Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Human Services

Good afternoon and welcome. This is the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Human Services. Today, we'll be discussing issues and programs related to multiple departments and the California Health and Human Services Agency, principally focusing on the pending implementation of federal HR 1 here in California for CalFresh. As a sobering reminder, CalFresh serves 5,500,000 Californians out of a total population of 39,500,000. So one in seven people in our state rely on CalFresh to eat.

Half of this caseload, over 2,700,000, are ages 18 to 64. The administration is stating that 1,800,000 of this 2,700,000 will be auto-exempted, and the remaining almost 1,000,000 will need to be further screened to either qualify for an exemption or meet work or community engagement requirements. As stated in our prior hearings, the administration has estimated that 665,000 people are expected to lose CalFresh food benefits at full implementation.

Our collective mission is the same mission we've always had as a committee, and that is to keep as many people stable as possible. We have to make sure that we do all that we can to keep food insecurity low, to keep hunger low, and to make sure that no Californian dies simply because they did not have access to food.

Make no mistake, we are under the threat of mass hunger, starvation, and even death due to the federal HR 1 policies that will soon be implemented and that will cut food assistance for hundreds of thousands of people. The question is, what can we do? And the answer is, if we have the will to, we can do a lot. This is going live in one month, June 1, which is thirty-three days from today. First, we can ensure that the auto exemptions work as intended.

That means being sure that the auto exemptions are correctly applied with no or minimal burden for the recipient or county worker. Second, we must provide for the county resources needed to properly screen recipients to avoid program disenrollment and the loss of food benefits. It has been over two months since our first hearing where we discussed the county request for funding for staff and time per case to live up to our shared goals of harm mitigation.

We are asking for an update on specifically where the discussions are with regard to the dollars so that we can include the appropriate amount in this June budget. Third, we can create, with the pending resources we'll have in the CFAP expansion, the ability for CalSAWS to provide a state benefit to those who lose food benefits due to HR 1 policies that will create disenrollment.

And finally, we can provide clear state leadership about how we as California will implement the federal law. We can state our principles to guide this work as we proceed, and we can codify clear blanket exemptions that are meant to add clarity to this very complicated implementation effort. All of these efforts can combine to reduce and mitigate harm, hunger, and deaths in the state. In addition, we'll talk about several priority efforts, oversight over priority investments, and discussion of expiring efforts that require investments to continue.

I look forward to these conversations with all of you as we go through this afternoon.

Not only are we going to deal with the crisis at hand, but we will not give up on setting and planting seeds for the future. If we get caught up just on the crisis at hand, we will be missing out on opportunities to prevent the next crises from happening in the future. We'll take public comment after all the panelists have concluded. Each person providing public comment will have one minute each to make your remarks.

One minute each to make your remarks, and you have all the time in the world to practice now.

There will be no votes taken in today's hearing. So I'm going to ask the first panel to come forward and take your seats at the witness table, please. Please introduce yourself before you speak, and let's try to go in the order listed in the agenda. And CDSS, you may begin when you are ready.

Good afternoon. My name is Alexis Fernández Garcia, deputy director of the family engagement and empowerment division at the Department of Social Services. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the impact of HR 1. CalFresh provides an essential safety net to millions of Californians, and our priority is to protect benefits for those who are eligible.

Today, I will provide a brief update on the collaborative work between the Departments of Social Services, Health Care Services, Developmental Services, and the Health and Human Services Agency to support eligible Californians when the state implements the CalFresh time limit for ABAWDs on June 1.

A key focus of this work is use of administrative data to establish exemptions from the time limit. Using existing data within the state's eligibility system, we estimate that about two-thirds of adults ages 18 to 64 are already known to be exempt. No additional data sharing or automation is required for those exemptions to apply beginning June 1.

This leaves an estimated 955,000 individuals who may be subject to the time limit and at risk of losing benefits starting October 1, because the first wave of countable months goes from June through October. For this group of people, we have pursued the use of administrative data sources that are external to the state's eligibility system.

For example, if Medi-Cal has information indicating that a person has a disability, caregiver responsibility, or a chronic health condition that renders them unfit to work, and that is the federal term, that information can be used to establish an exemption from the time limit. This approach reduces burden on the most vulnerable Californians who might otherwise need to provide additional information to receive that exemption.

One central consideration in this work is compliance with federal and state laws that govern data sharing, including statutes related to SNAP, Medicaid data, HIPAA, and the California Information Practices Act, to name a few. These laws protect privacy while permitting narrowly tailored data uses that can reduce administrative burden.

Based on currently available data, and this is new and good information we're about to share, we estimate that at least 20% of the 955,000 anticipated ABAWDs that we've been talking about may be at risk of losing their benefits.

Or approximately 200,000 people could qualify for an exemption through the administrative data match work that we've been doing together with the Department of Health Care Services and DDS. So that's 200,000 people who will be determined exempt based on new data that is not currently in the eligibility system, and that chips away at that 955,000 number. We also expect, and this is again new information, that this number may grow over time as additional administrative data sources are added.

And working in really strong partnership with CalSAWS, we are on track to apply these exemptions within the system by mid-August, which means that that would happen prior to any potential discontinuance. The collaboration with DHCS, in particular, relies on the overlap between the work and community engagement exemptions for both Medicaid and SNAP.

For example, Medicaid has an exemption for medical frailty, including people with a substance use disorder, a disabling mental disorder, a certain physical or other disability, or serious and complex medical conditions. SNAP has an exemption for individuals who are unfit for work. While there is imperfect overlap between these categories, for example, in the terminology used by each program, people qualifying for SNAP's exemption can qualify for Medicaid's medically frail designation and vice versa.

So that is the policy that is underlying this data work that we'll be able to implement by mid-August. Before we incorporate any administrative data into the exemption flow, we have explored issues of data quality and timeliness.

Given the long-term nature of the conditions that allow people to appear in this data, including serious and complex medical conditions or disorders, the age of the data is less of an issue. So there was a question from the committee about data latency, and that is not an issue, given the policy work that we have done. Finally, regarding the payment error rate, as with other policy changes of this scale, the time limit could increase the payment error rate in federal fiscal year 2027.

Applying all of these verified exemptions accurately is the most effective way to reduce the pressure on the payment error rate, and administrative data matches in particular will play a critical role in supporting both access and accuracy because we're determining those exemptions accurately based on verified data from these other departments.

We are grateful for the ongoing collaboration between our departments and CalSAWS to ensure that we are able together to seize an opportunity, even in the midst of these challenges, to maintain client access for CalFresh and California's most vulnerable residents.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair. Michelle Baass, Department of Health Care Services. The HR 1 Medi-Cal work requirements go into effect January 2027 for new Medi-Cal applications and March 2027 for Medi-Cal renewals. As such, the programming of the rules, the data matching, and the exemptions will be finished, finalized, and tested this fall for a January 1 implementation for the Medi-Cal program. I would also note that CMS guidance on work and community engagement requirements is expected to come out in June.

So we are working under the assumption of the best known information we have to date, but we anticipate detailed guidance with respect to implementation of these rules in June.

As a reminder, Medi-Cal covers 14,000,000 Californians. And at the Governor's budget, we estimated that the work and community engagement requirements would have an impact of a potential loss of coverage of about 233,000 Medi-Cal members in the budget year and up to 1,400,000 members by June 2028 as a result of these, in particular, these two provisions or this provision.

We will have updated numbers at May Revision, given all the work we've done since January to think about all the data sources we can use to do these automatic exemptions or to automatically determine a person as meeting requirements. Our goal is to automate to protect coverage. We are looking to maximize the use of all the data sources to confirm eligibility without burdening our members, burdening the counties, or burdening really just the whole system.

And so that is our goal as we work through this. Given the January 2027 implementation date, that's when all of our Medi-Cal exemption requirements and rules will be available. And I know that we are working closely on what is the possibility in January and what is the possibility between now or June and January. So the teams are working very well together, as the deputy director just mentioned.

Wanted to just respond to a question you had about IHSS. So for the Medi-Cal program, Medi-Cal and IHSS recipients and IHSS providers, we are planning to do a few things. For our Medi-Cal members who are on IHSS, we will exempt them from work requirements automatically due to the data that we have. For our IHSS workers, we'll first look at their income level to see if that is an automatic exemption as well from the work requirements.

And then in terms of the question of caregiver, because that is an exemption, Medicaid law today really considers a caretaker only those who are caring for a child.

So that is an issue where we are seeking clarification from CMS on the applicability of a broad exemption in that space. Then in regard to how CalFresh data will be used to apply exemptions in Medi-Cal, if an individual is exempt from ABAWD or is meeting the requirements, they are exempt from Medi-Cal work requirements, and we will be using the data to automatically do those exemptions.

As mentioned, HR 1 is going to make catastrophic changes to the health care program, the food programs, and just the general overall health care delivery system, and we are working hard to mitigate those impacts.

Mr. Chair, members, Pete Cervinka, Director, Department of Developmental Services. Thanks for the opportunity here. I'll be extremely brief given the comments made by my colleagues here at the table already. They've talked about the robust data matching, and we're really grateful for the collaboration at the department. We serve roughly half a million people.

Not all of them, of course, are ages that would subject them to the work requirements, but under the federal definition, they all are exempt. So in the data matching, we expect our population to be covered by auto exemptions. That said, there are some questions in the agenda about additional roles and activities. Outreach and education is always going to happen. We have new people joining the caseload every single day that may be caught up in this, so we want them to be prepared.

We want the data matching to catch them as well. There's no such thing as too much preparation, and we share both the comments of my colleagues as well as what you expressed in your opening statement about protecting against impacts to families. Nobody is losing regional center services as a result of anything that we've talked about today. So I just want to say that on the record. That's not the risk.

Our primary risk, as we see it, is the loss of matching federal funding for people that may lose Medi-Cal eligibility. And, obviously, we want our people to be fed as well, which you articulated in your opening. There is one question for us. There is some trailer bill language suggested on page 12 of your agenda.

I don't think the administration has any objections to that, but my understanding is that we may come with some technical word choices back to the committee staff after the hearing at some point.

So I will say we don't think it's necessary, but it certainly doesn't hurt and it codifies what we're doing. Happy to answer any questions, or I can turn it over.

Good afternoon, Chair, members. Thank you for the invitation. Carlos Marquez on behalf of the County Welfare Directors Association. My comments will largely be focused on responding to the questions that you included in your agenda. To your first question for CWDA, CWDA recently conducted three focus group sessions with county program and fiscal staff from eight counties working across four programs, CalFresh, Medi-Cal, CalWORKs, and GA/GR, to explore how counties have leveraged additional staffing and funding levels historically in other programs to yield the best program outcomes.

And what we learned is simply that there is no substitute for high-touch, individualized, worker-driven client engagement, which counties have found across different program settings has increased certification of exemptions in the context of welfare-to-work, prevented procedural discontinuances before they occurred, reduced churn rates, cured sanctions, and also prevented program disruptions, as well as keeping error rates down.

But we also know that how staff are deployed matters just as much as staffing levels themselves, and that our existing mandated functions will be impacted by how counties choose to redirect their staff to implement a harm reduction approach. Take Riverside County, for example. Riverside reported reducing their worker-to-client ratios in CalWORKs welfare-to-work following additional staffing and funding levels, which allowed staff to dedicate more time per case.

As a result, their hardest-to-reach segment of their CalWORKs caseload, the 45% of welfare-to-work clients who had historically not been established under an exemption, good cause, or demonstrated compliance, experienced increased engagement, resulting in an increase from 32% to 61% of cases meeting required participation hours, sanction rates being reduced from 20% to under 11%, increased employment rates rising from 24% to 40%, and employment stability improved overall.

This indicates that even among our hardest-to-reach populations, complex clients are especially responsive to increased touch points, targeted outreach, and staff capacity. Another example is Santa Clara County. During the public health emergency unwinding and following the expiration of income-based waivers for Medi-Cal enrollees who previously benefited from ex parte automated redeterminations but now required manual redeterminations, enhanced capacity enabled Santa Clara to mitigate precipitous program losses by focusing on enrollees at highest risk of coverage disruption.

Santa Clara's Social Services Department coordinated with their public hospital system to conduct live person outreach calls to enrollees in their second and third month of a three-month grace period following their discontinuance.

On average, a successful connection was made with nearly 40% of those called, and 13% of those who were connected with had a successful redetermination by phone, which is in contrast with only 7% who were redetermined through automated reminder messages alone. These are clients who had already been discontinued, yet they still were highly responsive to this individualized engagement.

In Sacramento County, after hiring an additional 100 eligibility workers, the county improved turnaround time for CalFresh face-to-face appointments from twenty-eight days to appointments the very next day. And in CalWORKs, improved OCAT appraisal timeliness from 11% to 20% with 16 new welfare-to-work staff. Finally, increased staffing and an innovative mobile outreach eligibility strategy in San Diego County successfully increased student CalFresh enrollment by 38%, reflecting an increase in successful applications, reduction in procedural denials, and improved identification of eligible students.

These examples demonstrate that when counties have sufficient staff to increase touch points, we are successful. In response to your third question, according to a national program participation tracker developed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, SNAP participation nationwide fell since the enactment of HR 1 by two and a half million people. The declines are especially pronounced in some states like Arizona, where the decline was 51%.

The tracker posits that SNAP participation may have dropped even before HR 1 took effect, in part for states preempting error rate strategies, but the report also named staffing shortages as a potential cause of the depressed program participation rates. To your fourth question, we continue to appreciate the cross-agency data matching opportunities that CDSS and DHCS are exhausting.

However, even with the most ambitious automation timelines, implementation of such data matching interventions, we worry, may not align with recertification timelines of all ABAWDs impacted by HR 1. For example, as additional exemptions are potentially matched throughout the budget year, clients whose recertification date is closer to the end of the first year of implementation may be less at risk than those whose recertification is at the end of the budget year.

This creates a potentially significant disparity based on arbitrary recertification dates, which we are very concerned about. To your final question, counties are actively preparing for new work requirements and have very different levels and stages of readiness. In a recent survey of all 58 counties, 100% of counties anticipate that, absent additional funding, this would result in reduced client engagement.

100% anticipate increased process delays and higher error rate risk. 85% cited reduced exemption screening capacity. Our counties ultimately are reporting that without reliable multi-year funding, it would be hard to make hiring decisions. And with that, thank you for the time, and I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions. LAO?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ryan Woolsey with the Legislative Analyst's Office. We've previously shared our analysis and recommendations related to HR 1 and CalFresh, and don't have anything to add today, but we're available to help as the discussion continues.

Department of Finance?

Noel Fakaji, Department of Finance. No further comments at this time.

Colleagues, any initial questions or comments at this time? Madam Vice Chair, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. My question is for CDSS. In speaking with my county, Riverside County, as you mentioned, is one of the examples. I know all counties are dealing with the impacts of HR 1, and the response. You, I think you just shared in all the highlights, the images of what they're now saying or the challenges.

So I know that the red tape around data sharing is a very significant concern. Currently, in Riverside County, and I can only speak to the county that I represent, we're facing the loss of 269 employees combined with a 120% increase in caseload, which increases the risks to the state error rate as you mentioned and additional penalty costs. So this makes the easy access to data sharing and care coordination the most important and vital component of all this.

So knowing all that and giving you a long-winded context of the setup, my question is, what, if anything, is being done to streamline the actual CalFresh verification process? You mentioned it a few times.

So we can get ahead of reducing some duplicative work. I think, especially for the counties where they're saying these are all the problems and they're really trying to find a workaround for the eligibility component of it. So what I need to know, what we can report back, is how we're going to handle this.

Happy to. This is a question for the Department of Social Services. Yeah.

I mean, it's really for everybody. But if someone has a great answer, I'll take the answer from anybody.

Do you want me to start? So Alexis with the Department of Social Services. So in context of the time limit implementation and the verification or information that is required to establish something like an exemption, we shared today, we've worked out the data sharing requirements between departments. And so when we talk about the additional 200,000 people as a starting point for that work, those are people that we know we can exempt, and we're able to share the data to do that.

So we've addressed it in that context, and so we're moving forward. There may be additional administrative data that we can use to have that number grow.

We're actively, like every day, working through what those agreements look like, what additional data we could add to that set to have that number grow over time, and as best as possible close to that pre-discontinuance timeline. In context of the many other factors that we need to verify for CalFresh eligibility, I will point out that in our accuracy improvement work, also very much a result of the changes in HR 1 and the benefit cost sharing.

We're introducing new tools that are intended to help counties with some of those verification touch points. A consent-based verification tool for clients called Truv, which will allow them to verify nontraditional work, such as TaskRabbit, Uber, right, the gig economy work that may be less consistent. We're also looking to expand The Work Number, which is an existing tool, but we would allow counties after this expansion to apply it to all household members.

So that gives them another place to proactively look up that income source and proceed without needing to request additional documents. And so I share these just as examples of totally agreeing with your point that the more data we can introduce that allows a streamlined verification of an eligibility factor, the better. And in context of the time limit and our accuracy improvement work, we are looking at tools and methods to do that.

Thank you. I think the looking-up part is concerning because the effective part is happening.

So let me, I can be more specific. The Truv tool will roll out in 2026, as well as The Work Number expansion. So I should actually be more tangible. We've got policy guidance coming. Those tools will be available statewide and at the scale that counties need.

Okay. Thank you.

One of the things we've been trying to grasp as we think about allocation of resources is where are all of these folks landing by county? Right? Which counties have the biggest amount of those who are going to be losing food assistance? I think the better we can begin to regionally target resources, the better we can actually help to serve and ensure that those communities have as much capacity as possible to withstand.

I mean, hundreds of thousands of people losing assistance can be very disruptive to a community.

And so how can we make sure that we're building the resiliency necessary in these communities to withstand the huge influx of those who are going to possibly be in survival mode? When can we expect to get those numbers by county?

I can confirm that we have the request, and we're moving that information through clearance and should be able to follow up with the committee shortly after today's hearing.

Thank you for that. A lot of auto exemption stuff going on. I think the first thing is, who's checking on the auto work? After it's completed, who's checking to see who was left out? Can any of you think about what your contingency plans are in that case, or are you going to leave it to the counties to then weed through all the rest of the people to kind of capture any more that there may be?

So from the Department of Social Services perspective, I can confirm that the same team that has been working on the data partnership with Health Care Services and DDS has access to eligibility system data that allows them to assess impact as well. And so we've been talking internally about making sure we have the data insights to ensure, as time goes on, to confirm that we're seeing exemptions applied at the rate that we had anticipated based on the administrative data that we provide.

Unfortunately, we'll also be seeing impacts. We'll see people potentially losing benefits as this time limit rolls on if they're not eligible for an exemption, not able to engage in a qualifying activity. So we are setting ourselves up with that kind of data infrastructure that is being used for the auto exemptions to also look at impact over time.

Questions for each of our departments in terms of auto exemptions. Obviously, there's a big June 1 implementation start date. For each of the departments, number one, are we going to be complete with the auto exemptions by that date? And if not, what do you think is a reasonable timeline to be able to expect those to be done? Okay.

So I'll start here as well. So the time limit is effective as of June 1. For ongoing households, it first applies to people who have a recertification due in the month of June. And so the first possible countable month that any Californian could be issued is July, and the time limit is three months in a thirty-six-month time period. So July, August, and September would be the first set of countable months that any Californian could receive.

The first possible discontinuance would be for the October benefit month. We've confirmed through collaboration with our CalSAWS partners that they can put the exemption data, the new exemption data, into the system by mid-August, which means that we will be able to apply that exemption before a discontinuance in October. And so while it's not perfectly aligned with the June 1 date, we will exempt people before they can be discontinued, and so we will be able to keep them on the program if they are indeed exempt.

Health Care Services?

So for the HR 1 provisions related to Medi-Cal, those go into effect January 2027 for new applications and March 2027 for renewals. And so we will be ready with the automatic exemptions by that time period.

I have the easy one. My match goes through them, and they've answered your question. But I would reiterate as well, we intend to provide regional center master files for this match. So we don't anticipate much in terms of people not being in the auto exempt pile. We're pretty confident that our folks are exempt under the federal rule and will be identified as such.

Is it possible that between the time of June 1 and the time where the automation will happen in the system that there could be people in between there that will lose benefits?

Not according to policy or the system automation. That should not happen.

So everything is going to be according to the recertification process. So if they're not going through the recertification process, then they will maintain their benefits.

Correct. So, let's say, hypothetically, you had a recertification in January. Nothing about your case related to the time limit is going to change between June and January. Yep.

When we are if well, not if possible. What I think will be helpful because, as you know, emotionals are rather high when we think about as many people who could be left off. And lose benefits and to be able to socialize this so that our members of the legislature can really understand what to expect. Can the administration provide a specific plan in writing to the legislature with all these details so that our members will know kinda how the process happens?

As you can imagine, when people start losing benefits. And when people start getting confused, we start getting inundated in our offices, with true information and sometimes not so true information. Can you, can the administration provide the legislature with these details and timelines in writing?

Yeah. We well, let me say, first, what we will follow-up with immediately is all of the client facing materials that we've produced, because I think those would actually be quite helpful for offices as they engage with their members. So I we can do that as an immediate next step. We have client facing FAQs and other outreach materials. So we'll make sure that gets to you as well.

And then, we can certainly, engage after this about what you all would need, what a plan might entail, and what we could get you in short order So that there aren't unnecessary delays.

I'm thinking out loud here. So October is-

I do it all the time, but be careful.

I know. It's scary. It's scary in there.

If October is the first opportunity for someone to lose their potentially 36 month in the recertification, we're talking about people losing their benefits right at the holiday season. And so I'm just trying to think timing and communication and what that looks like for us being that that is a very sensitive time of year for a lot of folks.

Yeah.

So the question is also what when will clients start getting notification that this possibility is coming?

Yes.

So, I will affirm the work that counties have already been doing to get the word out along with our community based organization network. And so we have been, kind of providing general education. In addition to that, at the individual level

So clients are already getting notices right now.

Not official notice, it's kind of mass communication, general information, alerts, IVR messages, website content, right general information campaign. At the individual level, the system is set up to do a variety of things. At that recertification, we dedicate time to a, what we call, oral explanation of the work rules and the related requirements as well as any services that are available in a given county, employment and training programs, workforce services.

That is required at that recertification and counties have been meeting that requirement for quite some time because there are other rules that are explained at that moment. Then from there, the person receives a notice each month of the countable months. Basically, a heads up. You've just used your first countable month. This is what you can do to engage in a program.

If you've become exempt, tell us. That will happen at month one. That will happen at month two, and then it will happen before the discontinuance. And so we've set up a few individual level reminders.

So for the first cohort, the first notice will go out July?

No. They will receive that information during their recertification interview in June.

In June. Got it.

Okay.

Yes.

We, as you can imagine, we have a host of questions because I'm we're and I appreciate the evolving work, which we are overwhelmingly support. Right? We all, I think recognize the protective factor related to automated, exemptions.

Okay.

But I think we still have some questions, pertaining to the existing guidance that we're essentially operating off of until further notice. So I think it's just important to acknowledge that the guidance that was issued last year hasn't changed. The evolving guidance, that has been built upon over the last 30 to 45 days, is not necessarily hasn't contemplated, I think, the data matching process that you're hearing today.

So I can't respond to what the relative reduction in workload might look like that would be otherwise alleviated by these data matching options. And I guess, ultimately, what comes to mind is if recertifications that happen in June, July, August, and September because folks originally enrolled in CalFresh last year around that month.

If the if we still have to conduct the screenings, we have to still go through the intake process. That's still workload at least for the first quarter that's full freight, almost as though we don't have a data matching process, that's unfolding. So that's consistent with the guidance that we have today that hasn't changed. So that's still our working assumption around the workload that would be associated with sort of the front end screening and intake process.

And the final thing I would say is we still do have remaining questions about the $1,800,000 of the caseload, who we know are potentially also going to be auto exempt based on on other categories like caregiving or or disabilities.

Pregnancy, for example. Because if a pregnant client sees in their record that we haven't updated the fact that they have already had the child and they're worried about an overpayment or the county is worried about spiking the error rate because of the potential of an overpayment because the case file hasn't been timely corrected, then how do we ensure that we're not creating more local workload associated with us those touch points as well, which is why we have not adjusted North nor South our original assumptions around about around our budget request.

So tell me and, I mean a lot of this also is Director boss' first, you have to get your own data in order to then share that data with the other department right? in terms of your data sharing work. Is that already done? I know you've already said you've been able to use some data already to identify people, but when should all this data sharing be complete?

I think there's two different things. There's data sharing, and then there's the actual programming and the rules to do the exemptions. Right? We will be ready to do the MediCal exemptions effective January 1.

All of the thing, I mean, we didn't go into the details but all of the exemptions for community and working community engagement requirements. Exemptions and if they met the requirements. That is rules and logics and programming in addition to the data matching. The data matching is a separate process by which DSS may be using other data points to do their same logic for their program.

Includes your data in terms of the exemptions.

But I guessit's not necessarily exemption data. It's just data. The first step is just their implementation. DSS's implementation is before ours. And so it is a like a data sharing so that they can use those rules, program the rules for DSS programs.

Our rules in the medical space will use maybe some of the same data, but we will have our own rules to determine the exemptions. The CalFresh and medical rules are not exactly the same. And so we need to have two sets of rules to determine if a person is exempt or meets the requirement in each of those programs.

And at what point will the sharing part be complete?

So we have started between departments to share information, which is how I provided the 200,000.

Right, do you like sharing them in different pieces, or is it, like, you just get a big old file?

Oh, no. I mean, this is going to be an ongoing forevermore. We will have a data sharing relationship where they are sending us updated files. We, I and ideally, in the future, we'll be combining that with other sources such as the information from DDS, information about a caregiver status. Right?

We create kind of a master file. I'll use myself as an example. Alexis Fernandez might appear in that file as medically frail or as being a person with a disability. That information then is sent to our eligibility system. We need to make sure that we have the automation in place to receive that information and properly apply it to Alexis's case.

And so when we talk about the mid August timeline for doing that, that has to build in, right, testing to make sure to your point about making having confidence that exemption will be applied correctly. We need time to kind of test and set up the the back end system infrastructure to apply that data properly to the case. So when a caseworker opens up, the case during that recertification, that person shows up as, exempt.

So the programming to even do anything with the data that you're receiving is August?

Yes.

And then once that happens, then you're able to do the exemption things. That begin and I'm just trying to lose layman terms. I don't wanna sound stupid or anything.

You doing good.

So that by the time October comes around

Right. Because they're the thing about CalFresh is that lots of things happen before the action. So in order for you to know that a benefit can be issued in October, you actually have to know that information in September. We have to apply everything in advance. We have to notice you.

We have to make sure the system is set up. So getting it in early August allows the system to process it in September so that October benefit month is issued.

And when does counties get the guidance that they need to do their job as you are building the plane while it's flying.

Lots of things happening at once. So a the new ABOD handbook is on the cusp of being released. It's right there. It's very popular. We just hosted a webinar with 1,200 attendees, so very popular topic.

And then we will expedite a corresponding policy letter that we hope to get out in May for counties related to this process and providing them the kind of policy guidance that these exemptions can be used in this way. I will readily admit that we are building the plan as we're flying it. And so, we are moving as quickly as we can. We're doing data matching. We're working policy angles, data sharing agreements all at the same time along with the automation.

So quite a few things to coordinate.

So far, you've provided some great information, even anticipation as we're preparing for this committee. And as you can see, some of these dates and timelines and flows and how to make we make this work is quite confusing, for many of us. And, so what would be great is, number one, if there's some way to create a real timeline on how this process is working or at least what you foresee it happening right now.

We know that these things can change, but it's going to be important to make sure that our our our colleagues and, most importantly as well, our District Offices are aware of what to expect because when people just don't know or get confused, they just call the number that they know to call, and it's usually our offices. And then that'll create more calls to your people.

And so I think the more we can front end the front load the information, no matter how fluid it may be, the better. I'm gonna ask for a couple of things here to help us with making sure that we have all the information we need and in anticipation for what many of our colleagues are going to be trying to get a hold of.

Number one, I'm gonna ask for a plan in writing and details that we as we talked about, for all of the auto exemptions and when each category according to the you guys really had a sexy river chart. You know, that little river chart?

Took us a

Yeah. That was pretty.

Put that in the plan.

That was impressive. I like that. But that so if you can give us the details for all the auto exemptions and when each of the categories that are shown on the river chart on page seven of the agenda, if everyone wants to look at that, it's a good chart, you while you're sitting there, will be accomplished for the $1,800,000.

And then two, the additional data integrations and planning with DHCS and DDS and any other departments that could help with the 954,000, that would be helpful as well, of course, broken down by each department involved and by what date those auto exemption work will be completed. Basically, we're asking for all that information that we've just detailed, you've all explained to us in writing so that we can have a better opportunity to dissect that and really understand it.

When would it be reasonable for the administration to be able to provide this?

Let before I answer that, let me just circle back to the first request and and clarify on that river chart. The information, that we've provided about the two thirds of ABODs who are already exempt is based on information in the system. Those exemptions are automated. And so the the chart was populated by pulling that information out of the system. So those those are exemptions are in place today.

That is based off of information we have today. And so I just wanna be upfront that, to the extent we develop any type of plan, it will just, confirm that that is existing automation.

You have just helped a whole lot right there.

Plan in half.

Wow. You literally did. Yeah.

And I know this is not, again, the most satisfying answer. I will get back to you all with a timeline. Yeah. The same team that is working on the letter, the data sharing is the team who would pull something like this together. So I will get back to you with a reasonable timeline.

Director Bass, same question in terms of as it relates especially with the IHSS MediCal portion of it. We know that all all of them are already exempt, but we're talking about also what is your time your timelines in terms of making sure that the data you are giving to the departments, the other departments to determine help them determine exemptions. You said that data won't be available till January.

No. Our in our exemption file. So our determination of MediCal exemptions won't be available. I mean, we will first run those rules for January 2027 because that's the implementation date of the MediCal provisions.

Okay.

So it it's separate from the data because this is just our rules against our population to know who's exempt.

Got it. DSS is there any other information you are needing from health care services?

No. We didn't, very gracious with their time and data.

Okay. Yeah. And then, DDS I mean, you're just you're just freeloading. You just you know, They doing all the work, and you're saying, done.

All these questions and clarification, please keep doing the back and forth that helps us to clarify things in our own minds as we're going through this process. And, of course, let's just keep in communication on when it's reasonable for information and those type of things, I think is the main point as well.

When can the administration provide your assessment of the county workload necessitated, by HR1 for the 2026-2027?

So, we've had several collaborative and informative discussions to understand, the county perspective and the methodology underlying their budget request. I think we've shared a little bit about how those have gone. I would say that ahead of the May revision or at the May revision, you'll see the administration's proposal for the budget.

Okay. And I guess once that happens, I think then of course, a follow-up discussion is probably gonna have to be had that to just see if we can all come to some type of or close to some type of understanding or agreement, of course. But then also, as you know, once the guidance becomes available to the counties, then you can rework to see if your number that you've asked for still stands or whatever a new number is based upon the guidance you're getting from, CDSS.

Is that correct?

Yes. With with the number of of caveats. I mean, I think it's still unclear how the CMS guidance impacts the assumptions at DHCS around the data that they can use for exemptions on their side, particularly around diagnostic codes and other flexibilities

And whether that will have any bearing on the file that is ultimately being furnished to CDSS because it's our understanding that yes, I understand the DDS population, that sort of is the perhaps the most clear, right? In terms of exemptable individuals within that file. But then the broader sort of medically unfit for work population that will emerge From that file will largely be, I assume, based on claims data, which a mix.

But the use of that data would it's saying it's unclear which federal agency will ultimately have to approve the use of that flexibility and that data. And I'm not sure if those discussions have been had or you all

So on the CalFresh side, we are issuing policy guidance within existing federal guidance. We feel like we do have the authority, and that will be articulated in this in this pending letter in.

In the month of May. So I totally understand, that's not available yet but we believe we have the authority, in the existing federal guidance that we've received.

Okay.

Yeah. And so

This is evolving. So new information. I just wanna name that amongst all our partners.

Absolutely. I mean, I think be between the evolving information, your guidance that's to the best of your ability to get to the counties to then do their own assessments on what they believe is going to be needed. And then comparing that, of course to the Department of Finance who will find out what they have, what they estimate to believe that what the counties need. So obviously, we're gonna be here comes the annual sprint.

And so, I think at the most important part, I think is that we just need to be generally at the table together once we all get the information we believe we all need so that we can come to some conclusion in a reasonable way where, you know, we're also providing the counties enough time to get ready for the humongous work that is ahead of them as well.

My last thing is also, for the proposed Trailer Bill Language on page four of the page 12 of the agenda. I don't know why I said four. There's clearly a 12 right here. For the proposed Trailer Bill Language on page 12 of the agenda, I just like to request feedback from the administration before the May revision.

Is this possible to get feedback on the language? And I know also we're looking at there was some scoring is some scoring that we were thinking of?

I'm not tracking the scoring, but I can confirm we have received the trailer bill, and we will work on providing written technical assistance.

Thank you for that. Any other questions or comments? Here we go. Thank you all very much. We'll move on to issue number two.

Alright. Mister Gillette, you're on.

Alright. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Gillette. I am the Deputy Director over the Research Automation and Data Division at the Department of Social Services.

I'm going to provide responses to the questions related to CFAP expansion on behalf of CDSS and OTSI. My colleague, Brandon here will be available to support with any follow-up questions that may arise. The Department of Social Services appreciates the opportunity to speak about potential automated solutions to support Californians who will lose CalFresh benefits due to the federal changes under HR1.

CalSAWS, the California Statewide Automated Welfare System, is exploring pathways to provide state funded benefits to two key groups, lawfully present noncitizens who would lose eligibility under HR1 and able-bodied adults without dependents or ABODs subject to the federal time limit. These options rely on leveraging the existing California Food Assistance or CFAP expansion currently planned for 10/01/2027.

At this time, implementation of a CFAP Plus Program could not occur any sooner than that date, but depending on the policy choices made could potentially be achieved in alignment with that 10/01/2027 timeline. The ultimate timeline for implementing something like CFAP Plus is driven by several factors. The first, the need for clear and final policy direction, the complexity of defining eligibility for new populations, and the consideration of other priorities that are scheduled for release, some of which are federal federally required.

Policy decisions around reporting requirements or state hearings or how a bods might transition back onto federally funded CalFresh would affect system design and could introduce additional complexities that might add time and costs to that schedule. Creating separate or unique rules for a CFAP Plus population would increase the complexity for counties, could create potential confusion for recipients, and may also significantly increase the automation burden as it would mean yet another type of unique client that would need to be tracked and managed differently in the system.

Finally, regarding the question about the, $15,000,000 of provisional funding, we are continuing to work through our partners and number of efforts that we currently have in flight to figure out the right set of allocations, for how to draw down that money. With that, I will leave time to answer any questions that you may have.

CDSS, you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Jackson, Members of the Committee. My name is Eliana Kaimowitz. I'm the Office of Equity Director at the California Department of Social Services. We appreciate the opportunity to provide an update on the Stop the Hate program.

In your agenda, the committee has asked about measurable outcomes that the Stop the Hate program achieved to date. Over the past four years, the program has had four distinct areas where we have measured outcomes. First is in our direct services, which have increased year by year, providing individuals with mental health care, legal assistance, and navigation case management services.

Second, our service providers deliver prevention and intervention services in the form of bystander training, safety planning, arts, and cultural programming, cross racial solidarity work, senior safety escorts, youth leadership development, and community rapid response coordination to over 16 million individuals across the state.

Third, our Transformative Grant Program, organizations who demonstrated capacity for large scale systemic anti hate work helped implement multilingual legal services, community healing programs, and rapid response coordination with public institutions such as schools and law enforcement. These organizations have served over 11,200 individuals.

And last, but perhaps more importantly, is our statewide coordination efforts. The Stop the Hate program is now an established network of community based organizations across the state, representing diverse communities impacted by hate who are sharing best practices and working together to address this complex social problem both from within their own communities as well as improving the systems that support survivors.

The department will use its program evaluation findings to identify high impact service models, such as legal services, case management, and case management, and multilingual outreach to recommend sustainability beyond the current grant cycle. We have also assessed grant, the grantee's delivery of meaningful and effective services through three main strategies.

First, the department monitors through the regional lead data reports, which provide detailed quarterly reports on all the individuals serves served, including their demographics, their victim or survivor status, and the type of direct prevention and intervention service they've received.

Secondly, we have secured an external evaluator to conduct impact assessments, beneficiary surveys, and data analysis throughout the program. And last, our CDSS staff also participate in site visits and convenings to directly hear from program beneficiaries and providers.

The final question on the agenda was how we are ensuring access in underserved rural and desert communities. CDSS recognizes the gap in nonprofit infrastructure in many rural and desert regions such as the Inland Empire, the Eastern Sierras, and other underserved parts of Northern California.

We have taken deliberate steps to ensure these populations are not left behind. In the second round of Stop the Hate funding, the department prioritized applications from organizations serving these regions. We also prioritize culturally relevant providers serving underserved populations within these regions and encourage collaborative models and local networks to help smaller or emerging organizations participate even if they lack the full infrastructure to administer a grant.

We are further strengthening our outreach and capacity building efforts through statewide convenings, site visits, and technical assistance provided by the external evaluators, helping attract and prepare more organizations to serve rural, remote, and under resourced communities. We appreciate your time and your interest in the program, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Jackson and Members of the Budget Subcommittee on Human Services. My name is Manjusha Kulkarni, and I'm Executive Director of AAPI Equity Alliance that serves as a regional lead for the Los Angeles area and also Co-Director of Stop AAPI Hate.

First, I'd like to thank the legislature and Governor Newsom for the historic $140 million investment in the social safety net of a 180 trusted CBOs to help Californians fight hate, as well as CDSS, for being a great partner in administering the funds.

This investment has enabled millions of Californians to receive critical services during a time of rising hate crimes and hate incidents. And at a time where the data shows that hate crimes are still on the rise and our federal government is sanctioning hate, we are urgently asking the legislature to reauthorize the critical funding before it expires on July 1.

I wanted to just share with you a brief story of one of our community members in our region who has benefited from Stop the Hate. I wanna apologize in advance for the language. David was getting off the bus when he heard homophobic slurs being hurled at him from behind. Fight like a man. You're a pussy.

You're a bitch. It was a group of boys who had followed him home. David tried to remain calm, but one of the boys grabbed a metal rod from a bike nearby and severely beat David. He was in a coma for almost a week and suffered from physical injuries, leaving him unable to walk.

The mental trauma he experienced resulted in post traumatic stress disorder. With the help of Saint John's Community Health Center, David received emergency services from the hospital as well as mental health support and legal services for victims of crime.

Saint John's also helped David to relocate to a newer and safer neighborhood. This is a horrible example, not like many of the thousands of individuals that we in Los Angeles have provided much needed help to heal from the hate since the program began.

Unfortunately, the number of hate incidents and crimes in Los Angeles County has only increased in the last decade. The Human Relations Commission, which publishes the annual hate crimes report data going back to 1995, has found a year over year increase.

In 2014, for example, there were 390 reported hate crimes. In 2024, that number increased to 1,300. And the increase, you know, despite the tremendous work of our program, is really a reflection of the fact that we live in a time where hate is being perpetuated by our national leaders.

Acts of hate, as you well know, prevent Californians from going to work, California kids from attending school, and seniors from getting their groceries and prescriptions. And I wanted to offer a second story that shows the example of what has happened and the benefits of the program.

Ching Ching Chong, this is what Kathy heard every single day at work. Even as a manager, her colleagues made fun of her accent and undermined her for being Korean. She felt belittled but feared losing her job if she spoke up. Over time, the stress increased, causing sleep disturbances and self doubt. She sought help from Korean American Family Services.

They provided her with cultural and linguistically appropriate mental health services for twelve weeks. It helped her to process the discrimination, boost her confidence, and helped her engage in safety planning and advocacy in the workplace.

Four months later, she spoke out against the discrimination she experienced, and her efforts led the workplace to hold a cultural bias and diversity training for all staff so that what happened to Kathy wouldn't happen to others.

I wanna conclude by saying that the work that we're doing really helps Californians from marginalized communities get the services they need to continue to live in California and even in some cases to thrive. As we're well aware, our nation is facing tremendous challenges. What we have seen at Stop AAPI Hate is a trifecta of hate.

Hate that comes not only from interpersonal acts, but also from hateful rhetoric and policies that have led to mass detentions and deportations, denial of health care, and attempts to end birthright citizenship. And even just today, really the end of the Voting Rights Act by the US Supreme Court. This trifecta of hate has led 3.1 million Californians to experience hate according to the CHIS survey.

This shows how important a program is and how critical it is for it to continue. I wanna thank you again for the opportunity to share our community's experiences and the work that our grantees and regional leads have done to address the needs of the most vulnerable community members in our state.

Good afternoon, Chair and honorable Members. My name is Rejie Marie Baloyos, and I serve as the Executive Director of Asian Resources Inc here in Sacramento. And I am here to respectfully advocate for the continued funding of the Stop the Hate.

In 2022, a Chinese woman who had been attacked and robbed while working in a massage spa came to our office seeking for help. My team spent hours walking her through her options, providing full language access, and offering support so she could safely engage with law enforcement.

We offered to connect her to therapy and reassured her that her information would remain confidential. Despite of this, she choose not to report the incident, not because help was not available, but because of the deep shame and humiliation she carried. Before she left, she shared something that has stayed with me and continued to guide our work at Asian Resources.

She said she wished that we could do more education to our young people so that they can understand and respect others' cultures so that they will not hate us. That moment is why Stop the Hate grant matters. Through the grant, Asian Resources partnered with 10 grassroots organization across Sacramento region to deliver culturally and responsive prevention and intervention strategies.

Together, we have reached tens of thousands of community members and engaged more than 3,500 youth through anti hate education, community dialogue, leadership development, and culturally grounded healing center programs. What makes this investment so powerful is that it prevents violence before it happens.

It creates safe, trusted spaces where immigrants, refugees, seniors, and youth can come together to learn about hate crimes and hate incidents, understand their rights, and support one another, especially in communities where fear and language barriers often silence victims. It also strengthen intervention, ensuring that hate incidents do occur. When hate incidents do occur, there is coordinated and culturally competent response rooted in trust.

Equally important, this funding has empowered small grassroots organizations, those closest to the community, to continue and expand their work. Without this support, many of these efforts would not exist. And without education, dialogue, bystander intervention training, and prevention initiatives, misinformation, fear, and prejudice are far more likely to spread unchecked.

Through this partnership, we have launched programs such as youth violence prevention poster contest and intergenerational healing spaces. And these initiatives do more than just engage communities, they build belonging, reduce isolation, and address the root causes of hate. These are not just programs. They are prevention. Today, I urge you to continue and expand funding for Stop the Hate, especially in this current moment.

A sustained investment is critical to sustaining this momentum and ensuring that prevention and intervention efforts remain strong across California. Because when investment, when we invest in our community, we are not only responding to hate, but we are also preventing it. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to a safer and more inclusive California.

LAO.

Nothing to add on this issue.

Department of Finance.

Lourdes Morales, Department of Finance. No additional comments at this point. Thank you.

CDSS, have you received our trailer bill language on this yet?

Yes. I believe we have.

Okay. Please provide us with any feedback that you may have. We would really appreciate that. And then also, as you, as we've stated before, as my colleague has held information hearing on this, as well as Assembly Member Alex Lee and the Human Services policy committee.

We want to make sure, number one, I'm very impressed with the work, the number of people that have been reached out to, served in various ways, exposed to this anti hate, anti racism framework and dialogues that have been going on to that.

Certainly applaud the API Caucus, for their historic work and making sure that this program even exists in the first place. So I wanna recognize that. Now that a lot of innovation has occurred, a lot of starts, fits and stops, and all kinds of stuff, which is always happens.

Actually, it's the most exciting part that happens is the creation of something new. Right? But now we should have had time to ensure that we start now looking at best practices. Because now we want to make sure and we actually codify these best practices and what the future is and what we want to are interested in funding moving forward now.

Alright? Three areas that we know and research show work. Number one, in the tradition of the African American community, if you go to the strategies of the Black Panthers, they would say the best way to combat racism is solidarity. So how can we make sure that we are, that each of our programs that we fund moving forward are engaging in solidarity work as a part of their work. Right?

Also, how do we make sure that we continue to address the harm that then has already been created? A hate crime has occurred. Violence or racist acts are occurring in communities, and we need to begin to address that. How do we address harm? How do we reduce that harm?

And then what are the legal services that may be necessary to make sure that we make things right also? And then in the third category, each of our communities has a predetermined narrative about other groups that are shared at the dinner table. That uncle who just can't act right is saying all kinds of crazy stuff about other people. And you're like, I don't agree with this, but should I say something? Right?

Then comes the education work and the training work that we must do in our own communities in order to ensure that we eradicate the biases and the discriminatory narratives that we spread or think about or talk about against other groups.

Three categories. If I can if I had to narrow it down to three categories, I would put that in. Solidarity, addressing harm, and then the education and training that needs to happen within our own communities so that we're not perpetuating harmful thoughts and behaviors towards other groups. That makes sense?

LAO, I'm gonna need your help. I wanna think about language to kinda codify some of these key categories and any additional best practices that we wanna start narrowing down what we should be funding to ensure we get the best outcomes with limited dollars. And I would like to stress limited dollars to be able to move forward. Okay?

If we can have some codification language, we'll make sure if you don't already have the language we've already have in terms of trailer bill language, I'll make sure that Michael Adamski gets that information to you to help with additional language to start really fine tuning this baby.

Right? I am a firm believer. There's no doubt that we continue to be in the, in a period of the highest rates California have ever seen in terms of hate crimes. And so we wanna not abandon infrastructure. It makes no sense to spend a lot of money on infrastructure and then abandon it.

Now we have got to fine tune it, sharpen it, increase its effectiveness so that we can continue to make sure that our communities are more resilient. Hate, racism is a public health issue. It's impossible to expect, to expect communities to be healthy and to thrive if they're under attack. Right?

There's no way we can expect children to learn in school if they feel fear, have a fear of being harmed simply because of the way they were born and who they are. And so we must continue to build a a stronger infrastructure to do so. So I'm going to ask for feedback on that CDSS.

I'm asking LAO to help us with some more language to help with expectations, outcomes that we're trying to expect, the type of programs we should be funding, the type of activities we should be funding with this, as well. And we will make sure that, we also wanna make sure we get the feedback from those on the ground as also.

We still wanna leave room for a little bit of innovation. Right? You never know. But at the end of the day, we wanna make sure that we can have some outcomes other than how many people came to our event.

Hint, hint. Okay? Any questions or comments with that? We wanna be good stewards of our dollars. Okay?

Thank you very much. Appreciate the work that you're doing. Absolutely. Issue number six. The sun is still out. Wow.

Good afternoon. Should I start?

Go for it.

Okay. My name is Hanna Azemati, and I'm the deputy director of the California Department of Social Services, Housing and Homelessness Division, or HHD. The agenda provided very robust background on the CalWORKs housing support program and the housing and disability advocacy program. So, I'm going to focus my testimony on answering the questions in the agenda focused on the impact of the chair's proposed investments in these two programs, as well as the trailer bill.

So the first question about impact, the proposed one-time investments of 55,000,000 general fund for HDAP and 105,000,000 general fund for HSP would allow the programs to continue operations through 2026 to 2027 and mitigate the current funding cliff caused by the exhaustion of prior time limited funds.

Additional funding with multiple years to spend will support grantees in maintaining the staffing and infrastructure necessary for program continuity in fiscal year 2026-27, delivering high impact services to families and individuals experiencing or, and at risk of homelessness.

These investments could, in turn, support continued progress toward reducing homelessness across the state, particularly amongst families with children and individuals with disabilities. On the second question regarding the, what will occur in the absence of these investments for each program. Both HDAP and H, HSP face significant funding cliffs. So for HDAP in particular, all funding beyond the base amount of 25,000,000 is expected to be exhausted in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026-27, resulting in more immediate and severe program reductions for that program.

For HSP, the one-time funding was exhausted as of December 2025, meaning many programs have already begun scaling down or are planning further reductions due to the funding cliff to align with the 95,000,000 in base amount that they would have to operate under next year, in the next fiscal year.

In the absence of new investments, counties report that they would need to significantly reduce or eliminate emergency housing assistance. That includes hotel and interim housing placements, shorten the duration of rental subsidies and financial assistance as well as decrease the amounts of those supports, and, and pause new enrollments or sharply limit the number of participants that are served overall, whether from prior year or new enrollments. These changes would lead to fewer families and individuals receiving homelessness prevention and housing stabilization services.

The likelihood of homelessness or prolonged housing instability would increase amongst families with children, individuals with disabilities who are served by these two programs. The impacts of funding fluctuations and reductions are further compounded by broader loss of resources and supports available to these populations served by HHD programs following recent federal actions.

Overall, absent additional funding, we would likely see increased exits from programs without stable housing outcomes, greater strain on emergency shelter systems and local safety nets, and setbacks in the statewide progress made toward reducing homelessness amongst vulnerable populations.

With regard to the trailer bill, CDSS has not yet had the opportunity to analyze the proposed CalWORKs rate of homelessness TBL. We would look to DOF, LAO, and the Assemblymember's Office for support in helping us triage across requests and how they should be prioritized. For consideration, however, we'll share that, I'll share that currently, CDSS routinely reports on families to, stabilization program, housing support program, and homeless assist, assistance program utilization through the CalWORKs interactive summary.

This includes enrollment and housing services delivery data over time for HSP and HA, and for the family stabilization program, that includes homeless support and services received during quarter as a metric, therein. Given that HA in particular is an entitlement program, it is a particularly strong proxy, for the extent to which families enrolled in CalWORKs are experiencing homelessness and housing instability.

And we have in the past provided estimates of the rate of homelessness and housing instability in CalWORKs based on that metric and other metrics and prior testimonies and written responses throughout the hearing cycles we've had. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions.

LAO?

Thank you, mister chair. Ginny Bello with the Analyst Office. Nothing further to add on this issue, but happy to partner with the administration as indicated to work through the technical feedback on the trailer bill language.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Noel Fakaji, Department of Finance. Just noting that the governor's budget does maintain the commitment to the ongoing funding. So that's 25,000,000 for HDAP and 95,000,000 for HSP. And noting that the proposal for a new funding that requires general funds would be considered in the context of the overall budget and may require some offsetting decisions.

Thank you very much. CDSS, this committee is proposing 55,000,000 general fund for HDAP and 105,000,000 for HSP, both above the baseline. Are these numbers reasonable to allow both programs to hold steady as they currently exist for the budget year given implementation today?

So to answer your question, maybe I'll just reference some of the utilization of funds that we have seen. So last fiscal year for HTAP, counties spent 83,000,000. And then in the coming fiscal year, their project, in this current fiscal year, they're projected to spend 64,000,000. At its peak, HDAP, counties participating in HDAP utilized 102,000,000. That was in 23-24.

So the proposed amount for HDAP would place us somewhere between the current fiscal year projected spending amount for counties and last year's, last fiscal year's funding utilization. That does not account for utilization of funds for tribes in the past and we continue to do this. We have been setting aside 5% of any one time funds for tribes to participate. So we would be taking, we would want to do a similar approach likely for future funds if the proposed funds were to be adopted.

For HSP, similarly looking at spending trends, The program last year, in the last fiscal year, in fiscal year 24-25 utilized 207,000,000, and in this current fiscal year is projected to utilize hun, 170,000,000.

So, again, the proposed amount puts us between the two amounts, current and last fiscal year. And for HSP, the last fiscal year, 24-25 was the peak year of funding utilization. And for HSP, we do not have tribes participating, so there wouldn't be any sort of set aside that we would wanna account for.

LAO, what are your thoughts on holding steady here? Does, do we, I mean, I mean, the, is the goal of this committee to make sure that we hold the line in terms of people falling into homelessness in these various categories? Does the 55,000,000 for HDAP above baseline and 105,000,000 for HSP above baseline seem appropriate in terms of being able to hold the pro, program steady, or what what would your recommendations be for the appropriate amounts?

Our, our initial take, as we heard from the administration, is that they believe that this amount would allow them to continue operations at the levels in place through the budget year. But we can take that back and just make sure that we're clear

and we're understanding them correctly. But that's how we're understanding the, the way the data has been presented thus far, as it would allow us to do in, in the budget year service levels about equivalent to what we were doing currently.

Okay. So we're gonna continue to ask you for a technical assistance to make sure that we at least know what we're, then, when, if we decide to appropriate a certain amount, exactly what we're gonna get for it and how long it's gonna last. That's basically what we're trying to do here. Right?

And so we wanna get it right, and we wanna make sure that we, as much as we possibly can, and with the finances we have available, making sure that we are serving as many people as we can to make sure that we are preventing people from falling into homelessness.

At least that's what we mean when we say we have a social safety net, I'm guessing. Anyway, I'm gonna, so I will be asking for feedback on our language to make, so that we can make sure that we are getting, making the best projections possible. Is it possible to get this feedback before the May revise?

We'll circle back with you, but we are already actively reviewing the language. So we can circle back on our timing.

And then I'm also asking, also, in terms of, it seems from the numbers that we've been provided, that the amounts that we've already allocated for HomeSafe seems to be sufficient for the 26-27 fiscal year. Am I correct in that?

Yes. Based on our projections of spending trends that we're seeing, we believe the funds, the, the newly allocated funds from Budget Act 2025 will last through, the first or second quarter. I'll have to look back at my notes, but of 27-28. So we do have more runway on those funds to, support counties and and tribes.

LAO, do you see any red flags in terms of making sure that we, that funding is gonna last throughout the, 26-27 fiscal year, given possible caseloads?

No, no concerns at this time, but we will also, as we're following up on the other question, we'll make sure that we touch on this one as well.

Okay. Questions for committee members at this time? Alright. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Issue number seven. I feel like I should slow down. You may begin when you're ready.

Great. Good afternoon, chair and members. I'm Jason Wimbley, director of the Department of Community Services and Development. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. And with your permission, chair, I would just like to proceed by addressing the three questions in the agenda.

So the first question, there are two budget proposals this year that impact the department. The first, a request to reappropriate unexpended greenhouse gas production fund resources allocated to the low income, excuse me, weatherization program, a program that provides energy efficiency upgrades and solar energy systems for low income farmworker housing and low income multi, multifamily affordable properties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the financial burden for home energy.

This proposal would extend the farmworker housing component liquidation period to 06/30/2027 and the multifamily component liquidation period to 06/30/2028. The second proposal is part of the Prop 4 Climate Bond Expenditure Plan, which allocates $10,000,000 for the low, low income weatherization program to support the continuation of the farmworker housing component. The second question, CSD is actively working with our network of agencies to assess the impacts of challenges made to the federal safety net over the past year.

While it is too soon to make any definitive conclusions, it is clear that they are challenges, these challenges are going to have a significant impact on the people we serve. Our network, including our community services, block grant agencies, also known as community action agencies, are often on the frontline providing food services, energy utility bill, and housing assistance, and other services to low income individuals and families in need.

Many of our, many of our partner agencies are already coordinated with other public and private entities at the local level in response to anticipated changes to CalFresh and Medi Cal. Using their years of experience and expertise in assessing community need, they are laying the groundwork so that, as the impacts of these changes become more clear, they can be as responsive as possible as to addressing the needs of impacted households.

Over time, we will have a better sense of the full impact of these changes and how our communities are responding.

Happy to share those findings in the future. The third question, with regards to what the legislature can be aware of and possibly support, I would ask that the legislature continue to prioritize supporting the, the most vulnerable among us. I'm proud to lead a department that's mission is to support and fill, to lift up the low income Californians so that they can meet their basic needs, achieve economic independence, and thrive.

To the extent that CSD can bring its unique skill set to supporting these efforts, we stand ready to do so.

LAO?

Thank you, mister chair. Ginny Bello with the Analyst Office. Just noting that we have no concerns with the proposed budget change proposals.

Department of Finance?

Kayla Knott, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add.

Mister Director, obviously, number one, this is our annual meeting day.

Oh, it is. Good to see you.

Likewise. See you next year. You have a number of anti-poverty organizations and work that's under your purview. Correct?

And we've talked about a lot of the possible opportunities to really think about how can we utilize the level of expertise that's in every county who are dealing with some of the most needy people, people with the most needs, low income people, marginalized people. How can we use that infrastructure to be able to do, or to possibly address the ramifications that we anticipate seeing due to HR 1?

Good question. So as I mentioned in my response to, I think, it was question two, our community action agencies are, that's their mission. They are anti-poverty agencies, and they are involved in, they play a critical role in the safety net that existed within each of these counties or communities that they operate within. And the federal dollars that they receive, is basically seed money that enables them to do the level of coordination across the spectrum of programs.

And in some cases, they use it to provide direct services, in other cases, indirect services.

But their aim is to serve as a one-stop shop to helping those in need within their communities. So I'm confident as the conversations continue to evolve with our community action agencies and those efforts that they're leading at the local level, continue, you know, materialize. We will get a clearer sense of what the impacts are for each county and how each community is responding to the impact changes associated with CalFresh and Medi Cal.

And then based on that, they will put together a plan of attack for how they, as an organization, can draw upon the resources that are available to them to address the needs of those that have been directly impacted by these changes.

Are you aware of the number of people who are projected to lose food assistance in the State of California due to HR 1?

I did before the, this hearing today, but in that first panel, it was definitely very telling. And I understand the concern. And, and, again, I think our agents well, I shouldn't say I think, I know our agencies are also, they also share the same concern and are working on those fronts.

But I will also say that outside of our community action agencies, we also fund other community-based organizations that offer other assistance, and we continue to, we plan to have broader conversations with those organizations to draw them in. Because, again, they are operating at the local level.

And through their doors, you know, come many people that are in need of assistance. And, and those organizations do their best to make sure that they can address the needs of those individuals that come through their doors, whether directly or indirectly.

There are over 700,000 people we are projecting who will be losing CalFresh benefits. By tomorrow, I'll have a good picture of which counties will be hit the hardest. Probably? Yes. And we'll make sure that we share that, by the way, Madam Vice Chair.

And I'm wondering, what can be done, or what support can we give to community action agencies to help provide them with assistance. Because at this point, the state of California does not have the infrastructure to be able to give them CalFresh-like assistance, even if we wanted to at this point. So this committee is interested in identifying existing infrastructure that we may be able to leverage that includes our food banks.

And in my mind, community action agencies would be a perfect opportunity to think about infusing with funds--sorry, Department of Finance--to be able to help mitigate, right, the level of instability this could cause in communities.

Would that be a good assumption given the history of the existence of why community action agencies exist in the first place?

Most definitely. You know, with the community action agencies, you know, there's always there's an overabundance of need oftentimes in the shortage of resources. So, obviously, the impacts that you're describing or we're predicting associated with the changes to CalFresh and Medi-Cal will only place a, a higher strain on those resources that, that exist at the community level to address those in need. So, obviously, that would—adding resources and bringing and providing more resources to bear for community action agencies can only be helpful.

Let's schedule a meeting for next week, please.

Okay.

I wanna talk to you further about that. You don't have to bring Mountain Dew. I'm no longer addicted.

Oh, man.

So, yeah. However, I'm now addicted again for—to Snickers. So, feel free to—feel free to hook a brother up.

Okay. Gotcha.

Thank you for that. I have no further questions. Any further questions? Thank you so much.

See you next week.

Okay. Likewise.

Oh, I'm sorry. Hold on.

Did I forget something?

Kayla Knott, Department of Finance.

I'm sorry.

Just want to add that any changes or updates, programs, we would have to look at offsetting the general fund.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

We're already at eight? Issue number eight? Maybe we can think about a few more before we—before this panel ends. H—HHS, you may begin when you are ready.

Good afternoon, Chair, Madam Chair. My name is Brent Houser, Dep—Interim Deputy Secretary for Program and Fiscal Affairs at the California Health and Human Services Agency.

They let high schoolers be deputy secretaries?

We, we've gone there that early.

Aren't there, aren't there child protective laws about this? Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

It's okay.

Before going into today's prepared remarks, I did just want to acknowledge that the many team members across the agency's 12 departments, four offices, for their incredible amount of work developing the budget, working tirelessly to address and respond to significant federal policy shifts, and most importantly in serving Californians. Today, I'll be providing a high-level overview of agency's mission or strategic priorities, as well as responding to the committee's questions.

Our mission is to work with cities, counties, and communities, as well as public, private, faith, and educational partners to make California Health vibrant, inclusive place to live, work, play, and learn. We continue to advance five strategic priorities. First, building a healthy California for all.

Second, integrating health, housing, and human services. Third, strengthening social well-being, equity, and economic resilience. Fourth, advancing well-being in children and youth. Lastly, building an age and disability-friendly state for all.

Cal HHS agency is the connective tissue that coordinates the cross-disciplinary work on program and policy impacts. We have oversight and support of our departments and offices in a variety of ways in policy development, program implementation, budget legislation, and communication.

Our 12 departments, which you're very familiar with, but I'll go over them for the sake of the record: Department of Aging, Department of Child Support Services, Department of Community Services and Development, Department of Developmental Services, Emergency Medical Services Authority, Department of Health Care Access and Information, Department of Health Care—Department of Health Care Services—Department of Managed Health Care, Department of Public Health, Department of Rehabilitation, Department of Social Services, and Department of State Hospitals.

In addition to the 12 departments, we also have four offices within the Agency, which are the Office of Law Enforcement Support, the Office of Surgeon General, the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration, as well as the Office of Youth and Community Restoration. Moving on to just some of the specific questions in the agenda.

As outlined in the agenda, the administration proposes to align responsibilities for the Center for Data Insights and Innovation to existing entities within the Agency to better align work streams, integrate those functions within these departments' portfolios and projects, and improve overall execution. This includes moving the Data Exchange Framework and the Office of Patient Advocate support to the Department of Health Care Access and Information. This is to enable leveraging their statutory authority and expertise in health data stewardship.

Also, moving enterprise data and analytics to including the data hub to the office of technology and solutions integration. This is consistent with their responsibilities for the broader agency.

We believe this transfer strengthens data leadership by aligning responsibilities with HCAI and OTSI, resulting in more coordinated and streamlined effort to support our all of our departments under the agency. Moving to the agenda's questions on HR 1, just like to start with our overall approach as an agency. We've developed guiding principles to navigate the impacts of HR 1. First, automate to protect coverage, which you heard lots of of that in the first panel. Communicate with clarity and connection.

Simplify the renewal experience. Educate and train those who are serving Medi Cal and CalFresh members, and provide timely and transparent communication. These guiding principles reflect our collective work with DHCS, Department of Social Services, and other partners that we—as we navigate policy guidance, technology design, and communication.

We've developed a governance structure within social services, the agency, and Department of Health care services to provide opportunities for cross departmental work, problem solve, share information, and ensure policies are in alignment, as well as to monitor and mitigate the harms of HR 1. This includes individual and joint meetings, so that we're able to identify the intersections across programs. To communicate updates and policy and guidance, as well as implementation efforts, CalHHS, DHCS, and social services have convened public webinars.

We've also held listening chest—listening sessions—to understand the impacts from the community and stakeholders. In terms of data, both CDSS and DHCS do report on disenrollment enrollment, data on their website as well through the budget process, but to facilitate ongoing monitoring and insights, CDSS and DHCS, we'll be planning to track data trends and disenrollment data associated with HR 1 overtime and agencies currently working with the departments on identifying those specific elements as we move forward in implementation.

That concludes my prepared remarks and available to answer any questions, and apologies for not hitting the three minute mark on that.

Nobody does. We're just saying, you know. LAO?

Min Li, LAO. Nothing to add at this time.

So, this is my first time seeing you. Who are you?

My name is Min. I work in the Health and Human Services Unit.

Oh, that's why I don't see you, because you're not in the usual purview. Okay. Well, nice to meet you.

I think you—likewise.

Yeah. Department of Finance?

Gabriel Ortaz, Department of Finance. I would just like to add a note for the CDII transfer proposal. It's a net zero shift. So, those—all of those resources that are being transferred over to HCAI from agency, it's net zero.

Okay. Thank you. HHSS, would like to just ask to be for you to be prepared to report back on data on the loss of Medi Cal and CalFresh benefits, both as an individual—both as individual programs and for individuals who lose both. Preparing to share that data on an iterative basis starting in January. We're trying to keep track to see, as we go on, how many people are losing benefits, which benefits, how many are losing more than 1 benefit, right, due to HR 1.

And we wanna start being able to get that information from you in January. And then, with the most comprehensive and up to date information, by next year's April hearing, will this be something that HS—HHSS—is able to do for us?

With respect to the data, I think that's something we're definitely working on. I think by January, that's when the community engagement requirements specifically go into effect for Medi Cal, so we may not have disenrollment.

We should not have disenrollment data related to that specific policy change because it doesn't go into because it doesn't go into effect until January and six month return redeterminations in March 2027 for Medi Cal, but we will be able to provide updates on the infrastructure being prepared to gather that data for that particular program. For CalFresh, since the requirements go into effect in June, it may be—we may have additional insights by, by that time frame.

We just wanna make sure that we continue to track this as we go, so we can start looking at different data points that might be able to help us and inform us as we begin to move forward once we start the budget process for next—starting next year as well. So, thank you very much. Looking forward to that.

Of course, we'll be in contact as we continue to try to find ways to make sure we're collecting the type of data that we need, making sure that there's good flow of information, maybe between the administration and the legislature. So, with that, any questions?

With that, thank you very much. This ends the panel presentation portion of our hearing for today. With that, we will move on to public comment. One minute each. Let's see if you've been practicing.

I've been trying. Darby Kernan for End Child Poverty California. Thank you for the opportunity in the hearing today. We wanna thank you, Assemblymember Jackson and Assemblymember Calderon, for including CFAP expansion proposals in this budget conversation. On item one, your continued conversations you've been having over this year on the budget has been really beneficial and we are so happy to see the progress being made and appreciate your work on that.

On item two, we support our the budget proposal that—a budget proposal that ensures our immigrant communities, children, elders, foster youth and house populations, and disabled community members have food at the table. We thank you and staff for your work on this. Regarding promised neighborhoods, thank you for putting them on the agenda today, and we hope to continue working with you on the proposal. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Kiki Lopez, a proud immigrant trans woman of color, representing San Francisco Community Health Center through the Stop the Hate Program. I also serve as a member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission LGBTQIA Advisory Committee, and we are proud of the work that we do by providing services to our queer and trans Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander folks, including the elderlies. And we are proud to be the safety net of the safety net in San Francisco.

Last year, we had a femboy...client who got physically assaulted, and that is why we are advocating for the continuation of the funding for Stop the Hate program because we do not just do the work by stopping hate.

We are doing the work to prevent hate from, from ever occurring and spreading towards our most vulnerable communities. Currently, our national leaders are spreading fear all throughout the country, but I am not backing down to speak for and on behalf of the transgender immigrants with the current political and social turmoil where the funding is coming from every levels. We urge you and this committee to help us advocate for the continuation of the funding of this Stpp the Hate program. Thank you so much.

Period.

Good afternoon, still. Rebecca Gonzales with the Western Center on Law and Policy.

I'll try to keep it as long as possible. I just ran out of material.

You did. I'm also here speaking with—representing John Advocates, John Burton Advocates for Youth. We want—on item number one, we applaud the department for working to get CalSAW to auto exempt 1,800,000 people starting June 1st and the various efforts across the departments to get this done and also the importance of timely data matching.

On issue number two, we are grateful for the chair's tireless leadership in urging the legislature to provide for the contribute—continuation—of food benefits for as many Californians as possible who lose access to CalFresh as a result of cruel federal cuts. We agreed that the most effective way to prevent hunger among people being cut off from CalFresh is to further expand CFAP.

And then, in order for the additional expansion to also go live in October 2027, it is critical that we start the automation process as soon as possible. We're also working on this through AB 2299 with Assemblymember Calderon, and we're also supportive of adequately funding HDAP and HSP program. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Hi, chairman and members. I'm Chloe Seeturn with the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organization. On item one and two, I'm here to ask the subcommittee to include funding in the 2026-'27 budget for the release of information and BenefitsCal, county by county reporting on CalFresh terminations and exemptions, and accelerated CFAP automation to some more—support—community-based organizations like CCWRO that help families navigate the public benefits process. We are the community, and we are the most vulnerable, already helping the vulnerable.

We can't pull up a client's case right now to see what's happening. We call counties and wait and guess, and counties already stretched thin. And when CalSAWS can automate terminations in six months—terminations— but takes eighteen months to automate help, we need that same urgency pointed towards protecting people. HR 1 threatens millions of Californians, and counties can't absorb that alone. CBOs will pick up the extra work, which we already do.

We need tools like ROI, and we need transparency in how benefits are being taken away so we can step in before someone loses benefits, not after. These benefits lead families disability, and children need to be fed, and families stay whole longer. Families stay whole.

Absolutely. Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Mr. Chair, Tiffany Whiten with SEIU California. Appreciate the discussion here today related to automation. Of course, we'd like to underscore that when you have automation, it doesn't negate the workload of the workforce. And so, just underscoring that, yes, we have automation, but we also will have a workload implications. And so, underscoring the need for resources for services and supports for our workforce.

Also, related to the timing, we're cutting it really close—really, really close. It's just, man. And so, just underscoring again when you're looking at that workforce, that training will be necessary in order for us to do the best job. That's possible to ensure that we're keeping everybody on services, specifically related to IHSS.

It is imperative that we ensure—appreciate the automation there and appreciate keeping recipients and providers on services so that we can mitigate any of those harmful downstream effects. So, I appreciate the conversation today and look forward to the continued discussion. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, chair Jackson. Gabriela Chavez with United Domestic Workers, echoing my colleagues' remarks. Definitely appreciate the committee's effort in the ultimate automatization process and ensuring that IHSS providers and recipients do not have an interruption of services. We really appreciate that and look forward to continue working. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Hi. Greg Herner. On behalf of two 211 San Diego and the California Association of Food Banks. Mr. Chair, thank you for all of your work this year on, on so many important issues. We really appreciate the department's work on figuring out how to do the exemptions, but we're still here appealing for funding, because even if you have an exempt county, you still need to find those individuals to find them up, to sign them up for services.

So, under CalFresh, we still need that outreach dollars to be able to reach those individuals and sign them up, even in those counties. And, you know, anybody that we can keep on Cal—and on CalFresh—is gonna be a 100% federal funded dollars. And so, we also, obviously, for those that can't, we want the Cal Food supplement that we've asked for is something that we strongly support.

We're also gonna be running a report for Department of Finance and for the committee that will show the benefit that you get with the outreach dollars. As an example, in, in a preliminary report, we just pulled in, in San Diego for about $6,000,000 in outreach.

We get $90,000,000 in economic benefits in the county.

Thank you very much. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Anieli Martin with the California Immigrant Policy Center. As a cosponsors of the Food for All Campaign, we applaud the chair's request outlined in agenda item number two to modernize the CFAP program so that our state can better ensure that no Californian goes hungry due to HR 1 cuts to CalFresh. CFAP Plus will allow us to make bold steps to provide food assistance to families in need, regardless of one's immigration status, age, or ability to work.

Again, thank you for your leadership, and we look forward to continuing to work with you and your committee on the trilingual language as it moves forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Monica Madrid with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, CHIRLA. We also applaud you all for CFAP, what she just said, and, but we urge your support for a budget response that meets the moment. California is facing a preventable hunger crisis.

Nearly 1,000,000 Californians will be impacted by federal cuts to CalFresh, including children, unhoused neighbors, and former foster youth veterans, and 72,000 humanitarian immigrants who have already lost food assistance. We urge the legislature to expand CFAP so families included in these cuts do not go hungry and invest in county implementation so eligible Californians are not wrongfully cut off due to data gaps. But food access not alone is not enough.

For newly arrived asylees and vulnerable noncitizens, we also need to restore funding to Esaven, which provided critical case management service and stabilization for services when families first arrive. At a time when Federal Government is attacking immigrants on every level, California must respond with both food security and integration support.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. Justin Garrett with California State Association of Counties. First, I just wanna thank the Chair for continuing to keep the focus and attention on the state doing everything it can to prepare for the work requirements for CalFresh and Medi Cal. I do wanna appreciate—acknowledge—the work of the departments to automate exemptions and share data, but even with this work at the, the county, eligibility workforce is critical.

CSAC remains supportive of the eligibility funding request that was outlined by CWD. This is part of the overall countywide HR 1 budget request. It's critical. It'll help as many people as possible retain their nutrition assistance and health care coverage. And with the extent of safety net cuts, and cost shares facing counties, it's especially important.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Dr. Jackson. Always a pleasure to see you. Clifton Wilson on behalf of the Board of Supervisors for the counties of Kern, San Luis Obispo, Sutter, Fresno, King, San Joaquin, Merced, Nevada, Placer, Shasta, Siskiyou, Solano, Stanislaus, Humble, Tulare, all in support of the county HR 1 budget request overall specific to today, the funding request just to retain the county eligibility workforce to support and help individuals, families obtain and retain Medi Cal coverage, and their CalFresh benefits overall. We'd like to align our comments with CSAC.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Chair, Kathy Mossberg on behalf of a couple clients. First, on behalf of the food bank, CAFB, supports the chair's work on the trailer bill language and on the increased access to CFAP for those who will lack access to food benefits due to HR 1. Really appreciate that. I'd be remiss not to give a shout out to outreach on CalFresh. It's incredibly important to keeping people on the program.

We're working on that as well. And additionally, for Nourish California in partnership with the Food for All Coalition, wanna align myself with my colleague from CIPC, but just wanna, again, thank you for your work on CFAP Plus. Look forward to working on the trailer bill, and then look forward to working with this committee as we look to expand to 55 and over and make sure that timeline stays on track. So, thank you very much.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. Alejandro Solis on behalf of La Cooperativa, Campesina, California. Respectfully urge inclusion and timely implementation of the $10,000,000...allocation for the low income weatherization program, farmworker housing component in the '26-'27 budget. This is a...approved high impact investment that advances both climate and equity goals. We support CSD's BCP to move forward with program design and procurement but emphasize the need for timely deployment.

Farm workers support a $5 billion 1agricultural economy, yet many live in inefficient housing with high energy costs. La Cooperativa, in this network, 82 offices across 34 counties are ready partners to help deliver this program effectively. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Taneicia Herring on behalf of the NAACP California Hawaii State Conference in strong support of the Stop the Hate Grant Program. This funding has directly enabled the NAACP California Hawaii State Conference to build and expand a legal redress pipeline that connects individuals experiencing hate and discrimination to trusted support and accountability pathways.

Through this pipeline, community members can safely report incidents outside of traditional systems, ensuring their experiences are documented, triaged, and addressed through legal advocacy, referrals, and community-based resolution when appropriate. It also allows us to identify patterns of harm and elevate systemic issues impacting black communities.

For many black Californians, trust in traditional reporting systems is limited. The Stop the Hate funded legal redress pipeline helps us bridge that gap by many people where they are by turning—and turning underreported harm into accountable, actionable responses. This work is resource intensive but essential. Without continued Stop the Hate funding, this infrastructure and the trust it represents would be severely weakened. We strongly urge the continued support for the Stop Hate Program.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. My name is Kimberly Zito with Asian Inc in San Francisco in support of continued funding for CDSS's Stop the Hate Program. Through this program, we support hundreds of thousands of community members with culturally and linguistically responsive services, helping participants feel safer and more supported.

As the US Census—Bureau Census—Information Center, we've seen these disparities not—for non-Hispanic, Asian households were twice as likely as non-Hispanic, white households to experience food insecurity driven by fear of leaving their home during the pandemic. We've seen this firsthand.

One monolingual Chinese elder, like many of us in the community, afraid to leave her home after anti-Asian violence, she regained her confidence through our Stop the Hate Program through language assessable support and self-defense classes and now feel safe to leave her home. And mind you, now she can kick butt. Without continued funding, critical staff and resources will be lost, leaving vulnerable communities even more at risk. We respectfully urge continued investment in programs like Stop the Hate.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Erin Evans on behalf of the County of Santa Clara. We really appreciate the hearing today and the updates, as well as the progress being made on automating eligibility work for CalFresh and Medi Cal. The county of Santa Clara is facing an annual billion dollar effect of from HR 1. And so, as you heard from CWTA, the county is doing all it can in terms of individualized and personalized outreach to our participants, but that certainly takes a lot of resources.

So, therefore, we support all of the efforts to automate the exemptions that the state is already doing, as well as the additional resources outlined in the request by CWDA. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, Dr. Jackson. My name is Nikki Uy. I am with the Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance or OCAPICA. We serve as the regional lead on the Stop the Hate program for Orange County and the Inland Empires. I first wanna say thank you so much for the attention to the desert regions of the Inland Empire in this hearing, that focus, I'm sorry, that suffer from really intense stops in service, especially once we leave past Victorville.

Many of our providers have cited extreme difficulty trying to get connected, and I, I really appreciate the focus on targeting these inequities.

I wanna say first that, thank you so much for putting forth the effort for continuing the Stop the Hate Program, but also that as a regional lead, and especially as one that has regions that you're particularly interested in, I am very interested in working with you to identify best practices and let you know exactly what's worked in our region and figure out how we can advance this to be codified.

Please continue to work with us, and we would do everything we can to make sure that this program is not only successful, but truly transformative to California's—Californians—across all different ethnic, racial, religious, queer backgrounds, any of that. Thank you.

Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Name and affiliation, please.

Dr. Lisa Pyre Berlin, Parents and Omnisync. We run the California Parenties helpline. Thank you, Dr. Jackson and the committee, for giving us a few minutes here, or a few seconds here, to talk about the helpline. We wanna say that funding needs to be continued. People have depended on the helpline since 2020.

It's the only parent youth helpline. It has research—published independent research—saying that 85% of the parents who call feel more hopeful, more solution-focused. That's the only research that exists that proves its effectiveness. We need to continue it. During ICE raids, during the attacks on LGBT community, youth who are being bullied, people are scared and afraid to reach out and even ask for help.

We are a trusted partner with the state and the governor since we launched this in 2020, and we'd like to see it continued at $5,000,000,000 a year for the next three years. We've helped millions of Californians from every district, every county, through our website, through people calling, texting, and live chatting, and people saying thank goodness there's a trained counselor there to help me, not pass me off, not put me on a web on a waiting list.

And, really, we are emphasizing always asking for help as a sign of strength. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Hi. Angela Herrera, parent anonymous, parent leader. When my mother first faced stage four bladder cancer, I didn't know how I was gonna get through it. The endless appointments, tough decisions, and emotional weight left me overwhelmed. Crying alone in my car after one visit, I felt utterly lost and hopeless.

I picked up the phone and called the California Parent and Youth Helpline. They helped me before with my kids' mental health, and they were a pivotal resource for me now. The compassionate voice on the other end of the line helped me process the case and refocused me on the next steps. It was a godsend. The California Parent and Youth Helpline gives parents/children a need the place to turn to families when, to turn.

Families are breaking under heavy burdens and people need this help more than ever. Please fund the helpline. It saves lives and strengthens our communities. Families shouldn't have to suffer alone. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Antonia Rios, Parents Anonymous parent. Thank you again for having us here to be able to be speak. My name—I'm a grandmother of six, a mother of seven, and I wanna share that if it weren't for the California Parent and Youth Helpline, my 11-year-old would not be here today, nor would my daughter,as my 11-year-old was searching the fastest way to take his life. And my daughter, due to partnership violence, they both got the support from the California Parent and Youth Helpline.

And in those moments, my children's lives were saved.

It didn't stop there. My son was able to share the helpline with other peers, and it saved two other of his peers from taking their own life.

I also wanna say that in this tragedy, in these moments, in these crisis, if it weren't for this helpline, and I can share and tell you that I know so many other lives of our youth that were saved, as well as young adults in our community that were able to reach out to the helpline and get the support that they needed, that our families are here with them today while they're thriving and sharing about the helpline.

If this helpline is not continued to be funded, if this helpline is not there, so many lives are gonna be lost in so many families. So, I beg you to please continue and fund this helpline.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, doc—Dr. Jackson. Kaiin Hay with The Center at Sierra Health Foundation. Thank you so much for hearing us out. The Center atSierra Health Foundation has a privilege of serving as one of the five regional lead in the California Stop The Hate Program.

I am here to say that the incredible communities that we serve from the most northern and rural communities of Northern California all the way through the Central Valley, we are so proud to be working hand in hand with 35 community partners who knows their community well, who are providing services in communities that have been deeply impacted by hate.

And we are here to implore you, to encourage you, the state, to continue funding support of this incredible work. We know that the impact has been deep, but we know that hate is not going away. And we've heard over and over that California has made a commitment to say there is no place for hate here in this golden state, and the ability to renew, this funding is proof that California is leaning to its values.

So, I wanna thank you and urge you to continue to support the renewal of this program.

Thank you. Seeing no other public who wish to, to comment, I wanna thank, as always, our fantastic committee staff, my personal staff, as well as LAO for the constant requests. Department of Finance for me always trying to spend money, and all of the departments who continue to work with us in partnership to try to deal with this historic time. Thank you very much to our sergeants as well. With that, we stand adjourned.