into 21 ones across the state. And it's important to Note, however, that 21 ones can only refer community Members to resources that are available.

That's why we urge the Committee and Legislature to continue supporting Californians access to food to CalFresh and food assistance. Thank you so much for your advocacy, leadership, partnership and support for most vulnerable communities. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Cathy Sunderling-McDonald, of Catbird Strategies. I'm here today for two clients. First, I'm here for Truv Inc. Truv is an IT solutions firm working in California and in several other states to support the implementation of HR1.

We offer flexible, client driven and worker friendly ways to verify income and employment including self employment and gig work. We are exploring other potential uses of our technology with various partners.

Given the breadth of changes contained in HR1, we're excited to partner with CDSS, counties, the Legislature and the state's many stakeholders to help address the challenges facing safety net programs at this moment and in the future. Second, I am here for the California Pan Ethnic Health Network for CPEN.

We are greatly concerned about the potential for outsize impact impacts on households in underserved communities, immigrant communities and those with a need for language support and translation. We know time is tight, but urge the state to work with advocate partners to meet these challenges.

We stand ready to help reduce the impacts of the harmful changes in HR1 to the greatest extent possible. And thank you for your leadership and support in these efforts. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for your time. My name is Kamaljeet Khera. I'm the CalFresh Healthy Living Director at the University of California. The SNAP education program known as CalFresh Healthy Living here has been a vital and important program supporting SNAP eligible Californians for over 30 years. This program helps our Californians reach their nutrition and health goals.

The CalFresh Healthy Living Program is evidence based nutrition education that partners with state local organizations to teach healthy living and active living. It provides nutrition classes, cooking demonstrations, gardening programs to our children and we help people stretch their food dollars which we've heard earlier today is a real concern.

The price of groceries and so much of our work supports what's been talked about today. This work promotes chronic disease prevention and with the cuts to Medi Cal and calfresh, what we've heard today is that our folks will be less healthy. So programs like CalFresh Healthy Living keep folks healthy before they get sick.

It's really an investment in chronic disease prevention and supports all of our healthy goals in California in support of Governor Newsom and First Partners goals. So I urge you to consider support for the CalFresh Healthy Living program. Thank you.

My name is Adro. Good day Chair and I'm with United Way California Capital Region. We provide a host of direct services including housing navigation using California advancing and innovating Medi California using the suite to support with housing deposits and housing navigation work.

The vast majority of our clients receive CalFresh those with children, CalWORKS and we definitely have shifted our focus within the past couple of weeks with everything with the Federal Government shutdown, with making sure that our clients have access to food, coming up with our holiday drives.

We've been now focusing on trying to get folks food and so definitely encourage the support and building network with community based organizations that are on the ground providing direct resources resources in addition of just trying to find ways to work with counties to Fund things like CalWORKS CalFresh in addition to Medi Cal Resources discontinuing those investments.

And I appreciate your commitment in just hosting this hearing today. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair, Members. My name is Oscar Sandoval. I'm the Policy Manager for the Center for Healthy Communities. I advocate for students at the University level in our community colleges at the UC and the CSU to get increased access to SNAP.

So often what we see is access to SNAP is the difference between graduation and them cutting off their own education.

A lot of our policies that were written in the 70s and 80s were written for college students who were 18 years old just coming out of high school, maybe living at home or living with their families or paying for school when it was much cheaper to do so.

Now with the increased cost of college, a lot of our college students are. Actually a little older. They're on average about 22 to 23. A lot of them have kids themselves or even veterans. Their worldview or their life experience coming into school is much different. So we need to affect policy change that reflects that new reality.

We look forward to setting the tone and working with you all to make sure that more college students in our state have access to SNAP. And thank you for having this meeting and we look forward to making more positive change. Thank you.

Hi. Luann Nguyen, Deputy Director at the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organization and also, also resident of Elsa Bronte. I just want to pull back a little bit and put some perspective on this in terms of the dynamic of the political and historical situation that we are in in terms of our public benefits program.

This is the attacks to SNAP, the attacks to Medicaid are some of the biggest attacks that we have seen in the context of public benefits history. And these things didn't happen by accident. They are intentional.

All part of Project 2025 and an agenda that is attempting to destroy and rip the safety net and is in part doing it through sowing chaos. And so a lot of the messiness and of the situation that left most of us disgusted, I think it's part of frankly, the strategy. Right.

And so we have to recognize the dynamic of the situation that we are in with the Federal Government and the Administration at this point. HR1 broadly, also in the space of this cultural war was the biggest redistribution of wealth. We, you know, I grew up poor and rely on government assistance.

So there is a way that to me, government matters so much and what we can do for people just matters so much. And that is being ripped apart.

And one of the ways that it's being ripped apart is that the money that poor people need are being taken from them and given to rich people that already have lots of money. And we all know that that's wrong. We tried to fight it. The vote on this was very close.

The Republicans in the State of California that are in our congression has not helped with the dynamic of the situation. And frankly, they need to be held accountable for that as well. But we can't just say that this revenue distribution redistribution is wrong. We need to do something about it.

We need to be able to take some of what was given to rich people and taken back in terms of what we can do as a state, even if we can't do that at a federal level at this point in time or that we should try to push.

And so revenue continues to be so important in terms of solving some of the biggest problem. We are. Third, we are so worried about the work requirements. Like we're along a long roll into the Personal Responsibility act. And the data from the General Accounting Office shows that these work requirements aren't working.

And yet they continue to be pushed even with our housing program today. Like, you know, the New York Times has come out saying that they're pushing work requirement. So we have to really be careful about the propaganda of work.

And also if we are to do this, if we are to help people, meeting the work requirement costs money and it's an investment and we need to help people meet work requirement if that's what they want to do so that they can't get cut off. So I appreciate your questions on that.

There's a lot of work left to do on that. It's huge. We need more time and more planning on that piece. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Any other public comments?

Kevin as they're Coalition California Welfare Rights Organization, I want to publicly say that the Newsom Administration has been wonderful in engaging with the advocate community. It's very commendable. I should also say that when it comes to income reporting income, often income is known to the county that the county doesn't act on it.

Like ihs, people get IHHS income from the county and they don't report it because they figure the county knows it. I mean it's coming from the county and the county doesn't know about it. And then they say, oh, there's an overpayment. That's a client error. It's not a client error, it's an agency error.

And the agency should be accountable for the root cause analysis of overpayments. They started October 1st to enter the error rate and we should have had the root cause analysis long time ago to be able to come down from 10 to 6 so we won't have a 2 $1.0 billion liability.

And finally, about the AI summary of what happened with the interview. It's nice that the worker is going to see it, but it should also be shown to the client so the client could make corrections too and send it back. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Are there any other public comments? Okay, seeing no other public comments, we'll close public comment. And I just want to thank everyone who attended and participated in today's hearing. It's been very informative, it's been disheartening at times. But I think it's also been extremely. Important to set the table for the.

Changes to come and how we as a state can work together to weather those changes to make sure we can maintain essential benefits for all eligible Californians. I think that needs to be the goal to reduce as much harm as possible.

So I look forward to working with everyone as we navigate this new policy and really centering the importance of making sure we can maintain eligibility for as many Californians as possible.

And this will be the beginning of many discussions we'll be having in the coming months, both with the Administration as well as with advocates and with other stakeholders. So with that, this concludes today's hearing of the Senate Human Services Committee, and we are now adjourned. Thank you very much.