Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 6 on Public Safety

Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Assembly Budget Subcommittee Number Six, which covers public safety. Today, we'll be covering issues from the Board of State and Community Corrections and the Department of Justice. I'd like to welcome special guests today who have traveled to our hearing from all corners of the state: Chairman Joseph James of the Yurok Tribe, Matthew Munoz of Big Sandy Rancheria.

We have Morning Star Gali from Indigenous Justice, and Chief Ranger Bill Denke and Investigator Juan Sanchez from the Pechanga Band of Mission Indians.

Thank you for all being here today. All public comment will be taken at the end of our last item, and each person will have up to one minute for public comment. We will not be taking any votes today. Speakers are listed in speaking order for each of the items. Please keep your remarks within the allotted time communicated to you by my staff.

We will now move to our first issue under the Board of State and Community Corrections. For this issue, we'll have two panels. Panelists are listed in speaking order, and please keep your remarks within the time limits provided. We'll move forward on Issue One, Grants Administration. Panel One, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Grant Program.

Before we get started, there are a couple of things I'd like to comment on. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Grant Program was an effort that began to lay a foundation for tackling both a national and statewide crisis. We've had a long history of thousands of missing Native American people, yet their cases are often overlooked and are excluded from statistics that illustrate this dangerous crisis. Some statistics that we do know is that over eighty percent of Native Americans experience violence in their lifetime.

Homicide is a top three cause of death for Native American youth, and Native American women face murder rates that are 10 times the national average in some jurisdictions.

The modest grant program has laid the groundwork for tribal communities to implement public education, community based, and law enforcement strategies, and other solutions so that we can actively work to end this crisis in the state of California. In order for the work to continue, the resources need to be there consistently so that we don't halt progress and lose momentum to bring justice and resolution to the Native American communities here in the state of California.

In another statement of the data that I just shared with you, anywhere else, we would see a task force assembled to combat this. But yet, here in the state of California, we are making that call here today in 2026. As now we move on to Panel One, we'll start with Chairman Joe James.

Would you like to go, Chairman? Or would you like BSCC to go and do the overview?

We can do the overview.

Alright. Okay. Colleen.

Great.

Good afternoon, Chair Ramos. My name is Colleen Curtin. I serve as Deputy Director of the Corrections Planning and Grant Programs Division at the Board of State and Community Corrections. Thank you for inviting us here today. I'm happy to provide an update on our grants management practices and on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIP, Grant Program.

The MMIP grant makes competitive grants, as you know, available to federally recognized Indian tribes in California to support efforts to identify, collect case level data, publicize, investigate, and solve cases involving missing and murdered indigenous people. Allowable grant activities include, but are not limited to, developing culturally based prevention strategies, strengthening responses to human trafficking, and improving cooperation and communication between state, local, federal, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Currently, BSCC administers a total of 36 MMIP grants, which were awarded over three separate cohorts.

Individual grant awards range from $436,000 up to $1,000,000. We have five collaborative grants, which were awarded to more than one tribe in a partnership model, and those were awarded at $2,000,000 each.

A little bit of history, and I think you know all of this, but for the benefit of the committee, initially, the MMIP grant was appropriated at $12,000,000 total to be dispersed over the course of three years. Our agency put out a request for proposal and the response was low.

And so we undertook aggressive outreach, thanks to my staff Eddie Escobar here, traveling around the state, attending various tribal association meetings, and really making an effort to build relationships and let tribes know about this grant. An additional $12,000,000 was added in fiscal year 2023, so we released a second RFP, and I'm happy to report the response to that RFP was much higher.

Our outreach efforts were successful, and we were able to award the full amount of funding that was available.

And then with the 2024 budget, a second one time augmentation came through of $13,250,000, and so we issued a third RFP. The response to that third RFP was also very high. We were able to award the full amount. So between the original appropriation and the two one time augmentations, BSCC has awarded $35,400,000 total to federally recognized Indian tribes in California. I was asked to provide a very brief overview of our grants administration processes, so I'll do that now.

We undertake a range of activities to support our grantees. All of our grantees attend a grantee orientation at the start of a new grant. They are briefed on what it means to have a BSCC grant, what our reporting requirements are, and how they can access ongoing technical assistance. Our staff convene our grantees on a quarterly basis via a virtual webinar. This is an opportunity for our agency to provide updates as well as for the grantees to network and share insights and challenges.

At the start of each grant, our staff conduct an in person visit to meet the tribe in person, make sure they have what they need to operate their grant, and offer hands on technical assistance. During the middle of the grant, we will conduct a more comprehensive monitoring visit, again, to assess the grantee's progress in implementing their grant activities and assess any technical needs they might have.

All grantees submit quarterly progress reports, reporting on both qualitative and quantitative data. Our agency has an amazing research team that works closely with all of our grantees, but in particular, with the tribes in developing progress report templates that are reflective of the activities that the grantee is undertaking.

And finally, all of our grantees are required to submit an evaluation plan at the start of the grant to describe how they plan to evaluate their outcomes, and they are required to submit an evaluation report at the conclusion to tell the story of their grant, whether they achieved the outcomes they intended, and what kinds of challenges and successes they encountered.

I will hand it over now to Eddie Escobar, who is a field representative for BSCC, and he's the lead staff on the MMIP grant.

Good afternoon, Chairman Ramos. It's kind of weird to be at an angle here. So, Eddie Escobar, field representative with the Corrections Planning and Grant Programs Division. It is an honor to be here and a privilege to be able to share just a snapshot of some of the creative ways the tribes are using MMIP funding to confront this crisis. I do want to acknowledge that as I use the acronym MMIP, I use the term respectfully.

Through listening to experiences and stories of many who have lost loved ones, I acknowledge that this is more than just an acronym to them. It represents much, much more. As administrator of the MMIP project, I've had the humble opportunity to learn and understand many tribes' histories, cultures, and traditions. I see our relationships as a mutual partnership. With that said, I appreciate being able to see many of my MMIP partners here.

We were talking earlier, so it's good to kind of be together to see them in person. Over the last few years, in working with the tribes from all three cohorts, it's been so rewarding to see so many of their projects be answers to their community's needs. In the interest of time, I will just mention a few of the projects that I've seen.

One that was difficult to hear, just the hurt from the community, was from the Hoopa Valley community that experienced an unfortunate gang related murder of a kid from their local high school. As part of the tribe's efforts to bring healing to the community, the Hoopa Tribal Education Association used MMIP funding to sponsor a gardening project and use other creative trauma informed activities such as painting, ceramics, and other art forms at Hoopa Valley High School.

Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians recently used grant funding to support families experiencing domestic violence, providing them with temporary shelter, food, and counseling services. Big Sandy, who's here, is providing domestic violence counseling and case management to over 200 tribal members, including providing extensive services to those tribal members who are most at risk. In collaboration with three other tribes, the Pinoleville Pomo Nation is providing services as well.

Next week, 15 youth will attend Native Youth Empowerment Day at UC Davis. This conference aims to provide youth with educational resources and support for native pathways into higher education.

Next month, locally, the Wilton Rancheria will hold its second MMIP law enforcement training where deputies from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department will be educated on PL 280 and other cultural awareness trainings to strengthen the understanding of and working with the tribal communities. Further south, the Torres Martinez tribe recently broke ground on their first 16 tiny homes of what is called a planned trauma informed tiny home village.

These tiny homes will temporarily house their community members who are most vulnerable and at high risk of MMIP. Their opening ceremony will be sometime in June. I'm going to skip a little bit because I know for time's sake, and I want to be respectful of that.

In San Diego County, the Jamul Indian Village has established its first of its kind regional coalition of nine tribal nations, law enforcement, and community partners to address the MMIP crisis in a coordinated way called MMIP San Diego. Recently, I attended one of MMIP San Diego's Amber Alert and Indian Country trainings, where they brought together various tribal, local, state, and federal law enforcement partners from across California to improve coordination and prevention efforts in missing child cases.

In strengthening protective factors for indigenous youth, this month at both Pala and Jamul, coalition partners are hosting Zion Story, an interactive theater based program that explores real life at risk factors such as bullying, substance use, mental health challenges, and online exploitation. The play teaches youth and adults how to recognize and respond early to MMIP risk factors. To conclude, Chairman, like Jamul, there are many more diverse and creative ways tribes are using these funds.

These are just a few. Besides the specific MMIP initiatives just mentioned, in the next few months, many other tribes such as Pit River, Dry Creek Rancheria Band, the Round Valley Indians, and the La Jolla Band will be hosting various events, gatherings, or prayer walks in efforts to bring healing, education, and MMIP awareness, not just to their tribal communities, but also surrounding non tribal communities. Some of these events host anywhere from 100 to 300 community members, including various local law enforcement agencies.

By combining public awareness, culturally grounded education, coalition building, and cross agency collaboration, the MMIP grant is not only addressing the immediate crisis, but also building a long term foundation for a safer, more informed, more connected tribal community across California. I conclude, Chairman Ramos.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for that testimony. We'll now move to Chairman Joe James.

Good afternoon, Chairman Ramos. I wanted to say thank you for your work and your leadership, and all of you up here in support. I always think about where I'm at and why I'm there. We're talking about murdered and missing indigenous people. Growing up as a young kid, there was no help.

There was no resources at that time. It just wasn't there. That was the norm. And we're still fighting that crisis of abduction, of hurt, harm, regarding our youth, regarding our women, regarding our girls of missing. What the state has said, NSU, a number of times in your college, in your leadership, in your caucus, no more, through via action, via funding.

And again, we're in this room here today talking about murdered and missing indigenous people. A lot of people don't have a voice no more. We are here to speak on their behalf and support them, their families, people that have unsolved cases, people that are still going through that trauma of unknown because their loved one hasn't gotten home or been laid to rest, or they're still searching for them. That's the mountain that we're all dealing with and talking about that's ongoing.

We just recently had an MMIP summit.

I know the number is bigger than that, but it was about 600 plus people that were there at that two day summit of us all coming together. It's not just us as tribes, us as a community, us as county, also as law enforcement. All rallying and coming together collectively as a whole in support of this program. Again, so it is bringing us together. We still got a long way to go.

We are slowly moving the needle. At the end of the day, is the needle being moved? You gotta ask yourself that. When you have the Feather Alert out there, I believe there's only probably four or five in the United States with some type of indigenous alert across the nation as first peoples. That Feather Alert, with the help of yourself, Chairman, and your colleagues and the legislature, the Governor.

We are helping our people. We are helping save lives. It is moving the needle. What we're doing collectively, we got a long way yet to go. But when we're talking about this, we're talking generations.

When we're talking about this program and this funding, we're talking about generational trauma. Back in the day, they said it was okay to take us, to remove us, take us to boarding schools, take our children to boarding schools, remove them when they're talking. It's all related. That was the standard, the norm back then. That's the issue we are still dealing with today.

And it's gonna take a while, but again, as a state of California legislator. I stand here today and fully support the MMIP program. I'm advocating for funding to be included in this year's budget. I know cohort one, as the director mentioned, two and three, did answer the bell regarding budget. We did meet that.

And as it's growing, it truly is growing. I asked for that funding to be included in this year's budget. Not only that, but also to exceed the dollar amount that's previously been in there. Because, again, we're not just talking about a dollar. We're not talking about a resource.

We're talking about a human being. When it was okay to take us. It was okay to murder us. It was okay to that's not okay. That's what we're dealing with when you put a number to it. And so I ask and advocate for the continuation of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People program and to be included in this year's budget and to exceed the previous request.

Again, I thank you for allowing me here to provide testimony, allow me to speak, not just on behalf of myself or the tribe, our program, but to speak on people that are no longer here no more. That's what we're doing. We're speaking on behalf of them. We hear them. We see them.

They're here. They're remembered. They have a voice. This crisis has been going on too long, as we all know. But can I say I thank you, Chairman, for being able to speak on this matter?

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chairman James. Now we'll move to Mr. Matthew Munoz, tribal council secretary, Big Sandy Rancheria Band of Western Mono Indians.

Manahue. Good afternoon, everybody. Matthew Munoz from Big Sandy Rancheria. Yeah. This is a heavy topic that no one wants to talk about, but we're here talking about it.

And as for Big Sandy Rancheria, we are just happy and we feel very blessed that we were awarded this grant, and it is helping our community and our tribe in ways that we could never imagine. We shined a light on something, and it's really impacting our tribe as a whole with having our sister communities and our sister tribes coming together and agreeing to something because, you know, sometimes we don't all agree on different topics.

But this one topic, we can agree on fully 100%. And we just had our last little tribes with surrounding about four of us helping and all coming together and agreeing on this topic, which is huge. And, yes, I agree with my tribal leader here as well.

We need further funding for this in the future because I believe it's a three year grant that we got awarded, and it's a lifetime fight. It's not gonna end just in three years. We're not gonna say, hey, this epidemic is gone and over with. It's going into the future, unfortunately, and we wanna protect all of our people, northern, central, southern tribes.

And so, like I said, we're very blessed that we got awarded this grant, and I'm just advocating that we need to have furthermore funding for this grant as we already were awarded it. We feel that we are just blessed to have it. And speaking on our tribes, you know, people that aren't here anymore, one of our personal tribal members that passed away. It's kind of a cold case going on, as Bessie Walker.

It hits our community hard, having that generational trauma with their family and then reaching out to the rest of our community.

This grant helps out a lot with the application that we get to work with, with the collaboration with the MMIP, Indigenous Justice. They're here as well. So helping all those little domino effects helps in a bigger picture. So thank you very much for hearing us. Thank you, Mr. Ramos, for all the work that you do in Indian Country.

A lot of this wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that voice and not speaking at the table. So thank you very much, Mr. Ramos. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony. We'll now go to Bill Denke, Chief Ranger and Director of Public Safety from the Pechanga Tribal Rangers.

Good afternoon. And I'm very humbled to be here, Chairman Ramos, representing the Pechanga Band of Indians. Like my colleague here, very, very pleased to get awarded this grant. We saw huge needs and gaps in service that we'll be sharing on the second panel. In short, we were able to hire a dedicated investigator for missing persons and precursor type cases, along with somebody trained in sex trafficking.

Also, our Child Family Services department was able to hire a social worker dedicated to and specializing in the commercial sexual exploitation of young girls. So, you know, we talk about gaps, and really that gap is from that historical, inherent distrust over generations and generations of outside law enforcement.

And I don't say that lightly. I've been working in Indian Country and working for tribal communities for thirty three years. I saw it thirty three years ago, and I still see it today. And that's despite some amazing effort by sheriff's departments with their outreach, doing everything they can. But really, without that tribal department, it's just that people trust the people in their community.

So you'll hear a little bit more on that on Panel Two. As far as the way the grants go, we couldn't be happier with the response we get.

Eddie, you're amazing. We reach out to you, you respond, you answer your emails. You've been very flexible. Obviously, we can't change our grant project because it was competitive. But as we work through it, we realized we could tweak some things where we had need somewhere else to continue the spirit of our program going.

You're always there to listen and you take things back and we can talk about that. So that's greatly appreciated. Understand that we don't always know, right? We get into this.

We ask for what we think we need, but they're like, darn it, we didn't really need that, but we need this. So that is very appreciated. And the only thing I could say, and this is not a negative, I know one thing can be tough with tribes is on that reporting end.

You know, we're reporting quarterly. We don't have grant departments. We don't have dedicated grant staff in our departments. It's usually the department head and somebody on staff that's maybe written a grant before. So my only recommendation, I guess, is just always be sensitive with policy and stuff on reporting.

And we can make it easier on the quarterlies where it's more check the boxes, maybe an annual where we hit those narratives. And maybe some type of, you know, in this next year, a listening session with all the tribes. Let them kind of talk about that, because I know it's not unique to your grant. Right? The reporting, it can be a lot of work.

So, Chairman, that's all I have right now. I appreciate this opportunity wholeheartedly. So thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Department of Finance?

Kyle Gaiman, Department of Finance. Nothing to add. Just here to listen. Thank you.

Thank you. LAO?

Drew Soderborg with the Legislative Analyst's Office. We're just here to answer questions.

Thank you. Bringing it back to the dais. Assemblymember Schultz.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the panel for being here. It is always a privilege to hear from California's first peoples, and I thank you all for being here today so that I can hear your testimony, and thank you in advance for answering my questions. I'll try to be as clear in my questioning as I can. And before I go on, Mr. Chair, I just want to thank you for your leadership on this issue.

It's a privilege to work with you every day, sir. I had one question, and sir, I think it kind of dovetails into some of the comments that you were making, but I open this up to any and all members of the panel.

Considering the diversity of tribes and the levels of resources or capacity that's often needed to navigate and secure these grants, has there been any thought given to how we can make the grant process more accessible, I should say, for our smaller or less resourced tribes? Has there been any recommendations or thoughts given to that? Anyone who's willing to answer, I'd love to hear about that.

So as a part of the process with all of our grants at BSCC, we convene executive steering committees made up of subject matter experts before we put out a request for proposal. And the executive steering committee for this particular grant recommended that we divide the money into two applicant categories. So we had a small tribe category and a large tribe, or large project category, I should say, versus small project.

So the idea was that smaller tribes would compete against smaller tribes, larger tribes compete against larger tribes. So that's one thing that we do to sort of level the playing field.

That's one thing we do to level the playing field, and I think we'd be open to discussing other options.

Thank you. And then, sir, I think you talked about maybe the frequency of reporting is an issue that at least some tribes are facing perhaps?

Yeah. It might not so much be the frequency. It's just the narratives and everything else to support it. And I get it. I've served on a couple of your steering committees in the past.

You do amazing work bringing the subject matter experts in, and the data is important. Right? We have to capture that data to justify appropriating more money. It's just, like I said, just being sensitive that maybe when it's too much, you know, a lot of calls back and forth trying to understand what goes in this narrative, that narrative.

If we could just look at more, like I said, check the box and maybe those narratives on an annual report. But that's just my humble opinion.

Sure. No, that's very helpful. I appreciate you both answering the question. And I'm done, Mr. Chair.

The only thing I would just add is both this year and moving forward, it sounds like there has been that attempt made, but the bifurcation of smaller and larger projects, if that's doing the trick, great. If those who are applying for the grants have any suggestions for how we can even better refine it because I understand the intent there. Just open to that continuing conversation. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And then diving back into the first cohort that moved forward, we didn't see that much participation. And BSCC took the outreach to the tribes themselves. And at that point, we've seen more tribes come forward for grants. Can you talk a little bit more about that outreach and how that took place?

Sure. And maybe I should ask Eddie, but yeah, because Eddie was the one that did it. Eddie traveled up and down the state and he attended several association events, round tables. He tried to really build connections and build relationships because I know relationship building is very important.

Speaking back to or referring back to the distrust that may exist, he really worked hard to break those barriers. Eddie, would you like to add to that?

Yeah. Just really trying to get an idea how we could get the information out. Just meeting even with our executive steering committee, like, where are we missing the mark? And they were gracious enough to be like, you know, talk to the tribal associations. They're having these events.

So just really figuring out where folks are gonna be so we can get the information out. So I think one thing that we did different from cohort one to cohort two, we started having information sessions. And at these information sessions, we just kind of went over the nuts and the bolts of the grant. This is just an information session. And that's also recorded.

So once we had that recorded, I was able to kind of disseminate that information to other tribes. And with that said, we went from four applicants in cohort one to 20 in cohort two. And in cohort three, we had more applicants than we had funding. So, again, just the connections, the relationships. I think now, as my colleagues are saying here, I definitely appreciate just going out, and I try to go out wherever they're at.

You know, I'm getting invited to MMIP days next month. So I try to make all these events and let them know. You know, Native American Day at the Capitol, I was out at the tables giving information, giving cards. This is coming up. Every chance I got, I went out and made folks aware that this funding is out there.

Same thing with not just MMIP, but with CalVet funding. For the first time, it was offered to tribes. So we did have a smaller applicant pool for tribes, but we hope to continue to get more tribes involved.

Well, thank you for that. The tribal leaders, that outreach, that personal outreach, you believe that's beneficial to get these grants out into the Indian community?

I think, absolutely. We were part of cohort one. Every tribe is different. Every tribe has different capacity.

I know we just built on that providing the native summits, MMIP week, even to this day. So the outreach has worked and has been responsive. The data and the information shows it. As a cohort three, the applicants outseed the money. When we talk about murdered indigenous people, we're saying now, we need more help. We need more resources there.

And again, as word got out and the outreach got out, at first, as my brother here said, it's a heavy discussion. If you're not used to talking about it, I know when I was bringing our team together, our first phase was that emotion, and it still is emotional. We still gotta move forward with the business, the awareness, the education, the solution.

So a lot of times when that first came out and we're talking about it, we had to relive our generational trauma. Yeah.

Because we all have it. So we went through that phase. I can't say for everybody, but I can say for myself as a tribal chair, I told my council, this is a heavy, hurtful discussion. Now I can have that good discussion because I know I gotta speak on behalf of my brothers and sisters that are no longer here. So you had that layer there too.

But as the outreach, the information got out, I think the data is reflecting the need and how it outseats the funding now. So long story short, Chairman, yes.

Thank you for that. Big Sandy?

I agree as well. The outreach, the one on one personal, you bring the numbers to the table and you see the demand and the supply of the numbers, and it's not going away. And I think it is just showing a little bit more light on this tough subject that no one wants to talk about. And once that information and that data reaches other tribes through the grapevine or one on one, it's actually really, really beneficial to hear that.

And then the tribes get comfortable with talking about this subject. And then you can see the demand a little bit more. And now I will see it, and probably see it a little bit more in the future. So, yes, I agree. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And, Pechanga, Chief Ranger, you mentioned thirty three years ago you were seeing these components. And now thirty three years later, you're still seeing those components. Does that mean that much hasn't changed until now?

I just think it's the sadness of what we're dealing with. This is why this is still an epidemic. It's just that trust is not there. I've been very fortunate to work in two counties, San Diego and Riverside County, over the last ten, fifteen years. I've taken tremendous leaps to build that trust, but those folks don't report back to the tribe, the tribal leaders.

The people, the community members, elected officials, their county officials. And I just think it's historical. That generational trauma, this story just keeps getting told about it. It was people in uniforms, law enforcement, that were removing children, splitting up families off the reservations. And I think just lack of response for generation after generation to those calls and not taking it seriously is why we're here now. But it's not a lack.

I think that a lot of the sheriff's departments are trying. It's just that distrust, I think, runs deep.

Thank you for that. And really the raw testimonies that we're hearing here today. And we do want to reiterate that once the outreach did take place, the third cohort money ran out. And I just want to make sure that people are hearing and getting into the testimony that all funds have been accounted for. And to also put on record, it's my understanding that there was not a requirement of signing a waiver of tribal sovereignty to get those grants.

That's correct.

Okay. So I want to make sure that people truly understand that. The money, once the outreach has taken place, taking this to the Indian people themselves of a crisis that has been impacting them for generations. And what the state moved forward with one time funding, that money is already gone. And to make sure that people hear again, there was no waiver of sovereign immunity to get these grants.

And I think that serves as a model for other areas here in the administration and in the state legislature. And I want to be clear that I believe that finally there's an infrastructure that's starting to be built, but it's at the infancy stage. And for us now to not look at that infrastructure when we're dealing with a crisis, one of my opening statements was that if this was happening to others in the state of California, there would be a task force assembled.

Yet we're here advocating for more dollars for this program that now seems to be accepted and moving forward. I think there genuinely is discussion around this topic and funding that needs to happen, continue to happen.

And even going back and looking at funding that could move forward again within the budget cycle that wouldn't be one time money. Maybe there's discussion that we could look at for ongoing funding because of the severity of what's happening in the state of California, the severity to California's first people. And now we have a program. Individuals like Mr. Escobar who took the message out to Indian Country, and now Indian Country is responding so much so that the funding has dried up.

Don't we owe it to California's first people to start to look at those issues, to see if there's dialogue around starting to move forward with ongoing funding to start to combat this crisis in general.

That's my statement on this panel. If there's any follow-up from Department of Finance or LAO, I'd sure like to hear it. If not today, then you could get back to us. But we do want to start looking at some type of ongoing funding to make sure that the infrastructure that's being built is not again a promise to California's first people that then the state walks away from. It's time that we stand together and united to combat this issue.

Thank you so much for that. We'll now move to Panel Two. Panel Two is Chairman Joseph James; Matthew Munoz, Tribal Secretary, Big Sandy; Morning Star Gali, Executive Director, Indigenous Justice; Bill Denke, Chief Ranger, Director of Public Safety, Pechanga Rangers; and Juan Sanchez, Investigator and MMIP Coordinator from the Pechanga Tribal Rangers. We'll start with Chairman Joe James once you're situated.

Go ahead, Chairman. So thank you again for talking about the funding program that's so vital and critical for us. You know, we awarded cohort one and cohort three. I think it is related, absolutely, from the previous panel to this one. When we talk about trust, being able to come forward to provide that inner testimony, whether it's tribal leaders having that discussion with its community.

This was always there. When I talk about murdered and missing indigenous people, it is, as we all know, nothing new. But we're saying as a whole and as a group, you can no longer hide no more. You can't hide in the dark no more. If you're a predator, you're someone who'll do harm, the light is shining on you.

And that's what we're doing as tribes, as legislators, as state of California rallying together, we're shining a light on this. As I mentioned, no more. A long way yet to go. We've hired, really proud that we've had an MMIP drone operator. Our MMIP drone operator staff doesn't just work for the Yurok Tribe.

It works for all of Indian Country. Here in California, Oregon, Washington. If we get called out by the county, local law enforcement, we're working with them to bring home that person to make sure they're safe. Again, we want to make sure that parent or family members are able to find them. And so we have staff.

That's what this has provided, and it is working. We have an MMIP coordinator. We're in the process of, again, filling an investigator. Thank Juan for the work that he does for Pechanga. Thank him for what he does for California.

We see it. We recognize it. Thank you. Again, there's a lot of great work that we're doing with this program, and it is working for Indian Country. I want to echo, Chairman, what you mentioned.

This is a cohort three. It is creating that foundation. We just now got to that point where we had to build trust. We had to talk about historical trauma. We had to talk all of that.

But now we're at a stage where there is a foundation. It took us a little while to get there, but again, now we're building on it and moving forward. We host an annual Murdered and Missing Indigenous Peoples Day here with our brothers and sisters. Last year, we were able to have one at Enterprise. Year before that was with Pala.

Year before that was with Wilton. Year before that was up north in Yurok Country. And again, where all of us come together, tribal leaders, communities, law enforcement, agency staff, legislators to hear about it. We also have a youth component. We have a culture component.

Again, really putting a spotlight on it. That's great work. That is great work. But there's people out there still suffering. There's still people out there hurting. Yeah. But that's all part of it. You gotta welcome that, and you gotta listen.

Staffing, we're continuing to recoup staff for this program. We also have an annual MMIP walk at home at Yurok.

We also participate here at the MMIP state Capitol week that will be spearheaded by your leadership there, Chairman. I want to highlight and share that we weren't talking about MMIP ten years ago as a state. Even as a tribe as a whole, a lot of people were doing grassroots work on the ground, and they've been in the trenches for years and decades.

But if you look at it now, even pending bills that are in the legislature, whether it's through yourself, or someone else, or your colleagues, we're talking about it.

You know? That was not the case ten, fifteen years ago. Whether it's MMIP, missing people, we're putting it up front and talking about it. That's where we are. That's what we built.

That's what you built, Chairman, with your colleagues. It is front and center now. And again, we're at that stage where we actually feel good and comfortable now of how we could deal with this internally, but also how can we move forward helping our people, not just here in California, but across the nation. But again, thank you.

Thank you, Chairman, for those words. Now we'll move to Matthew Munoz, Tribal Council Secretary, Big Sandy.

So when we got awarded the grant last year, we're fairly new to it, but we've been utilizing every dollar amount because we are a smaller tribe. And if you look up Big Sandy Rancheria, we are a smaller tribe. We're considered non-gaming. So we utilize every dollar to where it can be, and we do stretch that dollar because, you know, they need to be stretched sometimes. So with this, we've been able to look into hiring staff.

We've had a meeting with our Fresno County Sheriff's Department last week and with the BIA MMU department, the Missing Murdered Unit. They came down to visit the tribe and just went over their resources and connected with them last week. It was amazing just to see everyone connecting with each other.

Our Fresno County Sheriff's connecting with the BIA, their detectives working with their detectives, their investigators, and just seeing, you know, all this collaboration going on, which I don't think would have been possible without these dollars, because we don't have those dollars in our wallet to stretch out to reach out to everybody. But with this grant, we are able to do that.

So, you know, just giving those few examples, because we are new grant awardees, it's been huge to our community and seeing that movement going through helping all of our people, federally recognized and non-federally recognized. I think that's a huge significant, you know, dealing when we're talking about Indian country is, you know, helping out everybody as a whole and talking about it. So, you know, hopefully this continues the funding because it needs to be continued on, and we are utilizing every little dollar.

So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. And also, Morning Star Gali, who's been on the front lines and has worked on these topics for many years through the nonprofit. We'll go ahead with you now.

Good afternoon, and to Soleil. Thank you to Chair Ramos and the Board of State and Community Corrections for creating the space and for investing in tribal and community-led responses for missing and murdered indigenous peoples. As a Native women-led nonprofit organization, our subgrant funding allows us to strengthen survivor-centered, community-based responses for indigenous families impacted by the MMIP crisis.

Our work includes direct family advocacy, rapid response support when a loved one goes missing, culturally grounded healing and wellness support, case coordination outreach, and building stronger partnerships with tribal nations. We also work with urban Native organizations and our partners in justice and local systems.

A central part of our work helps to rebuild trust with families who have often experienced neglect and retraumatization from the systems that are meant to protect them. In terms of law enforcement, one of the most effective strategies we've seen is relationship-based coordination with agencies willing to engage in timely communication, transparency, and accountability. Direct contact within sheriff's departments, district attorney's offices, and tribal law enforcement helps to improve response times and follow-up in some cases.

Continued cross-training on MMIP realities, trauma-informed responses, and cultural competency remains critical. In addition, some of the most effective work has happened outside of law enforcement.

Families need trusted advocates who can walk through crises and navigate complex systems with them. Community education, healing circles, youth prevention work, family accompaniment, culturally grounded case support, and media advocacy have all made a real difference. I want to also share that we provide media training to both the families and to the tribes on both ends to ensure that their messaging comes across. These strategies help to reduce stigma, build safety, and increase visibility for Native families who have too often been made invisible.

I want to also share a bit that we have MOUs with both Pit River Tribe and Big Sandy Rancheria.

And in those MOUs, the tribes were able to support through Pit River Tribe. They were able to create their first MMIP department. And so this is an area where our tribal land base is 3,500,000 acres. It's called the Hundred Mile Square. That's our ancestral territory.

It's in a four-county area. And so when you're looking at Lassen, Modoc, Siskiyou, and Shasta Counties, in an extremely remote area, 3,500,000 acres and having $1,000,000, they've received the cohort two funding that stretches very thin across, as Mr. Munoz mentioned. We have also experienced significant challenges in that there are barriers in accessing timely resources, navigating reimbursement-based grant systems, and sustaining staffing for crisis response that often happens outside of traditional hours.

A feather alert activation can take up to the full forty-eight hours to be activated. This creates challenges for our already small but dedicated team. A major challenge also experienced is that many non-federally recognized California tribes are not eligible to directly access MMIP funding even though they are deeply impacted and often among the least resourced.

We are appreciative to Big Sandy Rancheria and our Fresno MMIP Coalition Task Force for extending the support of their BSCC funding to non-federally recognized tribes in the Central Valley. As barriers to direct funding, this has created inequities across tribal communities where some families have access to support while others must rely on underfunded nonprofits or informal networks to fill those critical gaps. We also continue to face inconsistent agency communication, inaccurate data, and jurisdictional gaps that delay response and accountability.

We are currently working with an evaluation team that is California Indian and have provided this additional support to tribes. And so we're working with Gray Oak, and we have been able to share that as a resource for other BSCC grantees in terms of the evaluation piece.

We work with tribes that, you know, any tribe that needs support with a feather alert activation, we're there to help them, but we're basically doing it on a volunteer basis when we don't have an MOU with them. There are tribes that have returned BSCC funding because they felt that the grant was too restrictive. And right after they returned the funding, then they had a feather alert activation case. So we were there.

We supported the family every step of the way, and they were able to find out where their loved one was, alive and unharmed.

Despite all of these challenges, we have seen meaningful outcomes: stronger family trust, increased case reporting and follow-up, deeper collaboration between tribal and local partners, and greater recognition of MMIP as both a public safety and a public health issue. We are seeing more Native youth, survivors, and community members step into leadership and advocacy roles.

Our recommendations are to invest in long-term flexible funding, expand eligibility and access for non-federally recognized tribes, rural and urban tribal organizations as well, to improve Native data systems and interagency coordination, and to ensure Native families are not retraumatized by the systems meant to protect them. Sustainable change requires trust, accountability, and resourcing Native communities to lead these solutions. To improve the process, we need less bureaucracy, quicker access to resources, more culturally responsive technical assistance, and continued investment in prevention, healing, and tribal sovereignty.

Lasting safety will only come when Native communities are resourced to lead and carry these solutions. To localfood.com, all my relations.

Thank you so much for that, Morning Star. As now, we go back to Bill Denke, Chief Ranger.

Thank you again. Appreciate it. Just going back to the start of this grant, I mentioned we hired an investigator who we have here today who I hope is going to share some good stories that everybody wants to hear, something positive, and also a social worker. We pretty much hit the ground running, onboarded both of those positions within about ninety days. I could speak more on behalf of what Juan does because he reports directly to me.

So that's where I'll be sitting for the next couple of minutes I have here.

But we're talking about that trust, Chairman, before, or the distrust. But let's talk about the trust, the trust that a tribal community can have in its own department if they do it right. Right? If they're out in the community. Investigator Sanchez worked for us before.

He knew the community. We brought him back on with his experience in the position, and he's just so busy, not to make a joke of anything. He's been on for thirteen months. He's the first person I've ever had work for me that has burned through a whole box of business cards because he's out there working it. He's meeting families.

He's speaking to the school. He's speaking to the parents, speaking to the students at youth functions, at Earth Day. He doesn't stop, and it's already starting to pay off. And if it's okay with you, Chairman, I'd kind of like to let that segue into what I think Investigator Sanchez would like to share today. If I could just defer my last minute to him, if that's okay.

Definitely. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman Ramos, for the opportunity to speak to you all. My name is Juan Sanchez. I'm the MMIP investigator for Pechanga Tribal Ranger Department. I just want to start touching on some topics.

The community engagement piece is what I focused on in the first thirty, sixty, ninety days of my position. I went out and spoke to the school, the school board, the tribal youth, tribal families, matriarchs of families that knew me, that I could build a relationship with and let them know what I'm doing. One of my biggest things I kind of push is if they don't know I exist, they will not come to me.

So part of that motto I've created was: I sit at every tribal membership meeting every time they have one. I'm at every event, whether it's a fire department event, whether it's Earth Day, whether it's a youth dance party that's happening at our tribal halls.

I'm there. I'm there for people to come and speak to me. I'm there for the families to come speak to me. It's been a very effective way to communicate with my community to make sure that they are aware that I'm here to help them. And that's been the biggest push, is to build that bridge, let them know what I do so that they can come to me twenty-four seven.

I am a 24/7 employee for the ranger department. My position, my phone doesn't stop. Sometimes it's a simple question, sometimes it's a complicated one. But I am there for the community. I'm there as a representative of the tribal ranger department, and I'm a representative of this grant that's allowing me to do the work I'm doing.

Moving on, the collaborative efforts. State, local, federal agencies. I've had more lunches, breakfasts, and dinners with more people at the casino to get them to come and see and speak to me and let them know that what I'm doing is impactful and it's going to need their attention. A lot of these individuals who are now sergeants, captains, lieutenants were friends with me when we were on patrol, when we worked special details.

So all I did was reach out to some friends and professional colleagues and said, hey, this is what I'm doing.

This is what I need you to help me do. When that phone rings, I need you to come and help me. And I built that relationship with very good colleagues. I've reached out to every agency, every three-letter agency, and every state and local agency. I have a great working relationship with the DOJ.

Their new hires for MMIP investigators, I work with them. I work with probation. There's not an agency in Southern California that I don't have a contact with. That's including Hawaii.

That's including Utah. That's including other states, the Midwest, New York. I have a contact somewhere because our tribal members are everywhere. So I have to actively go out and have relationships with other professional law enforcement agents and departments. So when one of our tribal members goes missing or a neighboring tribal member goes missing in another state and they don't have a contact, they can call me and I can reach out for them.

That's one of the biggest things. Getting local law enforcement to be vested within our tribe, bringing them to our community, letting them see our community, explaining, expressing, showing them our culture, making them understand that this is a community that needs help. Some of the other things I really want to focus on is the feather alerts. Last year, for my first year, we had six recovered missing persons. Two of those are non-tribal.

Out of one of those feather alerts, I am the only person, according to CHP, that's not only recovered a female from a feather alert, but also apprehended and arrested a feather alert suspect, and that's from the CHP's own data.

This individual lured a 14-year-old girl from her home. He had sent her a picture through social media. He took her from her home and took her for twenty-four hours. The feather alert went out. It was recognized by him.

He got scared. He brought her back to a neighboring reservation. She was recovered, brought back to her family. But as far as I'm concerned, it didn't stop there. I got with San Diego Sheriffs.

I got with San Diego PD. We worked together. The individual had sent her a photo of himself throwing up gang signs, and anybody who's worked with gangs knows that if someone's throwing up a gang sign, it's basically giving them an address of where they belong. So we searched that, and I investigated that with San Diego Sheriff and San Diego PD, and we identified him. Not only did we identify him, he was apprehended and arrested.

And when he was confronted with the feather alert flyer, he waived his Miranda rights and said, I need to clear the air here. Yes. It was me. Those kinds of stories are the stories that we want to hear, that I want to produce for this grant for the community, and I think it's very important to know that it doesn't stop with just the recovery of the person involved with the feather alert.

It's going after the individuals who are looking to prey on tribal communities.

Because if we didn't stop him, he was going to go to another tribe. So it's very important that I share that story because not only is it one of my proudest moments in twenty-plus years of law enforcement in this grant and working alongside Chief Denke, but also representing the tribe, our tribal council, who's trusted me to do this job and asked me to do this job.

And the only way I know how is to be forward-thinking and be very proactive. In closing, I want to thank everybody who's involved with this grant, who's allowed me to do my job, the job that I care so much about. Like I said, I am twenty-four seven.

I don't stop. I have to be forced to take vacations. And I'd like to thank our tribal council. I'd like to thank Chief Denke, all the rangers at the ranger department, our backbone, the dispatchers. And most importantly, I really want to thank my family who has stood by me.

My wife is a Pechanga tribal member. My children are Pechanga tribal members. I have missed out on some birthdays and some family gatherings and some family vacations for this position, and I'll do it all over again. And I just want to thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony, all of your testimonies, and bringing this full circle, coming back to the dais. Assemblymember Schultz?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And again, thank you all for your testimony today. I have three questions. Investigator Sanchez, I imagine that for many of them you might be the best suited to answer, but I would love to hear from anyone if you have anything to add. The first question is, from your training and your experience, can you speak to some of the specific challenges in investigating a missing indigenous person case?

The biggest challenge is speaking to departments or law enforcement agencies who don't know who I am and think that I'm going to come and take their case and basically take it from them. That's been the biggest challenge: they don't know who I am, so I have to introduce myself.

I have to let them know that I'm here to partner with them, to help them, come to the reservation if they need to do interviews, get their foot in the door, get them to meet the matriarchs of the family, be the person who can get them on the reservation to help move forward investigations.

And that's including cold cases, and to ask questions because historically, if they don't know who you are, but they know me, and they know who I am and what I do, they will trust me to introduce this person, this outsider, so that they can talk to him. So basically, in a nutshell, it's really just developing that relationship and having that connection.

Thank you very much. Oh, did you have something to add?

If you don't mind. Please. And it's in the same vein, basically. One of the biggest barriers I've seen over the years is the delayed reporting. I think there's still a stigma, you know.

It's, we don't want to let everybody know what's going on. No. Those minutes, hours are so vital. So again, having funding for a tribal department, the boots on the ground, the people that know the community, they may not be as embarrassed to speak to Juan's position. If any other tribal law enforcement department that's out there that's built that trust of that.

It's just been a huge barrier over the years.

Thank you both very much. The second question I have is, could either of you or anyone for that matter speak to the connection between MMIP and human trafficking, which is another topic I know the legislature is very focused on, very concerned about. So if you could maybe elaborate on that connection, that'd be great.

I don't want to take up all the time. Go ahead.

I'll share that the connection between human trafficking and MMIP has been happening since contact. And so since the time of colonization, there was an exchange of stolen land for indigenous women's bodies. Cavalry, and one of the projects that I work on is Gold, Greed, and Genocide. And so addressing the current day effects and contamination of mercury poisoning, and how that continues to impact our health. And so when we think about human trafficking, it has the same effect.

And so through the history of soldiers stealing Native women, girls, and children, this continues today. And so our organization has supported with over a dozen feather alert activations just between December and January during holiday times where, you know, it's a really critical time. And so as the information that was shared in terms of feather alert cases, especially with minors, fortunately, the majority of those cases, the young people have come back.

They've come home, but there still is one case that she has not. She's a Susanville tribal member, and she's a minor.

And so, you know, in these cases, it's really important because, you know, in that case, she was brought here to Sacramento, and everybody was hands off. The social workers, nobody wanted, you know, to provide permission, and said, you know, we don't have the authority in this case. And so we stepped in and worked with the tribe and worked with the agencies, you know, for that activation to happen. But it is historical and still continuing today.

Thank you very much for sharing that background and that perspective. Final question, Mr. Chair, and again, open to anyone on the panel. What are the risk factors associated with MMIP cases, and what prevention strategies can we put in place to have the best possible outcomes?

Any tribal leaders?

I think you mentioned the last part was what could we do for prevention. I think it's a combination of a little bit of everything regarding education, awareness, solution, resources, law enforcement. We have our MMIP own program, own department. And anything we can put solutions, we teach our own family within the home. Hey.

Be careful where you are. That place is dark right there. Keep aware of it. That's the outreach. That's the education.

And to talk about it even more and more, that's all part of prevention. But it's not just one resource or just one thought; it's a multiple of things in there. So again, as I, and that's what this program is doing, is having that discussion. Like you said, I can only speak for my family. I know when I was a young boy, we didn't talk about it.

We talked, people missing, and that was it. And then we rallied, whether it's people, whether it's prayer people, and wanted to look for them. But again, now we're doing the same things, but we're having the discussions here at the Capitol. We're also having the discussions back at home. Again, as I mentioned, it's no longer in the dark no more.

It's in the light. And then we're supporting with resources.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember Schultz. And really getting to the matter, ongoing funding would continue to help with all these efforts moving forward. Chairman James, you mentioned the building of the infrastructure itself. That first, you had to build trust, and that was the outreach of BSCC came out, local law enforcement and those employed by the tribe. Then you had to deal with the trauma aspect to get our people, tribes, to talk about this and be open with it.

We've had several hearings here in the state Capitol. And then you mentioned that you believe that the foundation is now being set because you're able to move from these different areas to where we're at today. And building on that foundation, utilizing grant money from the State of California, you believe that we're at a point now where there should be ongoing funding for this foundation to be kept intact?

Yes. We've been dealing as a one-time funding. As you just mentioned, there needs to be a continuation of funding, and we're talking about the grant program and what it's providing, whether expanding those resources, putting more funding on the table. We're having those discussions right now. We all have family.

We all have a daughter.

We have a granddaughter. And you just heard the testimony. You know, we use some of those. I don't like to let that hit me because I already felt like with my mind, I try to build past that phase because I want to make sure I'm focused to help. And again, some of them see this hits you still as you're going through this journey regarding providing help and resources and stuff like that. But I think we're at a critical stage within the state, within the tribes regarding these services and program.

We are all gonna, as individuals, all as groups, all as Indian people, are always going to help and do what we can. But we've been collectively as a whole, the State of California, across the United States, saying we are building the path, the program.

This is how we combat this crisis that's been going on for decades. Again, I do believe we're at a point where if this goes backwards, I feel like we're starting over again. But we're going to do what we do as Indian people and continue to fight, continue to care, and make sure our women are heard. We see them, continue to help our people.

We're at that point right now where we've built all of this on trust, on working relationships, and we're at a good foundation. And I urge yourself, your colleagues to continue this program with funding and resources in this year's budget.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Big Sandy, you mentioned utilizing the grant dollars for every dollar used, leveraging it. And you mentioned about building relationships with the local law enforcement, the local, the state, and the county along with the tribal aspect. Can you talk a little bit more about the results of building that relationship?

Yeah. So building those, you know, it's been, you know, we're fairly new to everything, but I think we've signed the last MOU with this grant, and I believe it was, like, the tenth MOU. So usual grants, they consist of one or two MOUs. This one consisted of about eight or ten. So it's very huge, from the Marjorie Mason Center, domestic violence.

It reaches out to, you know, a great line of people. So having those relationships, and with Big Sandy and Fresno County, we have a good working relationship, and, you know, we're very blessed to have that relationship with Fresno County. So when we ask for something, you know, they're right on it of, hey, how can we help?

Having this funding is greatly helpful to building those relationships to say, hey, at the end of the day, we can, you know, hire a detective, or at the end of the day, hey, we can hire some legal people to actually look into it. Because legal and all of that is very expensive.

And if it wasn't for this grant, then that would be having to come out of our pockets, out of the tribe's. And like I said before, we're a smaller tribe. So having this grant and the funding really, really helps building those relationships and, you know, having that in the future and continuing the funding is so vital to protecting our women, our children, and, you know, all of our Native people here and there. So thank you.

Thank you so much for that. And to the tribal leaders, tribal chairs and council members, this has been one-time funding. Cohort one where BSCC took the initiative to bring the program out into Indian country, and seeing cohort two move forward and cohort three exhausted the funds that are there. And dealing with tribal council and tribal members, knowing that it is one-time funding, how do you translate that into your tribal councils?

If you knew it was ongoing funding, how would you relate that to the tribal councils moving forward?

You know, having to respond back to that and, you know, going back to our general council and explaining the numbers, explaining the data of, hey, this is just a three-year grant. And after the three years, if it doesn't continue funding at the state level, we're going to have to rethink about it. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board. We're going to have to figure something out to continue. How do we fund, you know, being part of the coalition?

How do we fund, you know, doing these events, doing the outreach?

How do we fund the investigators? It all goes back to having that drawing board. So, I mean, like my tribal leader here already said, if it goes through, great. That would be a blessing to all of us. But being Native people, we're resilient.

So we'll figure out a way, and it might hurt us, you know, shortly, but we'll figure out a way in the long run to, you know, continue it going, hopefully. So, but, yeah, it's a tough message to get across the rest of our general council because, you know, they look at us for the answers.

And sometimes we don't have those answers, and we just kind of have to, like, take a step back and think about, hey, what can we do and how can we actually make, you know, progress keep going? And we'll figure it out. But, yeah, hopefully the funding does continue, and we won't have to hit that hurdle.

But if we hit that hurdle, I think just being as Native people, we're resilient, and we'll figure it out. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Chairman.

I think when we, I want to talk about, we talk about a three-year grant program. It needs to be a three-year grant program along with three years' worth of funding. That's really what needs to happen. I know the state passes their budget year by year. But when we talk about a three-year grant funding, something about regarding the first peoples, regarding the bounties, the eliminations, the boarding schools, the language.

And she was mentioning soldiers coming here. That was the norm. It still is that mindset. It still is that mindset. That's why us as people of color, that's why the data is enforced by the data.

That's why we're abducted. That's why we're talking. Again, we're talking about years and decades since our first contact. That's what we're dealing with and have to deal with that. So going back to the questions regarding our first one-year funding, you know, we have our own department.

We would have to leverage other funding. Well, I mean, what I mean by that, maybe it impacts us, the social service. Maybe it taxes on the youth. Maybe that's in education or the social. It is a domino effect.

This is something so vital and critical in the need, in Indian country. And it's a beautiful message from yourself and the state of what we have done up to this point. There are so many states that haven't said that message. They haven't. And again, it will impact us.

We'll have to use other funds from other programs, and they will be impacted. So again, the security of the funding and the grant program is key for us.

Well, thank you for that. And Morning Star, can you talk a little bit more about the nonprofit role and what's happening now? But also where the nonprofits could actually be implemented in the future.

Sure. So I'll share that our organization, Indigenous Justice, as I mentioned, has an MOU with Big Sandy Rancheria, has an MOU with Pit River Tribe, and we have a few more that are currently in negotiations still. And so it means very limited funding for us as a nonprofit, $50,000 a year for three years, for us to provide the on-the-ground support, the training, the technical assistance. So for example, Pit River is just creating their MMIP department now.

So this is the one full-time staff person that is responsible for over 35 plus cases.

These are active cases within our four-county territory, and so that doesn't even include the cold cases. And so working with the families, working with the sheriff's offices, working with local law enforcement is really challenging within these rural areas. And so we've been able to come in and provide support. As Chairman James mentioned with their drone program, we had certified search and rescue. And so Yurok was able to bring in their drones and equipment and staff to support us in that.

I'll share for Big Sandy. It was the Walker family that reached out to us in 2021 before there was any funding available. And so we were there, you know, on the ground to see how we could provide that support to the family, supporting them through the search effort that the family was conducting because the law enforcement in Fresno County, you know, was saying, oh, this is a pattern. She just took off.

She's not missing, you know, and all of the responses and finger pointing and victim blaming that we get with local law enforcement entities.

And so, you know, it's really just providing that support, when it comes to highlighting the cases, when it comes to the feather alert activation. But it's very limited funding, as I mentioned. We're a small team. We're seven staff, and we have one MMIP fellow who just now in the last two weeks is full time. So it's constantly trying to navigate through challenges when it comes to resources and just funding barriers to continue this work.

Well, thank you so much for that and showing the impact that nonprofits established with Indigenous Justice in the State of California helps out to Pechanga law enforcement capabilities there and through the grants that have been awarded. Do you believe that the impact is making a difference? And then, do you believe that lack of grants would also make an impact?

So the answer to your first question, absolutely. I've wanted enough time to talk about some of the, you know, just really good, I wouldn't say stories, but incidents that happened where because of the trust he built, where we had a child or a youth being under 18, 16. It was over the phone. It could've went really sideways. We did try to work with the sheriff's department on that.

They were willing to partner and assist, but again, they didn't want to talk. Especially the youth. It just closed. Got him out there the next morning, and within an hour, he had all the information. We're able to get the phone and really run a lot of interference.

And that's not just an isolated incident, as we've noticed this a handful of times now just in the year he's been there. Those are huge stories because those are when we talk about the precursor things, if it's mental health, alcohol, drugs, somebody targeting because she's a young tribal member and nonmember targeting them. It makes a huge difference, you know. It's just allowing this money to go to the boots on the ground, you know.

It's like if it's a local problem, let the locals deal with it, but give the locals the money.

Well, in this case, it's the tribe, you know, it's the tribes. It's the tribal communities. And I think without that funding, it just, it's everything else, especially for tribal law enforcement, because they got to find a way just, you know, a number of tribes just to meet their minimum staffing. So this stuff's so necessary, but, you know, finding funding for it out of your operating budget when you're going a lot of different directions, you have a lot of other responsibility, can be tough.

So I think this funding is very, very important.

Thank you. Mr. Escobar, anything to add to that?

I'm sorry.

Anything to add to that?

Juan? Yes. So to the second part of your question about the grant funding, I wanted to, you know, really just iterate with right now, currently, I am the only active MMIP investigator for all 109 tribes in the State of California currently right now. I'm the only one. I get phone calls throughout California to help with feather alerts, and that's including local sheriff departments whose investigators have never issued a feather alert.

They call me. I don't mind answering that phone call to educate them, whether it's six in the morning or two in the morning. Without this grant funding, my position, which is basically a twenty-four hour position, I wouldn't be able to do the work I'm doing.

It's imperative that I get help, not just me personally at my state department, but I'm talking about tribe to tribe. So that when something bad happens or someone goes missing, we can communicate as investigators from tribe to tribe to help each other. Because I've had tribal members from Yurok come to Southern California.

I've had tribal members from Southern California end up in Northern California or in the Navajo Nation. I need to be able to communicate with these people on these other reservations. And without grant funding and this type of funding, I wouldn't get to where we're at now, because I believe we're very successful, at least here at Pechanga. But the grant has created this ability for us.

To build the infrastructure and outreach. Right? Yes, sir. To make sure that people are talking and utilizing the dollars, building that infrastructure that if the funding went away, the infrastructure would be lost. And so having this hearing and talking about these issues, BSCC with Mr. Escobar speaking to the outreach that happened.

And now to the infrastructure that's being developed. I think it makes a strong case for ongoing funding for the program that has been established because of the infrastructure. But I do want to touch a little bit more on the historic trauma that Chairman James and others on the panel have addressed. That we are dealing with a mentality. A mentality that when the state was created, didn't honor California Indian people.

And that mentality was written into laws that now we're trying to reverse. And so moving forward, I think your words, Chairman, that it's going to take a long time to get to where we need to be. And I know, you know, we exhaust ourselves bringing these issues forward. But we bring them forward because of those that are hurting in our communities, Indian communities. We're going to keep doing that.

But the trauma is another area, and that's another topic that we're going to have coming up in a hearing, a joint hearing with our health committee, with the Select Committee on Native American Affairs on the health component of it. But I do want to thank you for your testimony, and panel one for your testimony. And we are making the argument that we need to look at dollars into this program because it is changing lives. And if the funding stopped, the resiliency of Indian people will move forward.

But we've been forced, as a tribal member from San Manuel, we've been forced to be resilient, basically overcoming everything that's come our way. And growing up on the reservation, we know that people went missing. Resiliency means continuing to move forward and honoring that family. But where do we bring closure? Closure to that trauma.

I think the State of California has an opportunity to move forward and to be able to honor California's first people. With the funding that moved forward, infrastructure was able to be built. It's time that we continue to move and have dialogue to keep that infrastructure intact. Thank you so much for your testimony.

As now, we'll move to Issue 2.

Issue two is update on missing and murdered indigenous persons related efforts, AB 3099 report, tribal police pilot, and MMMIP technician assistance. We have Ashley Harp, assistant director of fiscal operations, Department of Justice. Janet Bill, director of office of Native American Affairs, Department of Justice.

Right. Stephen Worlery, chief of division of law enforcement, Department of Justice. Chairman Joseph James, Europe tribe. Mark Jimenez, Department of Finance. Drew Soderbergh, legislative analyst office.

We'll start with Ashley Harp.

Good afternoon, chairman and others in attendance. As you mentioned, we have, Janet Bill here, the director of our office of Native American affairs, and we have Stephen Woolery, chief of the division of law enforcement to provide updates today. I will go ahead and pass it over to Janet Bill.

Thank you.

... I am a member of the ... and today I am here on the official capacity as the Director for the Office of the Native American Affairs of the California Department of Justice. Chairman Ramos and members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to give remarks today. And of course, thank you to the tribal communities who have come out and shown support on this issue that continues to be a crisis across Indian country. The Office of Native American Affairs advances the Attorney General's commitment to strengthening government-to-government relationships with tribes in the state of California, and improving public safety and justice outcomes for tribal communities.

Today's update reflects the attorney general's leadership through the California Department of Justice in implementing AB 3099, AB 134, and public law 280 in coordinated and fiscally responsible manner. At its core, this work reflects the attorney general's commitment to ensuring that jurisdictional complexity does not become a barrier to safety or justice.

I'll start with AB 3099 and the tribal assistance program. Under AB 3099, the attorney general has prioritized addressing long standing jurisdictional complexity and gaps in public safety in Indian country. Public law 280 creates concurrent jurisdiction, but inconsistent application has led to confusion that can delay response and impact investigations, including MMIP cases.

In response, the attorney general established the first of its kind, public law 280 advisory council, bringing together tribal, local, state, and federal partners, along with subject matter experts to address these inconsistencies. Through ONA, the department is working with post law enforcement and tribal partners to improve training, so peace officers better understand jurisdiction and response abilities in Indian country.

This leadership ensures that when jurisdiction is clear, response is faster, and outcomes improve. In addition to training and coordination, the department is focused on improving crime reporting and data. Under the attorney general's direction, ONA is coordinating across divisions within the department to improve on how crimes on Indian lands are identified, reported, and tracked. These efforts are addressing long standing data gaps and strengthening reporting pathways to better support investigations and inform policy decisions.

We are committed to strengthening data and reporting systems to improve public safety outcomes, ensure accountability, and support more timely and effective response across jurisdictions.

Equally important is ensuring travel communities have access to clear information and resources. The department has developed culturally relevant resources, including Native American Marcy's law cards, reporting guidance, and MMIP focused materials. ONA engages directly with tribal communities through conferences, MMIP task forces, round tables, and other tribal events to share information, provide guidance, and support reporting efforts. In addition, the department continues to update its website to ensure these resources are accessible beyond in person engagement.

ONA supported development of the missing in California FAQ and outreach on tools such as the feather alert, including assisting tribal communities in understanding when and how the feather alert can be activated.

Through these combined efforts, the department has reached thousands of individuals and families across the state. This reflects the attorney general's commitment to ensuring tribal communities have access to both direct engagement and ongoing access to the information and resources necessary to seek safety and justice. And finally, under AB 3099, the department has been advancing the required MMIP study. The department has conducted outreach with tribal communities, families, and justice partners to better understand barriers to reporting and investigating missing Native Americans.

The department is in the final stages of internal review of the AB 3099 report, which reflects extensive engagement with tribal communities, justice partners, and subject matter experts.

This work is focused on ensuring the recommendations are thoughtful, informed, and responsive to the needs identified through the data and lived experiences of our tribal communities. Building on that work, AB 134 advances a structural solution to many of the jurisdictional challenges identified through AB 3099. Under the attorney general's leadership, the California Department of Justice, in partnership with Post, has advanced implementation of the tribal police pilot program, the Triple P, to strengthen public safety in tribal communities and surrounding areas.

We conducted extensive outreach to tribes across the state, completed the application process, developed FAQs, published a dedicated web page, as well as held multiple listening sessions, standardized selection framework, and conducted a full review of interested tribes. We are happy to say that the Yurok tribe is going to be participating in the treaty triple P, and we are working closely in partnership to support implementation, compliance, and readiness for the program's 07/01/2026 start date.

This includes coordination with tribal leadership on statutory requirements, post certification pathways, and the development of reporting and accountability systems required under the program. This program is designed to improve response to crimes, strengthen investigation, and enhance coordination across tribal state and local law enforcement. This reflects the attorney general's commitment to implementing the T triple p thoughtfully in partnership with tribes and with a focus on measurable public safety outcomes.

Taken together, these efforts reflect the attorney general's coordinated and physically responsible approach to improving public safety in tribal communities. This work is grounded in partnership with tribes and a deep respect for tribal sovereignty.

The department remains committed to advancing meaningful, lasting solutions that strengthen public safety across the state, And we stand ready to answer any questions and to continue working in partnership with the committee to advance these efforts. Mitch Geis.

Thank you so much. Director Bill, go to chief of division law enforcement, chief Woolery.

Good afternoon, chair, member. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'm gonna ask for your indulgences as I read from prepared remarks, after which I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. I'm here to provide a high level overview and update on the Department of Justice's division of law enforcement's tribal assistance program focused on missing and murdered indigenous persons and why continued investment is critical to sustaining what has become a first of its kind statewide effort.

This program represents something different.

It's not a mandate. It's not an episodic. It's not episodic enforcement. It's consistent in person engagement by DOJ special agents working alongside tribal communities, local jurisdictions, and federal partners. We have begun to build coordinated relationships across the Golden State.

Tribal governments, tribal police, county sheriff's district attorneys, federal partners, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs Homeland Security investigations in the California some of the California's US attorney's offices. All while navigating the complexities of public law two eighty. Since February '51 DOJ special agent in charge and two DOJ special agent supervisors have attended a total of 54 meetings up and down the state. 18 of those meetings were with county sheriffs. Eighteenth and these are all in person meetings.

18 of those meetings were in person with tribal leadership, and another 18 of these meetings were with district attorneys in person. The, you know, additional multiple meetings in addition to the these in person meetings, lots of telephone calls, lots of emails and email threads with key state and federal agencies. We have delivered eight statewide trainings and participated in seven major engagements, conferences, etcetera. This work is producing tangible results.

For example, the tribal assistance program supported the resolution of disputed tribal remains in Orange County, facilitated movement of an active missing person's case, movement from one police agency to another to improve investigative progress.

We're reviewing an MMIP investigation out of Modoc County regarding a missing tribal citizen. Deal lead co chairs with Ona, the tribal police pilot program working group and listening sessions. We've purchased human trafficking field guides for distribution to tribal police, local jurisdictions that service tribal lands and casino hotel security. We've offered assistance to the El Cajon PD regarding the missing person's investigation. This offer for assistance was declined.

Feather alert follow ups with LAPD in regard to a missing person. This victim was reunited with her family in Oklahoma. And chair, I have many, many more examples. This program is gaining trust. It's delivering results, and it represents what effective statewide leadership can look like.

Right now, all this work is being facilitated by term or temporary positions. Without permanent funding, we will lose these relationships, the momentum, and the trust that we've built. And if there's one thing that I've learned over thirty six years in my career in law enforcement is that trust takes years to build and just five minutes to lose. We need permanent resources to keep building this program. Thank you.

Happy to take any questions that you may have.

Well, thank you so much for that. And now, chairman Joe James.

Yeah. Thank you, chairman. Just wanted to say it's been a long road to get to this point regarding the travel police pilot program. When we discuss about public law, when we discuss lack of resources. To start off, we currently have a travel police program, law enforcement on the reservation. Our reservation is located in Humboldt and Del Norte County in a rural area.

When we talk about protecting our own, being able to have that status with this as being as peace officers, as tribal police, when we talk about parity, when we talk about equity, we have a great working relationship with our sheriff, sheriff Scott in Del Norte County, sheriff Hansel in Humboldt County who fully support this. We've come a long way. I mentioned ten, fifteen years. We couldn't. I've been there.

I grew up on the reservation, on or near the rest all my life.

We talk about trust. We talk about here we are getting this bill that was signed last year. We submitted our application. We look forward to growing and go into this program, providing safety for our memberships. When we talk about lack of law enforcement or lack of funding, it impacts all of us, not just the tribe, but the the county.

And so being able to protect our people in real time on the ground, for the safety of our people, this allows us to do that. And, again, looking forward to to working on this program with a miss build in the staff of DOJ and the leadership.

Thank you so much, chairman James. I'm bringing it back to the dais. Any comments, questions? Assembly member Lackey?

Yeah. I have seen some awkward relationships from the past. I mean, I used to work out in El Cajon for about eight years, and there's many tribal areas in that region. And I'm thankful to say that things have improved in the relationship category between law enforcement and the tribal peoples. Because it used to not be good.

There's a lot of mistrust. There's a lot of perceptions that weren't healthy on both sides. And so we're moving in the right direction, but I look at some of these numbers here and I see staggering numbers. And I see that we're attempting to do the right thing. But I think meetings, I do appreciate and progress, I appreciate.

But it comes a time where we need results, and we need to figure out when there's such a high number of these people that are missing. We've got to do better. We've got to do better than what we're doing now. And I don't know exactly what the answer is because I think it's a collective responsibility. It's both tribal participation.

It's also outside law enforcement participation, and it's also a funding mechanism from this institution. And unless all three of those are working, we're just gonna grow the problem. That's the way I see it. And I would tell you that I'm I'm heartened by the fact that we're at least improving in all these areas, but we really still have staggering numbers. And that should motivate all of us.

At least I hope it does. And as a legislator, I just hope that we're doing our part. I mean, I see that $5,000,000 sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money. But is it really? When you consider the real tragedy circumstances that families are suffering from, I can't imagine it.

And some of these numbers almost to me reflect third world numbers, third world nations. I mean, it's like we live in a modern society. These aren't modern problems. These are problems that are staggeringly embarrassing for lack of a better term. So I really wish that I had the insight to know exactly where the problem is, but I think it's all of us.

I think it's all three. And I'm hoping that this kind of discussion will allow all of us to be better. Not just point fingers where the problem is, but actually collectively unite together so that we can do better. And that's what I'm hoping for.

Thank you so much for those comments, so member Lackey. Moving to Department of Justice, director Bill, you mentioned that the report back on 3099 is now an internal review. Do we know when that might be ready to present to this body?

We don't have an exact date at this time. As you had mentioned, we are internal review. We did an extensive outreach to the tribal community. We wanted to ensure that the final report reflects their voices. It's not necessarily for the state to speak on their behalf.

So that is part of what we're doing now, and that's why it has taken some time. I think, as you had mentioned, it's everyone coming together and making sure that no matter what, that tribal voice is heard. So that's hopefully what we have on that report.

Well, thank you so much. And I do know the the attorney general is really working hard on these issues. This is the first time this data has been collected in the state of California. So we continue to look to those results that are there. Also, on the PL two eighty pilot program, you mentioned your tribe is participating.

Did we run into any barriers, any outreach? We heard from an earlier panel where cohort one ran into problems and they took the outreach and moved it forward. Cohort two, cohort three moved forward. Is there areas, that we should be looking at, within the P L two eighty pilot program?

Yes. So under AB 134 with the tribal police pilot program, we did listening sessions. What we heard back from the tribes, and we will be submitting, a survey out to all the tribes that were contacted regarding this program so we could solidify that in the report. That's also due under that bill. But just initially, what we had heard was one, the waiver of sovereign immunity was a barrier for tribes in order to participate with the program.

The other is cost. So they would have to establish a lot of different infrastructure in order to actually carry out the reports, the studies, and all the data, and also the manpower to make sure that their law enforcement was meeting all the requirements. So those tended to be the most that we heard was cost and the waiver sovereign immunity.

Well, thank you so much for that. And chairman, Joe James, and to the Yurok people, thank you for being the first to move forward in the pilot program. We know that many times in Indian country being the first starts to be the model for the state of California, one that sees what's successful and what needs a little bit more work. So we'll be here, ready to help you through it and navigate through some of those things here.

But I do wanna give your people and yourself, right, accolades for being the first in Indian country to move forward.

Certainly, we sit back and don't take advantage of these opportunities. We'll see that the MMIW crisis continues to move forward. I think true law enforcement opportunity to investigate those cases against our people starts to move in the right direction. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Mister Worley, you mentioned that you coordinated relationships throughout the state. Were those relationships built with tribal organizations, tribal governments, local law enforcement? Can you elaborate a little bit more on those coordinated relationship outreaches?

Sure. Sure. Chairman, all the above. So whether it's training, whether it's conferences, whether it's referrals, working with the sheriff's offices, listening to the DA offices in terms of the cases that they're that are pending. Be mindful that DOJ's division of law enforcement, our role is to provide technical assistance and in in some aspects, technical advice.

We're looking at we're looking at cold cases. We're looking at the the the things that are stymied, the things that need progress. So we're talking to the local jurisdictions. We're talking to our tribal partners. We're talking to our prosecutorial elements, all equally.

Because someone said it earlier that it's gonna take all of us to really address this. Right? So it's really all the above.

And in those coordinated efforts, have you ran into any issues that this body should be aware of that maybe we could look further into as clarifying?

So I think that as my agents are talking to tribal members and talking to witnesses and victims, there seems to be, you know, and I've heard it mentioned, all day today, generational trauma. And I think it would behoove us to, bring in some additional advocacy, some expertise that can address the, generational trauma because, my special agents have expertise is, understanding, the gaps in an investigation and leveraging technology, leveraging, innovation to really, move these cases, forward.

And my agents are not trained in, addressing generational trauma. So that's what has been flagged for me, sir.

Thank you for that. Certainly, having more insight to the historical trauma, specifically with California's first people As noted, certainly, to get the right resources out there. Also, we talked about the funding and the funding aspect of it. Do you believe that the funding that you've received so far, in this particular area has been beneficial?

Do you think that ongoing funding would even be more beneficial? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for the panel for being here to address these issues.

Now we move to our next panel. Our issue three, we have Ashley Hart there, Aaron Sher, Jesus Gutierrez, Harry Freilich, Department of Finance in LAO. Now we move to our next panel.

Okay.

Alright. Good afternoon, chairman and others in attendance. My name is Ashley Harp, and I have the pleasure to serve as the assistant director of fiscal operations for the California Department of Justice. I wanna thank you all for giving our team the opportunity to testify today about our work at California DOJ. I also want to express my appreciation for your leadership in steering our state through especially challenging fiscal times.

To start us off, I would like to give an overview of our department. DOJ is charged with serving and protecting all 39,000,000 Californians, preserving California's abundant natural resources, and representing all state agencies in the governor. In practicality, the range of responsibilities that translates into is enormous.

Our employees are hard at work protecting public safety, including seizing more than 17,000,000 fentanyl pills, more than 7,000 pounds of fentanyl, and making nearly 600 fentanyl related arrests in just four years, including arresting 1,012 individuals engaged in human trafficking and insisting 1,054 survivors in the last five years. Additionally, recovering 1,520 firearms from illegally armed individuals through our armed and prohibited persons program in 2024 alone.

We're defending, implementing, and enforcing California laws passed by this body. Last year, DOJ successfully defended California's age based restrictions on purchasing firearms and our common sense regulation on ghost guns. We went to court to defend SB 976, the protecting our kids from Social Media Addiction Act, and an early win allowed the majority of the bill to come into effect.

We secured a $7,000,000 settlement with Greystar, which is the largest landlord in the country that manages 950,000 rental units nationwide following allegations that the company used RealPage to align rental prices with competing landlords by illegally sharing and gathering confidential pricing information. We're in court fighting Live Nation, the company, the parent company of Ticketmaster over allegations that it's unlawful conduct has hampered competition.

And since 2022, DOJ's housing justice team has been successfully enforcing California's nation leading housing laws across the state, leading cities to plan for more than 40,000 new units of housing, preventing discriminatory land use practices, protecting renters, and holding unscrupulous landlords accountable to the law. DOJ is also defending and supporting California's 236 state departments in their own critical service to our state and residents.

We're defending our environment from the impacts of climate change and the harm of pollution, protecting access to health care and education for all, enforcing civil rights laws, and helping victims of illegal business practices. Despite what some in Washington may falsely claim, we're tackling fraud head on, which has resulted in the recovery of nearly $2,700,000,000 for California taxpayers in the past decade. We're supporting you and your colleagues as you craft new laws to address the ever evolving needs of our state.

I'm also here to, provide additional overview of our federal accountability work later here in the agenda, but I'd be remiss to skip over the fact that since president president Trump took office for his second term, California has filed 59 lawsuits against the federal administration. We've secured a victory 80% of the time, returning approximately $200,000,000,000 to California children, seniors, workers, schools, and communities, and defending our constitutional rights, including the right to birthright citizenship.

I'm continuously amazed by all this department accomplishes on a daily basis regardless of who is in the White House because while the second Trump Administration has resulted in a massive amount of additional work for DOJ, the reality is it is additional work. None of DOJ's bread and butter work protecting our people, communities, and state has stopped just because Trump returned to office, which is why DOJ's current staff and resources cannot simply absorb the new federal accountability work.

DOJ needs to be able to keep up with the threats facing California, the mandates from the legislature, and the demands on our time, resources, and personnel demands we cannot fully meet with our current resources, and that's why we're here today.

As public servants, we all share the same vision and mission to serve, represent, and protect all Californians and to safeguard the progress our state has led. I have faith that we can work together to ensure the California Department of Justice has the tools it needs to do just that. And with that, we have, Jesus Gutierrez and Ari Freilich, here to further discuss the, agenda item related to our armed and prohibited person system, if you don't have any questions on the overview that I just provided.

Thank you. We'll hold questions till the end of the panel, discussions. Go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ari Freilich. I serve as director of the California DOJ's Office of Gun Violence Prevention. I'm joined by Jesus Gutierrez, who is serving as acting assistant, deputy director for the Bureau of Firearms and has extensive experience as a special agent in charge for the APPS program, the armed and prohibited person system program. We're here to provide a brief overview of the trends and statistics that we published last month in our annual APPS report.

The APPS program is a vital testament to California's commitment to public safety, especially to survivors' safety, through prevention, compliance, and follow through enforcement.

We have significant positive news to share as well as data showing ongoing challenges in this work to ensure unlawfully armed individuals in our state are separated from their firearms. First, a brief refresher on terminology in this program. The APPS program identifies someone as both armed and prohibited by cross referencing information about individuals who have a record of a legally purchased or registered firearm, in DOJ's automated firearm system.

That list of known firearm owners is cross referenced daily against records about events such as criminal convictions, restraining orders, mental health facility admissions that are reported to California DOJ and trigger a firearm prohibiting event. When there is no record that that armed and prohibited person has subsequently relinquished their firearm, as required by law.

The APPS program identifies those individuals who were once lawful owners but are now prohibited as APPS case subjects. There are three ways a person can be removed from the APPS list of armed and prohibited individuals. First, through enforcement and compliance efforts verifying that they have been, in fact, successfully separated from all known firearms, voluntarily or otherwise.

Second, if their prohibition expires, that occurs most frequently in the context of very short term emergency or temporary protective orders, typically lasting between one and three weeks, in which case the between one and three weeks, in which case the person may never have relinquished their firearms before the order expires or, law enforcement may not have reported the firearm was in fact relinquished to that agency of within the one to three time, one to three week time period before the expiration of the order.

And the third way is, that a person may be removed from APPS is upon their death.

After full investigation by, the BUF teams at the Department of Justice, when all investigative leads have been exhausted, An APPS case may be closed if the person is removed from APPS under one of those three, ways I just outlined. Or if that isn't possible, then the case is moved to pending status, meaning the case is closed, all leads have been investigated, but the purse we cannot confirm at the Department of Justice that the person has been separated from all known firearms.

That might be because the person has, for instance, moved out of state, or is subject only to federal firearm prohibitions where we do not have jurisdiction under California law to separate from firearms. Maybe they cannot be located or, in some cases, they cannot provide sufficient documentation verifying that that every firearm associated with them has been removed from their possession. If they have 10 firearms recorded in the automated firearm system, but nine firearms have been documented and verified that they've been removed.

They will stay in that pending status until that tenth firearm is accounted for. Onto the data. I wanna start by highlighting the positive trends in this year's report. First, California DOJ's agents, continue to increase their performance and set records. In 2025, DOJ agents made a record 26,000 contacts with prohibited people or other witnesses in the course of these APPS investigations.

They completed the highest number of investigations since 2017. It's 8,667. And they removed a record number of individuals from the APPS list due to compliance and enforcement efforts verifying that they were, in fact, separated from all known firearms. That's 4,461. The number of people removed due to successful compliance and enforcement efforts increased by 10% above the previous record, that mister Gutierrez's team set last year in 2024, and that number has increased by 37% since 2021.

So, again, there's been a 37% increase in four years in the number of people removed from the APPS list due to compliance and enforcement.

We believe this is due to a combination of factors, including excellent leadership at the Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement Bureau of Firearms, expanded state local partnerships, focus on firearm relinquishment efforts, passage of legislation, some of which started, I believe, in this committee, like AB 732, SB 899, and others, and investments in programs like the Firearm Relinquishment Grant Program currently administered by the Judicial Council that have driven increased local focus, staffing, and capacity to ensure firearm relinquishment compliance at the local level as soon as a person becomes prohibited.

Second point on the data, important note that the total number of individuals with a legally recorded firearm in the state of California continues to grow year over year. That number grew by just three percent from 2024 to 2025 but grew by 25% from 2021 to 2025. 25% increased the number of people with a legally recorded firearm in DOJ databases.

This reflects both actual increases in firearm ownership but also, both legislative changes and implementation changes that result in more people's firearm ownership accurately being identified in DOJ databases. As a result, our databases, have a larger universe of people, like, who may be identified as armed and prohibited each year.

Third and relatedly, even as DOJ removed a record number of people from the APPS' list last year and the recorded 37% increase in removals in four years, The number of people added to this list continues to grow each year and continues to outpace removals. In 2025, a record 12,035 people were added to the armed prohibited person list statewide.

At the start of this year, January 1, there were 27,199 people identified as armed and prohibited in the system. It is important to note that on that date, 60% of those cases were closed cases, where DOJ had already exhausted all leads, again, could not remove the individual from the APPS list. In many cases, that may involve the same individual from year to year who, for instance, has moved out of state.

But as of January 1, 10,893 cases were active cases under active investigation or in the workload queue for our agents. Fourth, of my five data points, fourth, I wanna highlight something that is too often lost in this data, which is that the APPS program is especially vital to restraining and protective order enforcement.

62% of all armed and prohibited individuals added to APPS and 48% of those removed from APPS last year were prohibited under court protection and restraining orders, such as domestic violence restraining orders. This is by far the most common way that a person goes from becoming a legally recorded farm owner to an APPS subject in our state.

Because many of these orders are relatively shorter term orders compared to the lifetime prohibitions that often attach in the criminal conviction context or mental health prohibition context, Court protection restraining orders represent a smaller 18% of all cases that are active at one time, but they represent a much larger a majority of the cases that fall on and off the list each year. Finally, I would do wanna emphasize in closing that the APPS program is a safety net. Our teams play a vital role.

They have decades of leadership and expertise. This program is a pillar for public safety. It's a national model that has inspired about a half dozen other states to launch similar model programs, but the APPS program is also not designed or resourced at scale to perform this essential safety work alone. Courts and local law enforcement agencies are the first line of defense. They too must treat foreign relinquishment compliance as a safety priority.

With that, anyway, more proactive coordinated prioritization of relinquishment compliance at the local level, including in the protective order context, California will continue to see year over year increases in illegally armed APPS subjects. By definition, APPS is also only part of the firearm relinquishment equation because it is focused on recovering firearms that are known to DOJ databases because they were once legally purchased or acquired or recorded in our state.

Local partners and especially courts may often receive additional information about other firearms not known to those databases, such as when a domestic violence survivor is in court testifying to the court that she was attacked or threatened by an abuser with a ghost gun that would illegally manufacture ghost gun that would not be reflected in DOJ databases.

That is why DOJ has sponsored and endorsed multiple bills in recent years, such as assembly bill 451 from assembly member Petrie-Norris last year, which requires all local law enforcement agencies to develop and implement protocols to ensure court protective orders are effectively and consistently served, documented, and enforced, and that fire relinquishment that there are protocols in place to, ensure fire relinquishment accountability. That's also why DOJ is sponsoring a package of protective order concepts this year, building on that progress.

Assembly bill, 1753, assembly member Stephanie, focused on improving farm relinquishment compliance and coordination. Our actual report includes a number of other legislative recommendations to build on recent progress. Happy to discuss this in more detail. I, in the interest of time, will simply uplift, a more urgent funding related item. The funding for the firearm relinquishment grant program will expire begin to expire this coming budget year in April 2027 for, I believe, about half of the grantees currently receiving grants.

The report from 11 of the 13 counties that reported data last year showed that, they were facilitated the relinquishment of 3,000 firearms from about 900 people who became prohibited under court protective and restraining orders. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Any other comments, questions, clarifying? Jesus.

Sir, I'm just here. If you guys have any specific questions regarding the APPS enforcement, I'm happy to answer any of those.

Thank you so much. Bring it back to the dias for any questions. So member Lackey?

Yeah. I was once a very strong critic of the APPS enforcement, and I actually I was able to participate in the ride along. Actually, went and saw the undertaking, and I didn't even come close to understanding the complexity and the challenges associated with recovering these firearms. In all truth, there there are so many elements, and there's so much work that's done before they go out and try to recover the firearm. I was very, very impressed with the professional way that it was managed.

But in my opinion, a lot of the problem is the way once this person is free, trying to get their firearm is extremely difficult. I we need to draft some kind of public policy that causes the surrender and the securement of the firearm whenever enforcement action is taken. That's the only way we're ever gonna catch up Because this problem, even though we've made progress, and I commend you for the progress that you've done, it's gonna bury us.

I mean, you look at the amount of cases and the amount of agents you have, you're never gonna catch up. It's not gonna happen.

And I think that we as policymakers need to realize that. We need to change the policy. And there's always arguments. There's always people that will blur the reality, but the reality is we've already made the public policy indicating these people are not to have a firearm. That's not the debate.

The debate is how do we get it? It's broken now. It's not gonna get any better, folks. It's not your fault. People will blame you.

I was one of them. So I because I know the realities of how this works. We need to change the policy. We need to secure the firearms immediately. And if we don't secure the firearms, they remain on probation or something, some kind of penalty.

Otherwise, it doesn't happen. These firearms are disappearing because there's limited tools in recovery. Right? You have rights of privacy. You have all these other circumstances that you have to respect.

And even finding these people is difficult. Right? I mean, a lot of these people don't wanna be found. And so it's it's extreme. It's an impossible challenge that you guys have to face.

And I was thankful that I had the privilege to see and heartened to see the professionalism of the way it was carried out because I had my doubts. Shame on me. I will admit to you that I was wrong. But I will also admit to you that if we don't change the way we go about recovering these these weapons, it's never going to be where it needs to be.

These people need to surrender the firearms at least for the period of time that the court indicates sometimes it's permanent.

But we're not doing that, and we're doing the best you guys are doing the best you can to recover these firearms, but it's never gonna happen until we change the policy. So my hats go off to those who have this challenge, and we need to fix it.

Thank you so much for that. Assembly member Schultz.

Thank you very much, mister chair. Thank you for your testimony. Sorry that it was a little bit in and out there, but I think I caught most of it. Hopefully, my questions, don't make you repeat yourself. First of all, I just wanna say, this 69 page, report made for some very light reading this weekend, but very helpful.

Now the report states that retrieving firearms from people at the time they are convicted and are placed on the prohibited list would be the most efficient way to retrieve the firearms. I guess my question to all of you is, what would that process look like, and do you anticipate any barriers to that approach?

I'll start. Please do chime in the so this is it. Excuse me. This is an area where California has enacted a number of laws. Prop 63 Enacted in 2016 set in and placed the process for the criminal conviction, timelines, specific timelines, reporting requirements, probation officers required to report to the court prior to final sentencing whether relinquishment of all known firearms was accomplished.

More recently, there's been a focus on expanding and, I would say, clarifying court's mandate in the context of protective orders too. So now courts for that that happened first for domestic violence restraining orders only took effect for other orders January 1 due to legislation we endorsed in recent years.

That's an ongoing project to shift both the resources and the culture to say that this is an obligation of courts prior upon issuing an order to check automated firearm systems, see if this person has firearms, and make findings on the record about whether they relinquished all firearms pursuant to that court order and to report noncompliance to courts and law enforcement.

I do think this is a tough year to make this to to say this, but I think the honest truth is that these laws provide important building blocks and that the gap between what they promise and what will show up in the real world is often about whether there is funding and staff positions dedicated not to ensuring farmer relinquishment compliance as an ancillary project, but as a core function of some people's job.

In the court, in a law enforcement agency where we see success, where we see best practice models at the local level is because it is someone's job to ensure farm relinquishment compliance.

That is their position. That's what they're staff to do, and they report amazing results. So I think there's definitely more work to be done in in terms of improving process, improving the law. That's some of those provisions will be heard in your committee, the public safety committee soon in assembly bill 1753. So we do have ideas about improving process, and I think, for me, it often comes down to whose job is it, are there resources for it.

Well, thank you. It sounds like, I'll be seeing you tomorrow morning. Yes, sir. I did have a a follow-up on that. It sounds like you were touching on first of all, I agree.

Funding, I know it's a hard thing to bring up in this year, but it is the honest truth is that we do need more funding to ensure effective implementation. You did make a comment about, you know, some local best practices. I'm just curious. Are there specific counties that you really see as going above and beyond and sort of setting the the California standard in terms of what it should look like? And if so, what are what are they doing?

Do you wanna chime in with any I have a few in mind, but we're good. I will regret leaving out whoever I leave out, but I think a few do stand out. San Mateo has has dedicated local funding to create fire malignant positions and additional court positions dedicated to making findings for the court about whether someone has firearms in a protective order and whether those were in fact relinquished.

Because they had made those local investments, they were in a good place to also successfully apply for state funding for similar purposes. Santa Clara, through their district attorney's office, has created a gun balance restraining order gun sorry, a gun balance reduction unit.

They take on different forms of this, but one of their key goals is ensuring farm relinquishment in these cases. I believe we've seen the same in Orange County. So many of the other programs receiving grant funding that honestly were were CalMatters articles about Orange County's failures to ensure farm management compliance, I believe, three years ago, and they are now reporting. They're now often through hiring a really small number of people to actually do this work full time for the full first time reporting significant increases.

So I could go on, but I don't know if you have others.

You know, I agree. The other aspect of it would be also task forces. For example, target, Tulare County has a task force where not only do they tackle

APPS subjects, it also tackles people that are armed and prohibited that are gang members. But that task force is tasked also with reaching out to the courts so they know the people in the court system to be able to disassociate these individuals from these firearms at the closer to the time of of of conviction, of prohibition because that is the most effective way to be able to disassociate somebody, just as, assembly member Lackey spoke of.

It's it takes a lot for DOJ to be able to process an individual and prohibit them and then go over to our enforcement, teams and be able to go out there, and disarm individuals, locate them. So just going back to at the time of of a prohibition is the the most efficient way to disarm someone because there are more individuals prohibition.

Thank you both. Last topic is unregistered firearms. I'm just wondering so it's a two part question. First of all is just how often are you encountering and taking possession of unregistered firearms?

So, statistically, about 60% are APPS and 40% are firearms that are not listed in that individual's name. So that's significant. 40% of those guns. And that's just of the people that we make contact with.

Thank you. And my final question, and again, appreciate everyone's time today. Just curious about your internal processes. Once these firearms are retrieved, is there a period of time or a process for maintaining them in the event that perhaps it's tied to an investigation of criminal conduct later?

So anytime agents, seize firearms, that case is discussed with, deputy attorney general, to ask, to see if there's gonna be a case that's gonna be brought up against the individual. If there isn't, that individual is sent a hundred and eighty day letter, letting them know, you know, we're either gonna store these firearms or, you're able to ask for us to take them to a gun store to be able to be sold or transferred to somebody else that is not prohibited.

Thank you all very much, and thank you, mister chair.

Oh, thank you. Assembly member Schultz, I did have a follow-up question and clarifying. You mentioned restraining orders. That that's the bulk of some of the the activity there. But then you mentioned that there was a a lower percentage of retrieving the guns, I believe.

So the let me sorry. The

Yeah. You can clarify. I was trying to follow you.

There's you get very different statistics if you kind of look at a photograph snapshot in time versus a video camera who's coming on and off the list. Okay. The a majority of the people who come on the list, 60% over 60% last year were coming on because of a restraining order. Okay. But many of those expire much faster than the lifetime prohibitions after a felony or mental health prohibition.

And so if you just look at who is armed and prohibited right now, the full universe, about 18% are prohibited under a restraining order. And because those are often much more recently issued, they're more likely to be active cases, not someone who was incarcerated twenty years ago and moved out of state, but someone who became subject to an order last year, for instance, and it's more likely to still be in possession of their firearms. So that's just why sometimes that data is lost.

If you look only at who is armed and prohibited right now, it's about 18% due to restraining orders. But because because they're much more commonly coming on and off the list, they're actually a much larger percentage of the team's caseload.

Because the restraining orders could be temporary restraining orders or six month restraining orders or that type in in nature?

Or five day restraining orders, twenty one day restoring or so. They become they're not prohibited after a few days. So

But during that time, it's very important for the person that's getting the restraint in order to know that the weapons that the other individual has is being confiscated.

Correct.

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you, for that. Thank you for your testimonies. Now we move to issue five. Four. Yeah.

Thank you. Getting a little late. Issue four, we have Ashley Harp. We also have Myra Morales, and then LAO and Department of Finance. And who's gonna lead?

Will it be Ashley?

Hi. Yes. I will go ahead and kick us off. Under this issue, the governor's proposed budget includes the following adjustments to support critical firearms related workloads. The first is a limited term net zero shift of $8,000,000 from the dealer's record of sales special account to the general fund for fiscal years 2026-27 through 2028-29. A second, $11,200,000 general fund in 2026-27 to continue the firearms IT systems modernization project.

And lastly, $1,200,000 general fund in 2026-27 reducing to $259,000 general fund ongoing in one position to implement Senate bill 704 related to firearm barrels.

Myself and Myra Morales are here to respond to any questions that you all have.

Well, thank you so much. LAO?

Drew Soderborg, legislative analyst's office. We recommend that you modify the proposal to provide funding to implement SB 704. We don't have any concerns with the amount of funding requested. However, we do recommend that the

legislature, support this workload from the dealer's record of sale account given that SB 704 included specific language requiring DOJ to charge fees in order to cover the costs of this workload. However, given that the fee revenue will not be immediately available and there will be initial start up cost associated with this program, we recommend that you support the initial cost to the program with a loan from the Fire Arms Safety and Enforcement Special Fund.

This special fund will be able to handle the initial cost of the workload while fees build up in the dealer's record of sale account that could pay off this loan. We also recommend that you approve the firearm information technology system modernization request in order to keep this project moving forward. And we recommend that you modify the proposed shift of BOF support to the general fund.

Specifically, we recommend approving the shift only on a one year basis. And given the general fund difficulties facing the state, the legislature could consider making this shift rather than, just a transfer of general fund resources to support the Bureau of Firearms, making it a loan. When and how this loan would be repaid could be considered as part of the legislature's deliberations on how to support firearm workload on an ongoing basis.

And in order to help the legislature decide how to support firearm workload on an ongoing basis, we recommend that the legislature direct the Department of Justice to provide a framework for determining which workload should be supported by firearm fee revenues. Many of the special funds that are supporting firearm related workload, most importantly, the dealer's record of sales special count, lacks efficient resources.

Now normally, when the state's in a regulatory situation in which fees are supporting regulatory workload and those fees, and don't produce enough revenue in order to support the workload, the state simply considers increasing fee levels. However, because of a recent Supreme Court decision, the the Supreme Court has signaled that it's possible for fee levels to reach unconstitutionally high levels. As a result of these factors, DOJ has often sought general fund resources for workload that could be supported by special funds.

This not only leads to inconsistencies in the way this workload is supported, but it also puts pressure on the state general fund, which is a notable consideration given the multiyear deficits potentially facing the state. This is the why we recommend that DOJ provide by 01/10/2027 a framework for determining, which firearm and ammunition workload should be supported by fees.

Once the legislature has this framework, we recommend that it use it to guide its decisions about how this workload should be supported. The framework would allow the legislature to determine what fee levels are it's comfortable with, which could be higher or lower than the amount recommended by DOJ.

And if the fee levels are lower than is sufficient to support the workload, the legislature would then be would be positioned to determine how to proceed whether to implement statutory changes to reduce the cost of the workload or consider general fund resources in order to address the, the workload. Happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much. Department of Finance?

Victoria Chin, Department of Finance. We appreciate the LAO's recommendations. With respect to their recommendations on the SB 704 BCP, we disagree with the recommendation to take a loan from the firearm safety and enforcement special fund account. Although the fund has a sufficient fund balance, we project the fund to be structurally imbalanced in the outer years. So taking a loan from this fund right now would not be prudent.

We do note that SB 704 allows DOJ to charge a fee. However, it would still need to go through the regulatory process, which may take up to a year to implement. It is also unclear if revenue collected will be sufficient to cover the costs. Ultimately, we propose general fund to provide consistent funding to support the implementation of SB 704. We note this funding is consistent with the fiscal estimate of the bill.

On the LAO's recommendation on the DOJ Authority alignment BCP, we disagree with the recommendation to approve only one year of funding. Approving the three years of funding as proposed would allow for DOJ and the administration to monitor the condition of the fund, assess options to support the solvency of the fund, while also providing a consistent level of resources in the short term. Lastly, we appreciate the LAO's recommendation regarding the framework for the funding firearm related workload, and we're happy to consider proposals the legislature may have.

Thank you so much for that. Department of Justice, anything to comment on? Any of that?

No. No.

Thank you so much. What about the reporting mechanism, Department of Finance that was proposed by LAO?

Excuse me. Can you repeat that?

Yeah. There was a reporting recommendation that would come back to the this body. What's your opinion on that?

Department of Finance is open to reports that would be required by legislature.

Thank you so much, and thank you for this panel as now we move to our final panel, panel five. We have federal accountability workload and other various budget proposals. Ashley Harp, Danielle O'Bannon, Christina Bull, Mark, Department of Finance legislative analysis. Christina Bullard.

Yeah. No. That's good. Alright. And I think we're starting with Ashley? Or not this time.

Oh, I don't know. Chairman, I I will go ahead and pass it over to Danielle O'Bannon, our chief O'Bannon, our chief of the public rights division.

Thank you, Ashley. Good evening, Chair Ramos. Thank you for having us here today. My name is Danielle O'Bannon. I'm the chief of the public rights division.

One of the primary divisions that are handling the presidential federal accountability work along with our civil division, solicitor general's office, and our special litigation unit. Department of justice is requesting $10,000,000 in additional funding to support the presidential federal accountability work. As you know, it is the duty of attorney general to ensure that the laws of the state are properly enforced and that California statute protecting the rights of all residents are properly interpreted and not undermined by the federal executive actions.

During the first year and few months of the president of the presidency, he has repeatedly taken actions that are contrary to law and curtail civil rights, restrict access to education, health care, erodes environmental protections, and access to sensitive since information and personal data. There's been attempts to end birthright citizenship, impose martial law through the federalization of the National Guard, withhold federal funding as a means to coerce the elimination of pro immigrant policies, and erode voting rights among others.

We're also defending a number of actions attacking California laws including AB 1266, SB 627, SB 805, AB 450, and proposition 50. DOJ's work has been extremely successful to date, and DOJ has obtained various orders protecting the vital rights of all Californians. Although our work has been very impactful, it is very time consuming and very resource intensive.

The administration has been very aggressive and has put California's safety, health, education, and well-being in peril, and we must respond to these attempts to curtail California rights. In order to counter these actions, we've had to file numerous actions.

Thus far, we have on average filed one lawsuit per week in addition to numerous amicus briefs and comment letters. The administration's actions have not slowed and we expect the pace of these actions to continue. Although we have received some initial resources, our budgeted resources will fall short of our current needs. I would like to now hand it over to Christina Bull Arndt, my colleague. She's the chief counsel for special litigation unit.

A court she coordinates the presidential federal accountability work within the office as well as with our multi state partners across The United States. She's gonna discuss some of the specific work that has protected California's access to over $200,000,000,000. Christina?

Good afternoon. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here today and talk about the important work that the California Department of Justice is doing to protect Californians and notably for your purposes, California's budget, from the harmful and unconstitutional work of the current federal administration. And as del as Danielle mentioned, our work has been broadly successful, and, of course, entails a significant increased workload. We have filed 66 lawsuits since the beginning of the federal administration.

Many of those challenge federal funding to California and funding cuts that has been in the area of education, of medical research, of health care, transportation.

So a broad array of different funding cuts. Our second lawsuit that we filed was the first week of the Trump administration, and the department of the Office of Management and Budget set out this memo saying that they were freezing all external funding. It was a total of $3,000,000,000,000 of funding. $168,000,000,000 just to California. About a third of California's budget.

And so that day, we got on the team's calls with our multi state colleagues. We divided up what we're gonna do. California's team worked until the wee hours when we passed the baton to New York and Massachusetts, and we filed a complaint the next day. And we got a TRO within days after that, and we have a preliminary injunction in place. That's important for to highlight the quick work that's required and the amount of funding that's at stake.

It's also important because that case has been the basis of numerous numerous returns where we will go back and say, hey. You're freezing the federal funding again, and and we can enforce that order that we have from the court. So it's been very effective for us. Like I said, our work has been broadly broadly effective. We have saved California nearly $200,000,000,000 of money.

We have secured 15 final court orders in our favor. We have 40 orders, affecting preliminary relief to stop the federal administration from taking its unlawful actions. And in seven cases, the federal administration has said, okay. Fine. Never mind.

We backed down and has has given up on the lawsuit. I think the funding piece of this is extremely important, but, of course, our work has has gone well beyond that as well. We successfully, fought back the federalization of the of California's National Guard, both, in Los Angeles as well as in Portland, Oregon. We successfully fought against the birthright citizenship executive order. We are defending California's voting rights, access to health care.

We have challenged the dismantling of the federal of a number of different federal agencies than ways that would harm California. And we're also fighting against the improper disclosure of personal information that the Federal Government is is requesting. So that's sort of a synopsis of our of our lawsuits. As Danielle mentioned, we've also been very active filing a number of different amicus briefs, often in cases where we couldn't bring an action ourselves, but definitely impacts Californians and is important to us.

And we have started the administrative process by issuing comments when the federal administration seeks to start the regulatory process to make sure that California's voice is heard.

And we've issued guidance to the public as well. So I could go on. I'm tremendously proud of the good work that our team is doing, but it's late and I'll stop there.

Well, thank you so much for your testimony, for both your testimony, chief O'Bannon, chief, Arndt. Any other comments from the dais or questions?

Yes, mister chair.

Chairman Schultz?

Thank you very much. Sorry that I missed your testimony, but I was able to catch the tail end of yours. I I like these oversight hearings because it gives us a chance to really lift the hood up, if you will, and look at the fine work that the department is doing.

I wanna thank the department for all the work that's being done on a daily basis by all of your staff and personnel to protect Californians from the chaos and the targeting that the federal administration has taken against our state and our people. I was just wondering if you could speak to maybe one or two particular cases that citizens should know where the department is fighting tooth and nail to protect our citizens.

Maybe one or two cases that are that are worth worth mentioning.

Let me start. So let me dive in a little bit to the National Guard case. I live in Los Angeles, and if you live in LA, you you felt it when they were there on our streets. And it also felt like a pivot point to me at least because we've been fighting about a lot of federal funding and things like that. And it really felt like taking this work to another level when the president attempts to impose martial law in our cities.

It the president used a statute that had only been used once before when president Nixon federalized the National Guard to to deliver mail because the postal workers were on strike. And so there wasn't usually, when you bring cases, there's a body of case law that that interprets the the laws and guides what it all means. Right? And here, we didn't have that. We found ourselves filing briefs, quoting Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers because that's what we had.

And in fact, that is fundamental to what we're doing because so much of what we're doing is about the foundation of how this country was was structured. We, we won that case, and, that went up to the the Supreme Court. And, and, we got a successful result there as well. So that's one that I'll mention that I'm particularly proud of.

Thank you very much. And just to be clear, we won. We won.

Yeah. Thank you. Notwithstanding the revisionist history, the the thumb at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, my app, we won and they lost. Just I like to

Okay. Good point.

Ok good point. Sorry. I didn't realize that wasn't clear.

We won

No. You're no. You were. I just I'm just hoping some somehow they'll play back this tape and you can see me getting under his skin. But that's that's more about me. The second question I had was actually about the funding request. So, from my prior career, I know that litigation can be very expensive and time consuming. Years for a case to resolve from beginning to end.

In some cases, maybe even decades. I was just wondering if anyone on the panel could speak to what prompted, the budget request to go from the ongoing resources to limited term resources. Not coming at it from any angle, just purely curious what was sort of the the impetus for that request.

Mark Jimenez, Department of Finance, and I can maybe speak to that question. It's, you know, it's in response to, of course, the, the, multiyear budget deficit that we're, we're, you know, we're that we're facing. We did initially provide about $14,000,000 ongoing general fund or a mix of funds, for DOJ to do this work. But, in cons about recognizing the need for additional resources, but also trying to balance the, future, budget deficit.

This is, a way to provide, additional resources, a budget augmentation to what we've already provided last year, while also trying to balance, the deficit that we're facing.

So we need that.

Thank you. And just a very quick follow-up. As you're looking towards the May revise, have you given thought to certainly, the term limited resources is is one valid approach. Have you also considered looking at just maybe, altering the number of the ongoing funding just as as another proposal?

We are evaluating the the resource the funding level for federal the DOJ's federal accountability work in the May revision.

Okay. Fantastic. Looking forward to seeing the revision. Last question that I had was okay. I like to end on something kind of positive given the circumstances.

What's been the nature of the relationship between the department and city attorneys and county council? Has there been good collaboration on on some of these efforts to take the administration in DC to court?

Yes. There has been. We have worked with different localities for for different matters. Right? And so we have we reached out to Los Angeles when the National Guard was, deployed in Los Angeles.

We have, regular calls with, San Francisco to understand what their concerns are meet their needs. There are a number of localities in California that have their own, that have an independent right to bring actions under the unfair competition law. And so we that provides a strong basis for us to collaborate with those cities as well.

Thank you so much. I just wanna reiterate a comment that you made that through litigation, you saved the state $2,000,000,000. Is that

No. $200,000,000,000. Billion.

$200,000,000,000.

$200,000,000,000.

So then, Schultz, did you did you hear that? $200,000,000,000 they saved through litigation.

Oh, so we saved money by suing Trump. I love that. Yeah. Thank you, mister chairman.

Yes. We do.

And with that, we'll conclude this panel and move to public comment. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

200. Do we have any public comment?

Evening, mister chair. Jeff Neal representing, Othram Incorporated. I was inspired to hear earlier the panels on the missing and murdered indigenous peoples. Also humbled to hear about how much work there still is to be done. Wanted to highlight, one program despite, significant cuts at BIA under the current administration.

One bright point is the Operation Spirit Return, which is a program that, you know, seeks to, reunite families, with missing loved ones by, identifying using cutting edge DNA technology, that often provides, missing, excuse me, unidentified remains that are either on, or near Indian lands in The United States, and that are believed to be American Indians or native Alaskans. You know, those that program has had a number of successes in using that.

So one, I I just want to make sure that that you're aware and the committee members are aware and that the panelists are aware of that program so that if we do have unidentified remains in in this state that we believe to be missing indigenous people, we can we can provide that service. It's a continuously appropriate program at the federal level. So the money is there to pay for it.

You know, that cutting edge DNA technology one reason this is possible is because DNA technology has come so far just in the last five or six years instead of needing a one to one match, or, or happening to match a CODIS somebody in the CODIS database, you now get a match essentially every time, if we have DNA to work with.

So we can also use that technology for both for other cold cases, where where it isn't an unidentified person, found on or near, Indian lands, but also for contemporary cases so that we can, you know, move that investigation upstream and hopefully avoid, the case where we do have unidentified remains to work with. So we'd urge, but, you know, the contemporary work is not funded through the Federal Government.

So we'd urge the legislature and the governor's office, to provide even just even just a few $100,000 for a program like that can help solve dozens of cases. And so we just wanna bring that to your attention.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you so much for your comments. Any other public comment? Department of finance? No. Just kidding.

This meeting is adjourned.