Senate Standing Committee on Rules

The Senate Committee on Rules will come to order. Before we begin to today's agenda, please can we establish quorum? Can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Quorum. Alright.

A quorum has been established. If there are no objections, I'd like to take up. First on today's agenda, governor's appointments not required to appear starting with item 2c, the appointment of Olivia May Asuncion as a member of the commission on disability access. I'll entertain a motion.

Thank you. We have Vice Chair Grove. If we can please call the roll.

[Roll Call] Three votes.

Alright. That is three zero. We'll leave that open for others to add on. Next we have, for governor's appointment not required to appear, item two d, William Adams for the California Exposition and State for board Fair Board of Directors. I'll entertain a motion.

We have a motion by Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Three votes.

Alright. That has three votes. We'll leave that on call for Members to add on. Next item, for governor's appointments not required to appear. Item two e for the California Law Revision Commission. I'll entertain a motion. Alright. Senator Laird, has made a motion. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Two to one.

Alright. That is two to one. We will leave that, the role open for Members to add on. And next, we have last item for governor's appointments not required to appear. Item two f, David, Hubner, JD for the California Law Revision Commission. I'll entertain a motion.

Alright. That motion was made by Senator Laird. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Two votes.

Alright. That has two votes, and we will leave that, open for members to add on. Next, we I would like to take up item three, reference of bills to committees. I'll entertain a motion. We have a motion by, Vice Chair Grove.

Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Three votes. Alright. That has three votes.

We'll leave that, open for members to add on. Our final items before we return to governor's appointees are items four through seven for acknowledgments. I'll entertain a motion, please. No. We have Vice Chair Grove who's made that motion. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Four votes. Alright. We have four zero.

We'll leave that open for members to add on. We will turn now to governors appointees required to appear. Item one a, the appointment of Bryan Bishop as director of the division of adult parolee operations, department of corrections and rehabilitation.

Director Bishop, we welcome you to come forward. Welcome.

You have one to two minutes to provide, your opening testimony. Should you have any introductions or guests, feel free to, include those in your opening, testimony. We'll give you a little, signal when your time comes up, but you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and distinguished Members of the Senate Rules Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, and I'm deeply honored by governor Gavin Newsom's appointment.

I'm grateful for the trustee in his office that placed in me to lead this important organization. I would like to acknowledge and thank my family.

Several of them are here with me today. Robin, my wife and best friend of nearly thirty years, whose unwavering love, sacrifice, and encouragement have sustained me through every chapter of my career.

Our four adult children, Morgan, Garrett, Landon, and Abby, my loving parents, Don and Debbie, and my grandmother, Bridget. I also wanna recognize those present here today and those watching online from the division of adult parole operations and my former team, the Office of Correctional Safety.

I'm equally grateful today to CDCR's executive leadership for their guidance, mentorship, and faith in me.

For for nearly two and a half decades, I served in law enforcement. Part of that, I served our nation as a United States Marine. The Marine Corps taught me lessons that have stayed with me throughout my life.

Discipline, accountability, humility, courage, and the responsibility to always lead from the front. Those values shaped my life, and I've carried them with me throughout my personal life and throughout my career, especially now as a leader entrusted with helping guide DAPA into the future.

Throughout my extensive career, I've seen that public safety is strongest when accountability and rehabilitation move forward together.

I will continue leading DAPA with a deep commitment to staff safety, community safety, and public service, while advancing reentry and rehabilitation pathways to support the success of those those under our care.

I also want to acknowledge the tragedy our department suffered last July with the loss of pro agent Joshua Byrd.

His passing and sacrifice is a solemn reminder of the risk carried by our staff that serve this department and our communities every day. I believe I'm here today not only to help lead this organization forward, but to help ensure we continue to honor our fallen.

My primary focus as the DAPA directors is still a culture of pride, emotional well-being, resilience, and selfless service to this organization. I'd like to thank this committee for their time. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to your questions today.

Thank you. We will begin with questions from our Vice Chair, Vice Chair Grove.

Thank you, Director Bishop, for being here. Thank you for your opening statements. I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate, your resiliency and your commitment to take care of staff and, still make sure that,

incarcerated persons have an opportunity for success outside of a cell. Also thank you for your service to this country.

The first question I have is as the director of the adult operations program that you oversee with, what specific data driven processes does Dapo use to identify the highest risk parolees, particularly violent sex offenders, repeat violent felons or gang affiliated individuals.

And with those serious mental health risk, or the risk that they could possibly have, was there heightened supervision, out there? Or is there a process where you, I guess, assess them differently? I'd like to know what process you use.

Yes. Thank you for the question, Senator. So we are a data driven organization. We have robust data sets in a a variety of ways from, from coming, from standpoint of housing, employment, stability. We, we we we use systems that help track, their location.

Obviously, GPS, monitoring is a very is an our enhanced supervision model, and we use that data to help us articulate, design, and mitigate risk when it comes to the parole population.

When it comes to, how we supervise, those that are, we would consider at a more elevated level or higher risk level, that's an ongoing process when they're under supervision.

So, there are risk assessment tools that the through their, especially for the 290 population that you mentioned, Senator. They're, during their, routine, therapy sessions, they have ongoing risk assessment tools that are continued to use.

And so based on their level of treatment, based on their level of, let's say, receptiveness to the the treatment, their receptiveness to, their conditions of parole, we can elevate or lower that level of interfacing or interaction depending on the circumstances.

And it's meant to be a fluid supervision model. We wanna reward those that are performing well, but we wanna be able to elevate that level for those that are showing heightened signs of risk or heightened signs of concerns,

and we wanna continue to make sure our agents have the ability to engage with them, interface with them, get them to the appropriate treatments that are gonna help them either recover or get back on track.

So I would say it's a fluid model that we we use risk assessment tools that it's an ongoing process. And oftentimes, depending on their level of risk, they may we may increase their conditions to where they have to meet with the therapist a couple times a week. Right?

So it's it just really depends on, that risk level, but it's in conjunction with our BHR, behavioral health, reintegration staff or Clinicians trained in identifying those types of vulnerabilities and those types of risks.

Thank you. Are you still working with local law enforcement? You mentioned GPS electronic monitoring. What about frequent drug and alcohol testing or unannounced visits?

Abs absolutely. Thank you, Sunna. I'm really glad you asked that question. Part of my focus as the DAPO director is I come from a very strong public safety background.

I've worked in a multiple different avenues in law enforcement from fugitive apprehension to I was assigned for many years to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

So public safety for me is near and dear to my heart. But more importantly than that, the collaboration with local law enforcement is where I found the greatest level of success.

What I bring to DAPO and my experience and my leadership style is we have to leverage our relationships with these law enforcement partners. We have to build bridges with them. It's it's not only it's not encouraged, it's expected in this organization.

And to that point, Senator, I'd like to say that since I showed up to DAPO, it's only been a short while, I've been to 42 all 42 parole offices. I've met with every everybody at every office. My style of leadership is intentional and present.

In doing that, I'm encouraging every one of those unit supervisors. What do you do with local law enforcement? How's your relationship with the local law enforcement?

And I and we had one instance, in a town up in one of the northern counties where they said, oh, it's a little fractured right now. I said, okay. Let's set up a meeting, and I went and met with that, chief of police. That's my role as a leader.

I have to set that tone and set that example. I'll always do that. Additionally, since we've been since I've been here as the director, the direction to our organization is we will be intentional with when it comes to community compliance sweeps.

Since September, we've done nine major community compliance sweeps from San Bernardino County all the way up to Shasta County. Nine sweeps in just about five months, those are in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies.

Those are with the county, with the local municipalities. We have targeted searches where we're increasing in my opinion, that increases the public confidence. It builds proficiency in our staff.

It holds our parole population accountable to the conditions that are parole, but it creates a culture of public trust in my opinion in my opinion. Those nine sweeps produced 218 contacts, a 124 total arrests, and 20 recovered firearms.

I think those are important stats because those are firearms that are no longer on the streets that are able to victimize our community. That's the the difference.

We are looking to enforce the conditions of parole, but then also push rehabilitation programs because those, our programs, our rehabilitation efforts build stability, which ultimately, provide, stability for our community and a safer community.

Thank you. That's the answer I wanted, that you will work with local law enforcement. So I appreciate you. I look forward to your confirmation, and thank you, Madam Pro Tem, for letting me ask questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Senator Laird.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Let me follow-up on a couple of things from Senator Grove. And I think one of the questions that a lot of us have of and by the way, thank you for meeting with me and I'm sorry it was so abbreviated because various committees were running over.

But for laypeople, we don't totally understand the line between discretion and non discretion. Like, how are you given a process that you have to run off?

And, yeah, there's sort of some discretion in in how you implement it but you don't have discretion in the rules of distances or other things. How do you handle sort of the whole notion of what's in your discretion or not in your discretion?

Well, that's that's a I appreciate the question, Senator. From from a discretionary standpoint, especially when we're talking about parole supervision, much of what we do in parole supervision is rooted in penal code.

So where we have areas of discretion, we're gonna, use the lens of how does this impact the community. We're always gonna look at the lens of victim, awareness. How does these how do these decisions we're making impact the victim?

Second, how do they impact the community? Then we'll look at and then we'll look at other issues like what's the, how does this impact our, supervised person? But it's always gonna be from the lens of the community first.

And so that discretionary and I hope I'm answering the question.

You're doing fine.

Okay. That discretionary process really is where it's important that agent of record. It's why those home visits are so important.

They get a real sense of what the needs are of this individual as well as their behavior health therapist, their parole agent, the unit supervisor. Their input is vital.

They're the boots on the ground. So we need their input. We need their feedback. And there are times where we have to make a discretionary decision on, okay, is this parole violation that this person did? Is this a one off, or is this a habitual, circumstance?

And that's where that discretion, that's where those decisions, need to be made. And, I'll reiterate, we're always gonna, in this division, we're always gonna, be mindful, and our center approach will always be, on victim awareness and

what's the outlying risk to the community and to the public. That's the forefront of our discretionary decision making process. And then, and largely that's, when it's outside of the scope of penal code.

Some some things we don't have discretion on and we have to just we follow penal code and we follow the letter of the law.

And and when you talk about a victim awareness, if somebody is placed back in the county from which they came, the odds are 95% the victim is in that county. So how do you manage that?

Thank you, Senator. So it largely does depend on the commitment offense or the crime. Right? We have to take that first into consideration.

And there are, we while parole is not, necessarily responsible for the notification process of our victim, services or our victim and survivor services.

We have a program in CDCR that engages and interfaces with victims, and we work closely with them. In circumstances, for example, in a circumstance where there is a victim and the victim has noticed our office of victim and survivor services that, hey,

I wanna be I would like to be advised when this person is released from prison, or I would like to make sure that this person isn't placed near me because I have victim concerns. We we take that seriously.

We have to look at, and and the penal code section three zero zero three actually provides parole that opportunity for out of cla out of county or out of city placement for someone based on the needs of the public. And it's always good.

That statute also provides that that has to be focused primarily on victim advocacy. So we have good statute in penal code that that allows us to move someone to protect a victim.

In addition to that, we have provisions with our GPS monitoring system where we can create inclusion zones, exclusion zones to protect the victim.

That way, if there's any time they get within a certain radius of that victim's house, we are immediately notified and we'll deploy agents to the field.

So we have provisions and we have, safeguards, if you will, to help protect those victims.

And we were rushed because of me. And you mentioned a 35 mile distance. What was that in?

So the in circumstances where there's victim concerns, we can do what's called an administrative, transfer. Typically, we, that transfer process would look like 35 miles outside of where that victim either works or lives.

And, so we have that ability again that's within statute and penal code to allow us to do that. That process is, usually done on the much way on the front end of someone actually coming out to parole.

We start that process We start the parole process as much as two hundred days prior to their release.

So we in reach into the prisons and start engaging with that person so that they have a much more successful transition post release. Things we start looking for one of the primary things we start looking for is where is this person gonna live? Are there victim concerns?

So we'll look we'll figure those things out. We try to figure those things out on the front end prior or, prior to their release.

So, you know, things like programs, transitional housing, you know, what types of, rehabilitative programs that we can get that person into, but also being mindful of making sure that we're, not putting any undue risk at at victims of their hour or 35 mile radius is is considered Oh,

and I sort of observed that only the city and county of San Francisco is smaller than the county of Santa Cruz and that you'd be hard pressed to find a place that's 35 miles away. So if you really had a problem with a victim, it it means you wouldn't be placing them in the county they came from.

No. You're absolutely correct, Senator. And usually that does result in an out of county placement. And so, that can be difficult. That's very it's very difficult, because I mean, I can imagine counties may not want someone like that.

Again, we have to do what's best, for the public, excuse me, and for that, the victims in that regard. So, out of county placement is a process.

There are processes also where, someone can request to transfer out of county, but there's a lot of stipulations and there's an investigative process that we require, before anything like that is, is

And and one final question. In the background material, I was sort of I should have known this but but you supervise over 3,000 people that are unhoused. Talk about the challenges of trying to supervise people that are unhoused.

Yeah. That's a that is a unique challenge to parole, Senator, and I appreciate that. Housing is definitely one of the primary stability factors in someone's successful reintegration. So we work diligently.

Again, I talk about that two hundred and ten day in reach into the prisons to try to get them into housing, and and usually, it's a choice.

Unfortunately, for a lot of these folks, it's a choice not to be housed because we do have programs, avenues, community based partners, community based organizations.

There are programs even our DRP, Department of Rehabilitation Planning, can, in some instances, fund up to a year of of housing for them. When someone is on parole and they're unhoused, we it is difficult. We have to interface with them.

We have to go to where they live.

We have to or where they're staying or sleeping. For those under GPS, we try to establish a pattern of life. So we go, okay. We know where they kinda coalesce. We know where they hang out.

We have it's it's difficult because we don't have that opportunity to go, okay. When we do a home visit, we go visit someone on parole. We get an understanding what their what their living conditions are like. Someone on that's unhoused, that's that's hard to achieve.

So, you're absolutely right. It's difficult. Our agents do a really good job of it. I mean, there there are agents that unfortunately have to go to an overpass bridge to find someone that's under their caseload and try to conduct a a visit.

That's an unfortunate reality in parole and community supervision. But we work diligently to try to get them housed.

We have monthly packed meetings, and each one are packed as our parole and community team meetings. We have resource fairs continue. I was just at one last month. A 122 different programs at this resource fair. So we have robust rehabilitative programs in the state.

The hard part is getting those people that are not interested necessarily being housed, motivating them into the into those programs. And just one last follow-up question given that Senator Grove asked about the relationships that

you would have with local law enforcement. How do you develop the relationships with local service providers that might address unhoused issues or mental health issues or things that aren't direct law enforcement.

Yeah. No. I appreciate that, Senator. And those community those resource fairs, our community reentry unit we have a community reentry unit who does an amazing job of outreach.

Their tasked with building those relationships, fostering those relationships, looking for different opportunities, different community providers, community based organizations.

And really, they're sort of the network element of that. And so, they have an amazing network. They really do an amazing job finding those types of venues, those types of providers.

And when tasked with a really difficult situation, if we have a, maybe a placement that's very difficult to find a home for or find a program for, They their network is amazing, and their passion for those rehabilitated programs. I'm blown away every time I go and meet with our staff.

And again, they have these these resources, and I think these are amazing. Because you'll you'll see sometimes hundreds of different providers there. And that's a great opportunity when we have our supervised persons, like, hey, come to this fair.

There's gonna be employment opportunities. We've I've been known. They've had dental vans, and there's just a a lot of programs available. There's really no shortage, in my opinion. It's getting them directed there and motivating them to get there.

Thank you. You were very responsive to my questions. I appreciate it. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. Yes. And then I'll.

Just to follow-up, when you do out of placement counties because of the 35 mile radius issue, are they contiguous counties so that they're closer to their family or are they not contiguous counties?

Unfortunately, Senator, no. It's not usually continuous. It's usually based on the criminogenic and programmatic needs. So oftentimes, especially with the 290, we're we have to find the program that's receptive to them,

and it would be ideal to keep them close to the county their their, a continuous county because usually there's family reunification close by. We obviously prefer that, but in my experience, it's seldom the case.

More often I'm just curious. Yeah. More often than not, it's not. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. We're gonna go to, Senator Reyes.

I appreciate the questions asked by my colleagues, and, I was going to ask you about the homeless. I saw that, the parole agents aren't required to make sure people are housed.

And in your research though, only 14% were unhoused or homeless under parole supervision. Another statistic was that the formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to be homeless. Now, the initial questions were already asked by my colleague.

So I wanted to ask you, you have some private for profit corporations that CDC are contracts with.

So my question is about the oversight that you have over these for profit corporations whose job is to secure housing for people transitioning out of prison, and to ask what time limitations are they allowed to set?

Thank you for the question, Senator. So in regards to some of these for profit providers and I think I wanna make sure I understand your question correctly as far as what are some of the safeguards to make sure they're doing their job correctly.

We have a our we have a our team of folks will do monthly reconciliation of the invoices, making sure the invoices look good. So we we continue to monitor that pulse through our budget and our procurement folks.

And our DRP, Department of Rehabilitation program, that's a separate division, but we work in conjunction with them.

They oversee a majority of these contracts. And they do annual and oftentimes we do DAPO and DRP will do joint site visits at these locations to ensure that they're, basically, they're meeting the needs of these folks, and ensuring that they're up to the standards,

and they're following through on their commitment. As well as for a lot of these programs, so we get a weekly report, that shows the utilization of of these programs. How are we sending enough people to them?

And so, you know, the benchmark we usually look for is I don't wanna see a program I don't wanna see one of these programs under 70% because that's being underutilized, and that's not a good use of taxpayer money.

So if it starts to fall into that, we're gonna take a keen look at that and go, okay, is this, better suited somewhere else where we're gonna get a higher return on our investment as an agency and as a state?

So we there are safeguards and and and provisions and balances that we take to look at that, including, like I said, on-site visits. And we also continue to check-in with them and then I work closely with our DRP.

Folks to make sure that we're collaborating effectively in that regard.

Thank you. And my final question is you've you've you have a long history of doing so many wonderful things. Thank you for your service to our country as well. Very beginning, great training

Thank you, Senator.

There as you mentioned. Why do you want this job?

I'll say this, Senator, without not many people know this, but on July 17 was one of the darkest days in Dapo's history. Parole Angent Joshua Bill Byrd was tragically taken from us.

It's also a little known fact that he was killed around 12:30 in the afternoon, and my interview for this position was at about 1PM. I say that to you because prior to that, I did want this position because I thought it was a good opportunity, a good career opportunity.

It was a good it was a good opportunity for me and my career and my family. That moment changed everything for me. And I'll be honest with you.

I had clarity in that moment that what this organization needed was somebody to guide them through some of the darkest days. I believe I'm that individual. I believe I knew exactly what they were gonna go through.

I mentioned it in my interview with the governor's office that I know what this organization's about to go through. I wanna be that person that leads them through this.

I'm reminded of Isaiah six eight, and I was in that moment that said and I heard the voice of the Lord say, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And I said, here am I.

Send me. And that's that's what I heard in that moment. And so I say that to this committee because I believe I'm guided by my faith, and I'm compelled by duty serve this organization. That's what I'll do with honor, courage, and commitment. I promise that.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. And thank you for just all all your answers, and the information you've shared with us. I wanna ask you just a little bit about, we've talked a lot about housing, what happens.

And so I wanna just ask if there are, in some of the the gaps that you have seen between reentry and also kind of the community services network, what are those gaps?

Can you talk about the gaps that you still see that you are going to be working on or that you have to continue to work on?

I will try to keep this short, Madam Chair, because I'm I get really excited about this. There are there are gaps and I think one of the things that we're finding is post AB 109 and through some of the redistricting that occurred in CDCR and parole,

we've seen our parole population fall. What we also saw was our footprint in the state is in in in when it comes to offices has shrunk, significantly, inappropriately so, as the population falls.

But what that's created is very, challenging geographic areas. So some of our parole offices are covering areas that are a couple hours away, and that's super problematic for our parole population when they have to try sometimes they have to try to get,

to a parole office to meet their therapist or their parole agent, and it could be two hours away. So those are real challenges, and we see that in the South, and we see it especially in the North because the North is much more spread out.

But we see it throughout the state. That's a that's a challenge. I I do have some ideas, and we're pursuing some opportunities. I know that there were some grants for some of the county probations where they're using mobile parole units to go into these areas.

And so that's an area where actually, my team's looking into to try to look for grant opportunities or funding opportunities where we can actually, employ something like that because I think that's what's needed in these geographically challenged areas.

So, we can take the services to those folks and take that burden of jumping on a bus and trying to get to a parole office. You know, that's that's just it's unfortunate.

It's not conducive to their rehabilitation, and it's it just doesn't, encourage, collaboration when we have that big, vast, amount of space in between a parole office and where one of our supervised persons lives.

Thank you. Seeing no additional questions, I am going to invite any members of the public. If you would like to come forward now, if you are in support, please do so. At this moment, you just state your name, affiliation, and your, position.

Good afternoon. Ryan Souza speaking on behalf of a Coalition of Reentry Providers, including Amity Foundation, HealthRight 360, and West Care Foundation. We just wanna support director Bishop's confirmation and thank him for the conversations he's already had.

You heard it here today. He believes in public safety, but also balancing rehabilitation, and we're just really excited to continue working with him. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Alright. Seeing nobody else here in support, is there anybody in opposition? This is the time to come forward. Alright.

Seeing no one else, here in opposition, then we will bring it back, for a motion.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Pro Tem. It would be on my honor to move your, confirmation to the full Senate floor.

Thank you, sir, for your continued support of our law enforcement of those who are on the staff side and also making sure that it's rehabilitation offer option so that people are successful outside the cell.

We do have a motion. The motion by has been made by vice chair Grove. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Five votes.

Congratulations. The appointment has been approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, committee.

And lastly, we are going to turn now to governor's appointees required to appear item one b, the appointment of Sarah Larson as the director of the division of facility planning, construction and management, department of corrections and rehabilitation.

Director Larson, you have the opportunity to provide one to two minutes, for your opening testimony to the committee. In your opening, you're welcome to make any introductions of your guests as well. You may begin when you're ready.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee, and thank you for allowing me to appear before you today. I would like to begin by thanking the governor, the secretary, and the under secretary for this appointment and for their continued support.

I would also like to thank the facilities team. I'm here today representing the work of many dedicated staff that I am honored to support as director.

I would like to acknowledge the people who are here with me today. I have my husband, Anton, who supports me in everything, my mom, Debbie, who has taught me everything that I know, and my sister, Megan. And I especially want to acknowledge my son, Geno, who is here today.

He had to miss a field trip to come, And my daughter, Noemi, who is missing her nap to be here. I thank them for their unwavering support, their love, and for reminding me of the best, most important parts of life.

I am also lucky to have many people watching from afar, including my dad Steve, my other sister Jordan, and my mother-in-law Mariah, along with many friends and colleagues.

And I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to give special thanks and credit to the many professional women who have supported me on my journey here today. As they say, it takes a village, and I am very grateful and lucky to have mine.

I have worked for CDCR for nearly a decade, and I am proud of the change that the Department has affected over that time and to have been part of that transformation.

As we look forward, I believe this role is a significant opportunity to create positive, lasting change for the people who live and work in our facilities and for the communities that we serve.

I'm grateful to be part of that change, and I look forward to answering any questions that you have for me today.

Thank you. We will begin with Vice Chair Grove.

Thank you. Madam Pro Tem, thank you for being here today. And your family is absolutely lovely. Thank you. We have 11 grandchildren, five under five, and that's a lot of fun where you're at right now.

So how does CCCR aligning its capital budget staffing resources and infrastructure footprint with a declining prison population?

Well, I think, as the committee is very aware, we have reduced our footprint relatively significantly. We've closed all of our contracted facilities in and out of state. We've also closed several of our CDCR owned and operated facilities that are now in, closed or deactivated status.

So we have reduced that footprint relatively significantly. I do believe at this point that the footprint that we have is appropriate for the population that we're serving.

As as I've discussed in front of the legislature before, anytime we close a prison, we're talking about about a 100 additional people going to our other remaining facilities.

And that's a 100 more people competing for programming space, for space in the visiting room, for opportunities with the employment opportunities that we have at our facilities. And it makes it more challenging to operate. We still are above our design capacity in terms of our population.

And so, I think, really, what we're looking at right now in terms of our facilities is how do we plan for the future of the footprint that we have, knowing that many of our facilities are aging.

Since you brought up aging facilities, what's CDC are doing, and to address infrastructure issues with some of the things that we've read in the papers and articles about heat exhaustion and heat stress because of inadequate air conditioning in facilities, in our facilities,

both for staff and the incarcerated population?

Yeah. And when many of our facilities were built, they weren't built with any sort of refrigerant cooling in them. The comfort of our population and our staff, I think, just wasn't a priority.

Many of our facilities were built in the prison building boom in the '80s. And so, those time of three strikes, they were really just trying to build capacity.

Obviously, times are changing, and I think we've recognized that we need to make that investment in cooling infrastructure. We do have an air cooling pilot program that we're working on right now in the Facilities Division.

So, at three of our locations, we're adding insulation as well as, HVAC, so refrigerant cooling and mechanical cooling infrastructure at those locations to see kind of what's the appropriate mix of infrastructure.

Adding cooling infrastructure at all of our facilities is a significant fiscal and operational undertaking. And so we want to make sure through the pilot that the approach that we're using is the most effective and the most cost effective approach.

And so we're going to use the data from that pilot to inform what our plan is moving forward at the remaining facilities.

Thank you. And my last question is, is that same along the same question that I just asked, what are you doing to prioritize safety of both the staff and the incarcerated person as these, construction revamps are taking place,

as you're modernizing new facility or facilities, and how are you gonna make sure staff and the incarcerated person are safe?

Yeah. I mean, the it is such a challenge in prisons, but I also think we have such an opportunity when we're taking on building projects to think about how we can design the infrastructure to really support our staff and support the population in a way that maybe it previously just was in their way in trying to do their jobs.

I think the project at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center is an excellent example of how you can achieve that type of construction that's new and looks very modern and welcoming and, I think provides a more healing environment for the people who live and work there,

while also introducing all of these new opportunities for safety. So, for example, that project uses, a significant amount of new technology, like cameras and things like that, to provide additional safety, compared to the infrastructure that we have had previously.

So, I think there's really a great opportunity to do that.

In terms of how we do safety when we're doing prison projects, It's obviously a real challenge to try to do a project in an active environment.

A benefit of a project like what we did at San Quentin is that we actually kind of built that outside of a secure perimeter and then kind of rebuilt the secure perimeter around that new facility, which allowed us to build much faster because we didn't have to do all of the tool control,

safety check kind of things that you normally have to do when you're doing prison construction. So I think we've learned a lot from that project in terms of how we can, you know, create safety and I think also healing in our facilities.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I'll go with, Senator Reyes and then Senator Laird.

Well, I was just going to ask you why you want this job. I we there with all the budget shortfalls and you have the the experience having worked in the LAO's office and with Saint Trebel and of course all of your your tenure with CDCR.

There are many budget shortfalls but that you have to deal with and try to balance as as has been asked earlier. So why do you want this job?

I really like to help. And I felt like facilities was a place where I could really help. I do think it's a new frontier for the department. We've added a lot of programming in my time at the department. We've had a significant reduction in the population.

I think we've made really innovative strides when it comes to how we're managing our security and managing our prisons. But what we haven't done is provide the infrastructure to support all of those things.

And so this just felt like such an opportunity for me to really help move that piece along to support the work that everyone else in the department is doing. And I just I loved the chance to do that. It's it is an undertaking, I admit.

I'm lucky to have a really great team, though. The facilities team has a ton of experience. We have very low turnover. And so I'm really grateful to that team and looking forward to working with them to make those changes and and support the rest of the operations.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam PT.

Thank you. Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. And now I understand the connection that that I was late for our appointment because it was the local government committee that was going on and on and on. So I get the connection now. I missed that before. But thank you for that abbreviated meeting.

And I know one of the things I indicated I might ask about is what's the status of the closure of the Norco facility?

So we are on, kind of in progress and on track to close that facility, in line with the budget. So I believe that's October 2026. From the facility side, thankfully, thankfully, not thankfully, we are relatively experienced at this point in how to negotiate, navigate prison closures,

and kind of how we run those operations. So we have a plan for moving that facility from being an active facility to being in what what's called cold shutdown, where my office.

Oh, believe me. We had a warm and a cold discussion last week. Yeah.

That might be my follow-up question.

Yeah. So we we we will maintain that facility and cold shutdown, once all of the population, the staff, and everyone depart the facility.

Thank you. And then the other thing I thought I'd ask about, and we mentioned it, talked about it briefly, is when the lake or flood was happening next to the Corcoran prison. There was a period of time where it was thought that prison might have to be evacuated.

And we had some officials from the department in front of us when that Harabedian they were laying out what it would take. The fact that it would take two weeks and the different level of prisoners.

And so while flood might be one, we do have some prisons that are really in high fire areas. And so how do you plan for just disasters? What what is on the books with disaster planning and what might happen to some of your facilities?

Yeah. So our Office of Correctional Safety does maintain kind of emergency planning for all of our facilities and, you know, what happens in various kinds of incidents and disasters and how the department would respond in each of those cases.

From the facility's perspective, one of the things that we're trying to do is abate the risk, right? Just mitigate the risk that any of that is going to happen.

So, for example, in high fire hazard areas, that's maintaining any the the weeds and things like that to make sure that we're not posing a fire risk.

One, you know, kind of helpful thing about, a prison compared to a community is that the the secure perimeter is usually relatively free of, any sort of Greenery, vegetation, just for security related purposes.

But one of the things that we do is abate that risk, and that includes at our closed facilities as well. And other things that we would do would be maintaining all of our ventilation systems in good working order and making sure that all of the materials that folks need are available for

that, making sure that we have adequate supply energy supply to maintain operations in the event of, emergencies and things like that. So on the facility side, those are the kinds of roles that we would play.

I don't even know how you'd manage because having the misfortune of being through some cataclysmic disasters in previous jobs. I mean, when we had the hundred year flood years ago when I was on the city council, who knew that redwood trees would batter down a bridge?

Who knew that the bridge that would get batter down would be the one that had the water main that connected both sides of town?

All these things, Even though you have plans, in the moment, how are you operationally able to pivot to whatever the crisis is within the disaster that's hitting you?

Yeah. I'd have to defer to our of Correctional Safety, I think, about how they manage that. I know they do stand up, like, incident command centers. We do a lot of mutual aid with other agencies as well.

You know, there's that active coordination. It's why those relationships with the community are so important. And even on the facility side, we maintain those sorts of community relationships.

And we've we've provided mutual aid in in disaster times as well to other public safety entities. So I'd have to defer to them though.

I think about how in the moment they might kind of pivot from what's happening there.

You know, I had eight years with Cal Fire and I actually did a session because there were certain things they hadn't anticipated. We're in the middle of the drought and there's incredible fires. And I said, how do what do you do?

And they said, oh, we scoop up water from ponds and other places then we pay it back. I said, we're in the most intense drought in modern time.

How do you intend to pay that back? And they all got quiet. And there's fire hydrant cleaning and nobody understands why fire hydrants are shooting water in the middle of the air when they're limited to 50 gallons a day.

And they had to revisit that and so I just hope in your coordination with them you'll have those kind of conversations because it is always the unanticipated things that happen. So thank you. You've been very responsive to my questions.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Senator Jones?

So Senator Laird set it up. Following up from last week on the conversation regarding warm and cold closures, I think we've been updated that all of the prisons that are closed now are in cold closure.

Can you kinda describe for us what that means? And if we needed to reopen one, what would it take to reopen one?

Yeah. So a cold shutdown would be maintaining the permits that we need for anything that we have at the facility. So be that fuel storage or, maintaining a levy or something like that, any sort of permits, those kinds of things, abating weeds and, and fire risk,

not posing a nuisance to the community, so making sure that we have adequate security doors gates are locked, doors are locked, those kinds of things. But it really is very minimalist.

So, for example, if a roof leaks, we're not going to fix that, right? We have a very, very small, special repair budget in the department's $26,000,000 for our facilities.

Typically, if you're talking in the private industry, you're going to want to maintain one to 4% of replacement value, in terms of your special repair budget. For CDCR, that would be almost $900,000,000 a year.

And so we don't have that kind of funding available, which means that all of our money really has to go to the facilities that we are currently operating to maintain them in working condition and can't go to our closed facilities to do any sort of maintenance or repair there

because I have leaking facilities where people work and live. Right. That I have to repair. So that cold shutdown is very minimalist. In terms of reactivating a facility, I think it really depends on the facility that you're talking about.

For some of our facilities that are co located, we're maintaining some of that shared infrastructure for the other prison. So, a good example would be, Chuckwalla Valley in Blythe where Ironwood, is right next door.

And we have some shared infrastructure in terms of water, wastewater systems, that kind of thing. Those are in relatively good condition. And so perhaps that might be more easy to reopen.

But, I mean, really, it would be probably a significant expense to reopen any closed facility. I would note, to the extent that the department needs additional capacity. We've also deactivated a lot of housing units, and yards in our currently open facilities.

So, it's essentially, the closing part of a facility. Senator Laird and I talked about earlier, in San Luis Obispo County, there's, the California Men's Colony. We are still operating CMC, as it's known, West. CMC East is a deactivated facility, but it's still there on grounds.

Those, we maintain in much more workable condition. And we have a checklist for staff at the institution about how to maintain those facilities in more operable condition.

So, to the extent that the department ever needed additional capacity, I would think that that would be the place that we would likely look first. Our closed facilities because they are just in that cold shutdown mode.

On the facilities that have, security detail, who provides that security?

For our closed facilities. So for CRC, so Norco, what we've proposed is doing a contracted security With a private company.

What's the newest facility that's in cold closure?

Like, the most recent closure?

Oh, no. The newest, building. The youngest building.

I'd have to you mean, in deactivated status or closed shutdown?

Or or The buildings that were closed, which one was built?

Most recently.

Most recently.

I'd have to get back to you on that, I think, and look at our list.

Take curiosity.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Senator Laird?

Actually, one thing you said triggered a follow-up question and that is, for example, when the one unit is closed in San Luis Obispo at the Men's Colony, Cal Poly and other things are on the same water line or used to same water and suddenly water consumption gets cut in half

because one unit is closed. And they're hungry to know if that water is available to be able to be contracted or used. Who makes that decision or who makes the determination that because it sounded like the desire was, oh, it might reopen sometime.

We're just gonna hold it in reserve even though it was not essentially being used. Who makes that decision or if if I wanted to make sure that the Cal Poly people were talking to you, how would that work?

You could absolutely refer them to me, and I would be happy to look into kind of whatever the individual circumstances. It will vary by location because some of our locations are on their own well water supply.

Some of our locations are on municipal water supply. Some of them have there are just like a I have been amazed by the variety of circumstances that our institutions have when it comes to water.

Well, that triggers another one. And that is is the Salinas Valley prison. The city of Soledad uses half the system and the prison uses half the system.

And there was a time before I represented that area that I got money in the budget that would supplement the cities and then it was never claimed and seemed to go away. And and yet that project wouldn't move ahead unless the state appropriated its half.

It's why we did it in the budget because the locals had their half and the whole project was being held until the state appropriated their half. So I would just look forward to working with you on all those issues. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Great. Thank you. Thanks for the information. As you you know, it's sometimes hard to to get really excited about some of the facilities, especially when they have a lot of needs.

And I'm actually wondering if you can share what does excite you about your job in relation to the with the potential for facilities.

Like, what are the things you're like, look, these aren't just fixes. These are things that I'm looking forward to, you know, improve the quality of experience, if that could be said, for folks. Yeah.

That's such a wonderful question. I do get excited about our infrastructure. I agree. It's not like, it's not usually the thing that excites people.

But I've been working with the team since I've come on board on infrastructure master planning because I think a lot of what we've been trying to do with our infrastructure is make do, because there are so many priorities in the state in ways that we want to invest in our

communities that it's really hard to spend money on the prison infrastructure.

And so we've been doing little roof repairs here and trying to build in accessibility accommodations there, and haven't really taken a holistic look at the infrastructure and say, like, what's the population that we serve now?

What are the needs that they have? What do our staff need? Like, what would help them and make them safer and more comfortable? And so, we're in the process of doing that review and talking about more substantial infrastructure projects focused on specific institutions.

So, rather than the governor talked about this when he did the ribbon cutting for San Quentin, but rather than sprinkling money a little bit around the system, building something where you can really see the impact of it.

If you have a chance to visit the rehabilitation center, that construction is the thing that excites me.

So, you can sit in a study carrel at in the library in the new building and look out at the Marin Headlands and feel your system just relax as you're there. And I want that for our staff and I want that for the population.

I visited, that new build with someone who had been previously incarcerated there, And he talked about his experience living at San Quentin and being able to smell the ocean for years and never see it.

And now, at San Quentin, there are outdoor rooftop classrooms where you can look and see the water that that institution is next to. Like, those are the things that really excite me. Just the healing that we could create with the spaces that we have.

Thank you. At this time, we're going to turn it to the public. And so if there are members of the public who would like to speak in support, just your name, your affiliation, and your position, please. You're welcome to come forward.

Diana Kurodarmal of Holt Consulting. My firm represents a lot of organizations working on criminal justice reform. Really pleased to support one of my favorite thought partners in this work, Sarah Larson, to this role. There's no better person for the job. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. I'm Ken Hartman. I'm the executive director of Transformative Programming Works. I served thirty eight years in the California prison system and put out about eight and a half. Since I've been

out, I've had multiple opportunities to work with miss Larson. It's really exciting to see somebody I know who's a truly good human being elevated to this level in the department. We support her a 100%.

Thank you.

Natasha Minsker, Smart Justice California. Very happy to support Sarah Larson.

Ryan Suiza once again on behalf of Reentry Groups, Amity Foundation, Health Right 360, and West Care Foundation, she is incredibly smart, collaborative, and innovative, and we support absolutely any position that she would be in. We appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Espon Nunez here on behalf of the Anti Recidivism Coalition, CROP, and and also CSJ, California's for Safety and Justice. Also, I've had the pleasure of working with miss miss Larson. Such an inclusive leader. We're we're proud to support her today. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. If there is anyone in the room who wishes to speak in opposition, this is your opportunity. Alright. Seeing no one, in opposition, we're gonna bring it back.

And I welcome a motion, if there is a motion. Sure.

I'll move the conferee to the full Senate floor for a vote.

Thank you. We have a motion, and we will now call the roll.

[Roll Call] Five zero.

Thank you. The appointment has been approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation. Congratulations.

So at this time, this portion, of appointments, is, concluded, but we are going to go through the roll, to do add ons to some of these.

So I'm going to begin with, governor's appointments not required to appear, starting with item two c, the appointment of Olivia May Asuncion as a member to the Commission on Disability Access. Can we please call the roll for absent Members?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Alright. That is approved. Five to zero. Next item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item two d, William Adams for the California Exposition and Exposition and State Fair Boards of Director. Can we please call the roll for absent Members?

[Roll Call]

Five to zero. Alright. That item is approved. The next item is governor's appointments not required to appear. Item two e, Anna Cubas, for the California Law Revision Commission.

Two f, Madam Pro Tem?

Two E.

It says F. We'll go with E.

Okay. We split them. Okay.

[Roll Call] Three to two.

Alright. That item is approved. Three to two. Next, we have governor's appointments not required to appear item two f, David, Huebner, JD of the California Law Revision Commission. Can we please call the roll?

[Roll Call] Three to one.

Alright. That item is approved, with three to one vote. Next, we have item three, reference to bills to committees. Can we please call the roll for absent members?

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

Alright. That item is approved. Five to zero. And the next items are items four through seven, floor acknowledgments. Can we please call the roll for absent Members?

Jones?

Can I have the vice chair's vote on that? Is it all aye?

Aye. Everything? Yeah. Aye.

Aye.

Jones, aye. Five to zero.

Alright. That item is approved five to zero. So with that, we have concluded our hearing for Senate rules today.