Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 7 on Accountability and Oversight

Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome all of you. Do I have my microphone on?

To the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Accountability and Oversight. Today, we'll examine the budget for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I've had the pleasure of serving on the Public Safety Budget Subcommittee in the past, and I look forward to understanding both the progress that has been made and the challenges that remain.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is California's largest state department with an annual budget that is upwards of $14 billion a year. As noted in the LAO's analysis, California's prison population has declined by nearly half over the past twenty years.

This project progress is due in large part to the legislator's concerted efforts to reduce extreme incarceration policies. This this decline in population has not been matched by a corresponding decrease in overall spending. In fact, the department has ongoing budgeting challenges and has relied on more than

$7 billion in vacancy savings over the past decade to address budget shortfalls. There's also concerns about a lack of transparency and accountability in CDCR's short and long term budget planning. This is particularly difficult when determining where to invest in rehabilitating aging prison infrastructure while also planning

to address the declining prison population through facility closures. The legislature has required numerous plans and reports over the years, but it's unclear how these reports are being used after submission. As we approach this budget, we must consider how to respond to the current economic conditions while

minimizing harm to Californians, especially our most vulnerable communities. While this hearing focuses on CDCR, these issues must be viewed in context of the overall state budget. Divisions decisions in this area create real trade offs and opportunities across other priorities. I'd like to invite the panelists to come forward.

We have Caitlin O'Neil from the Legislative Analyst Office, secretary Jeff McCumber from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Anthony Franzoa, the Department of Finance, and Amber Rose Howard, executive director, California United for a responsible budget. We'll begin with, Caitlin O'Neil from the Legislative Analyst Office.

Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst's Office. I'll be speaking today from a handout called overview of state correctional population and spending trends, which is available in hard copy outside the hearing room, as well as on the committee website and our website lao.ca.gov.

Turning to page one, here's a quick overview of what I'll be presenting on, which is we'll be talking about prison and parole population trends over the past twenty years, CDCR's total operational spending over that period, CDCR's current operational spending broken down by major category, prison spending

per person broken down by category, as well as background on budget savings due to recent prison capacity reductions and recent efforts to to reduce CDCR spending through efficiencies. Moving to page two, we see a figure here which shows the state's prison and parole populations over the past two decades.

2006, the beginning of this period, was actually the year that the prison population reached an all time high of about 173,000 people. Since that time both the prison and parole populations have declined by about 82,000 people each. These declines were primarily driven by the cumulative effect of many policy changes implemented over this period.

For example, you can see a notable decline between 2011 and 2012, and that was largely associated with the 2011 realignment, which shifted responsibility for housing and supervising certain people from the state to the counties along with a portion of the state's sales tax revenue to pay for that realigned workload.

Moving to page three, we see a figure here of where the darker columns show CDCR's operational spending and the lighter columns show that same thing but just adjusted for inflation. And as we see here nonadjusted and, non inflation adjusted spending has gone up by about 5 billion over this period, but the inflation adjusted spending has come down slightly.

And it's also worth noting that CDCR made up about 9% of total general fund spending at the beginning of this period and now makes up about 6% of total general fund. Moving to page four, just a couple other notes related to this figure.

And the first is that the amount of spending in a given year that is the height of the columns that we're looking at here is influenced both by the scale of the department and and its operations. In other words, of course, the number of prisons.

For example, that are being operated, the number of staff that are required to operate those, etcetera. But also by factors associated with the broader the state's broader fiscal context. For example, in some years, the state took actions to reduce spending such as by furloughing staff.

Which which effectively results in shifting a portion of employee compensation into future years. So it has the effect of reducing the height of the column, without actually reducing the overall scale of the department. So that's just an important caveat to to keep in mind as we're looking at this data and trying to understand some of the fluctuations that we see.

Finally, CDCR currently has about 50,000 filled positions, which is roughly the same number of positions that it had at the beginning of this period. One might reasonably ask, why does CDCR have the same number of positions now as it did when the populations were significantly higher?

A part of a contributing factor to that is that over this period, the state has made many changes to how it's operated prisons in response to federal court orders, most notably, significantly having to reduce prison overcrowding as well as improve health care services in the prisons.

And, so what we're really looking at here is to the prison system in 2006-7 at the beginning of this twenty year period was different than the prison system that we have now. So it's worth keeping in mind that these are not complete apples to apples in terms of the service level that was being provided.

Moving to page five, this figure has two columns. The column on the left shows the breakdown of CDCR's current total spending. As you can see, most of CDCR spending is on prisons. The remainder is split between parole and department administration and other centralized functions like internal affairs and the board of parole hearings, etc.

The column on the left shows a breakout of the prison spending, and that is primarily going toward security and health care costs. The remainder goes to rehabilitation and other costs associated with operating prisons like maintenance and counseling, food and clothing, etc. Moving to page six, we actually covered these points, so I move it to page seven.

This table is another way of looking at the cost of operating prisons. In this case, we're looking at the a breakdown of the current average cost per person of operating prisons. This is, you know, some individuals, for example, those who maybe have particularly high health care needs are gonna be more expensive.

In contrast, some individuals are gonna be less expensive in reality to to serve. But this is just the average across all people in prison. And again, as you can see, large portions of the costs are driven by the cost of providing security and health care. And again, we have seen increases over the years in the average cost, specifically in 2010-11. Since excuse me.

Since 2010-11 the average cost has increased by about 78,000 per person. And when we ingest adjust that for inflation, we still see an increase of about 50,000, which was driven again largely by security and healthcare. And again, the reason that a significant reason why it's outpacing inflation was due to changes driven by these federal court orders.

So moving on, we've we've talked about we have clearly some themes of cost drivers around health care and complying with prison overcrowding litigation. But the the remainder of the handout gets into factors that are driving that are offsetting cost increases in recent years.

And so the first one is that the state has been reducing prison capacity by both closing prison whole prisons as well as portions of prisons. And that to date with the closure of California Rehabilitation Center in the Fall of this year. About a billion dollars in ongoing savings will have been scored as a result of these deactivations.

And when we deactivate prison facilities, we also avoid the need to do what could be very costly infrastructure upgrades at those or repairs at those facilities. Finally, moving to page nine, another way that the state has attempted to reduce CDCR spending has been through efficiency exercises.

And there's been two major, efficiency exercises authorized by recent budgets. These, I should note, did not exclusively apply to CDCR. They they applied to other departments as well. The first was initiated as part of the 24-25 budget act, which assumed that savings would be achieved through a combination of operational efficiency.

And the elimination of vacant positions that were to be identified through an exercise coordinated by the Department of Finance. The second efficiency effort was authorized in June with the 25-26 budget act and provided Department of Finance with $20 million to enter into one or more contracts with

an outside entity to identify and implement operational efficiencies. In September, Department of Finance contracted with the Boston Consulting Group, and that work is ongoing. It applies the contract applies to both CDCR and the Department of Healthcare Services. The CDCR work, as far as we understand, generally falls into kind of two work streams.

The first is analyzing CDCR's procurement data to identify whether contracts could be, renegotiated or modified in some way to reduce costs associated with goods or services that CDCR contracts for. And the second area is reviewing, processes within and staffing within CDCR's administrative functions.

Such as workers compensation, human resources, and information technology to identify areas of duplication or areas where, processes could be automated in order to reduce costs. And as a part of that work, CDCR or the administration, we understand is working with the state fund which administers this workers' compensation for the state.

In both cases, with these exercises, the savings have fallen short with with what was originally assumed, as you can see in the figure here. And the under the current. The activities that were authorized in the 25-26 budget act, that's currently underway with Boston Consulting Group.

The governor's budget assumed savings would ultimately reach $375 million and ongoing for CDCR, and we understand that it it is expected those, numbers will be revised downward, at the May revision. That brings me to the end of my prepared comments.

Happy to discuss our recommendations related to these topics at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you, miss O'Neil. Appreciate the information. That was great work. Next, we'll have Secretary Macomber. Please take your time with your remarks. your remarks.

Jeff Macomber, CDCR Secretary. Good morning, Chairman and Members of committee. Thank you for giving me a few minutes today to talk about what we have going on in the CDCR as As you would expect, we have our our set of challenges as well as, you know. Some accomplishments we've seen as of late.

As the LAO alluded to, we do have some challenges challenges with our structural budget. These are driven by things like lump sum payments when employees retire. Those furloughs and PLPs that we've earned over over the years, they come due at some point. In an apartment our size, that's over a $100 million a year in expenditures.

We also have seen challenges in the workers' comp arena. Expenditures go up as we've seen some benefit increases over the years. We've also seen some increases in our medical guarding and transportation costs as our health care partners work to clear a backlog of specialty appointments that is on the right track now that's really carry over from the Covid era.

And then we also see ongoing issues with incarcerated violence against staff, a stubbornly high homicide rate that we're focusing on that we're really looking to address going forward. And it's no secret, and I think, LAO also alluded to this, is we have an aging population.

Our prisons, when they were built 30-40 years ago, at least the newer ones, were not built with rehabilitation, ADA, those things in mind. We were focused on warehousing individuals, quite frankly. And so as our population has aged, we just don't have the right ADA facilities, and so we will be looking to address that going forward.

You know, as the secretary, one of my biggest goals is obviously public safety. And, you know, I I think I value rehabilitation very highly. The more overcrowded we are in prison, the less rehabilitation I can offer. The more overcrowded we are, the less normalization and dynamic security I can offer our population.

So, I know the the topic is on the agenda to talk about closures and it was referenced earlier. And I think, you know, there's a perception sometimes when we close a prison that all those incarcerated individuals go home. And, no, what happens is I send about a 100 people to every other prison in the state.

Who go on a wait list for programming, go into more double cell housing and things like that. Really not the direction I wanna be. We know the more programming I get people in, the better outcomes I have.

We have the data recidivism data to prove it. You know, people leave, our department with a GED or high school diploma. We know your recidivism rate drops by ten percent. I get you in a reentry program. If you're a male, it drops by twelve percent. If you're female, closer to twenty percent.

And so I'm pleased to report too, we also are on track to bring up a a few 100 additional reentry beds in the community, this coming year. And so my point being, you know, you can be for decarceration, meaning you want fewer people in prison or coming to prison and against prison closure.

And I often ask people if you had a loved one that was coming to prison, would you want them to share a cell with 60 square feet where sometimes you eat both, you know, your three meals per day and has a toilet in it? And I've yet to have anyone raise their hand and say, yes, that's the environment I would want.

Some of the positives, you know, I referenced the recidivism rate, which, again, continues to trend downward. I will double down on, Caitlin stole a couple of my, talking points. Our share of the budget has continued to decline. Ten years ago, we're about 9%. This coming year, we'll be below 6%.

So we are trending in the right direction. We also are looking to address our significant capital outlay needs. One of the handouts reference, you know, the 12 prison study that was done a number of years ago that showed substantial investment needed in our prisons.

And those investments have not yet occurred and costs have gone up. And it's no secret it's getting warmer in California. Most of our prisons were not built with air conditioning and appropriate cooling measures. So those will need to be addressed over the coming years.

We are seeing, positives in terms of, college program for incarcerated. Often get the question of why are you spending money for college for incarcerated when we have to pay? Well, quite frankly, it makes sense for a recidivism point.

We have 10,500 folks enrolled in college right now. For those that, you know, have a AA degree, you see a 5.6 percent recidivism rate. For those that leave prison with a BA or a master's degree, we have a zero percent recidivism rate. So it's a hell of a return on investment in my opinion.

And as I mentioned before, we we are pleased to report we continue to work on a reentry bed expansion in the coming year and in the out years as well.

So looking forward to that. And we're also in the process of closing the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, and that closure is on track and on time. So thank you for giving me a few minutes, and I look forward to the discussion and any questions the committee has today.

Thank you very much, Secretary Macomber. Appreciate you. And then next, we're gonna go back to Caitlin O'Neil.

Alright. Thank you. We have recommendations on two topics. The first is the state's overall need for prison capacity, and the second is the ongoing efforts with the Boston Consulting Group to achieve, efficiencies. So starting with the prison capacity topic, first, I'll talk about, our recommendations as it relates exactly to that topic.

But also, second, I'm going to raise, some trans a related transparency issue that has popped up recently. So first on the state's need for prison capacity, we find that under the administration's projections, we estimate that by 2030, CDCR will have several thousand empty beds in operation.

And even after we make various conservative assumptions, we find that the state could close a prison within that period and still retain sufficient, significant flexibility, with which to manage unexpected population increases. So we do recommend directing CDCR to close a prison.

And that would not only align population with capacity, but would help address the state's out year budget deficits. And then we find that it would not be cost effective to approve infrastructure projects or to begin infrastructure projects at a prison that is soon to be closed.

In reviewing the facilities for which a infrastructure project is proposed in the governor's budget, we find that of those prisons, the correctional training facility in Soledad is the strongest candidate for closure. Happy to share our criteria that we used for that if the committee would like.

So we would recommend not approving proposals at that prison unless the administration identifies an alternative prison for closure given that the legislature even if the legislature doesn't direct CDCR to close, a prison, it could be that the administration chooses to close a prison in the future, nonetheless.

And then the state would have spent money on infrastructure projects that would not ultimately bring benefit to the state. Okay. So moving on to the transparency issue that's related to this topic. And that is that there's have been some indications that CDCR has begun the process of deactivating portions of two prisons.

And when we asked the Administration directly about this, it declined to provide to either confirm or deny these indications, and instead alluded to potential updates coming at the May revision. This is similar to something that happened last year around when there were indications popping up that

operational changes had been made, and, the administration declined to confirm or deny, alluding to updates coming with the governor's budget. And we find that this is problematic because it limits it limits the legislature's oversight of potentially significant operational changes relative to the budget plan that was enacted.

It also limits information that is relevant to ongoing budget discussions, including this one. And so we recommend directing CDCR to report in hearings on any steps it has taken, such as formally notifying staff or the incarcerated population to implement any yard deactivations.

Pattern, we now recommend the legislature also pass statute requiring CDCR to notify it the legislature when it implements a capacity reduction going forward. Moving to our comments on the contract to achieve operational efficiencies with the Boston Consulting Group.

It's our understanding from the administration that it is in the early stages of developing and implementing changes related to this this work. And as a result, it has not been able to provide much detail. However, it has indicated that it anticipates the May revision will reflect lower levels of estimated savings associated with this work.

So given that you there really isn't much information to go off right now, and yet there and you will have some more information at the May revision. We recommend that you use this time to, prepare basically to receive that in additional information at the May revision by asking questions to better understand.

You know, what this work entails, what are some of the potential benefits of it including even potentially beyond, you know, near term savings. Maybe there's other benefits that the administration's expects will, occur, in which case legislature may want to know about that.

So it can factor that into its it it's thinking and, provide oversight to ensure those benefits are achieved. The legislature may wanna also ask questions related to to better to help it better understand the benefits of using a contractor and the skills that the contractor brings as opposed to having state staff do this work.

Another example is the legislature could probe to understand what if there's been any updates since the there was a report submitted by the administration to the legislature in early February with some limited information about updating the legislature and its progress. Now over a month has passed.

This whole contract with BCG is only 28 weeks, so that suggests that some progress maybe has occurred since, over since early February. So the legislature could, ask if there's been any updates that can be shared at this point. It could also probe on the role of the state fund, for example.

In and what kind of, savings it's expecting to achieve through through the work around workers comp. These are just examples. And then we recommend reassessing the contract as a part of the May revision considering the full scope of options from potentially terminating in part or full or any kind of future

work that has not been completed at point to revising the contract. And if the legislature decides to move forward with it, we do recommend requiring quarterly updates on the progress. And finally, we would recommend that in general, moving forward, the legislature view unallocated savings, proposal skeptically.

And that's while we we we certainly agree that seeking efficiencies is good. Recent efforts have fallen short was of what was assumed in the budget, which muddies the legislature's understanding of the fiscal health of the state.

That brings me to the end of our assessments and recommendations, and happy to take questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you again, Sunil. Next up, we have, Anthony Franzoa with the Department of Finance.

Good morning, Chair Hart, Members of the subcommittee. My name is Anthony Franzoiawith Department of Finance, and I'll provide, some responses to the LAO's recommendations, then after that, available for any questions. Regarding the, recommendation on CTF Soledad as a

candidate for closure, The administration has not proposed any additional prisons for closure at this time, and naming a specific institution is not part of the closure decision process. It's outlined in penal code 2067 and that's for a few reasons. Before CD stars had the chance to go through its own

internal process, naming a specific institution can cause confusion on a few fronts. Number one, confusion for the staff at an institution wondering if they're gonna have jobs. The incarcerated population wondering where they might be moved to as the secretary alluded to earlier in his comments.

The families of the incarcerated, again, for the same reason, wondering if their family member is gonna be moved somewhere in a far part of the state where it might be difficult for them to travel to, and then the surrounding community for the staff at the institution, you know, and the, economy that's kind of supported there.

And further, I think I would say for some of this high profile and sensitive as a prison closure, we don't think restricting specific funding for an institution like CTF Soledad the administration announces an alternative, as the foreclosure is the right approach for City Star to manage its operational needs.

Moving on to, the transparency issue of the LAO raised with, Avenel and Solano, The administration does acknowledge that there are facility deactivations at those two institutions that will be, announced as part of the housing unit conversion population adjustment in the May revision.

So more information will be forthcoming. And I think I would just note that occasionally, there are times when CCR has to make operational decisions at institutions that don't neatly fit into the budget process. And for that reason, we do have a biannual population process.

One, it goes budget, and then one, it may revision to capture anything that's happened in the current year. I would say that the administration has concerns with enacting whether it's any kind of statute change, Trailer Bill Language, or provisional language that would require reporting.

And I think the main reason without seeing additional specifics is that it's unclear what would trigger a reporting requirement. For example, is it when CDCR just has the idea to deactivate a facility? Is it when, CDCR and Department of Finance have initial conversations?

Again, it it's just unclear what that trigger would be in the reporting language. But, again, no matter the trigger, the administration would be opposed to that language at this time. Moving on to, the recommendations of the Boston Consulting Group, the administration, does acknowledge that this work has been difficult.

This work has been ongoing since, late summer, early fall, but there, will be some erosions to the $125 million figure, that was estimated for 25-26. I don't have a specific erosion amount for you at this time, but, again, more details will be, coming at the May revision.

I would just note that while near term wins are great, as my colleagues at CTCR can attest to, this work is not easy, and rarely is process change as simple as kind of stopping one process and starting a new one overnight. The goal was ultimately to achieve long term sustainable savings.

Were to end the contract now, not only would we still owe BCG, form money for work that has been performed to date, but we also believe there could be some legal exposure to doing that as well. I'm happy to get into some of the benefits of using a contractor like BCG.

So moving on to kind of responding about terminating the contract or altering the contract, the administration believes that the, again, long term savings of this work with the Boston Consulting Group will lead to far more savings in the actual amount of the contract.

That might not occur, as quickly as we would hope. But, again, the goal being durable savings, we do believe that CDCR will be able to make these changes, as a result of the work with BCG. In terms of terminating the contract, if we we, being the Department of Finance.

I think in in general, BCG is specialized. They they do this kind of work with other, not only private, but public sector agencies at federal, state, local levels, and they can bring in that expertise from other work they've done. Whereas, you know, an organization like the

Department of Finance doesn't necessarily have that view that that BCG does. Also, BCG is able to, again, be very specialized. The Department of Finance would either have to hire more staff or work an enormous amount of overtime to even get close to the same amount of of depth that the BCG can go to.

So again, those are some high level points, and again, happy to answer further questions on anything there.

Thank you, Mister Francois. Is it Mister Francois? Is that your Francois. Francois. Okay. That's what I thought the first time. Thank you. Next is Amber Rose Howard.

Good morning, mister Chair, Members of the committee. Thanks for having me today. My name is Amber Rose Howard. I'm the executive director of Californians United for Responsible Budget, otherwise known as CURB.

We are a coalition of organizations across the state of California, about a 100 organizations who, are aiming to reduce the size of our prison capacity here in California and to redirect funding to communities so that we create systems and infrastructure that keep us safe.

Prison closure, incarceration, and budget oversight are all choices. Ones that California has made, and I'm here today to urge this committee to continue to make. Californians need the legislature to make bold plans to move away from incarceration and to invest in a

California where everyone has food on the table, living wage, and health care. A quick snapshot of what we've observed over the past few years. Despite prison closures, yard deactivations, and other efficiency reductions, the CDCR our budget has remained basically the same over the last five years.

While the prison population has reduced by 10,000 people.

In the five years before that, the CDCR budget has increased by $2 billion while the prison population dropped by 30,000 people. In 2024, CDCR promised approximately 400 million in reductions, but only accomplished approximately half of that.

Then came back and asked for an additional 400 million due to CDCR overspending. Now is the time that we should be rethinking our expensive commitment to the state's traditional system of incarceration.

The proposed corrections budget increases incarceration spending even as California faces a significant budget shortfall and ongoing federal threats to basic supports. The CDCR continues to struggle with such basics as providing mental health care, costing taxpayers millions in fines, and preventing sexual violence.

Prison guards' pay, meanwhile, continues to climb at triple the rate of inflation, driving annual costs past 130,000 per incarcerated person. CURB supports the LAO's recommendation that another prison can be closed in this budget cycle.

And even with 15,000 empty beds, we can close more than one. We can choose to continue to decarcerate California, and a responsible budget proposal should not abandon people at society's margins. It's unacceptable to use jails and prisons as stand ins for supportive housing or mental health facilities.

We're housing people who have nowhere else to go. The solution to homelessness is housing first, and the answer to mental health crisis is accessible care. The answer to an aging prison population is to stop incarcerating them and to bring them home with supportive community programs.

We must spend on social welfare and infrastructure projects, treatment facilities, affordable housing, and community based reentry programs. We've seen cuts to programs across the board at 30-50% and only 3% to the CDCR.

These costs are not driven by operations. The prison system itself is aging and extremely expensive to maintain. CDCR has identified at least 2.5 billion in deferred maintenance needs across the prison system over the next decade, not including billions more that would be

required to address infrastructure challenges. Continuing to maintain a large prison footprint while incarcerated population declines forces the state into costly and unnecessary spending decisions. Those are not abstract numbers.

Those savings represent real resources that could instead support housing, behavioral health treatment, wildfire response, schools, community based programs that prevent crime before it happens. Yet even with declining prison populations.

California is still projected to maintain thousands of empty prison beds. I don't think any Californian wants to continue spending money on empty prison beds. In other words, the state is continuing to spend billions to operate facilities that are no longer needed.

That raises an important question for policymakers. Are we budgeting for the prison system that California used to have or the one that we actually need today? Fiscal responsibility requires aligning the size of the system with the size of the population that it serves.

Maintaining excess prison capacity has real trade offs. Every year, we delay rightsizing the system. The state commits billions of dollars to maintaining infrastructure and operating facilities that sit partially empty.

Every year, we have these conversations, and we don't see the changes happening. Those dollars come at the expense of other priorities. At a time when California is struggling to fund housing, priorities at a time when California is struggling to fund housing,

expand services, and address the root causes of crime. Continuing to overspend on prison capacity that we no longer need is a policy choice. We urge this committee to make different choice.

The legislature has already taken important steps toward reducing unnecessary prison capacity, continuing that work, closing additional facilities, aligning the system with the projected population, and making intentional plans to continue to reduce prison population

represents one of the most straightforward opportunities for long term cost savings in the state budget. Rightsizing the prison system would allow California to reduce correction spending responsibly while reinvesting those savings into communities and services that strengthen public safety in the long run.

The time has come to address disproportionate correction spending through the elimination of wasteful prison capacity outlay and infrastructure spending, staffing expenditures, and strategic prison closures in the near and long term.

This comprehensive approach, which the legislature agreed to last year when or excuse me. In 2024, mister Ting passed a policy that got to the governor's desk that would plan the reduction of the prison capacity safely and over time, but was rejected by our governor.

The that kind of an approach would actually help right size the prison population or excuse me, the prison capacity where we can see savings go into our community. The essential services include, but are not limited to education, substance use disorder treatment,

community based rehabilitative programs, visiting opportunities, legal counsel, nutritional provisions, recreational activities, access to outdoor spaces, and religious services. We really recommend the legislature's dedication to this critical issue and pledge our ongoing

support for steps toward a more balanced and responsible state budget and enhance effectiveness of California's equity and criminal justice system in ways that support the well-being and social safety net for all Californians. We realize that we can close more than one prison.

We realized that people do need rehabilitation inside of prisons, also realizing that only about 5% of CDCR's budget goes to rehabilitation. Speaking as a formerly incarcerated person and on behalf of many formerly incarcerated people and currently incarcerated people, Folks are rehabilitating themselves.

They are creating programs with each other and not depending on CDCR services. The truth is we've always had wait lists for programs. The truth is that empty cells do not increase capacity for CDCR to rehabilitate.

The truth is that we are continuing to spend all of this money at CDCR when folks are not being supported in the ways that they should. The only way that folks can get well is outside of those cells. We know that folks have been serving long sentences, draconian sentences, and have been incarcerated, some folks, since the nineties when we

saw the large crime bills come down from the federal state from the Federal Government that landed in states like California. Folks have been locked up for far too long, and we should continue to decarcerate. And as we continue to decarcerate. We should be closing prisons.

Every dollar we spend on incarceration is one we don't spend on building homes, supporting students, and fighting climate change. With so many vital programs in jeopardy, we have a moral imperative to put the broader needs of Californians ahead of empty prisons.

I really urge this committee to continue to recommend to the state that we close prisons and that we do it in such a way that isn't so harmful. We know that folks are going to be transferred, and CDCR has a choice on how to handle those transfers so that folks are harmed in the least way. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, miss Rose Howard. Your words are powerful. Appreciate that. Before we go to questions from the committee, I just wanna do a little temperature check with, mister Franzoi.

At the very first budget committee hearing we had, Chair Gabriel made a point of saying how the challenges we have this year are are significant, and we wanna really collaborate with the administration to address the long term budget shortfall that we have.

And that in that spirit, we wanted to begin, you know, early and not wait until the May revise to do some of the hard work that we have to do. And yet I heard from you that you're not prepared or willing to do that in this instance.

You know, you said we get to defer decisions. We don't we're not prepared to share information. And I just wanna say that is the first time I've heard that from the administration that we're not rolling up our sleeves and doing the work now, and that's really troubling.

Because I thought we were on a path where we're gonna do things differently and we're gonna, you know, really use this time that we have between now and the May revise to get into some of these issues. So I just wanna pause and say I'm concerned about that.

And I'll let my colleagues ask some questions, but have that in mind when we come back. Who'd like to start?

Thank you. Assembly member Schultz.

Thank you very much, Mister Chair. Thank you to our panelists. I'm sorry that I arrived late, but I was watching your testimony virtually as I walked in. I do have a couple of questions, and I'll try to be clear about who I'm directing them to. I think the first one would probably go to you, sir, but, of course, anyone's free to answer.

I made a comment on, the on the issue at a recent hearing of CDCR, but I'd like to make it again and specifically ask the secretary to respond if possible.

Considering the significant vacancy savings that are used to fill budget gaps and in the interest of transparency, can unfilled vacancy savings revert back to the general fund and the department can come forward with a BCP, a budget change proposal so that we can keep track of where our dollars are going.

Yeah. I mean, it's no secret that we've historically had to rely on salary savings to fund things that we were not appropriately funded for. And I mentioned a few of those things early on, which, you know, was the lump sum payment, workers' comp.

Some unscheduled overtime that we have to use that money to fund. Are we open to look at ways to realigning our budget and ensure we're you know, appropriately funded in the right categories? Yes. We're open to that.

Okay. I appreciate the answer. I mean, that's the point I'm trying to make is from the department's viewpoint, I would imagine that it's preferable to have that predictable funding as opposed to this mechanism of trying to fill the holes with the savings every year.

Which I would argue is much more variable and harder to plan for.

Yeah. We've been challenged as of late. With prison closures, you know, the we don't lay off the staff. They tend to transfer to other prisons. And so, like, with California Rehabilitation Center, Norco. We're gonna have 1,200 staff that basically filter to our other 30 prisons in the state.

And our vacancy rate is actually gonna go down even further. While the savings tied to prison closures swept back into the budget. So it is a challenging issue for us.

Thank you. The next topic I'd like to move to and like to give just a little bit of background here. I'd like to thank Assembly Member Bonta for her work in making CDCR's budget more transparent, particularly around the cost of litigation, both to defend and to implement remedial measures.

I would argue that an outsider who views the evolution of CDCR over the course of the last couple decades might come to the conclusion that the department waits until they're sued before large scale changes are made to address systemic issues. In my view, this fundamentally has to change.

In addition to resolving all the lawsuits, what is the department strategy to reduce our legal liabilities? And and more specifically, what are you doing to reduce violations of law and policy by individual staff and by the department itself?

Well, excellent question. Well, we appreciate the investment the legislature's made in things like cameras and body worn cameras to promote transparency. You know, we very much appreciate that. And can you repeat the first part of your question? I I just blanked on it.

That's fair. It's kind of a loaded question. No. I I what is the department strategy

Oh, thank you.

Reducing our legal liabilities?

Thank you. And and I quite frankly share your concern. It's it's often a challenge for us to get funding for critical needs. I referenced early on that, California is getting warmer. We're gonna need to invest, in HVAC systems in our department.

And what I don't wanna do is put a brand new air conditioning unit on a 30 year old roof. So we wanna get this right. Meaning, if we're gonna put a new air conditioning on it. I wanna make sure we have a roof that's gonna be there for a while.

It's no secret that our fire alarms are failing and we have request in for fire watch staff that has been ordered by the state fire marshal. We're trying to get ahead of these things, and and we have request for ADA funding as well.

I referenced earlier that we were not designed with ADA needs and an aging population where prisons were the prison boom of the, you know, eighties and nineties occurred. That was not a consideration. So we've been working on in a process of finalizing a twenty year capital outlay plan to address the long term needs.

We've heard concerns from the legislature over the years that we don't know what the long term plan is. We don't know where you're going. This twenty year plan is meant to address that. That we have a comprehensive plan of where we wanna go. And so I do think your question's on point.

We are frustrated by the litigation as well. I am pleased to note, at least in our platter, which is the health care litigation, we're down to three prisons left to be delegated. We had our facility in Stockton delegated a a week or two ago. So we we have some positive progress there.

Thank you very much for that answer. And just on the topic of of reducing legal liabilities and this kind of juxtaposition of being reactive versus proactive, I know recently the Texas correction correctional system was sued for extreme temperatures in their institutions.

I also know that in 2025, as part of our budget process, we launched the air cooling pilot program. Could you speak to was the department or the state threatened with litigation, or was that a more proactive measure the CDCR undertook?

So, I don't wanna say we're threatened with litigation. It's been a point of concern, in in several of our court cases and is actually listed in, case management conference statements that I believe are publicly available.

So we wanna get ahead of that, which is why we're trying to develop the plan. We appreciate approval of the pilot. That pilot program will let us test, different systems before we go out and spend a lot of, tax dollars on air conditioning units and insulation.

We anticipate the first facility or first housing unit to have the installation installed by this summer. So we should get some immediate results on the impact that has and inform our future decisions. We're also looking at potential to have automated temperature taken at our facilities.

The individual housing units, so we can get some real time data when we have a problem and stay ahead of things and provide some, you know, transparent and comprehensive, information to the legislature and others.

Thank you very much. My next question is both for CDCR and it also might be appropriate for the Department of Finance to weigh in. Can either of you speak to why our staffing levels are the same as it was twenty years ago when we had twice as many people in our state prisons?

And I'd also like to know, has the pro proportion of our administrative security and health staff changed? And if so, how has it changed over the course of twenty years?

So I don't think our staffing has stayed the same. We've obviously closed five prisons, and, typically, that's around 1,200 positions that come down. We're saving over a billion dollars a year based on the beds that have closed. So it has decreased.

We have seen increases tied to some of the litigation, which may be where you were going. We've seen some increases in our health care and mental health staffing, as part of that that litigation. I don't know if finance wants to

Yeah. I'd like to hear from finance as well. Thank you, sir.

Anthony Franzoia with Department of Finance. I mean, the secretary answered it perfectly. I already think I was gonna note that, yeah, especially in terms of CCHTS, California Correctional Healthcare Services, which is kind of the, you know, health care side of CDCR. So to speak.

I think there has been staffing increases there tied to, yeah, class action litigation. But in in terms of the other proportions that you mentioned, you know, I'd have to see the numbers and and compare things first.

Got it. Thank you. Final two questions, Mister Chair. I know we have a contract with the Boston Consulting Group to help the state find the savings opportunities. I guess my question is, do we really need to contract it out?

Do we not have the ability in house to look at our own books and find those opportunities for cost savings? I bring that up because during the great recession well, I guess it is a question for finance. Did the Department of Finance bring in outside consultants to assist the state during that period?

During the, great recession. So Yes. 2009, 2011? I'm not sure. I could go back and ask, but those before my time a little bit.

Is there a general practice in the state of having our departments contract out to have an external consulting firm find cost savings?

I don't have a great global view of I mean, there are, you know, an immense amount of contracts out there between the executive branch and, you know, the private sector. In terms of this specific contract, I think the reason that I mentioned during my kinda opening remarks.

The reason that we chose to go with the contractor is given the the scale of the problem and given the seriousness of the budget situation, knowing that there are out year problems, knowing that CDCR is such a big portion of the general fund budget.

It made sense to have a contractor who had dealt with similar situations in other states, corrections departments in other states that could, again, bring in that expertise and maybe see what CDCR could be doing differently or may in leveraging best practices.

Again in other situations that they've seen that again, an organization like Department of Finance wouldn't necessarily have, and I think it would take us a much longer time to get to that level of granularity that could just given our normal budget preparation workload, if that helps.

It does. Thank you. Mister Secretary, do you have anything you wanted to add? Or

No. I don't think I think finance covered that. Okay.

Thank you. My last question is is for you, mister secretary. From your perspective, is there an operational need to maintain the current number of empty prison beds that we have in the state system?

Yeah. Good question. And and I think to answer that is we don't have empty beds. It's what we have is we have fewer cells or bunk beds with two people on it. So you don't walk into a unit and see a cell with nobody in it.

You see more cells now with one person instead of two. And as I open with, you know, my vision of the department is we move to more a a single selling and a single bunking, type system. Allows us to provide better rehabilitation, more dynamic security, more normalization.

Better public safety, better outcomes for the incarcerated, better outcomes for staff as well. So I've I have a different vision, to, the curve, folks, here today, respecting your comments earlier. But to me, I have a different vision of what I think our department should look like.

Thank you, Assemblymember Schultz. Next, we have Assemblymember Elhawary, and then Assemblymember Quirk-Silva and then Assembly Member Alanis and then others. Leckey Assembly Member Leckey before you. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here today to share and present to us. I wanted to start just something you said, secretary Macomber, around the current prison closure. I can't remember which one you said.

It might have been the one in Norco. You said that the prison is closing and that no there are no layoffs happening, that folks are just getting sent to the various prisons.

But earlier, when Nick when Assemblymember Schulz, sorry, asked about, you know, why there's still a similar number of folks, you said that there have been layoffs. And so I just wanted to understand the discrepancy

And what you said.

Yeah.

Great question. So we we don't know yet with the California Rehabilitation Center if there will be actual layoffs. There's potential there will be. We give the opportunity to people to bid via, you know, a process that's, you know, a state process via CalHR to other vacancies

throughout the state. Some individuals may not wanna move themselves or their families and will choose, to undergo layoff. Now to accommodate I think the source of your question is, you know, why do we have high numbers? Well, we also have had a hiring freeze in place for a number of classifications to mitigate any overages.

We've also ramped down the size of our academy classes to have fewer cadets so we can place folks that wanna relocate. That way, I'm not laying off an officer and then turning around and retraining another one to go to a different place. So we're trying to be fiscally smart here.

And so that's why you'll see over time, our vacancy rate will go back up. It has gone down with the closures, The prison closures and the yard closures quite a bit by about 10% on the custody and non custody side over the last

few years. Thank you. I that's helpful to to understand. I also just in terms of thinking about staffing levels overall and really kind of building on, the Assembly Member's point, I recognize that. You know, as we're looking at the decarceration kind of framework that we've gotten to now

90,000 around, 90,000 folks who are incarcerated with 58,000 positions that are budgeted. And I just wanna understand the justification of almost one to two. Like, I even think of, like, schools. Like, we don't even have enough teachers for 30 kids.

Like, you know, I'm, like, how do we get to a point where we think of 58,000? Like, what like, how I recognize that there are some court ordered staffing levels related to health, but I think beyond that, it just feels crazy.

Yeah. I I understand that question. And and we have something called a standardized staffing model. So similar prisons are staffed the same way, so we're not inconsistent. And so the typical housing unit, CDCR, may have a 100 incarcerated cells or bunks within that unit.

Now whether there's a 150 people living in that unit or a 100, I still staff it with on on a dorm, for example, two staff at each watch. And so our overcrowding rate has gone down. It doesn't mean I can pull out and just have one officer in that housing unit.

Of, as an example, some of the reductions that we took in prior years. We did things like, you know, unfortunately, we we we cut down yard time on on the evening two nights a week, to save money, for example.

And things like that to, reduce our staffing, but that is why you get locked in. And if I have a healthcare clinic, that staff with a nurse and a doctor, if you have, you know, 500 or 600 individuals on the yard, it doesn't necessarily change that staffing pattern.

And that's why you you you don't see mammoth drops. You do see our our our p y count was 65,000 a few years ago, and and I believe we're at 57,000 now give or take. So we we are trending downward.

Yeah. That's something. Cynthia Mendonza, CDCR, our deputy director office of fiscal services. We also have the within that oh, sorry. We also have the population for parole. So we have supervision out in the communities to make sure they're overseeing those individuals as well. So that's part of that staffing package as well.

Sorry. Is that, like, the MCRP kind of? Or

Individuals who are placed on parole. Oh, you're saying parole

officers and agents that Yes.

Okay. Sorry. And there's staffing based on their population levels as well.

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. Something you talked about in terms of single cells versus double cells. Mhmm.

Earlier, you also mentioned that there's, like, a stubborn I think you said stubborn homicide rate in the prisons. Yes. I don't know if it's against staff or specifically incarcerated people. But I just wanna understand because I think that as we're thinking about savings.

Especially given that there's gonna be a structural deficit, especially given the chart that I saw and how, you know, there was a promise of 392 million of savings, only 154, and we're shifting. I feel like I heard, Mister Franzoia say that, we're not maybe gonna reach the 125 million this year.

I don't know if I made that up, but just kind of understanding how much it are single sales contributing to more safety? And is there while we're trying to achieve normalization? Is there a world where double bunking actually saves us money but doesn't necessarily change the safety given

just what you mentioned and overall what that means when folks are having to move around.

Yeah. I think the premise is yet double bunking could, you know, reduce costs. Obviously, with our homicide rates, some of those are in cell homicides. And, obviously, you know, it's harder to do it in cell homicide if you don't have a cell mate, not that it still couldn't happen.

So I guess I'm agreeing with you that that both things are true. If we if we had less if we had more, single selling, we'd we'd we'd have an impact on our homicide rate.

I guess what I'm saying what I'm asking is, it sounds like you're already doing the single sales, but you're saying that there's a higher homicide rate. So, like, how how did single sales help safety at all? And it and is it possible that we could just go back and the safety wouldn't necessarily be impacted?

Okay. I understand your question. The bulk of our homicides are not in cell. They're usually on a yard or a day room, but we would we would potentially close be close to be able to eliminate homicides in cells with less overcrowding. I don't believe that the overcrowding rate is what's driving our homicide numbers.

It's continual gang activities and quite frankly, drugs and gangs in our system. I have a, you know, portion of my population that really wants to program better themselves, do good when they release.

And I have another contingent of folks that wanna do the gang thing, the drug thing, the smuggling. And so we have really 2 sets of individuals we're dealing with in prison these days.

Thank you. I think I just wanna understand. Maybe it's an Amber Rose question too. When we think about what we're trying to do and trying to save money and understanding that there is an idea that normalization happens when we have folks in single cells.

Do you believe that it's better or it's okay to double bond given that we've already been doing that for so long and we're gonna save a lot more money? I just wanna understand that so that as we're thinking about savings, that we're not actually making things worse.

But also that we really need to we really need to think about what it's gonna take to close these prisons.

I thank you for the question. I think that, first, I think that we have to realize, like, a place like San Quentin, for example, that was built in the eighteen hundreds, our first prison in California, where the cells are significantly smaller.

Then maybe a place like that single selling is actually appropriate. But when we also think about the abuses that come down from staff that people are experiencing that have for long been unaddressed, and there's no accountability for that.

It's a little bit dangerous for some incarcerated folks to be single cell because then there's no one there to witness when they're experiencing harm that comes down from staff. And that's testimony coming straight from incarcerated people currently.

So I think that in terms of safety, it may not be best to single cell. And I think that at a time when we are shrinking the capacity of CDCR, it's actually counterproductive to move to single cells because then we're just expanding the scope of the CDCR, and those savings will not be achieved if we can't continue to close more prisons.

Thank you. I really appreciate your answer, and thank you so much, secretary Montgomery, because it was helpful to kinda get there. Two more questions. One is, 5% being spent on rehabilitation.

I heard what Amber Rose said and have actually experienced that for many of the folks, who we've worked with, whether in our office or in the community who have talked about, like. Having to lead their own classes, having to train themselves around how to, you know.

Get on be eligible for parole and then actually, like, pass I don't know how exactly that works, but recognizing how much they're doing that themselves. But as and and I know you talked about the importance of of decreasing recidivism. So why only 5% being spent on rehabilitation?

How can we shift that? How can we be more thoughtful around that number? And recognizing that, you know, if there are opportunities for savings, if there are opportunities for single cell, why are we not putting that into rehabilitation instead of just putting it in other places and plugging those holes differently?

No. Great question. We're a 24/7 operation, meaning, you know, we're typically doing rehabilitation during, you know, day times hours. Then I have two other shifts where it's the evening or, the night or the weekend where we're not running your typical education class.

Now what's not in that is there's also opportunities, that aren't captured rehabilitation for things like yard time. Well, I have officers out, observing that. You have day room time, where I may have, you know, peer mentors out there supporting, other members of the population.

Amber is correct. We do have a lot of, folks right now that, are peer support specialists, peer mentors helping, other incarcerated. I'm a big advocate of that. Sometimes it's better to hear from a peer than someone else. But I think it's a misnomer on the 5% because of the 24/7 operation.

You're always gonna still have a fixed cost of custody staff and a housing unit and a control booth. And it doesn't capture some of the other things that that occur as well that are rehabilitative oriented.

Amber Rose, would you like to add anything related to rehabilitation? Or

Well, I think that it's just important to note that incarcerated folks will testify and let you know that the best services that they receive are actually from community based organizations that are funded, sometimes through the state.

Sometimes through nonprofits to come in and host those services. Also, we have to realize that there's a numb, thousands of people who are, sentenced under life without parole, who are not having access to rehabilitative services.

So when we think about the scale and the scope of rehabilitation that CDCR provides, it's actually pretty ineffective according to what incarcerated people are experiencing now. We truly should be relying on community based organizations, to go in and support with those services.

Thank you. Last question, Anthony. Related to BCG, I think I'm really astounded at the number $20 million to try to save money, like spend 20 million, save anything. I just can't believe it's $20 million. So I think in my own newness to this world, like, understanding, like.

How did we decide on BCG? Why 20 million? Were there other bids, like and and why are we not getting, like, regular updates if we're paying them $20 million? I mean, pay me $20 million. I will update you every day. Okay? Like, that is crazy. Like, what what I don't understand what is happening that, like, $20 million.

And then there's this idea that we have to wait till February to get an update. And I feel like I heard you say, and maybe I'm maybe I didn't hear you say this, that, like, also what type of reporting you all are opposed to some of the I was I just need to understand what's going on there.

No. It's Anthony Franzoia, Department of Finance. The reporting that I was speaking to was related to the yard deactivations. So separate issue, but happy to talk about it if you want. I'll try to answer your question, but I know there was there were a few parts of it, so I if I missed anything, let me know.

I was uninvolved in, you know, negotiating formally in the contract, but I think $20 million for the amount of work that BCG has done. I mean, when I say it has been constant since the contract started, I really mean it has been constant.

And that is meeting with, you know, the division of adult institutions. Those are breaking down CDCR into kind of the different sections if you would. The division of adult institutions, the division of adult parole operations. You know, Cindy mentioned kind of the parole side of things.

EIS, HR, kind of the business services with contract and procurement. It has been a very holistic look at the department. And not only is BCG, you know, working kind of in-depth with CDCR, but they're also bringing other state departments together. I think Caitlin may have mentioned the workers' comp issue.

Secretary also mentioned it. You know, that's involved in getting CDCR, CalHR, and the state compensation insurance under SCIF together. And I think they're able to do that a little bit more. I again, not the Department of Finance couldn't, but BCG kinda brings an extra urgency to it.

I understand that it was there was an exemption, so there would not be any bids. And that was, again, with the intent of speed. Again, given the scale of the statewide budget problem, the issues that CDCR itself is facing, you know, a decision was made. It was not.

I was, again, not involved in that decision. I'm just relaying some information, to go with BCG, again, in order to get things moving as quickly as possible, knowing that we were facing issues in, 25-26.

I just have to say that it makes very little sense that we are paying $20 million. We didn't do any bids. We rushed the process for them to also then come back and tell us that we won't see these savings move as quickly.

So we rushed to get somebody for $20 million to save money that they're not necessarily helping us save because we keep on going back on the savings and then didn't offer any other bids. And now when we're talking about getting the information, we're not rushing.

We're not feeling like any level of, like, that. I just like, I I just don't understand it. I know that that you didn't make that decision. I just, like, have to state that as something that, like, if we are going first of all, $20 million is so excessive. Like, let me give you a million dollars to figure out some savings. Like, $20 million like, it just I don't know.

I'm, like, really taken aback. I would love to know how much other people charge to do this kind of work. Maybe this is just generally how government works when you try to save money, but in my mind, it just feels out of control.

Thank you, assembly member. Next is assembly member Quirk-Silva.

Thank you to to the panelists who have joined us and for your remarks and to the my colleagues, your appointed questions. I just have more of some macro comments related to systems.

I mean, obviously, we're here to talk today about our California prisons as a whole and how do we save dollars. The former elementary school teacher, which is another system, so a k 12 system. And the state is responsible for many major systems, our health care, our roads.

And yet there's themes that intersect on all of these systems and it always comes down to dollars. And I don't think there's a time that I've been in government and I was on a city council before this. So this is twenty years now of being elected that I I can ever remember where we felt we had enough dollars to do all the things that we want to do in government. So when we talk about prisons and we know that many of us have now traveled even internationally to see other models, to see how other countries are not only treating, but making inroads into, the prison population with really transforming their systems. It can be difficult for us as legislators to see the dollars that are put into the system, And sometimes it might feel like an attack on CDCR.

But, you you know, when I read some of the notes here, I'm seeing that we're maintaining thousands of beds. And, you know, there have been remarks about single cell versus, you know, cells that are much more impacted. I know I visit visited the Orange County Jail, which is not prison, but it's a county jail where we're now seeing individuals remain in these facilities for sometimes four and five years because of some of the legislation and the initiatives made. And when I went to visit, it was just last year. I was shocked at how impacted they were with about six inmates in a square this big right here.

And I say that because we're talking about empty beds. We're talking about maintaining, which is costing dollars, maintaining empty beds, and then single cell versus not. I mean, I think any of us who have thought about how inmates are housed, there definitely could be a case made for, yes, more space, more programming. But even last year, I had a programming bill to just analyze if we could do a report on if there could be a space for more programming as we know whether it's college, whether it's physical. We need space in prison, and it was said there is no space.

So we weren't able to move that. There's been other pieces of legislation. I think my colleagues here, we had a working group on women incarcerated. And we tracked it ourselves for the first time last year where we had 12 pieces of legislation that were introduced and there was only one signed by the governor. One, be happy to share that information of the bills.

Most of them were held. And most of them were held not even having opposition in the committees and move forward, but were held in appropriations. So it is a lot of discussion up here, but ultimately, I think what we want in our system that we're gonna have is we want to see better care. We wanna see, of course, you know, staying within the budget that is proposed, not going over. We understand I understand whether it's the health care, whether it's overtime, why these budgets can really explode.

I get that. But I guess I'll just go back to my first comments, which is I came out of a school system. And May March is the time that notices are given to teachers across the straight the state. Thousands of teachers right now. Matter of fact, March 15, I believe it is.

So this week, thousands of teachers will be receiving slips saying you are not going to return unless the budget changes. And this means programs. It means collapsing, getting rid of programs, analyzing all of those things we hate to do as government electeds. And yet they have to go through these exercises. And sometimes the budget changes and they can return them.

But I I would just say CDRC, when we have to make choices outside of the the system of incarceration for is somebody gonna get SNAP, is somebody gonna get some type of housing, then I think it's incumbent upon CDCR that you have to take that seriously as far as your budget and your numbers because everybody else is trying to college systems, trying to make sure their math works. And when we continue to see this is the budget, yet now we're asking for more. And sometimes it's not even equitably funded. I mean, we have seen with the women incarcerated. They get this much to the males, and I'm not I know there's far more males that are incarcerated.

But so this is a lot of macro discussion to just really say we have to do better. And because everybody else is out there struggling, and we have to look at how can we transform our system. And there are excellent models out there throughout, not only the state. So I appreciate some of the work that has been done. I know the San Quentin model.

There's a lot of good work being done. So that is not to say that there has not been accomplishments as you said. And I I do believe that, but I really feel like we have to have a bottom line. We can't have one of our major departments constantly out of sync as far as what the budget is and then the overruns. Thank you.

Thank you, assembly member. Next, we have Assemblymember Lackey.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry I missed a lot of the presentation because I had other committee commitments. But I I would tell you this whole Boston Consulting Group contract has been mystified, and we've had some other colleagues also weigh in on the situation. And and the fact that we contracted $20,000,000 and we're woefully short on what we were told it would result in.

I mean, 810,000,000 versus 2,000,000,000 is a remarkable deficit and poor performance. And so I'm also frustrated that they're not here. Why in the heck are they not here so that we can ask them pointed questions? Apparently, they were invited. And who knows why they're not here, but they are not here.

And I feel like we deserve to hear from them. I mean, 1,200,000,000 difference is a lot of money. A lot of money. And we could do a lot of good with that money. And we were told that that's what we were going to get, but we haven't even come close to that.

And I guess my biggest frustration is what do we do from here forward? We look back at what the consequences were and how do we manage going forward. I don't understand the intricacies of the contract, and I'm shocked we didn't have some kind of built in in the contract performance as part of it. And the performance, I'd and there is savings. There is cost savings.

And we do appreciate any amount of cost savings we can get. But we paid, you know, $20,000,000 to try to get what we were told would be significant because we shouldn't be contracting out, this kind of cost savings. That that should be incumbent upon the legislature and Department of Finance and and all these other parts of government. I'm just very frustrated by the failure of the system.

But what are we gonna do about it? What are we gonna do about it? Right? And how do we keep this from happening again? And that's my bigger frustration. I don't think anybody on this table can answer that question. What can we do about it? But it's something that this committee has a responsibility of figuring out because that's why we exist here, is to discuss these these points. And I I think another thing that makes me excited is there it's a bipartisan concern. Right?

This is not just one side blaming the other side. We just need to fix it. Let's not assign blame in a in a political battle. This is for the good of our society at large, and CDCR has a huge responsibility and a very difficult and complicated responsibility. And it's you know, there's fairness issues, there's equity issues, there's all these other things that blend in.

But one thing that really stands out to me is that this is a failure. This was a failure, in my opinion. So how do we address that failure so we don't so we can build trust with our people who have entrusted us with this responsibility? And I feel like this contract was was a betrayal, what I think. And I feel also like it was an expenditure that we shouldn't have had to make.

We shouldn't our system should be able to manage this, and we should find cost savings ourselves. And I'm just disappointed, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that this committee and the information that we have gotten disseminate here will allow us to improve and to make sure that this doesn't get repeated.

Thank you, Assemblymember Lackey. Next, we'll have Assemblymember Bonta, then Assemblymember Alanis, and Assemblymember Alvarez.

Thank you. And I wanna appreciate Assemblymember Lackey for making me miss, serving as the budget sub chair for public policy. I Iove that we saw a lot of commonalities in our concerns. I just wanted to start with a basic question because in my mind, your budget is a representation of your willingness to execute the mission of an organization. After 25 years in organizational development and working with organizations, that's what I've come to know. Can you all state to me the mission of the CDCR?

Yeah. Generally, it's to promote public safety and successful reintegration of offenders back into the community.

Yep. Specifically, it's to facilitate the successful reintegration of individuals in our care to their communities equipped with the tools to be drug free, healthy, and employable members of society by providing education, treatment, rehabilitative, and restorative justice programs, all in a safe and humane environment. If we were holding true to that mission statement and you're paraphrasing, I think secretary gets at that, what metrics would we use for determining whether or not we were successfully achieving our mission?

I I would start with some, assuming the question was for me, our recidivism data. We're seeing very positive results on some of the things we're doing. We're putting out more information publicly, transparently. You can find it on our on our site. As I said before, we're seeing phenomenal results on certain programs like college programming, very, very low recidivism rates.

Seeing very great results from folks that go into a reentry, center, up to two years, prior to the release. Not only are the recidivism rates great, folks leaving those programs, often are leaving with money in the bank because they can work well in the community. And it's no secret to be successful once you're released. You need job. You need housing.

And then, you know, second to that is things like, you know, money to buy a car. And so I think we have some metrics to measure success via our recidivism rate. As has been talked about here, our our population has declined significantly over the years. So I think there is some some positive metrics. You've also seen, you know, and I I I believe you've, you know, been to Norway and kinda see the vision of of, you know, where we wanna go.

You look at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center project. It was a project that was probably the fastest capital project in the state of California's history done behind a prison wall.

For one for one institution.

I appreciate that basic response. From a budget perspective, how would we be demonstrating that mission from a budget perspective? I'm going to again kind of focus in on the fact that in the DOF's reports, in the LAO's reports, and in the CDCR's own self reporting, the number that we have in terms of the money going towards the support of, rehabilitative efforts is still only at 5%. So from a budget perspective, how are we actually embodying the completion or the successful execution of our mission if we're still only dedicating 5% towards rehabilitation efforts? And I note Secretary McCumber's response around that there are other factors to be counted in the achievements of that, but you have the opportunity to self report that kind of information into into what we're looking at in the budget, and still you're only coming up with 5% for rehabilitative programs, and still 1% of rehabilitative program going towards the known community based organizations reentry programming that we know is actually the most successful.

Absolutely.

So how, and I'm asking this of DOF, I'm gonna let secretary McComber off of the hook for a second here. How are we from a budget perspective, and perhaps you can as well, actually executing our mission when we're only dedicating 5% of our resources towards, towards our mission.

Anthony Franzoia with Department of Finance. I think just to clarify a little bit on the 5%, I'm not sure if that is 5% that's just Ref 08 for DRP, which is a specific line item in CDCR's budget. But I just wanna note that there are also, I guess, what you would call kind of DRP costs that are in other areas of the budget. For example, every incarcerated person has access to a tablet that they can use, you know, for various things, contacting family members, again, rehabilitated programs broadly. Those costs aren't directly budgeted in DRP.

I'm not saying that suddenly expands the rehabilitated budget to 20%, but it I would say it's more than 5%.

But I think then you all need to do a better job of actually counting what is considered rehabilitated programming in total in your in the budgets that you present to us. Is that a fair request of us to make of you?

That is fair. I don't think the 5% was our number, but I hear the concerns.

Do you all come up with a number for the sake of transparency that we can actually rely on as it relates to this in your budget?

Hi. Ryan Weinberg with Department of Finance. Just to clarify on that number, we believe, as my colleague mentioned, that number didn't I don't think come from the Department of Finance, but it is referring to the funding allocated under a specific program within CDCOE's budget. That program doesn't capture the entirety of spending related to rehabilitation.

And we just you he just said that same thing. So what I'm asking Yes. Is what how are you all going to, for the safe transparency, actually reflect in our budget for our consideration how much you are actually providing towards rehabilitative programming, reentry programming, and all of the dynamic security, and all of the things that might be included in that, so that we actually have a legitimate number from you all, so that you can't say that it's not our number, we don't know what you're talking about.

We could provide information back to the committee on what that entails, moving that money out of other items in other programs to create operational difficulties for the appointment. When we allocate that money into a specific budget item or budgetary program, it's so that it can only be used for that purpose. And that was done intentionally by the legislature to restrict the funding that the purposes for that funding. It can only be used for this purpose. It can only be used for this purpose.

So I I would encourage CDCR and the DOF to come forward with a budget that actually takes into account the totality of the programming expenses and the things related to actually achieving the mission of the organization. And an excuse of having it just be siloed into one bucket kind of is fundamentally the the problem here. I think one of the metrics that I would use in terms of looking at the success that we have around whether or not we are achieving our mission is the fact that in the last eight years, more than 200 incarcerated individuals in CDCR have committed suicide. That's a those are 200 lives. That's the output of CDCR right now.

That is reprehensible. I just have to say. Given the fact also that within the context of achieving that bold goal of 200 lives lost to suicide in our system, That is within the context of a 36 year old lawsuit and several class action lawsuits, Coleman, Plata, Armstrong, that are all around basic conditions and providing the security and certainty that we need to know for individuals. I'll give you another metric that I think is really important to note here. Our inability to achieve our mission, be compliant for the class action lawsuits that we are having has cost us just in fines alone this last year.

A 112,000,000. That's fines related to people that to our system being in contempt of the lawsuits. If you wanna continue to add that number, we have $41,500,000 for the creation of a new of implementation costs associated with a newly created receiver's office for mental health. That's $41,500,000 of, again, us not being able to achieve our mission. So where are we now?

We're at a $150,000. I'll round up a little bit because I'm terrible at math. Or could we talk about the $43,500,000 that is spent last year in the budgets to be able to be responsive to these class action litigations? We are we are these legislators here, every single one of us, are starving for $200,000,000 to be able to support medical health care, education, $200,000,000 of waste, 200 lives lost. My specific question around this is what in very concrete ways are you all going to provide some operational efficiencies related to the loss of life and compliance around these lawsuits?

Yeah. Let me jump in. I mean, I think we're always concerned with suicide and providing, you know, good mental health treatment for our incarcerated. I think it's also a failure of the system before they get to prison. The governor has done a lot of investments as the legislature has also funded investments in mental health programming and diversion so folks aren't coming into prison.

So I think that is a big start. And in terms of litigation, obviously, we've been married in litigation a long time. Generally, we're following the counsel of the attorney general's office in terms of how we are fighting this lawsuit. And as I referenced before, while it is concerning, we are seeing enormous progress. You look at the plot of case that you referenced.

We're down to three prisons left to be delegated. So we're very much close to the end on that case. We're encouraged with the appointment of the receiver in Coleman that we're gonna see additional progress there as well. I don't wanna be in litigation, and and some of this is, issues not unique to the department. We have trouble filling, certain health care professionals that's not unique to CDCR.

It's unique to private sector, and it's unique to my partners and other state agencies as well. There's a result of us being stuck in this litigation for a long time. So this I spend an inordinate amount of time on the litigation issues and no one wants more than me for us to wrap these up.

DOF and CDC are willing to spend $20,000,000 on this consulting contract from CB is from the Boston Consulting Group. The focus around those operational efficiencies as you were able to state from what you knew, because you weren't there, was around procurement data and IT systems. And you said some other things, but we're really around kinda like purely operational efficiencies. Secretary Macomber, in all due respect, What the response that you just gave had no timeline associated with what kind of operational efficiencies around cost of life we have been experiencing right now, or the cost of our hard earned tax dollars going towards the lack of basic compliance by CDCR. Those are two numbers that really we should have some urgency around.

So are we to expect that we're gonna be waiting another ten years perhaps or another twenty years perhaps in order for those to be addressed? Or should we actually anticipate having something done sooner than that?

Anthony Franzoid, Department of Finance. Just to take a step back in terms of the governor's budget, what was proposed for CDCR for 2627. Again, given the structural issues that the state is facing, we really tried to focus on true baseline issues, ADA improvements, fire watch, lump sum payments, things like that. However, if there is a concern from the legislature that CDCR should be doing more in terms of suicide watch, suicide prevention, we can certainly have those conversations as we approach may revision and budget enactment. But I I don't think that secretary Macomber would say that nothing is being done.

I think CDCR has suicide watch. There are measures in place. Is it at the level that it should be? Probably not.

I think it is context around I think it is at the level of much like desegregation orders with all deliberate speed. We're talking thirty years here now. I showed up on, these committees way before Assemblymember Lackey, but way after assembly member Lackey has. And I don't think it's a secret that this legislature has had serious concerns about our inability to actually have transparent information from CDCR around our budgeting related to these, to many programs, but particularly our rehabilitation and reentry programming, and our safety programming. And and so I will go on the record again.

We are deeply concerned. We continue to be deeply concerned. And I would love it if at some point, CDCR and the DOF and the administration would actually take that concern under consideration to move something other than all deliberate speed. I wanna move on now if I may, chair, to the issue around let's talk health care, and I'll stop there. Particularly the cost of our healthcare as it relates to people who are our elders in our healthcare system.

Do you all have any specific numbers around the cost to CDCR related to health care costs for one person and another individual who might be medically fragile?

Anthony Franzoia with Department of Finance. I'm aware of we have a per capita number that is kind of overall the the average cost of of care for an incarcerated individual. In terms of, specific health care number, I I see Caitlin flipping some pages. We can get back to you on that, but I'm I'm not aware of one off the top of my head unless Ryan Nope. Yeah.

...

more. In the agenda. On page

Are you aware? 10 of the agenda, there is a chart that contains information that CDCR submitted to the legislature in a report, required report recently on cost estimated average annual health care cost per person by age group.

Yeah. That was included in, SB 108 report we submitted recently to the legislature, and I think LAO was quoting from that report.

So can for the record, can LAO if you're the only ones with actual numbers on this, can you state what those numbers are for health care costs?

Sure. So for under age 30, it's about 33,000 per year. For age 30 to 39, it's about 40,000 per year. Age forty to 49 it's about 47,000 per year. Age fifty to 119,060 to 69 nearing pushing 90,000, and age 70-79, 139,000 80 and over 237,000.

Assemblymember Bonta, it looks like we have someone who'd like to add something to you as your question.

Good morning, chair and members. Duane Reader, California Correctional Healthcare Services. I'm the budget officer. We average about $57,000 per inmate for health care

You said a 100 and

We average about 57,000.

57,000 per inmate.

Yep.

Okay. I will I will take that number, although that it's I guess, that 57,000 might be an average of whatever LAO is reporting.

Yes. Exactly.

Down by individuals. Alright. So we've had a 68% increase in the cost of imprisoning a person in in the state of California over the last decade or more. Is that a fair number? Are we

That sounds Correct. So on page let's see. Page seven of our handout where we have the average cost table, we say since 2010-11 the annual average cost increased by about 78,000, or a 161%. But when we adjust that for inflation, the increase is about 50,000 or 68%.

Okay. So very baseline question. Wouldn't one way for us to be able to actually save money is by having fewer people in our prison system?

Yes. To the extent the prison population decreases theoretically. If if it decreases enough, yes, you could reduce the size of the system.

And if you didn't wanna be as radical at thinking of thinking about just not having people in our prison system, does it cost more to have somebody in an actual facility or in some of these step down facilities that would that would also ensure that we're protecting and preserving the public safety of individuals while also providing people an opportunity to not be in the highest cost part of our prison system.

I mean, the secretary can speak to this too, and and my colleague can, but I think you might be referring to the MCRP male community ranching programs and FCRP female community ranching programs. Yeah. I think that is the ideal scenario. If we can get more people into those rancher beds, the recidivism data does speak to their effectiveness. I think that is a goal of the administration long term to keep increasing those beds.

I would just note there are challenges around siting sometimes. There's not always an easy place in the community, to put those. However, yes, I I I think that would be a goal. But, again, it it's it's a small number compared to the overall size of the kind of incarcerated population at institutions right now. But my colleague's gonna add detail if they wish.

I think the judge of your question is, you know, it costs more money. Obviously, the figure says the older you get, it costs more money for care. There is, you know, avenues for those folks via compassionate release process and the elderly parole process as well. There's also no secret recent concerns with utilization of those programs with certain folks that that we're releasing. So the s b 108 report did provide options and information for the legislature to consider if there's an interest in, you know, doing some more in this area?

I think it would I would certainly appreciate having very specific targeted information about how we intend to not only have a stated goal around increasing the number of cited beds outside of our prison facilities that are still secure and protect the public safety of of every individual and every community. It would be really helpful to have that on paper. And in a way that we could actually have some accountability around those that aspect of our housing and facilities for the state of California. I'm gonna just move to my very last question I promised here. There's been a lot of talk about single cells and and the bed buffer in in the state of California.

Where is the administration now on considering asking the courts to focus on a lower population cap than 137.5%?

I'd have to circle back with our attorneys and on that in the attorney general's office. The cap the 137.5 remains in in place as of now. That's still, an active case. We are below that right now. And so I'd have to circle back with you on that.

So that number for folks, is directly related to the stated capacity needs of of our, institutions collectively, our prison capacity. It is the only legal and concrete number that this legislature has in order to be able to make determinations around around whether or not we have enough empty beds in order to be able to meet just the compliance aspects of capacity. One other I've in my time here, I've heard two excuses for not being willing to close prisons.

The first is that we must be compliant with this population cap, and the second is that we are moving towards a single cell model. We have this California model that is intended to be system wide that really requires us to be able to move towards having maintaining our prison capacity. Secretary Macomber, you referenced the need for programming to be able to do that. I think I'm very clear on the fact that we don't need to wait for for that programming budget number to go up in order to be able to execute on these. Do we have any information from you all about the actual number of single cells beds that you are targeting?

Is there a plan that is stated that this legislature can review so that it is not just in vision and overall kind of policy statements, but it's actually a number that we can rely on on paper that impacts our budget?

Well, I think we provided information in the past. The legislature requested us to produce a capacity report, which we did a year or two ago, which Kinda lays out our vision of less overcrowding, providing more rehabilitation. If you're asking what that exact number is, we could get back to you on that. I don't I I think we can get you something on that.

That that plan, and I'm pretty sure that that plan was requested while I was sitting in that chair for the budget sub, does not articulate at all as concerted plan around this notion of single cell beds. I mean, I think you heard from Assemblymember Elhawary and others on this on this dais that we just don't have as much information as we should around single selling. And if it is going to be one of the I don't know. A theory of change around how you all intend to achieve the mission as stated. Don't you think it makes sense for this legislature to actually have visibility into what that is?

Yes. So we have that data and we'd be happy to provide it.

Yeah. I I I don't think that it should be hidden. I think that we've been in a space of excuse making. The reality is that CDCR, you can talk all you want about the state's structural deficit, but CDCR has had a structural deficit and will continue to have a structural deficit that we continue to fund mid year in terms of our in terms of the responsiveness to our BCPs and other kind of budget prioritizations that we make. And Assemblymember Alvarez is sitting there making very challenging choices related to education, to human services, to to our health care system.

I can tell you right now that I have a very good use for the $200,000,000 just of waste for lack of compliance, and these class action lawsuits that we desperately need in other parts of our budget for other purposes. So forgive me for being a little heated. At what point is it fair to continue to ask the legislature to fund, I'll use the nicest word possible, the inefficiencies of CDCR at the cost of not providing support for other parts of our system? Is it another ten years we should wait for that? Is it this year that we should be focused on that?

Ryan Weinberg, Department of Finance. Speaking specifically to the class action lawsuits that are currently ongoing, the secretary noted that we're continue to make progress about it. We recently had an institution delegated back to us.

Sorry, progress without any timelines associated with that and very vague metrics around that. Please don't come before this committee and this legislature with a vagueness and lack of responses when we are facing a structural budget deficit, when we know that there's a specific structural budget deficit within within CDCR that we need to be responsive to. If you know better, do better. I think this is at least me saying, I think we know better, and you all know better.

Thank you, Assemblymember Bonta. Appreciate that. Assemblymember Alvarez.

Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for the opportunity to be stay on this particular, topic. I appreciate, the opportunity. And, I'll start with some brief comments. You know, it's my belief that all of us in public service are doing this with the intention of serving the public to the best extent possible in the different roles that we have. It is my belief that individuals who serve at CDCR are, I I hope, working with that same intent of ensuring that public safety is is accomplished, but also that the mission of the organization is executed in a way that's successful.

And so the my questions are really rooted in how do we make what we do all more successful. And I hope that that's the approach that CDCR will will take to to to the questions that I ask. There's some and I apologize for some pretty basic questions that I'll be asking because I think, you know, as I do work in in the education space, we are I tell my subcommittee, I just told them yesterday, we're gonna be facing some very difficult decisions where we likely will not be able to provide as much financial aid for students. Perhaps, we will not be able to open or increase the number of slots of, students at our UCs and CSUs. And those are some really decisions that are not anything we'd like to do, but given the structural deficit, maybe something we need to talk about how we do that more smartly.

And so I approach this hearing with the same way asking that we are smarter about what we do with with CDCR. And so on my first in order to even get to that point, I need to ask some basic questions that having not been in this space before just seem like pretty fundamental questions that we should have answers to that it appears we don't really do at the time, at least according to some of the exchange and testimony that I've heard here before. Let me start with the first one and basic one. I heard from Department of Finance this this $20,000,000 budget was not one that, individuals here, led the effort on or presented. But was this proposal presented to the budget appropriate budget committee in last year's, process?

Anthony Franzoia with Department of Finance. I'm sorry for awkward angle. Yes. This would have gone through both Senate and Assembly of Public Safety Committees.

So Department of Finance testified to the committee that this this $20,000,000 would result in $2,000,000,000 of savings?

Correct. Those were our initial estimates at the time, and that applies to both I just wanna know, CDCR and the Department of Healthcare Services.

And that contract was there was no bidding process. It sounds like there's it was just awarded to someone. And is it true that you don't have any further information today on the progress of that contract?

In this, to go back to, chair Hart's comments, I hope I didn't mean to imply that there hasn't been any progress. What I meant to say was that, the work between CDCR and BCG has, basically wrapped up, and CDCR is in the process of kind of going through the potential options with BCG to see how those would be operationalized, not only in the current year, but in budget year and ongoing.

Is it your expectation that the legislature will see all of the options that are presented to CDCR, not just the ones selected by CDCR?

At this point, I don't have information as to what might be offered, but, definitely, you will see the final options that that that CDCR is approaching.

To the LAO, given that you did some analysis on this, is it typical that, when work product is produced at public dollars that, the that work product is not made available to the legislature?

I don't know if I could speak on that in a total a global sense. I think if it's being produced internally to the administration, we wouldn't that wouldn't necessarily be shared unless the administration chose to. If it's being produced upon a request from the legislature, for example, then it would be public. In in cases of work that's being done on contract, I don't know that I would be able to speak to a general practice. That being said, you know, it would be helpful to have that information, for the legislature, not only to be able to identify possibly whether there's other, you know, there's recommendations that the consultant made that the administration didn't take that the legislature could pursue, or maybe to understand, you know, what recommend better understand the recommendations and the contractors work in case they would be helpful to, implement in other departments to achieve savings possibly.

And just to evaluate whether or not this whole process, the idea of employing a contractor was worth the the cost kind of in a retrospective sense to just sort of see, like, what the state got for its money. Okay.

Well, I think that that's certainly the prerogative of the legislature, and I hope that the subcommittees support that. Let me ask other basic questions. The the to the secretary, thank you for being here. I I did a a quick search in terms of the ratios of staffing in in prison or in in jail models. This is obviously we're talking about prisons.

And there seems to be no specific standard in terms of the ratio of individuals who are incarcerated to those who are performing the public safety duties, whether it so so what is the standard that the department has?

So we have a system, and thank you for the question. It's called a standardized staffing system where we make sure that similar design presence are staffed in a similar fashion. And again, if you're a secure facility and you we typically most of our housing units, not all of them, have about a 100 bunks or a 100 cells. We typically staff those units with two staff members as an

example. Is that use when you use the word typically, it makes me think that that's not always the case, so that's not a standard. So I'm asking, are there standards that you use?

Yeah. And so that example is for a general population unit. Let's say the unit next door looks identical, but houses mental health patients.

I might have four staff in there, two to do the housing unit duties, and two to help escort people to their mental health groups. K. If it's a lockup unit, meaning they're in segregated housing, restricted housing, I may have four extra staff because they're when they leave their cells, they're typically in handcuffs.

So we're escorting in handcuffs to yard, to groups, to other things.

Okay.

But that'll make sense. So that those are all policies that are established by by you and I assume by every secretary as as they determine. And there's probably different categories. Are those you earlier in an exchange with miss Bonta, you said that there was some report a couple years ago that identified these. Will I find all those standards in that report?

I don't know if the report will will have the standards for standardized staffing. It will reflect capacities and have detailed information by prison on the level of programming.

It wasn't intended to address the standardized staffing process.

Okay.

Okay. So, what information do we have available based on the population that we have at the different throughout the state and those ratios and whether those ratios are being met or we're falling short on those ratios?

So, we're mandated, by the CCPOA, which is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association contract to basically fill all of our unit six, positions. And so we typically run all those positions and that's why sometimes you see overtime expenditures behind vacancies. Now there is times where we don't run and we might have to curtail a programming such as yard if we're short staff. But, yes, we typically fill all of the bringing in six positions.

Given that we rely so much on the legislative analyst office to sort of make some of these decisions, do you have access to all of the staffing ratios? And is that something they can provide to us so we understand the population that exists and the staffing ratios that exist for those populations?

So when CDCR, makes a change to the types of facilities it is operating. So, basically, these these staffing ratios that we're talking about are highly tied to the the facility design. So, you know, depending on how many people it houses and kind of what what the lines of sight are, etcetera, whether it's maybe a two tier or first or single tier. And they were established after basically, after 2011 realignment when it used to be that CDCR would get additional staffing for driven on a ratio basis by the number of incarcerated people. And then when there was a significant decline in the prison population, that significantly brought down CDCR's staffing levels to the point where it, couldn't really manage appropriately.

And so it that prompted the development of a new staffing model called standardized staffing. I believe at the time, there were experts from a national association brought in to advise on this. And so going back to where we are now, when CDCR converts a particular housing facility from housing one type of population to another type of population, there is a standard adjustment that we review in January and May that displays, you know, what type of population is going coming down and what the new type of population will be that's in that unit that's gonna be brought up, and then there will be we'll see the changes happening.

Access to that information.

Yes. We have sorry for long winded Yeah.

And your analysis provides us feedback on whether those that mission is being accomplished.

We review exact yeah. We review all of those changes and would raise any concerns to the legislature. We we're just seeing the position count go up and down relative to those specific changes, like housing unit population changes. We're not we aren't reviewing currently the the actual methodologies that are underlying them because those were established many years ago. One could imagine maybe it's worth taking a look at that.

But just as a matter of routine, we're mostly looking at, okay, CDCR is bringing up is saying that there's an increase in the, you know, high security population, let's say. So we're seeing conversions from lower security to higher security. So we would be like, is that look we'd look at the data. Is that backed up by is that supported by population trends? And then we would we wouldn't necessarily dispute what specific staffing positions went up or down as a result of that because that's kind of more of a methodological, like, plug and chug kind of thing at this point.

That being said, we could always look back into it if the legislature wanted to explore that.

There there might it's been fifteen years, so maybe it might be a good time to do something like that. Let me ask about the one bed per cell. No. I wanna ask a follow-up on the the standards. Are there standards and ratios in terms of to accomplish the portion of the mission of rehabilitation of of program individual coordinators that are not necessarily officers or maybe they have to be because they're in the prison.

I don't know the specifics to that. But are there other standards to the other needs that are obviously, medical, you have to have standards, psychiatric, all of that. I I get that. But are there other metrics that you maintain in terms of you need Probably, if it's a level, you know, two facility, your expectation is that there should be one counselor or one academic program, one teacher providing some support to every 50 individuals. Do those exist or do they not exist?

They do. For correctional counselors, for example, that's a set ratio. So as the pop goes up or down, it's adjusted. We also have teachers, vocational instructors, things like that at every prison. It is not a strict ratio there because we have different designs at different prisons. So Okay. I don't make it equal. If I don't have a classroom, for example, enough classrooms, I wouldn't keep adding teachers when I don't have a classroom for them to go in.

That's an over simplistic answer, of course. But, yes, we do have, programming and

I definitely wanna talk with you about classrooms, after the the set of questions, actually. The tell me about the standards that were set by CDCR on the cells that should have one bad double bunked, triple bunk that used to exist. I don't know if that's still is given the population numbers. Is is there a standard that you're looking to a national standard in that?

You know, so we used to call design capacity as, you know, one inmate per cell or one minute inmate per box. That was, like, the intention is long term. You want one person per cell, one person per box. Okay. We've embarked over a number of years on, you know, an effort we we sometimes refer to as the California model, which is to increase your normalization and dynamic security.

Normalization being, making life in prison, more similar to what it would be at home, which, would be, to me, it's not normal for two people to share a 60 square foot cell as I mentioned before. And then dynamic security is the idea that folks do better when there's more communication between staff and the incarcerated population. Most people think you wanna create distance. We want more interaction. You have better outcomes, less violence under those scenarios.

And so to the extent we can achieve more levels of one MA per cell, one MA per bunk, we get closer to that goal. Okay. If that makes sense.

So so I I understand what you're saying. I just wanna be clear that that that is the standard you're trying to reach then. Yes. One bunk per cell. Yes. K. How many bunks do we have? Sorry. How many cells do we have in current prisons that are open and operating?

Oh. Yeah. It's it's I I don't wanna give you a guesstimate number. We get the data every day and it's it's publicly available on our website. We can circle back and make sure you get that. I don't wanna just

I guess I'm trying to figure out what is your trajectory to accomplishing your goal of one per cell.

We have, go ahead, ... if You've got you got the numbers there. You know, we continue to get closer. Our population is not declining as much as it did previously. Obviously, we saw a huge decline in COVID. We dropped 25,000 in about a year. Okay. And we stabilized around the 90,000 now. And it's projected to go down slightly, but we're still, of course, looking at effects of Prop 36 and and other initiatives. Okay.

Let me now talk. Thank you. Those are all kind of basic fundamental questions just for me to understand, where you're at at the moment. Let me ask you about the, well, let me preface this by saying to our colleagues, we had a hearing at Donovan State Prison about a year and a half ago with member Quirk Silva and and member Fong and a few others from our select committee. And the point of that or the purpose of that was to understand whether, there are academic programs which have proven and demonstrated to, produce positive results as it relates to recidivism.

And so we hear testimony from participants, former and current participants. And one of the things that came to light was the issue of space classrooms and space. And it is my understanding from the LAO that this has not changed in the last couple years, and I think miss Quirk Silva, apparently, the legislation that she was focused on was hoping to accomplish this. But we do not currently have CDCR currently does not have an assessment of the utilization of your space. Is that correct?

That's not correct. So you could you can tell me today how much space, common space, classroom space may be available at each one of our prisons?

Yeah. We did a space assessment a couple years ago to ensure we're maximizing our space opportunity. So yes.

Okay. I don't know if the LAO representative that is here today was part of the report from 2024 or not. But the report stated and if anybody who's here can who did work on this, could help me, there was a summary of recommendations in the LAO report from 2024, which stated, CDCR and CCC, California Community Colleges, reported lack of sufficient space to hold in courses person courses, yet CDCR lacks a comprehensive assessment of its space utilization. This was 2024 from the LAO. So it sounds like this has been updated.

Do you have any comments on that?

Hi. Orlando Sanchez with the LAO. I helped write that report. We still haven't seen an assessment of that. It's possible they might have done an internal one, but it hasn't been shared with with our office.

Mister secretary, can you make that available to the legislature and the legislative analyst office? Yes. K. Appreciate that. There are some expenditures in the budget that may or may not be approved as a result of this budget process, which includes some prisons which potentially may face closures.

Whether that happens or doesn't happen, I'm not sure. It has already happened in the past that some prisons that were were budgeted to receive some pretty significant, capital improvement dollars to do some, improvements then went on to close Norco being being one example. If if if that were to happen, this year, do you do you, mister secretary, have the authority to utilize infrastructure dollars that are set aside in a budget to fund other infrastructure projects, or are you relegated to specific projects that are brought before us even if, like, a prison, for some reason, is closed or a project that the particular prison cannot be executed within a year for any number of reasons, closure, non closure just can't happen. What is your authority? What are you authorized to do in order to utilize those funds?

Complex question. I think, you know, if it's a major capital outlet project, it's funded for a specific location. I would not have the authority to move those funds. Okay. We have maintenance funding, a a a a a pot of funding for ongoing preventative maintenance, demand maintenance, that type of stuff that we are able to shift some of those resources.

And so that scenario, I might do that. We also have, you know, money for special repair and and and other small pots of money. But, you know, certainly, we don't wanna spend money on a place that we may not need. Okay.

I think you'll you'll appreciate the answers to those questions. I I probably will follow-up on the issue of the space utilization for sure and to see and identify those opportunities to continue to invest in those programs, particularly the ones I referred to with community colleges. I'm sure there are plenty other, important and and meaningful ones that can create the same type of change in people's lives. But from a perspective of collaborating our community college system, when a state agency with another state agency. I think there's a lot of opportunities that are currently being missed, and I hope that we can take advantage of those.

So we'll follow-up on that with you.

Yeah. We we appreciate our partnership with the community colleges. I think we have in person college. It's either at every prison or every prison but one right now. And so we do our best to work with those folks, noting the great recidivism data we get from those programs. Right.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you, Assemblymember Alvarez. The great questions. Assemblymember Elhawary, you had another question?

I don't think anyone asked this. I just wanted to make sure I followed up on it related to some of the sexual abuse that happened in the prisons. Can you tell us about some of the recent lawsuits that have been filed as some of these incarcerated women endured sexual abuse in custody and have any been settled? How many staff have been charged criminally or fired?

I I think, you know, there's been a lot of media attention on a on a case out of CCWF where we had a former officer that we referred for prosecution, was terminated, and is now serving time. There's ongoing litigation on a whole host of cases there, and I don't wanna get ahead of our litigation folks to say where we are unsettling. But, you know, those are moving through the process. They're particularly concerning for us. We really appreciate investments from the legislature and quite frankly, the the the interest in our in our female prisons.

And when I say the investment, I mean, in cameras and body worn cameras and things like that. We wanna stamp this out of our system. We don't tolerate it. And like I said, the the individual was prosecuted. It went on too long, and it's abhorrent.

And financially, have any cases been settled in terms of those lawsuits?

I I don't think so, but I I don't have that info in front of me.

Thank you. Can I ask a couple more questions? Okay. Thank you. I I know, we've kinda talked a little bit about our we've we've been talking about the budget, and and we talked about employees and kind of where you are in terms of the the numbers.

But I know in the agenda, it kind of really specifically looks at long term contractors versus the civil service positions themselves Mhmm. And how much more it costs. I would love to know kind of where you all are in terms of attracting and retaining more civil service employees and kind of evaluating how we can convert some of the long term contractor positions to more civil service positions to save some of that money given how much that discrepancy is?

Yeah. Great question. I mean, we we, of course, would love to be able to hire every one of our and and this is a primary health care issue, and I'll let my colleague jump in here too. But we would love to hire, but, you know, sometimes it's difficult based on a number of different factors, location and work environments and telework and things like that. I also, you know, saw the data in there, and I'm not sure how much of the benefits also play into that where it would balance those numbers out.

We're working collaboratively with both the plotter receiver and the Coleman receiver on these issues. And again, our our first choice would be to have civil service staff, and I don't know if mister Reeder has more to add.

Yeah. Good morning. Duane Reeder, California Correctional Healthcare Services. I have a couple of my HR folks here. But if you're interested in knowing, like, some of our hiring efforts, happy to share some of the things that they're working on and and doing to improve civil service hires.

Please do. One other thing I'll note in the in the contracted rates, there is overhead. So there there is a portion of that hourly rate that goes back to the contractor and not the not the contracted employee. So those rates in include an overhead amount. So when you think about, like, how much the actual contracted person is getting compared to a civil servant, it it does get a little bit closer.

And and one other point before we go over, we're also looking at other opportunities. Like, historically, we primarily use for mental health psychologists and licensed clinical social workers. We're able to get approved to start using marriage and family therapists, licensed psychiatric practitioners to expand our numbers. There's as many as those folks as there are social workers. So we're trying to be creative in this areas to the extent we can to bring more people in.

And again, in a perfect world, we'd have less mentally ill coming into prison.

Hi. Good morning. Cindy Ormichia. I am an assistant deputy director in human resources for CCHCS. Is that good? Okay. I think it's gonna be kind of a two part. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our workforce planning and some of the initiatives that we have going on there, and then my counterpart will be speaking on, vacancies and some other, initiatives that they're doing on the actual hiring side of it. So, just I'm gonna read a little bit just because I wanna make sure I don't miss anything.

We are really focused right now at CCHCS on a mark on a multifaceted approach to our marketing efforts. And we're doing this we really want to focus on trying to present as the employer of choice to get those candidates engaged and really want to come to work for us. We do that through many, many things. We have multiple national campaigns targeting top of the funnel awareness through educational outreach and partnerships, digital and social media, and print advertisements. Our efforts in 2025 through these different things, we do we attended 74 recruitment events, and that landed 350 direct leads into different classifications.

And this is all different medical, mental health, dental classifications that we are targeting for these positions. Our defined marketing presence includes web banners, digital ads, digital job posts, and these are on different various platforms, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, PracticeLink, and as well as various other health care platforms to really get our name out there and market ourselves. These all of these combined totaled 14,000 leads with 1,600 leads or 1614,000 leads, 1,600 applicants from those leads out of all of those various marketing. We also have that we're really proud of. We've been working very hard on establishing partnerships with various community colleges, trade schools, professional schools in areas especially where there are institution current institutions, especially those areas where the institutions have the highest vacancies.

So we've built those partnerships, and we are adding that in and my counterpart will talk about that in a minute about using that to help us do our hiring events and other focus recruitments in those areas. We also and this was something new that we started about eighteen months ago, two years ago, hosting virtual info sessions, and this can start from the simple basic how to get a state job, which it is fairly a confusing process. I I mean, we've got, you know, psychologists, clinical social workers that we have to walk through the process very often. It's confusing. So we host those as well as target focused classifications.

For instance, our psych tech will get a for any psych tech in the community that's interested in possibly coming to work for us, they can get on, and they will be able to speak with professionals in their area on these, virtual events. So they've been very successful, really great turnout. And then finally, while all of that that's happening, we also are planning future forward as with a retention unit. And the focus of the retention unit is gonna be that candidate engagement from the very beginning through the first year onboarding, first year of employment, and really monitoring employee wellness, employee happiness so that we can keep them and maintain them. And so it'll be our thought is from the beginning, the very hook all the way through retirement or leaving state service.

And we already have an exit interview exit process that we're hoping to we're building that, making it more robust that will help us track the reasons for these turnovers so we can help retain staff going forward.

Good morning. Denisha Colbert with Correctional Healthcare Services. And so I'm responsible for the hiring side of things. So our recruitment and retention strategies are centered around reducing barriers and entry into, and accelerating the hiring process. And so one of our strategies are we do the in person hiring events that Cindy mentioned.

We continue to host one day in person hiring events that have proven to be highly effective. At these events, candidates can move from the entire process starting from the examination or creating their CalCareers account up to receiving a tentative job offer in a single day. The impact of that is it significantly reduces the overall time to hire and help secure strong candidates before they pursue other opportunities because we're competing with other entities outside of the state. So far, we've hosted two events this year, and we have one today. And we're actively identifying additional institutions to target with the focus on those remote locations.

In 2025, we hosted a total of 15 in person events and hired almost 500 people. Another strategy we're using are virtual standing interviews. So four times a month, we host standing virtual interviews, and the goal is early engagement. We interview interested candidates within ten days of their application submission. This approach keeps candidates engaged and keeps prevents the drop off and helps us secure candidates expeditiously.

And so the hires that we made from our virtual hiring events, I believe, is a 121 to to to date with 33 people in the process as well.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Assembly member, if I may, Orlando Sanchez with the LAO. We recently released a report on chronic vacancies in the mental health area of the prison system. It's our understanding that the newly appointed receiver on the mental health federal court case, that's a priority for them. In that report, we offer several recommendations for the legislature to address some of these recurring things that can be on top of what the department's already pursuing or what the federal receiver is doing. Happy to go into details on those, but I can also share the the report with the committee as needed.

Thank you. I just I realized that I am hogging the mic, and I wanna pass it back to mister chair. But I did wanna just say I recently went to a prison. It was the women's prison. I cannot remember the name, but I think it's California's women's I'm not gonna you got it.

CIW. Thank you. California Institute for Women. And one of the things that we talked about actually with some of the folks who worked there was the the kind of discrepancy between the folks who worked there maybe partially through health care services, partially through some of the outside programming and the corrections officers themselves and kind of the cultural differences and how they treat the incarcerated folks themselves. And I'd love to talk to you about that, secretary, just to kind of better understand how we can make that better.

And even thinking about the wellness piece and the retention piece is partially related to how that is really hard for them to witness the great work they're doing and sometimes the the toughness that comes from the questions officers. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember. We've covered a lot of territory today. Appreciate that. Really appreciate all the panelists, the extra help that came in to talk about all these issues. And I just wanna conclude by saying that, you know, my previous experience on the budget subcommittee about three years ago, Secretary Macomber, you were there talking about the challenges that your department faces, and they are significant and complicated and had a briefing from the Department of Finance yesterday to talk about the Boston Consulting Group.

Understand, you know, that's an extremely complex thing. And and while it is not delivering results in the short term that that folks had hoped for, there is still hope that that will produce cost savings down the road. And I know particularly fruitful is in the workers' compensation system, trying to refine the processes to to move more quickly when employees are injured to avoid costly litigation down the road. And that's a big cultural shift that requires investment and time and training and new practices. But I am I continue to be struck by the fact that we don't really feel like we're on the same page.

You know, the members up here, Assemblymember Lackey has been here a really long time. Assemblymember Bonta both feel like we are in the dark as to what it is what the plan of the department is and how we're gonna have the the the cost savings and more importantly, the the shift in resources to rehabilitation. That the the one thing that came out of this hearing that just stuck in my mind was when you said with our college degree programs, we have a zero recidivism rate. That is a win by everybody in this room's judgment. And so how can we get more resources to that program to have those results?

And it seems to me that the complexity of the single person cell issue has to be looked at in light of facilities and the cost of maintaining facilities. Because it's not just as simple as it would be great if everybody had a single cell. That would be great if there was no cost constraints. But we live in a world of cost constraints. So we're gonna have to decide, you know, should we close facilities?

Should we modernize facilities? Where should we invest these dollars? What is the plan? Mhmm. And that's where we struggle.

And that was my point to to mister Francois is that, you know, we need to be rolling up our sleeves now. We have sixty days before the May revise. The idea that the deactivation decisions are not part of our conversation today, that the the scale of the cost savings on the BCC contract are not part of our conversations today. We're gonna wait for the mayor revised to do that. And, you know, I know you're doing planning for facilities, but you've you said that three years ago too when I was here.

I remember distinctly. And Reggie Jones Sawyer, Assemblymember Sawyer, chair of the committee, expressed grace frustration going back ten years to we seem to always be promising that we're gonna have the plan or the information or the collaboration in the future. And and here we are in the present. And and it's deeply frustrating to every member of this committee. I imagine it's frustrating to you too.

And you have limited resources and you have to make decisions about, you know, what where you're gonna spend these precious state dollars. But we have to get a handle on this. You know, we just literally I I come from local government, and we don't have the $14,000,000,000 systems, but we have a capital improvement plan that says, here's everything we need to be buying. Here's how we have to maintain the roofs. Here's all the investments that we need to make over the next twenty years.

And here's our revenue stream. And here's how these things connect or don't. And that's what we need to understand these things in context and be able to actually make the change that you wanna see, that we all wanna see, that miss Amber Rose Howard wants to see. And I suspect when we hear from the members of the public, there's gonna be a large number of people here too that say, we need to get to that place. So is there anything you can say to give me hope and optimism?

Well, yes. I appreciate your comments. I know there's tough decisions on where to prioritize funding. Mhmm. And we've heard concerns with legislature that we don't have a comprehensive plan. So as I referenced before, we're we're putting gonna put forth a twenty year comprehensive plan. So both can see we have a plan.

Just pause right there and just give you more timelines on that. So you're doing it. When's it gonna be done? When are we gonna be part of the collaboration and developing that? Is the public is how does that happen?

So this we we don't view this as a one time plan where we do it when we're done. This is something that has to evolve over time. Because if I came forward and said, hey. I need a billion dollars for air conditioning next year, I doubt you're going to fund that. So there has to be some flexibility.

The plan has to evolve over time. And so we wanna have open dialogue and discussions with you folks, the LAO, and others, once this is complete. So you see that. And we've also produced reports in the past at the legislator's request. You know, we did the capacity report.

And, unfortunately, it sounds like a lot of folks haven't seen that report. It is publicly available on our website and was produced to the legislature. The 12 prison study identified we needed 12 plus billion dollars for, facility renovations. This is 567 years ago. But the rate of inflation in the construction industry, we know that's 20,000,000,000.

And so and we we appreciate there's difficult choices to be made and people have different priorities. I will reiterate that, with the closures we've done so far, we've saved over $1,000,000,000 a year ongoing. Our portion of the state budget continues to go down. We were nine percent ten years ago or 6%. And so to think you know, to to point the fingers, the CDCR is a source of the state's budget problem.

I disagree with that. And I think we have a real opportunity to change the culture in corrections going forward. Twenty years ago, we had an art of rehabilitation, and almost nobody liked it or believed it. Twenty years later now, people are on board. They understand the benefit of rehabilitation.

Some of the stats I quoted today, there's people that said, you know, we don't have the proof of it. We have the hard data, and we do wanna get more people in college. I gotta get them high school diploma GED sometimes first. Mhmm. I also need to get, some folks who aren't gonna be, good college students.

I need to get those folks to vocational programs. So they have skills when they go out. That's that that's a key reentry barrier. So I figure I've ate up enough time on my closing comment, but those are some some thoughts for me.

And those are all great ambitious bipartisan supported efforts. So let's just put more precision on the report that you described. When is that going to be completed?

I anticipate the next sixty days.

Sixty days in time for us to be considering that information in the this budget side.

Yeah. And and and to be clear, we're not necessarily going to see in the spring process a capital outlay request or anything this round. You will see it in the you'll start seeing requests in the 27-28 process. Okay. But this will foreshadow some of the significant needs.

And I say significant because, you know, the last person we put air conditioner in air conditioning in down at our state prison, Probably four or five years ago, that was in excess of a $150,000,000, which my guess is that same project now would be at least $250,000,000. So the the scope of this is going to be eye opening for some folks.

That sounds like it, but it I'm not surprised given the size of the system and the expenditures that you have. These are big numbers, regardless. But is this report gonna be able to highlight the choices that we have regarding, you know, single cells and facilities? Is it

This has been to address long term capital outlay needs. I don't think it will specifically address single cells, but we'll lay out the vision of the California model where we want more normalization and dynamic security and understanding that some people are on board with that, some people have other ideas. Mhmm.

So the the what this report is gonna produce is here are the most pressing capital needs program over the next twenty years, and it's gonna be a very, very large number because of the reasons we talked about. But it's it's not gonna get at what we will need to do is we need to invest in these facilities to meet the next twenty years maintenance and rehabilitation requirements. And to do that, we also are going to have to keep the the prison population at a certain number. You know, what are all the expectations and assumptions in that document that are that are variables in the equation?

Well, what we're really trying to do is we know, like, roofs last thirty years for the sake argument that plug in our plan in every thirty years, we're gonna have to have a a dollar amount to put a new roof on it. Mhmm. The roof leaks and then we have all kinds of other problems, electrical problems, conditions of confinement. So there are bots who are clearly frustrated with litigation. But to get out of litigation, I have to have, you know, humane and safe environments, not only for the incarcerated, but for our staff that work there.

And I'm going to the side here. You know, I want what other state agencies have and the legislature has. I want, you know, safe work environments. I don't want, of my staff or the incarcerated to live in, housing units that are 90 degrees, in the summer. I want Wi Fi access like you folks have and other state employees have, but we don't have all that necessarily in corrections.

And so we're trying to get a baseline of where we need to get to. And I understand we can have reasonable policy debates on the on the the whole single selling versus prison closure. I understand there's some tough choices here, and I I look forward to continued discussion on it. Do I have a document that says this is exactly where we're going? No. But I think we can continue to discuss this and and and get you the information that you're looking for.

Well, I'm encouraged that we have a date that we're gonna have. Let's let's say May 15.

Is that we're April or March 18 today. And, by May 15, we're gonna have a report that describes the capital needs over the next twenty years, the major expenditures required to maintain the facilities and keep them there. And then we're gonna on have an ongoing conversation about, you know, how can we provide that funding if at all and, you know, what does that mean for overall facility contraction or expansion and this question of how many prisoners should be in a particular cell and the vision of that and how we're moving to the California model over time.

Yeah. And the one of the last point on that too is we do some of these retrofits with air conditioning and roofs and ADA. I'm gonna have to vacate facilities. So I'm gonna need some swing space as well-to-do that. I can't put new roofs and air conditioning units and expect people still live in those units.

And so we will have to have a number of those temporarily deactivated to accommodate that need. So that those types of things are also addressed. And we look forward to your feedback on it.

Well, I look forward to getting the report, and you'll have no opportunity, no shortage of opportunities for us to have a continuing conversation. So thank you for being here. Thank you for everybody else, who who were here. We'll now go to public comment, and there's a microphone up there. So please come on up. Try and keep your remarks, as brief as possible, and, look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you, secretary.

Please. Yes. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, mister chair and the, committee. As a formerly incarcerated person now leading Transformative Programming Works, thank you all for tackling this complicated subject. I wanna highlight that the most effective form of rehabilitation provided by community based organizations receives less than 1% of the CDCR's budget. I agree with the legislature that we need to invest more money into community based rehabilitative programs through the right grant. This investment would further reduce recidivism rates and result in cost reductions due to shortened sentences from credit earning and less people returning to prison. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Danica Rodarmel, Hall Consulting on behalf of Transformative Programming Works and the GRIP Training Institute. Really do appreciate this hearing today, committee and staff, and the opportunity for all of us to really dig into a very big budget and the decisions we make as a state about what to fund. I echo my colleague Ken's comments and also just wanna add as we are as a state identifying efficiencies, to reduce the unnecessary spending that's happening within the department that we really shift some of those funds over to community based rehabilitative programmings, which has been shown to effectively reduce the prison population and recidivism. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, mister chair, members. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME. On behalf of our members, who are the frontline medical and mental health staff at CDCR, I just wanna thank the work of this committee and the pointed questions by the assembly members today, related to transparency and accountability. We echo the concerns of the $20,000,000 allocation, to to BCG to address operational and workforce challenges. This firm has faced significant scrutiny regarding transparency, accountability, and work with controversial clients, which raises concerns about how taxpayer dollars are being used.

We're also concerned with the administration's BCP on the office of the inspector general's request to use contracted staff to develop recruitment and retention programs for mental health positions. The state is now outsourcing not just the work, but the solution to its workforce challenges. And this raises a fundamental question. Why are we paying premium consultant rates instead of investing directly in hiring and retaining qualified state employees or making other infrastructure investments. We respectfully urge, assembly members to continue doing this work, to continue to scrutinize the agency's use of of taxpayer dollars. Thank you.

Thank you, miss O'Malley.

Hi. Courtney Hanson, with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Yesterday, we released a relevant report to this conversation called No Time to Wait, a case for releasing elders from California's women's prisons. I have some copies here. Our state women's prison specifically have been riddled with abuse for decades.

Scandal after scandal including forced sterilizations, rampant staff sexual abuse, excessive force, routine medical neglect, and preventable death. Our report produced with the policy advocacy clinic at UC Berkeley finds that incarcerated elders who make up one in five people incarcerated at CCWF and CIW is unjustified, costly, and inhumane. Releasing these people will help California address the crisis of this rapidly aging population. We spend 300,000,000 annually specifically on these people in the women's prisons. We need more efficient and meaningful use of elder parole and other release mechanisms, and we need investment in community based reentry.

We really want to caution against expanding prison like reentry facilities run by the same department, which is had a proven track record of not being accountable or transparent or able to care for people. We can release these elders, grandmothers, cancer patients, people who have served served extreme sentences and aged out of crime and give them genuine care and services within the community. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi. Jim Lindberg with the Friends Committee on Legislation of California. I just really wanna thank you for this hearing. I think oversight and accountability is often neglected function here in the legislative process. I wasn't sure I would speak today, but I reacted to a comment by Assembly Member Bata about making the system smaller.

And I think that is really the only way that we're ever going to have the kind of prison system that we want and that taxpayers deserve. We talked a little bit about the San Quentin model. That's one prison out of 33. How much would it cost to put that in place system wide? It would be unsustainable.

So I'm also reminded that a lot of the responsibility for what happens in CDCR is in this building and with the voters. And only when the federal courts got deeply involved and said, we're gonna manage your prison population if you, the legislature, won't do it, did we start to do meaningful things such as realignment? And I'm very and then the Senate, put in place a policy called Roca, which was to demonstrate to the federal courts that we were really serious about reducing prison population and that we would not pass any enhancements or create new felonies. That policy is no longer in place. It has been concerning to me to see new bills popping up all the time now with sentencing enhancements, and we're talking about creating new felonies.

I think we need to if if we're not gonna fix the system, at the very least, let's let's not make it worse. And that requires bipartisanship. Some of the best reformers that started reducing prison population were Republican governors. I hope we could come to that that realization. But when we went from, indeterminate sentencing to determinate sentencing, We put sentencing in the hands of the legislative process, and we know what happened.

Despite Building 23 new prisons, the population and overcrowding was just out of control. It was a Frankenstein scenario where we created this monster, and then the monster started controlling us. So I hope that we're not repeating history, and, wanna thank you again for having this hearing today.

Thanks. Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon, chair members. My name is Elizabeth Kim, and I represent Initiate Justice. My colleague here, Amber Rose, eloquently covered ongoing fiscal challenges. I would like to specifically address California's aging prison population. I currently go into two facilities monthly to teach college inside, And High Desert, for example, is a a a concerning medically disabled elderly facility.

They I've seen the population in mobile and wheelchairs. They're hearing impaired, vision impaired due to age. And we are also seeing recent hit pieces that rely on fear based narratives. These are political distractions that ignore the reality that California's parole process is among the most rigorous in the country, and they failed to address the very real fiscal impacts that we heard today while doing nothing to improve public safety. Last year, delaying parole for just 100 individuals was estimated to cost at least $2,600,000,000 for over ten years.

Delaying release for a single elderly person by just three years can cost $1,500,000. The state of California taxpayers cannot afford this while facing cuts to their own housing and health care. We need to make a better policy choice. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Hart and committee members. Dax Proctor on behalf of CURB. During the last month, our coalition members submitted over 4,000 letters to this and other budget subcommittees to draw attention to our California budget that consistently prioritizes correction spending while reducing funds for vital safety net services that keep communities safe and out of crisis. The coalition is calling for the identification and closure of additional state prisons on a clear timeline aligned with population decline in the near term and a durable strategic consolidation plan for the long term. The advancement of pathways to release elders and medically vulnerable people, After all, there is no public safety justification for continuing to incarcerate 80 and 90 year olds with dementia, the halting of wasteful corrections infrastructure projects, reinvestment in essential social programs and services, especially those facing state and federal disinvestment.

California cannot afford to balance its budget on the backs of low income families, elders, immigrants, and communities already struggling to survive. True public safety is built through stable housing, accessible health care, quality education, and strong community support, not through persistent CDCR budget overspending. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is April Grayson with the Sister Warrior Freedom Coalition. I urge the legislature to immediately address the sexual abuse crisis in California's women's prisons. Not only because of this serious human right violation, but also because it cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. When CDCR talks about the sexual assaults, it is mentioned as a one off situation or a bad apple scenario.

When actuality is systemic and has been going on for decades. Hundreds of women have filed lawsuits against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, alleging decades of sexual abuse by staff. This ongoing abuse prompted the US Department of Justice open a civil rights case in 2024. In separate federal cases, 13 women who reported sexual assault also faced retaliation. On August '24, officers violently attacked a housing unit of women with physical violence, tear gas, and pepper spray.

They were confined for hours. They were left without food, water, and medication. A lot of these women were alerted to the substances that were being poured onto them by these officers. Many of the women in this particular housing unit have filed abuse claims. We have yet to provide safety for the survivors of these ongoing rapes and continued violence.

These women need to be released. The financial consequences are already significant. Individual settlements have reached millions of dollars, including a 3,700,000.0 payout in 2023. With hundreds of survivors, the state's liability could reach tens or even hundreds of millions. Stopping the sexual abuse is not only the right thing to do, it is far less expensive than continuing to pay for the consequences of the systemic failure. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Emily Harris, and I'm here on behalf of Curb and Sister Warriors. I wanted to appreciate the dialogue this morning. Having been witness to a lot of the budget hearings over the last two decades, I think this was a very subs very wonderful dialogue in terms of really creating, more pressure for accountable spending from CDCR. And I wanted to just really lift up that the population reductions that have happened in the last ten years really are the only durable solution to reducing prison prison spending, but also to address all the conditions of whether it's overcrowding, whether it's a desire for single selling, whether it's addressing the sexual violence in the women's prisons.

We gotta get people out of there. And there's a lot of avenues that we can utilize now, including, secretary, your own ability to recommend people for resentencing. My hope that in order to get to single selling, instead of saying that as, like, single selling or prison closure, that actually you could have single selling and prison closure. And part of that is about utilizing every authority you have to get all of those elderly people out of the prisons, all of the people who've been assaulted by your staff out of the prisons. There's a lot more we could be doing, and the discussion really should be be be utilizing every single possible avenue to get people out of there, and then we can close more of these facilities.

Thank you, miss Harris.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Kamal Butcher. I represent Uncommon Law. We support people navigating California's discretionary parole process through trauma informed legal representation, mental health counseling, legislative and policy advocacy, along with in person programming led by those who have been through the process themselves. Over the last twenty years, we've represented hundreds of clients in their parole hearings, many of them elderly clients undergoing elderly parole hearings.

CDCR recently released the SB 108 report regarding alternatives to incarceration for the elderly, disabled, and medically vulnerable. This report makes clear the implications of the aging crisis in our prison system. A significant amount of CDCR are spending is driven by disproportionate health care costs for the aging population, consistent with recently released CCHCS debt data showing that health care costs can climb upwards of $450,000 per year for a single elderly individual. California prisons are becoming nursing homes with cages, burning precious taxpayer resources without any public safety benefit. The situation is guaranteed to worsen without any real budgetary oversight and legislative action.

So we want to uplift important solutions mentioned in the s b 108 report, such as investing in transitional housing that can accommodate the needs of this aging and medically complex population, and ensuring that barriers in existing, release programs, such as elderly parole, compassionate release, and medical parole are urgently addressed by the legislature. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good morning or afternoon, chair and members of the committee. Esteban Nunez, I'm here on behalf of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, CROP, California's for Safety and Justice, and Repack. Really appreciate the opportunity, the hearing, the continued conversations around consolidation. We think it's very important. We also wanna just emphasize the need to prioritize the savings of of of these closures to be allocated towards reentry services, victim victim services as as well as rehabilitative programmings in prison.

I am an example of what rehabilitative programming and proper support services look like, and I'm I'm not an anomaly. I've seen a lot of individuals who have had ample opportunities to get support services through various organizations, some of which you you heard come before you today. And and those, organizations can do a lot more, if if we had a lot more resources to provide for.

So thank you. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning. Eric Henderson on behalf of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. As one of my colleagues noted, I really wanna appreciate the comments from yourself and the committee members this morning because we've been asking these very same questions for many, many years as well with no successful responses. As noted, the prison population is gonna continue to go decline over the projected period, and we really wanna encourage the legislature to reduce correction spending, the corrections infrastructure footprint, and close at least one prison.

Although and as noted, there could be more than one prison that is closed. And especially in light of the cuts to health care, nutrition programs, education programs as assembly member Alvarez mentioned, it's really, really important to look closely at CDCR's budget and see where we can trim. Next, as noted by another one of my colleagues, there we really encourage ongoing oversight over around the ongoing sexual violence and harm at the women's designated facilities and at all CDCR facilities. Quite honestly, release and other mechanisms need to be explored to, right some of these wrongs and including prevention, more emphasis on prevention. And then lastly, we really wanna explore encourage the legislature to explore solutions around the rapidly aging population as mentioned by my colleague at Uncommon Law.

There are many, many people who are currently incarcerated who post no unreasonable risk to public safety who could and should be released. And we should explore parole elder parole, resentencing opportunities, and other mechanisms. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon, mister chair. My name is Mica Doctoroff, and I'm here on behalf of Smart Justice California. Thank you so much for the discussion today. As others have said, it's been really important and illuminating. And as you've heard today and and heard many times before, the state budget is really a reflection of California's values.

And in that spirit, and this came up a lot today as well, we would encourage the legislature to really consider to continue to consider the trade offs that come with continuing to operate a prison system at the current capacity despite current populations far below capacity and thousands of beds empty statewide. Continuing on this trajectory is not only fiscally imprudent in general and and particularly right now given the state of the budget, but it also means less money for other services that prevent harm and crisis, including violence prevention, social safety net services, medical and mental health care, and other critical community safety programs. We applaud the legislature's important role in the state's recent prison closures and urge further closures. As you've heard, reductions to state operated prison capacity have resulted in roughly a billion dollars in general fund savings annually, and it has also allowed the state to avoid funding infrastructure repairs that would otherwise need be needed to continue operating these facilities. The state, as you've heard, is in a position to continue with these closures, and we would really encourage the legislature to continue to fulfill this important role.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for those excellent comments. With that, I just wanna thank my incredible staff, Jennifer Kim and Christian Griffith for preparing this hearing today and for all of your wonderful comments as panelists. It's been very helpful to surface these issues, and we look forward to continuing to make progress this budget year on the issues that came up today in the hearing. Thank you, secretary and and everybody else. Appreciate it.