Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 5 On Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation
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Speaker 3
Just at the highest level, Cal OES's role is to coordinate the state's response during disasters and emergencies. And that role has certainly evolved as the threats to California continue to grow in all directions, and more and more we are acting early. We anticipate impacts where possible, and we preposition things, planning, resources, people, equipment, communications to the public so that we can protect communities, you know, more quickly and respond more rapidly. For example, when we have a red flag warning and, know, have fire impacts that we we project are coming to California communities, we have the ability to preposition fire assets, other assets so that they can more quickly respond if and when a disaster occurs. Same thing for storms.
If we see that there's gonna be significant rainfall and flooding potential, we can also preposition swift water rescue assets, things like those are the those are the that's what the threat calls for today. And we now have the technology and the insight to understand, you know, more precisely where to place resources. And those have yielded just tremendous benefits. So thank you for your support so that we can continue to do that. Callos OES's role, of course, extends beyond disaster response.
We're also in charge with of recovery. But importantly, on the front end, we plan, train with our local government, with our state agencies, with our first responders because readiness is a is a full time job. Everything and then in terms of disaster recovery, there's also resource needs that that come with that. Oftentimes, right on the back of a of a response, we're immediately, you know, looking at things like debris removal and watershed protection, but also the financial aid to get communities back up and running as quickly as possible when they've been impacted by a disaster. Cal OES leads the state government when we respond to a disaster so that so that communities can anticipate and expect a coordinated state response in every corner of state capabilities are leveraged towards, you know, one charge, you know, to meet the needs of of what happens, whether it's the LA fires or or floods or all the different things we've experienced.
And this is more critical ever than ever because of the uncertainty on the future of FEMA and kind of federal government assistance as as that's all being looked at at at federal levels. I was asked to touch briefly on the along those lines on LA fire recovery. We've seen both progress and challenges with the recovery operations following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires just over a year ago. Significant strides have been made in the past year, in in terms including the quickest debris removal operation that the state has ever undertaken. Of course, the federal government was a huge partner in that.
However, much remains to be done to restore these communities and the lives that were so tragically and consequentially impacted by these fires. So we remain on the ground in Southern California. We're still there. We're embedded in Los Angeles County. We're embedded in the city of Los Angeles.
We're embedded in Malibu. All of the communities that need us were still there because we're still coordinating, facilitating, understanding the cost of the repair work that needs to be done, and we'll be there as long as we need to to continue to support that as as we move forward. And then we also are facilitating risk reduction programs. So right now, we're in the process of finalizing at at what we call the hazard mitigation grant program. So on the on the back of a federal declaration, we often get risk reduction funds that go with that.
So so we're really focused on on preparing that package of what that application will look like so that we can submit it to FEMA. Those are due in early April. So that's a big focus of ours too. We're asked to give an update on FEMA reimbursement for the LA fires. California has submitted almost 700 what we call public assistance applications.
So that's infrastructure. That's response costs for law enforcement, for fire agencies, all the different things that ultimately will be available under that kind of government umbrella of of impact from the disaster. Those total about $1,200,000,000 in estimated cost that should be eligible under the FEMA declaration. But, this dollar amount is gonna continue to evolve because scopes of work for some of the rebuilding projects are still being are still being finalized. Insurance settlements are still things that local governments are navigating.
To date, FEMA has obligated about 4% of that of that amount that we that's not a lot. And so, you know, a lot of our effort is continuing to press the the federal government to increase the pace of getting those approvals done so that those dollars can flow back to these communities for that they're that they're owed for the eligible work that that has been demonstrated. But to support immediate relief, you have authorized authorized a wildfire response and recovery mechanism under a v 100. And to date, approximately 545,000,000 has been allocated to support activities really to front load, some of the stuff, especially given some of the delays we've seen with the with the federal allocations, including for some of those public assistance projects. The latest federal shutdown has temporarily paused FEMA funding even further.
So that's, you know, so we don't expect any movement until that's until that's released. However, it doesn't change California's near term ability to respond when something happens. And, certainly, well, fortunately, we haven't had a large disaster recently. What we've seen from, you know, other states, what I've heard from my counterparts in other states is is FEMA is showing up. You saw it in the in the storms back east.
So we don't anticipate. We hope, you know, that we'll still have the same level of a life safety response that we've had in in the past, but they, you know, kind of the grant processing and some of this recovery dollars has is paused during the shutdown. Likewise, not just natural disasters, but planning continues. We've got a lot before us in California with planned events, FIFA World Cup this summer, the LA twenty eight Olympics, all of that is very dependent on partnership with the federal government to and and that planning is going forward. But there has been delays in the federal in the federal grant allocations for those.
So we're continuing to press for, you know, anything we can do to get these those dollars moving where they're needed. We don't have a budget ask for next generation nine one one, but we do appreciate the opportunity. I know we have another whole item after my my intro and we look forward to give you an update on that and I'm sure you have questions for us. But I wanna impart from the the leadership level, from the top level at Cal OES that this is a top priority for our organization. There's no question about it.
We are fully committed to implementing a reliable, secure, next generation nine one one network for California. We will get this done, and we are gonna get it done right. The state has already made investments to facilitate facilitate this transition, and we have an updated plan that we have shared those details with you, but we'll talk about it some more today for the go forward. And that is anchored in the needs of the public safety answering points and the feedback that we have gotten from them as we've gone through this transition process is gonna be anchored in accountability and anchored in transparency. You'll hear more on the next item about our phase transition plan that simplifies the system architecture, reduces operational risk for the PSAPs, and accelerates the long term deployment.
And I will end by touching on security, which is certainly top of mind given the ongoing conflict in Iran and across The Middle East. At this time, there's still no credible threats to California, either physical threat, cyber threat, but certainly these kinds of situations, we are we are, you know, more vigilant than ever. So know that our state of threats threat assessment center that's housed at CaloES or California Cybersecurity in Integration Center that's housed at CaloES are remain vigilant. They're in real time connection with the fusion centers, with federal partners, with the intelligence community, just to keep an eye out for anything that may result as of of this conflict and all and developments as it as it proceeds. So it certainly a time of of criticality and of vigilance more than ever.
And we ask, you know, if there's if there's anything we can do to continue to share information. I know that's been of interest to the legislature. I know it's of interest to your communities. Then we will commit to sharing information going forward and and hope that we all kind of share in the in the time to be even the public plays a big part in this to to help us to be aware of security incidents so that we can know and react as quickly as possible. So with that, very brief overview.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for your continued support, and happy to answer any questions you may have for me before we move on to the next item.
Speaker 1
Okay. Thank you. Colleagues, with any questions, senator D'Arzo, would you like to start today?
Speaker 5
Thank you. Thank you for all of the work, that's done on behalf of Californians. I have one issue is about Operation Stone Garden. Mhmm. I've read several articles that mention this program, and it's enabled California law enforcement to collaborate with the US border patrol.
So are you what tell me more about that, and are you administering the grant? Anything.
Speaker 3
Yeah. No. I appreciate that. Very familiar with operations. So I know that in the past, that has been one that we facilitate.
I believe it's directly allocated to the communities, but do you have an any update on currently on
Speaker 4
We don't have any update as far as are you asking about sort of the federal status of it? I think it's we don't have an update on its continuance, but the we've been very careful with that. We you know, that's one of those things where the collaboration is certainly useful and very useful in terms of drug interdiction and other kinds of issues. But, also, we are mindful of, you know, the making sure that we are following all of state law regarding, you know, border enforcement and all of that as well.
Speaker 4
Yes. As far as I know. If I I'll go back and see if there's I don't think there's been any change so far.
Speaker 5
And why or or what is it? How is it being used? I mean, tell me more about your involvement with with this program.
Speaker 4
I think the way we've been it's more of a it's we're sort of a pass through to the to the locals, to the local border counties, but it's used more as a to collaborate on certain types of crimes that may occur across borders. We do not use if I think we don't use the grant at all for enforcement on the state side of of border border border enforcement?
Speaker 5
Well, you know, there's enormous concern in our communities all over the state about collaborating with the border patrol and the racial profiling that's used by ICE and the border patrol and the impact that it has on immigrant communities. Immigrant communities are not segregated over here, and you're an immigrant, you're not. So this racial it really becomes more racial profiling than than anything. And so how our involvement with them is very concerning. So I really need to know the status of that grant, who does what, what's it being used for on the ground, how are you collaborating.
These are things that we've been very we've been very intentional about not using our state resources to collaborate Absolutely. And vice versa. So that's what I need to know.
Speaker 4
I'd be happy to we can be get you some information on who the grant recipients are and that, but I also I wanna make sure that we emphasize the point you're making. We're very careful that this is you know, there's still some collaboration that needs to take place between between the two countries on some of these activities, not not necessarily enforcing the border, but in terms of making sure that we're, you know, stopping trafficking and some of these other activities. And that's what I think that's where we're concentrate this grant on, but I will get you more details for sure.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Mhmm. You very much, and thank you for giving us an update on OES and and some of the activities that are going on out there to to better improve. You know, I see OES as an evolving agency because we have evolving problems. And right now, the the biggest problems that we are having are are natural disaster related type problems.
And as you know, while there are spotlighting some of the larger incidents that have occurred, we also have other incidents out there. And and some of these communities feel like they're being left a little bit behind. They don't want to draw resources or attention away from the the larger incidents, but at the same time, you know, they're they're kinda standing there with their ruined communities waiting for that same help. And so what have you guys done this last year to address? Because I brought this up last year, I believe, to address the concerns of some of these, like the airport fire and and and some of these other fires that are in other areas where we we don't lose 6,000 houses, but we lose, you know, 200 or, you know, a thousand or whatever.
Once they're declared a disaster, they should all be getting the exact same process and and help. And and and, Mike, I'm curious whether we're just spread too thin to be able to to to administer in the same manner or or what we need to do. Because that's ultimately, what we need is the information from you so we know how much we need to budget to be able to let you guys do your job. Because it's a a very, very important job in California for us to to to be able to, you know, not only prevent, but respond and then help in the recovery. We can always depend.
As you know, we can't depend on others to help us all the time. I think others are happy to help us as long as they know we're being frugal with their money as well as we're being frugal with ours. And and so we need to get to that point where we know how much we really need. I I think it was the last hearing that chair asked that group, you know, hey. Be honest with us about what your needs are so we can at least consider that.
I don't wanna be thanked for giving you $10 when you need a $100. And and so, you know, I I appreciate the gestures, but but, really, we we appreciate the honesty, especially, hopefully, in this committee.
Speaker 3
No. No. And I and thank you for that point. It's a loss is a loss, you know. And, unfortunately, we're in we live in a world where the bar is incredibly high to even ask for federal assistance and certainly for California just because of our size and the and what we have to demonstrate in losses.
And what it results is is is to exactly to your point. These these small small emergencies from the FEMA lens are large emergencies for small communities. So, we do what we can to lean in and help them. We have our own public assistance program that the state is authorized to do under the California Disaster Assistance Act. And, that's really viewed on a, you know, kind of like a certain things are eligible and not.
It is not for rebuilding homes, for example, but it's for public public infrastructure. And we look at it on a per capita basis. So, really, it's it's as fair as it could be in terms of an impact on a very small county. You know, they shouldn't have to meet as high of a test as a as a large county. Other things that we have done is, you know, we've, you know, with everything from technical assistance to actually doing the work to help with the things that facilitate recovery like debris removal, you know, and increase increasing the capacity of of counties to, you know, not only do that work but also get reimbursed for it.
But if needed, you know, the state can step in because that's such an important first step for anything else to happen. And then we still have the ability, in fact, we've gotten several declarations from the Small Business Administration when there's home loss in a in a in a disaster and and when there's business impact or business disruption. And, we've been successful still, know, even with with all of these. While that is not a, you know, like a a comprehensive fix, those are our low interest loans program. So so really continuing to recognize, you know, and meet counties where they are when something happens and as best as possible leverage the programs we have.
But also things like training and and, you know, giving them the tools so that they can be recovery ready is a huge focus of ours. And and and because we don't know when it's gonna happen, but those investments, even of time, make a lot of sense. And that's really what the counties have asked us for is to is to, you know, kind of be as prepared as as possible for these things.
Speaker 2
And I think some of the frustration, you know, from county level, city levels, and and neighborhood levels is is that sometimes the process is really onerous, and it becomes the, you know, the the perception by by people trying to access help that it's stuck in the bureaucracy. And so to the to the amount that can be done, we need to identify the things that we can do, whether it's, you know, statewide exemptions for instances like this so that, you know, that debris removal can be done in sooner than a year for other little incidents while bigger incidents are are rolling, and that's great. I like that. But I also want those other people to be served as well. And so to that effect, you know, if we can make that part of our our organizational culture of, hey.
Better serve the people that need us to serve them and be responsive to to their concerns. It's one thing to be responsive. Yes. We understand. We hear you.
But then a year later, they're they're still begging. And, and and that's what if we can eliminate things like that, I think all all Californians will be a
Speaker 1
Thank you, mister Ciardo. I have a few questions. So, director Curry, you alluded to in one of my questions is what is the status of our federal reimbursements in our partnership with FEMA? I believe you stated that there are is it 700 pending applications for a total of 1,200,000,000.0, and FEMA has obligated 4%. What has been the timing of obligating that 4%?
How long have you been waiting since these applications have been submitted?
Speaker 3
Well, I don't have the exact time frames because it's been a flow basis. Certainly can get back to you with more information. But one of the things that there's been a lot of changes as we've gone with with FEMA's approach to the LA fires, process wise, that we've been navigating. One of the things that was different about the LA fires, in some ways was positive, was kind of a rapid process to identify the universe. So really working with the counties, you know, kind of collecting.
That's how we arrived at at knowing that we have 700 at this time, even though it's been a year. That was a very deliberate effort. But in that process, there's been, know, also rapid, you know, adjudication to the fact that, you know, things were were deemed ineligible very quickly that we then kind of have to adjudicate in a different process to fight for it. So there's been a bit of a shift that has resulted from trying to go fast that we're navigating in real time. If I'm being perfectly honest, it's kind of a first time we've we've seen this process in place with the federal government.
So, in some cases, we've been waiting since, you know, kind of really close to when the fires occurred. Some of that, those decisions or or eligibility determinations have made a little bit more recently. But, the yield that we're focused on is that it's a very low percentage. It's act that's actually been approved. And, our push is, you know, we've we've demonstrated, we've done our part, these counties have done their part to show a lot of cases when it's emergency work.
They they they did that work a long time ago and, you know, have the documentation. So, we'll we're arguing and fighting for releasing anything we we can that's reasonable to to you know start start bringing cash flow to these communities. The section 100 process helps a lot because you know we can we can front load some of that to alleviate it. But, I'm sorry that's not answering your question directly in terms of how long we waited because it is a little bit of a iterative process that we, you know, are kinda like processing things as they come in. But, that 700 projects is a pretty good definition of the of the universe of what it ultimately will be, and the counties have agreed to it that they believe that's that's those are the things that that they're going to need assistance for.
Speaker 1
Okay. So I'd like to ask that you would please provide to the committee or whoever the appropriate individual of these 700 applications where we are in terms of actual obligations. So has it been, you know, one year, six months, eighteen months? And then if you could keep this committee abreast on a monthly basis on what the status is. When you interact with FEMA, is that something that you're sharing with them the hopes of increasing these numbers?
Or is it the administration? What's the process to actually seek these additional funds from FEMA?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So there's there's kind of local determinations that we're working on the ground with FEMA to just, you know, figure out what's eligible, what you know, make those agreements, make those adjustments. My understanding is there's there's there's headquarters determination, you know, even all the way up to to DHS that they have, you know, processes that they have put into place. This is across the country for all disasters everywhere that also influence the the time frame. So we do as much as we can with the with the the local, you know, FEMA office has been very cooperative and and good to work with.
But some of it is even out of their hands. And so that kind of takes a different level of communication and and advocacy. But but it's also we're not alone in California. You know, this is this is these are challenges for unlocking these dollars that are that are that are happening in a lot of places with with open events. But, certainly, we're pushing to to clear those up and getting those dollars flowing back to to Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Speaker 1
Thank you. So, given the fact of what we're it sounds like we're agreeing is that since it's been more than twelve months, if you could keep the committee abreast on the pace so that we're fortunate that we have members on both sides of the aisle and we have Californians that represent California on both sides of the aisle. So to the degree we need to get more involved, we're committed to doing so. So please, if you could keep us abreast on those numbers, it would help us to do that. My second question is you mentioned something about that because I believe of the fires, there's risk reduction and so there are hazard mitigation funds that are available that you're gonna be completing applications in April.
Speaker 1
Okay. Yeah. And so if you could provide us a little more information about when you submit it, what we submitted, when do we anticipate hearing answers, so we can keep the public abreast. We have several members, you know, who have been just dramatically impacted their communities, and to the degree that we can share information on our end is really helpful. And then you also mentioned a federal application for FIFA.
Mhmm. And if you could share with the committee, if you don't have the information today, how much that request is and what's the status. Well, some of us, we're gonna be having meetings about LA twenty eight and FIFA and so on. And so to the degree that we can share, you know, hey, we've submitted this application, but we're still waiting. Have you heard anything?
Would be really helpful for us. My last two questions, thank you for sharing your comments about the nine one one system and stating that it's a priority for accountability and transparency. However, as you know, we have not successfully implemented that program to date. And so beyond your commitment of accountability and transparency, how about accountability of when are we gonna get this done? Because we've really I'm glad that you're not requesting more money for it, but we really need to see in addition to the accountability and transparency, we need to see to get it done.
And so, I know it's the next issue, but since you are the director, do you have any other thoughts you can share with us of meeting now the timelines that will be presented, to us?
Speaker 3
Yeah. No. Thank you for that. We share that absolutely. The need to move with urgency every day that we don't.
We are still operating on a nineteen seventies legacy system that is fragile. So we recognize our obligation is to move quickly and do it right. And that and that was gonna require, you know, everything we have in the cooperation of of, you know, all the parties that are involved. So, we do have some a better sense of of timing, what we're gonna do in the interim to keep things go going to stabilize. On top of the urgency to get this done, we've we recognize we've got the Olympics coming up.
We've got FIFA coming up, particularly in those regions. The need to to modernize their systems are on another layer of this. So so I'll you know, deputy director Yarborough can talk about the, you know, kind of the timing. And and I know we've shared some of that in the report. But, you know, we have now sketched out, you know, some general sense of what we believe is realistic, how we are gonna maintain or kind of start up the the maintenance again to stabilize this so that there's really no gaps and pauses in between.
But we're we're moving forward responsibly because this will require, you know, a procurement effort that's, you know, gonna be, you know, we want to be thorough and complete and includes all the things that that are needed to get the system running. But we've got a plan to keep things moving at the pace that needs to happen in the meantime. So so in terms of timeline, I think we have a better sense and we're absolutely committed to to meeting those. But if there's issues and problems, we have to jump on them quickly and we have to fix them too and not let that slow us down, but not take anything less than, you know, a reliable and modern and functional system as satisfactory. So, we do have a better sense of timing and a plan than than last time we were here, and we look forward to continuing to talk to you about that as it rolls out and work with you on on input Yes.
To shape that.
Speaker 1
So if you could share with the incoming director, who I think has now been named, maybe first day today, that you did testify today and that you as the director, since you won't be testifying in the next panel, that we do have concerns about the timeliness in getting the system done right, as you said, but also getting it done. And so we hope the new director will prioritize that in terms of the work that's before us. And then I had a final question. Have we received an estimate of our federal VOCA funding level and how much state backfill would be required to maintain the current service levels?
Speaker 4
We have not. And we we kind of are struggling with the same issue we had last year where in the past, we've received that federal allocation estimate sooner in the year, which made it a lot easier to deal with as far as we go forward in the state budgeting picture. But in in fact, last year, didn't receive a final allocation till I think either August or September. So it took a while. We don't have an estimate of what the shortfall would be to continue those programs, but it likely is in the same neighborhood as it was last year, probably around a 100,000,000.
Speaker 1
Okay. Thank you very much. Any further questions or comments, members? Alright. Thank you for your participation, and, thank you for your service in this acting period, and we look forward to continuing to work with you both.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Alright. With that, we're going to move to issue number two, which is an update on the next generation nine one one system, which we were just discussing a moment ago. We will be joined by the following panelists for this issue. And if you could come here in the center portion.
We're gonna have Steve Yarborough, who's the deputy director of public safety communications, OES Eric Swanson, deputy director finance and logistics in the administration of OES Heather Gonzales, principal fiscal and policy analyst with the LAO. Drew Soderborg, deputy legislative analyst of LAO. Sarah Swain, principal program budget analyst of the department of finance, and Zachary Voss, finance budget analyst with the Department of Finance. With that, we'll start with Cal OES. You can begin.
Speaker 4
Sure. As you noted, I'm Eric Swanson, deputy director of finance and logistics administration. As our acting director noted, there is no budget ask at the moment before you, but we thank you for for providing us a forum to update you on implementation of next generation nine one one. And with me is Steve Yarborough, who started just this year as our deputy director of public safety communications.
Speaker 10
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to come provide an update for the next gen nine one one system. You'll hear us refer to it both as the next generation nine one one system, but also next gen or NG nine one one. Those are all synonymous terms and In in discussing this I think it helps To have some of those shortcuts available It we're committed I think California as a whole and certainly Cal OES is committed to delivering a next generation nine one one system that works for all Californians. We're confident that the system that we're building will provide a fully functional, modern, and reliable secure communication platform that will serve us well into the future.
The California Next Gen nine one one program is funded primarily through a dedicated surcharge that is put on each in state phone user whether it be a hard line or a wireless bill. So, that's the the funding mechanism that that provides what we need to build out this system and operate it. It's the system itself, the technology is acquired as a service through our vendor partners. And so, when we talk about having an open solicitation for a vendor partner, it's because the nature of the way nine eleven services are delivered, not just in California but throughout the nation, is to do so through a contract with the vendor partner. That being said we have made substantial effort to move away from the legacy analog nine one one infrastructure that we've used as the as the director mentioned since the seventies toward a modern IP based platform that will allow, people to reach out to nine one one using technologies and communication modes that they're used to using in their daily lives.
Such as text and messages, video calls, sometimes sending videos or pictures to the dispatch center also helps out. So this IP based system will allow all of that new capability to be used on the system. And then, of course, making sure that the network connectivity, routing capability, and the resiliency is is there because this is a mission critical public safety system that we're we're providing. So, it needs to have the kind of reliability that our first line public safety responders need to have to execute their mission. So, when it comes to system deployment, over the period of time between 2019 and 2024, Cal OES and its contracted service provider deployed the next gen nine one one system that we have right now, which used a regional approach.
It it divided the state of California up into four regions. And so each of those regions had a a per a service provider who operated the nine one one network for that region. And then, of course, as a fallback to those regions, there was a statewide provider that was connected to all of the public safety answering points throughout the state of California. So, in the event that something happened with one of the regionals, the the traffic can be carried by the statewide system to ensure that there was no disruption to the service. But during the testing early on in this period, we started to notice that there were some issues with call routing and the reliability of the services that the the network providers had.
So, rather than risk service disruptions, we made the deliberate decision back about a year ago and this was say February '25 to pause further deployment. At that time, we had about 23 public safety answering points who had migrated their voice traffic on to the next gen nine one one system. Some of the examples of problems that were encountered included calls that should have been delivered to PSAP A had instead erroneously been routed to PSAP B. And that means that the response isn't coming from the area that it should be and it's most located proximal to where the event is happening instead gets routed to somewhere further afield and may not be the right location. So, that location routing is one of the problems that we've run into.
Similarly, if a call needed to be transferred from a primary public safety answering point to say a CAL FIRE answering point because it was primarily a medical aid call. When that happens, some of those transfers did not go through correctly. And so, when we talk about the system, know, the call routing and the reliability of the system, these are the types of errors that were being experienced. That obviously needed to be resolved before we could in good conscious bring more of the public safety answering points on to that network. So, that's what the pause was for.
Now, naturally, we've been paused for, you know, about a year now. And, unpausing is going to be a very critical next step that we take. And in order to do that, we need to understand how we could solve these problems. And so, to that end, during the pause, we sent out staff to each of those public safety answering points who had been on the next gen system so we could learn from them firsthand what their lived experience was and make sure we understand all of the issues that they were experiencing so we could determine how best to solve these problems. We went out to all of the PSAPs, went out to all of the vendor partners that we had, and made sure that we were understanding from all of the different stakeholders what the issues were.
From that, we developed a new strategy. And, this strategy is the one that was referenced earlier. This is a phased transition plan to get us from the version of next generation nine one one that we have right now to one that will be more reliable and solve those routing issues that were problematic in the first incarnation of next gen nine one one. To do that, we're we were going to simplify architecture so that reduces this operational risk in making sure that those answering points are are able to get onto the system and accelerate the long term migration to next gen nine one one so that we get all of those public safety answering points on the next generation system as soon as we can prudently do so. And understanding that the technology and the capabilities that come with NextGen nine one one are critical for the for the first responders.
We wanna get there as soon as we possibly can. So, the new strategy, which we talked a little bit about in our recent board meeting with the nine one one advisory board, includes a number of things to help us solve these problems. One is we wanna maintain stable interim operations. So, we make sure that we're not having those continued routing issues and operability issues. We wanna make sure that we solve that problem by putting them on the statewide providers.
So, this is the the backup statewide provider that we identified as since it doesn't have to transfer from one region to another. We're not transferring between providers having them on the statewide provider solves a problem. And so that's the interim phase to make sure that we're stably running a next gen platform that everybody can use. So, that's step one, statewide providers. Step two, is we wanna do an open competitive procurement to establish a long term provider, vendor partner that we can use for years into the future.
And, that's at the point at which we migrate the balance of the public safety answering points onto the next generation system. And then, of course, during during this operational period, we're also going to putting a significant focus on migrating the Los Angeles Region PSAPs, public safety answering points, onto the next gen system so that they have these capabilities in time for the Olympic Games coming in 2028. Once all that is done and and all of the PSAPs have been migrated to the next gen nine one one system, that's at the point at which we would decommission the legacy system and any remaining elements from the first incarnation of the of the next gen system. And, we will then be 100% on the next gen system going forward from that point. So, in order to get there, as I mentioned we need to establish the contract with our statewide partner right now.
Our engagement with the statewide partners under the tariff structure Oversight of the public utilities commission We find that that's better suited for maintenance and operation phase rather than deployment phase. And so we would like to have our, our vendor partner under a contract allowing us the terms to manage that engagement better. So, we want to establish a contract with our interim provider and then simultaneously be doing that open procurement for our long term provider. Doing that also gives us the benefit of being able to use this intervening period to advance and solve these problems rather than wait for the open solicitation to take place over a number of months. We have all the confidence we need in the partner, the statewide partner that we have right now.
They've served us well in capacity as a backup. And to that extent that we have run into problems with some of the regions, we have actually transitioned the call taking load from two of the regions onto the statewide provider. And that system has performed well and is designed to carry the load and all the load necessary for this plan. As I mentioned, the open procurement that we're going to be doing, we're working closely hand in hand with our partners at the California Department of Technology to make sure that we're conducting that open procurement in in alignment with all of the state's contracting rules and making sure that we have all the terms and conditions in there that we need to both make it comply with the contracting rules, but also comply with cyber security requirements and making sure that we have enforceability built into the contract. As we do this open solicitation, we're looking for a vendor partner who has experience and has demonstrated themselves as being competent and able to carry the amount of traffic that we expect to see throughout the state of California.
I know that on average we get around twenty six million nine eleven calls for help in a typical year. That's across all of the PSAPs that we have. And recognizing that, you know, when those calls come in, somebody must be there to answer that call and be able to route help to the person making the call. And so, that's why one of the benchmarks of our open solicitation is going to be that whoever is ultimately awarded this contract needs to have a proposal that can deliver an availability level of 99.999%. In public safety communications, refer to that as having five nines of availability and that's a standard that is not easy to achieve.
It amounts to on the order of just a handful of minutes per year that the system would be offline or unavailable. And then of course, one of the ways you get to that level of availability is by having redundancy baked into the design at all levels. So, is never a link in the chain or a node in the network that doesn't have a redundant backup part to be able to carry the traffic should something happen to one element of system. So, the standards that we're adhering to are defined by the National Emergency Number Association and and adhere to throughout North America and Europe. And, of course, we're going to adhere to those standards.
And one of the key features there is that every element must have a redundant backup and oftentimes more than just one redundant backup. You need to have sort of a failover plan for your failover plan so that in, you know, to get to the level of availability we're talking about, you can't leave it to chance. So design of the system is going to be one of the key things that goes into how we award this contract, making sure that we have that kind of availability. I think, Senator Richardson, to your point earlier about the time frame, I'll talk a little bit about that now. The Here we are in March 2026, and we expect to execute a contract with our current statewide provider, and that will help us for this bridging contract that we see so we can stabilize and make use of this time while we're doing the open solicitation.
We expect to do that in the coming weeks. That will then allow us to migrate the public safety answering points who are on the next generation system right now onto this statewide system so that they will have stability and not have those reliability issues they were experiencing. Simultaneous to that, we're also going to be doing the open solicitation. So we expect to release an RFP for our long term vendor partner in the '26 here. So coming up right on the heels of that the contract with our current vendor.
We're also going to release that out. And then, of course, we expect to award that contract in the fall of this year, at which time we will begin working with our new vendor partner to plan the transition timeline and make sure that we're including in that to move as quickly as is prudent to do and hitting those areas of focus that we want to hit. So talking about transitioning the Los Angeles region, for example, ahead of the Olympics, is something we're definitely going to be working with our vendor partners to make sure that that's prioritized in the implementation. And then, so by '27, we expect all of our regional providers to be no longer needed. And so, we will then end our engagement with them and decommission any services that they had left on the regional networks.
And then we will begin in the '27 to transition all of the remaining public safety answering points on to the new statewide network with the intent to have 100% of them transition to the next gen network by the 2030. Our goal remains the same as it ever was, which is to deliver a reliable, modern next generation nine one one system. And our approach is adapting in response to what we've learned during the period of time that we've experienced with, you know, up in the implementation up to this point. We intend to standardize our architecture to eliminate some of the some of the vulnerabilities that we've experienced while simultaneously making sure that we have the reliable and redundant system necessary to reach those availability metrics. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that the committee may have.
Speaker 1
Thank you for that very thorough overview. We appreciate it. Any comments from the LAO?
Speaker 11
My name is Heather Gonzales. I'm with the LAO. I'm here with my colleague, Drew Soderborg.
Speaker 11
As you have just heard, OES is moving rapidly toward and, in fact, has already begun making major changes in the state plan for next generation nine one one. It is our view that while these alterations may be entirely appropriate, changes of this magnitude to a public safety system this important are best accomplished under close oversight. In addition, we do not know if faced with a set of options and trade offs whether legislature would adopt, amend, or reject the changes that OES has proposed. For this reason and others I'll cover more thoroughly in this presentation, we recommend that the legislature temporarily pause, temporarily, forward movement on this project while it gathers the information necessary to either increase confidence in the plan that OES has proposed or enable it to work towards an alternative that the the legislature prefers. You should have a handout that we prepared for this hearing.
It contains summarized information on next gen nine one one systems, the state's more than ten year effort to plan and deploy a next generation nine one one system, the recent challenges OES faced during deployment, what they propose to do next, and also it summarizes our findings and recommendations. So by way of background, we direct your attention to page one of the handout, which explains what next generation nine one one is. Simply put, next gen nine one one uses Internet protocol based technologies instead of copper wires to deliver and route nine one one calls. These systems consist of four main components, networks, core services, geographic information systems, and call handling equipment. We include definitions of these components in your handout, but as a rough analogy, you can think of a next generation nine one one system as a dedicated emergency highway system.
The network is the highway, core services do the traffic controls, and direct vehicles based on verified addresses, The geographical information system is the official master map that ensures that calls go to the right dispatch center and first responders go to the right locations. And call handling equipment is in the local control rooms where dispatchers receive and manage these emergency communications. Now turning to the state effort to upgrade our 911 system, as you will see on page two, there we have a timeline for you. We can actually trace the overall state effort, to as early as 2010 when the state developed a road map to next generation nine one one under former governor Schwarzenegger. However, we date the current effort to 2015 because that's when the legislature enacted s p twelve eleven, which statutorily directed OES to start planning.
That said, it was not until twenty eighteen nineteen that meaningful amounts of funding became available for build out. And in 2019, as you've heard, OES was able to execute contracts with regional network vendors and a statewide backup vendor, which we refer to as the regional approach or the regional system, to build and deploy a next generation nine one one system that we have now. Deployment of this regional system included trenching and laying fiber optic lines, structural and electrical work at dispatch centers, and the installation of both hardware and software. Though it is unclear to us what portion of these installed features and the materials the state actually owns or perhaps more importantly, we could repurpose cheaply if we adopt the changes OES has proposed. We should also note that despite the challenges OES has identified with the regional system, in their February report to the legislature, they reiterated previous statements indicating that the regional system is currently delivering caller location and text to 911 services to all dispatch centers in California and that 23 dispatch centers have begun transitioning calls to the voice system.
Turning next to our assessment and findings. As OES has already explained, when the initial tranche of dispatch centers begin transitioning voice calls to the regional system, problems surfaced. OES reviewed these challenges and has concluded that the best solution is to switch from the regional approach to a statewide approach. Although OES has not yet submitted a BCP requesting authority to make these changes, we reviewed the information OES has provided to date, and our findings on this information may be summarized as follows. First, the project is clearly overdue, and future budget needs are unclear.
We feel especially strongly that the legislature be provided with the best possible estimates of the cost needed for next generation nine one one, the legacy system, and support for dispatch centers in this budget year and future years under any plan it adopts. Number two, we wanna be very, very clear that we believe the major changes OES has proposed may be entirely appropriate, but these changes come with trade offs. We do not have enough information about the options OES considered or the ones that didn't to be able to lay out all of these complex trade offs for you. But as an example, unless a statewide system envisioned by the updated plan is designed carefully, the regional approach may offer greater redundancy and may be more able to withstand failure as a result, and I stress may in that sentence. On the other hand, the regional approach may have too much redundancy and have become so complex that it suffers inoperability compared to the envisioned statewide system and is effectively fatally flawed.
We don't know. Cost may also be a trade off, although we have no information on which to judge that point yet, as well management needs. Although this may or may not prove true in practice, it may be easier for OES to manage a single contract with a single vendor than it is to manageable multiple contracts with multiple van vendors. But do these management advantages, associated with a statewide approach outweigh the value of any technical advantages to the extent that they exist and can be fully realized that might be associated with the regional approach. And if there are advantages to the regional system that we don't wanna lose, can we find other ways to mitigate the management challenges?
We just don't know what the universe of options is or what the technical cost or managerial trade offs would be if we could compare options. The third finding that we came that we found during our assessment is that changes of this magnitude to a system this important are best accomplished under close oversight. This is currently lacking. The state nine one one system has an advisory board, but it is only advisory. As we've been told by CDT, because this is
Speaker 11
telecommunications project, it is not subject to the typical oversight and approval processes that CDD does for other technology projects. And to date, of course, the legislature has not been provided with a statutory proposal, trailer bill language, or a BCP for us to consider, which brings us to our fourth finding, which is that the available information leaves key questions unanswered. Although OES has provided high level descriptions of its plans and reasoning, we are missing or have insufficient answers to the following six questions. First, what is the exact nature and scope or the problem or problems that OES encountered with the regional system? And second, what is the new plan to solve these problems?
And before I move on to the next four questions, I wanna pause and really stress these first two, the nature and scope of the problem, and will the solution address the problem? And the reason why I highlight these questions is because when we asked experts and stakeholders what advice they would give you if they were up here facing this same question, the near universal response we got was to get very, very clear on these first two questions. The other four sets of questions we have include what other options were considered, how do these options compare, how will the system comply with state privacy and security regulations and law, and is there sufficient oversight of this project? Our fifth and final finding is that we wanted to raise to you is that nine one one technology will continue to evolve. It's a mischaracterization to think of deployment of the next generation nine one one system as having an end date where the project will be done.
Yes. We can likely identify a date at which the legacy system will be decommissioned, but that doesn't mean next generation nine one one will then be complete. Once IP technologies are the basis of these networks, we're going to be challenged by new innovations in this space, and stakeholders may want to adopt these. And this will likely happen at a much faster pace than was possible historically in the legacy system. We're going to continue to see evolutions.
Based on these findings, we recommend the following. First, oversight hearings including but not limited to the one we're having today, preferably before May revise so that if you receive a BCP or even without one, you're able to make the most informed decision possible when the budget is adopted in June. We strongly recommend that these hearings focus on the key questions we have raised and that they include a meaningful comparison options and trade offs including cost. If this kind of analysis is not possible, we recommend the legislature consider adopting language in the budget or elsewhere that would prohibit OES from implementing the statewide approach until an independent, technically proficient third party, which could include the state auditor, a blue ribbon commission, or even a select committee, is able to do this comparative analysis. To strengthen oversight of the current project, we recommend quarterly reports and monthly progress reports to the legislature until legacy nine one one has been fully decommissioned.
And lastly, looking for the long term future for these systems, including the potential for national interoperability and innovations that are already possible, for example, with artificial intelligence and the myriad of trade offs and policy questions that might come as a result of these these changes that are coming, we recommend the the legislature consider whether additional oversight is appropriate and what oversight that form should take. Thank you for your time and attention, and we're available for questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you. You also provided a very good, thorough, overview recommendations to this committee. We appreciate that. Any comments from the Department of Finance?
Speaker 2
Hi. Zach Voss from the Department of Finance. Nothing further to add right now, but happy to answer any questions for finance.
Speaker 5
Where where is the the the the primary problem here? It seems like there's numerous numerous issues, numerous problems. Mister Yarborough, you you just came on?
Speaker 5
Yeah. You just came on, and all of this has been going on. One thing that stands out, it's not the only thing, but is how can we be ready for the Olympics in just two years away? So I'm very concerned. Usually, it's okay.
I agree with one, you know, one set of recommendations versus the other. I sort of agree with all of the recommendations, and they all have to be done, but they're not it's not possible to do all the recommendations. So I don't know. I guess I go back to mister Yarborough. What do you say about these numerous issues, numerous problems, and the what concerns me is the pausing.
But on the other hand, I understand that a pause is necessary because there's so many unknown problems Or there's problems, known problems with unknown answers. So this is really difficult. I I don't see anyone getting to the the bottom of it. Is it possible to get to the bottom of all these problems? Is it is it the vendors?
Was it the original idea of having these regional hubs? I get I'm at a I'm at a loss at so many issues that have to be dealt with, and there doesn't seem to be the plan, your plan, to address these serious concerns.
Speaker 10
So, yes, it it's definitely a very complex issue that we're dealing with. Many many parts of it don't necessarily all get fixed with one solution. And so I think it's it I think it's instructive to look at this in a couple of different ways. One is there's the infrastructure itself. And in terms of building that infrastructure to be able to carry the traffic across it from point to point on the network.
The I I referenced earlier the National Emergency Number Association standards for building next generation nine one one systems. That represents industry best practices and understanding everything that's been learned from implementations up to this point. So the design that that we started on six seven years ago was informed by the collective wisdom that we had at that time. And I think we've learned a lot since then not just from investigating our own problems but from other states who have also deployed. And in all of those learnings filter into the standards that the association.
Promulgates to make sure that everybody can benefit from the body of knowledge of deploying these networks. So, one thing that strikes me as being a place to start in terms of fixing this is to understand that the regional structure that we deployed, nobody has ever successfully adopted and implemented that structure before and it is not in line with the NENA standards. That's the Emergency Number Association. So I think by adopting an architecture that didn't align with what we now know are the standards, that's a great place to start to probably make a huge impact to resolving the number of problems that have been identified here. And so that's I think what feeds into our plan to migrate off of the regional structure onto the statewide architecture so that we don't have the interfaces and handoffs between the regions.
We have a single homogenous network to deal with that one vendor is responsible for owning and operating. We don't have to translate between one vendor's technology and another vendor's technology. So in doing that, we address many of the problems that have been experienced. So I I hope that addresses in in a number of ways the question you were asking.
Speaker 5
There's several specific issues beyond the the broader one. One concern that was raised in the committee analysis is that shifting to a statewide provider could create the risk of a statewide outage. And what are the safeguards that will exist if that primary vendor experiences a system failure?
Speaker 10
So I think as we as we write the statement of work for our open solicitation, we are incorporating the standards and practices from all of the learnings to make sure that we are defining what successfully implementing this network will look like in terms of architecture. And that's how we arrive at the ability to have system uptime of 99.999% is by building the redundancy into the statewide system. The regional architecture didn't build it into the one system, it did it by adding systems together. And that is certainly one way to build in redundancy and reliability, but it's more efficient to build that redundancy and reliability as layers within a single solution. And there are certain costs that go along with standing up a system that must be duplicated or triplicated or quadruplicated when you have a regional structure.
That is an inefficient deployment of economic resources. Building in one system can have the same reliability and same uptime, but do so in a more economically prudent fashion because there are certain overhead things that don't have to be replicated in for multiple systems. And so in doing that, it's solving a couple of problems. It's building the resilience you're you're inquiring about, but also doing it in a in an economically more prudent way.
Speaker 5
And so how are you how are you going about to learn from the lessons from all the problems Yeah. And learn from those lessons? What are you doing to
Speaker 10
Yeah. So we do a thorough analysis of of what we've experienced, and we did that by reaching out to all of the stakeholders who were engaged, learning firsthand what they went through, and tracing it back to its root problem. Second part is my team engages regularly with associations across the country for standards and practices that everybody and you know there's workshops where they learn how was it implemented in North Carolina for example or how was it implemented in Washington, the state. And learning from what they learned in their deployments, engaging at the design level from my design engineer to their design engineer, that communication can happen. So, we have these partnerships in collaboration with other people who've gone down this path before.
So, compiling all of that and then comparing it against the standards that are published by the Emergency Number Association, we get a robust playing field of what people have tried, what they have seen as a result from those trials, and what they recommend as a best practice going forward.
Speaker 10
That's correct. Yes. So we we learned from the problems that we experienced with the regional and identified a path forward for our new approach, which will be a a statewide system.
Speaker 5
And then could you specifically talk about what upgrades will be completed in the LA region for the for the games?
Speaker 10
So, one of the things is adopting the statewide provider that we have right now. So that was built as the fallback position in the regional model. We had a statewide provider that is connected to all 440 plus public safety answering points. Then we're actively meeting with the public safety answering points in the Los Angeles region, particularly around where we see Olympic venues going to be, making sure that we're targeting the right answering points and working with them to map out a schedule as to how we could migrate them onto the system in time for those Olympic games to include all of the equipment that needs to be deployed, software that needs to be deployed, and then working around their own schedules, understanding that there's testing that needs to take place before they would feel comfortable taking live traffic. So we have about a two year runway on that and we're looking to engage with those partners.
We did a kickoff meeting with them last month to start discussing the idea and planning it and we have another follow-up meeting scheduled with them. I believe it's on March 19 down in the Los Angeles area in person. So we can continue to engage and plan this transition for them. And through that, we get their input as to how that might look. You know, one of the key things here is getting stakeholder buy in at every step of the way.
And so we're actively engaged and we intend to engage with them at least on a monthly basis to make sure that we're doing that.
Speaker 2
Thank you. Thank you for being here to give us an update on this. So we've spent about what $450,000,000 so far?
Speaker 2
Right. And and we have let me get this. We have four vendors. Correct? One for each region, and then one of those vendors handles the state part handled the state part of this too.
Yeah. Alright. And we're gonna go down to two?
Speaker 10
We're going yeah. We're going to go to the the statewide provider in the interim and then an open solicitation for a provider after that.
Speaker 2
Okay. So the vendors that were used to gather some of the, like, location services data, the GIS information. They usually hire the subcontractors who actually do that work for five years while they're trying to figure this out. Who owns that data?
Speaker 10
So the data is owned by the state, and it is used by the network provider.
Speaker 2
And that's outlined in the contract? Yes. Okay. And is that going to be in the new contract as well? Because because the one thing I don't wanna see is us getting into the situation where because it wasn't in the contract, the subcontractor who is no longer working for the project owns the data and and and that's it.
They're they're gone with that data. And then we have to go in and redo that because it takes a long time to get that in. Yeah. And it's also changing as you're going along. And so that's that's a concern as far as we're but we don't wanna duplicate another $450,000,000 to do the work that at least has been done to this point.
And I want assurances that that did is is in a contract, our current contracts, so that contractors or subcontractors don't make off with the work that they have done already and because they're not finishing this project.
Speaker 10
Yes. So we've we've handed off between vendors before this Okay. Day. We have a location database. It the data in it, it it belongs to the state.
And when one vendor goes off into the sunset, the requirement is that we get a handed off file that contains everything. It goes to our new vendor is uploaded and to make sure that we don't have a gap or lose the data.
Speaker 2
And I and I understand that that's the that's exactly how you would want to do it. And, if it's in a contract, because that's part of what you write in a contract Yes. Is is what happens in that case. I wanna make sure the state is not on the hook for having to redo a bunch of the work. This isn't an issue of should we do this or not.
It is an issue of we have to do this. We have to update our our systems. You are making some big promises for LA County and LA City. If you've ever been in their dispatch centers, they have 20 consoles, and there's people at each one. And there is a massive wiring that go into those consoles and the whole system because it's not just the wiring.
It's familiarization with the thing and all of the training that goes with it once you've been able to get the other system online. And and that's gonna be a huge challenge. I've seen nothing. And and the biggest challenge we have with our communications systems as we as, you know, in thirty five years, I saw us go through, like, three or four, is that transition period. Many times, especially large agencies, they start on a project.
By the time they get done with the project, the project's outdated and needs to be updated or, you know, thrown out and start over again. And and and we can't have that constant cycle. And so from a technology standpoint, how long does this take to do, and why does it take so long? You know, there's bureaucracy parts, but then there's also the technology parts. And is it getting people to do it?
Is it having people that are qualified to do it? It's a massive, massive project when you look at all of these different PSAPs throughout California. And and so, you know, when they initially talked about doing the regions, because that that kinda answers a little bit of a redundancy issue, but the red flag is when they said nobody's ever done it before. Yeah. That's a red flag.
There's a reason nobody's ever done it before. It's almost impossible to do. Maybe. But we need to find out what those answers are. So, anyway, if I asked a question in there, you can Yeah.
Feel free to comment on
Speaker 10
But, yeah, I will address a couple of points. I talked a little bit about the what I I like to call the transportation layer of this network. And that's the infrastructure that carries traffic from point to point. And I think it touches on the idea that was mentioned earlier that there isn't a really a finish line to building a next generation nine one one system. The technology will always be advancing, but what I look at is the infrastructure itself doesn't evolve as fast as what I call the application layer.
And that's the layer that interfaces with the call taker. And some of the additional capabilities that were mentioned in the in the readout from the legislative analyst office talk about additional functionalities that might be brought into the environment. And what we are intending to do here is build a base transportation layer that can carry that traffic regardless of what additional application needs to happen to ride across the network. And so, in doing that, we're building a system that is, for want of a better term, future proof. And it's intended to be adaptable into the future much longer than just the term of of initial five year contract or whatever.
And so that's, I think, a way we're addressing what you're talking about.
Speaker 2
Thank you. You know, and and I think in the budget process in 2019, there were some pushback on that budget, and the pushback was there wasn't enough oversight. And so they got past that, and now we're seeing why that pushback was there. The legislature needs oversight on on projects this massive, especially when we're talking about budgets that are constrained like we have. And so I would recommend to the the chair that we would probably refer this whole thing into a one of our committees, like the emergency management committee for an oversight hearing so we understand all the answers.
Because we'd be here all day talking about this stuff and where we're at and what needs to be done in addressing the LAO's issues as far as what their concerns are. And and and so that's I I would recommend that before the May revise that we have an oversight hearing so we know exactly where a little bit more about about this and can explore more in-depth. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Miss Gonzalez, would you mind, sharing with me your list of recommendations that you rattled off?
Speaker 1
Right. And then also page four, you had some questions to ask. Yes. There was nothing else further that you shared. I thought there were a few others.
No?
Speaker 11
Those are the the primary ones. We also provide we can provide you with we wrote a a more extensive brief. These that from which these come, and we'd be happy to provide you with a brief. I didn't bring a copy with me today, but I'll make sure you get it.
Speaker 1
Okay. So let me start off first by responding to senator Sarriardo. Interestingly enough, senator Stern approached me on the floor this morning. He's the chair of the emergency management committee and suggested that we may wanna do something jointly. So I think we will probably take that recommendation and request that he do the next gen nine one one system sooner rather than later so we can weigh in together on how it's working, how it's not, where we need to go, what are the cost, and all of that.
So I will take him up on his offer, which is also what you're suggesting. But further from that, I did have some follow-up questions to ask. Number one, when we talk about the regional structure, how much physical infrastructure or data or whatever it will be a part of the system for the n g nine one one will have to be reinstalled or replaced based upon this new strategy that you're suggesting? And that question probably goes to mister Swanson, I think.
Speaker 4
Actually, I think that mister Yarborough would be better to answer that question.
Speaker 1
And if you could summarize your answers a little tighter, you've I've been lenient because of the subject matter that we need to understand, but we also have members that I've got to take some flights to.
Speaker 10
I appreciate that. Thank you. So I mentioned earlier that the it's acquired as a service from our vendor partners and that means that the costs break up into two categories, non recurring costs and monthly recurring costs. The monthly recurring costs amount to about 85% of the total expenditure of this service, if you will. So, you mentioned I think earlier, senator, the $450,000,000 that was spent during this.
85% of that was the monthly recurring cost. There is no enduring benefit that comes from that, it's just the service fee. The other portion which is about $76,000,000 is the part that includes startup equipment and installation and that would need to be replicated with each changing of the contract And so, I envision a number around that order of magnitude is what it takes.
Speaker 1
So, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're stating that some of the initial cost for equipment and so on was about 76,000,000 for the original regional recommendation, and now we probably will have to incur something similar to that again for this new strategy.
Speaker 1
Okay. So with all due respect, mister Swanson, that's why I asked you the question since you're the director of finance and logistics. If you could give us this committee more of the details of what has been spent, what do we expect to continue to be spent, and with this new system, what can we anticipate cost could be. Because we are in a budget deficit, and we do have to appropriately plan. And I don't think it's really fair legislature to kinda come at the last minute and say, okay.
Well, now we're gonna need this to continue. We need to know that now. And frankly, we probably shoulda had it today since this is your recommendation of of what we're doing. So if you could provide us with that information, that would be really helpful. Not helpful.
It's needed. The second thing that I wanted to say was mister Yarborough, you talked about, you know, talking to other places and what they used and so on. The state of California, I believe, is the largest populous state in The United States. What could you give us a little more details about who you talk to? What system does New York use?
What systems do other countries use? When I was on the Homeland Security Committee, included FEMA, when we were studying airport security, we actually went to Israel because the best place that knows the most about security, unfortunately, due to what they have to face in that country is Israel. So what steps did you take to look at and maybe it wasn't you at the time, it was someone else, but what steps did we take to identify what other places we're using? And, really, is there a need to do a whole new system that we're proposing, or is there something off the shelf that we can get from someplace else that's already doing it. And I think that gets to miss Gonzales's questions is that you generally said to us, oh, you know, we've talked to people and so on, but this committee really needs to know what other places are using, how effective are they are, are they available off the shelf, is it something we could implement.
So given the time that we have, I'm gonna ask that you give us the answer to that question, But it's really important because oftentimes we're recreating things when frankly, you know, for a fraction of the cost, we could utilize a similar system. My next question gets to senator D'Arrazzo and that has to do with what happens if we don't go to this new system? What happens if we continue in the pause? You're using the overarching state vendor system, and we ride with that through the Olympics because the last thing we need to do is have you know, we're in the middle of transition, and now we're having more and more people who are coming. And you experience problems that we're not anticipating, and now we have even more problems.
Have you thought about the possibility that maybe what if we pause where we are now? Could you share with the committee what would be the impacts if we did not go forward? What that would be? And if you could very briefly, in less than a minute, answer that question.
Speaker 10
Yes. So, yeah, moving forward, we can continue with the the overarching state provider. We can migrate off of the regional structure onto that state provider. And the key is that we need to be able to have our vendor under contract so we can hold them accountable in ways that the tariff structure does not. And so we can proceed in that fashion.
But it's we would like to do an open competitive process for our long term partner. Whether that happens this year as we intended or later, I'm I'm open to that conversation.
Speaker 1
Okay. So, if you could provide the committee and the LAO and Department of Finance all the questions we're asking, the information. But if you could give us a little more detail on that if we don't move forward. And then I wanna discuss what happened with the fires. One of the issues that was discussed had to do with the notification that people received and information.
Do you have any information that you can share with us of what happened with the nine one one system regarding the wildfires that we experienced last year?
Speaker 4
Yeah. I'm sorry. We don't have the right people for that question, but I can we can follow-up with that as well.
Speaker 1
Okay. So, yes, we would like that information, and that's germane to our discussion because that tells us that was a very prime example of something that was not working. And what are we doing right now in the meantime? Okay. Last couple questions.
So are we gonna owe the vendors of these regional systems any money since what you said you already paid on the front end and now it's a monthly expenditure? Do we owe them anything else?
Speaker 10
It's under tariff so we can turn off the tariff payment with appropriate notice, but it's on a month to month basis at this point.
Speaker 1
Okay. And how are the redundancies and cybersecurity targets built into the contracts with the vendor requirements for this potential new system? And how will OES ensure that the vendors are complying with these requirements? And that gets to senator Doronso with redundancy and, you know, power and all of that? What what do you have in place to deal with that?
Speaker 10
So we engage with the California Department of Technology to make sure that we have the most current and up to date set of requirements built into the contract terms, and that includes for cyber security requirements as well. We also have a vendor partner that we've engaged to provide oversight and evaluation of those features, the cybersecurity features of our network on an ongoing basis to ensure that we're in compliance on, you know, continuing. So, and we will keep that engagement going to make sure that we're monitoring and ensuring compliance with the cybersecurity requirements.
Speaker 1
Okay. And then for the record, I'm gonna read the questions that were provided to us for the LAO that I'm officially gonna ask you on record to provide. And we would like this information before we do potentially a joint hearing with our colleagues. That way we have the information and and can be productive. So the questions that we have of the committee for you to provide to us are the following.
What exactly is the nature and scope of the problems with the regional system? Will the transition to the statewide approach solve them? What other options were considered? How do these options compare? How do these options comply with the state privacy and security regulations and laws?
Is there sufficient oversight both of this specific project and of the state's overall nine one one system going forward? Also, the questions are in particular to provide us with an analysis of the options and the trade offs, and that should also include costs. If OES can wait a minute. And what was the independent technical third party evaluation that you recommended? Just a second, sir.
Speaker 11
That would only be if they're unable to The information, we would we would suggest if that information isn't possible to get to you by May revise so you have confidence, then we would suggest you consider pausing a little longer to get that independent third party technically competent evaluation.
Speaker 11
You have a number of options. The state auditor is one. Advantages and disadvantages to each of these. You could do a blue ribbon commission. You could have formed a select committee.
There are a number of options that you could have to do that, and some would take longer than others. Some would give you more information than others.
Speaker 1
Okay. That's up to you. So let's with the joint hearing that we have probably reach out to the state auditor. That'll probably be the easiest one for us to get some feedback on. And then going forward, we need to receive some quarterly fiscal reports.
That's for you, I believe, mister Swanson.
Speaker 1
We need quarterly fiscal reports and monthly progress reports to this committee regarding the status of your your current recommended state. And then, finally, we need to talk further as a committee of potential governance options and oversight going forward. With that, any further questions, mister Raza?
Speaker 5
Just if if you can include in the next steps. I'm really concerned about how much time this will take, and so the LAO or anybody has any suggestions on how we can speed up the time. I'm really worried that this could become something that just goes off into the sunset and goes on and on and on and on. So I would just ask of all of you, how do we fulfill the our responsibility to seek all this additional information, but we need a a faster process. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Regarding the Olympics and trying to get a transition of any sort done before the Olympics, sometimes the worst thing you can do is try to change something just before a big event like that. And you've got to just keep going with what you have through that period and and and not do that because then you find out all the bugs. If there is an incident, you find out all the bugs. And at least we know how to deal with stuff when our system goes down. I did it in the Antelope Valley during July 4 one year.
We figure that out, and we have backup systems within our own counties and stuff to do that. But trying to get everybody trained up and watching something fail and not knowing how to to to have that redundancy, I I don't know if that's gonna be a goal. And I hope when we have an oversight hearing, we can address that a little bit more. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, mister Ciardo. That was the one of the questions that I had asked was what if we don't move forward? What do they see as could be the impacts and if required. Agreed. Okay.
Well, thank you very much for your participation. We look forward to speaking to you all again very soon. With that, we're gonna move to issue number three, which is an overview of the Department of Justice from Aaron Shore, the chief deputy of operations at the Department of Justice. Please come forward. Okay.
Let's go for which one of you is, Erin?
Speaker 14
Good morning, madam chair, members of the committee. My name is Erin Sur, and I have the pleasure to serve as chief deputy of operations at the California Department of Justice. I wanna thank you for giving our team the opportunity to testify today about California DOJ. I also want to express my appreciation for your leadership in steering our state through challenging fiscal times. To start off, I would like to give an overview of our department.
DOJ is charged with serving and protecting all 39,000,000 Californians, preserving California's abundant natural resources, and representing all state agencies and the governor. In practicality, the range of responsibilities that translate in that translates into is enormous. Our employees are hardworking, protecting public safety, including seizing more than 17,000,000 fentanyl pills, more than 7,007 pounds of fentanyl, and making nearly 600 fentanyl related arrests in just four years, including arresting just over 1,000 individuals engaged in human trafficking and assisting 1,054 survivors in the last five years, and recovering 1,500 firearms from illegally armed individuals through our armed and prohibited persons program in 2024 alone. We're defending, implementing, and enforcing California laws passed by this governing body. Last year, DOJ successfully defended California's age based restrictions on firearms and our common sense regulation on ghost guns.
We went to court to defend s b nine seventy six, the protecting our kids from social media addiction act, and an early win allowed the majority of the bill to come into effect while the case proceeds. We're in court fighting Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, over allegations that it's unlawful to conduct that its unlawful conduct has hampered competition. Since 2022, DOJ's housing justice team has been successfully enforcing California's nation leading housing housing laws across the state, leading cities to plan for more than 40,000 new units of housing, preventing discriminatory land use practices, protecting renters, and holding unscrupulous landlords accountable to the law. DOJ is also defending and supporting California's 236 state departments in their own critical services to our state. We're defending our environment from the impacts of climate change and the harms of pollution, protecting access to health care and education for all, enforcing civil rights laws, and helping victims of illegal business practices.
Despite what some in Washington may falsely claim, we're tackling fraud head on, which has resulted in the recovery of nearly $2,700,000,000 for California taxpayers in the last decade. We're supporting you and your colleagues as you craft new laws to address the ever evolving needs of our state. And while my colleague, Ashley, will give you a more thorough overview of our federal accountability work, I'd be remiss to skip over the fact that since president Trump took office for his second term, California DOJ has filed 59 lawsuits against the federal administration. We've secured a victory 80% of the time, approximately 200 returning approximately $200,000,000,000 to California children, seniors, workers, schools, and communities, and defending our constitutional rights, including the right to birthright citizenship. As someone newer to DOJ, week six, I am continuously amazed by all this department accomplishes on a daily basis, regardless of who's in the White House.
Because while the second Trump administration has resulted in a massive amount of additional work at DOJ, the reality is it is additional. None of DOJ's bread and butter work protecting our people, communities, and the state has stopped just because we're Trump just because Trump returned to office, which is why DOJ's current staff and resources cannot simply absorb the new federal accountability work. Trump is not the only reason we are requesting additional resources. As you will also hear from Ashley, the other items on today's agenda are evolving in scope, complexity, and urgency in part because of the good legislation passed by this legislature. DOJ needs to be able to keep up with the threats facing California, the mandates from the legislature, and the demands on our time, resources, and personnel.
Demands we cannot fully meet with our current resources, which is why we are here today. As public servants, we share the same mission, to serve, represent, and protect all Californians and to safeguard the process our state has led. I have faith that we can work together to ensure that the California Department of Justice has the tools it needs to do just that. Thank you.
Speaker 15
Good morning, madam chair, members of the committee. Ashley Harp, assistant director of fiscal services with the California Department of Justice. I'm here to provide a brief overview of the agenda items today, and I have along with me in the audience and will be joining subject matter experts from our programs who will be available to respond to specific questions as needed.
Speaker 5
I just want to thank you and the entire team of the Department of Justice for the work that you do. You you mentioned it yourself, I don't have to repeat it. But I I'm particularly proud of the work around immigration, funding from the federal administration, and housing. So there's so many things I could get into, but I I just wanna take a minute to thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. If you would kindly, chief deputy Shore I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name. Sir. Sir. Okay.
If you could please provide us what's allowed of your statement in writing to the committee just so we have it for the record of some of the details and stats that you gave, I I think would be really helpful. I just have one question. How is the DOJ balancing a significant and active federal litigation workload with its other core duties such as firearm regulation and consumer protection?
Speaker 15
The question is how are we balancing existing workloads with the incoming
Speaker 1
Yes. I mean, I know we allocated a significant amount of more money as well, but I just wanted to clarify, how that's going in terms of balancing all
Speaker 15
Yeah. We do have, Danielle O'Bannon from our public rights division who can speak to, kind of the balance of existing litigation work versus the incoming federal accountability work.
Speaker 16
Thank you. Danielle O'Bannon. I'm the public rights chief at the Department of Justice. We're balancing where we're managing. Like CEO, sir indicated, we have current workload that we're currently working on, but we have the additional workload that's coming into the door.
We're managing as best we can. There's a lot of work. In regards to the PFA workload, the presidential federal accountability work, we build at least this fiscal year over a 100,000. The work is coming in fast and furious. We have filed 59 lawsuits.
And if you take a look of how long this administration has been in office, that's one lawsuit per week as we sit here. We also have some defensive cases that we're also working on defending some of the state's legislature, legislative mandates that have come out including the anti masking legislation that come out, the transgender cases, prop 50, those types of things. And there is a gap. We have work coming in. We still have staff working on the workload that we currently have, but it's becoming challenging.
We have team members that are working heavy hours and on the weekends trying to get these lawsuits filed. And some of the additional requests that we're asking for today will go to help ease those burdens that we currently have. The civil rights of the state of the people of state of California are extremely important. So this is work we must do, but we also need to have resources available to allow us to do so. It's very complex.
It's resource intensive, but it's definitely rewarding. We have had some really big wins as well. And we've not only had wins for civil rights, but we've also been able to, protect about $200,000,000,000 in funding, as we've been going along.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Have additional people been hired with the money that was provided?
Speaker 1
Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Any further questions? Yes, mister Azar.
Speaker 5
I just wanna urge you to keep your work on the immigration detention facilities. There's been so many reports by locals and and others who are able to get information. A lot of the community based organizations get information about what those conditions and how deplorable they are. Well, keeping track of how many people die in the in the custody. So I just wanna urge you to keep working hard on that.
That's something that's, very important to me and a lot of us. Thank you.
Speaker 16
Thank you, senator D'Arzo. And we will definitely we're focusing heavily on the detention facilities and and the atrocities that are happening in that both those locations.
Speaker 1
Thank you all for all your work, and please share with the department how much we appreciate all the efforts and congratulate your successes thus far. With that, we're gonna move on to issue number four. Thank you for being here. Issue number four is one of those other subjects that you cover, which is the firearms workload. We'll be joined by the following panelists for this issue.
Miss Ashley Harp, assistant director of fiscal operations for DOJ. Miss Allison Mendoza, director of bureau of finance for DOJ, miss Myra Morales, assistant director of bureau of firearms of DOJ, and then we have miss Jennifer Chang Chan, assistant chief for the California Justice Information Services. And then, of course, we have our support from the LAO, mister Drew Soderborg, and we have mister Mark Jimenez, who's also well, he's with the Department of Finance and miss, Victoria Chin. I'm gonna need more chairs pretty soon. Okay.
We're gonna start with the DOJ. You decide who goes first.
Speaker 15
Hi. Thank you, Ashley Harp. The governor's proposed budget includes the following adjustments to support critical firearms related workloads. Under this, item, there are three. The first is a limited term net zero shift of 8,000,000 from the dealer's record of sale special account to the general fund for fiscal years twenty twenty six, twenty seven through twenty twenty eight, twenty nine.
The second is 11,200,000.0 general fund in twenty twenty six, twenty seven to continue the firearms IT systems modernization project. And third is 1,200,000.0 general fund in twenty twenty six twenty seven and 259,000 general fund ongoing in one position to implement senate bill seven zero four related to firearm barrels. I can certainly go into detail on, each of these proposals if we'd like. Just looking to you on how how we'd like to proceed through this issue.
Speaker 1
And is Mendoza, Morales, and Cheng, do you have additional presentations, or you're here to answer questions?
Speaker 15
We're here to answer any questions on the proposals, and all three are here in the audience.
Speaker 1
Okay. Perfect. Senator D'Arrazza, did you have any questions? Senator D'Arrazzo, I apologize. I should have referred to the LAO and Department of Finance first.
So we'll have you go forward. Yes.
Speaker 17
Drew Soderborg with the legislative analyst office. Let me first speak to the proposal to fund SB seven zero four work. We have no concerns with the amount of funding requested. We do recommend however that rather than support this workload from the general fund that the legislature support it from the dealer record of sale special account given that SB seven zero four included specific language requiring a fee to cover this workload. We do recognize however that this fee revenue will not be available immediately and DOJ will experience startup costs and so we are recommending that the initial startup costs be covered by a loan from the Firearm Safety and Enforcement Special Fund.
This fund has sufficient resources to cover this initial workload until the fee revenue created by SB seven zero four is sufficient to pay back the loan. With respect to the proposal to fund the continued firearm information technology system modernization request, We do recommend approval of this as this will allow this important project to move forward. With regard to the proposal to shift $8,000,000 of costs from the Bureau of Firearms onto the general fund for three years. We are recommending that you modify this proposal specifically we're recommending that you approve the shift only on a one year basis and given the significant difficulties facing the state general fund we're recommending that the legislature consider providing this $8,000,000 for the Bureau of Firearms as a loan and the the timeline on which this loan could be repaid could be determined as the legislature determines how to address overall firearm and ammunition workload going forward. And to help the legislature decide how to support ammunition and firearm workload going forward, we recommend that you direct DOJ to provide a framework for determining what workload should be funded by fee revenue.
So if you turn to page 11 in your agenda, you'll see two graphs. One is a graph that shows the overall level of support for the Bureau of Firearms and as you can see in this graph, at the early part of the graph in twenty sixteen seventeen it was exclusively supported by fee revenue but as time has gone on their costs have gone up as have the general fund costs of the Bureau of Firearms. And below that is an explanation of why this has happened. This has happened because one of the main supports for the Bureau of Firearms, the dealers a record of sale special account has had sort of an erratic amount of revenue coming into it and in recent years has been experiencing a declining fund balance. Now normally when fee revenue collected to support state regulatory workload runs short, the state simply increases fees to cover the workload.
However, when it comes to firearm regulations there's an added complexity here. There was a recent decision by the US Supreme Court that suggests that there is a level at which fee revenues could become so high that they become unconstitutional. As a result of that constraint as well as other factors, DOJ has often sought general fund support for workload that could be covered by special funds. This not only leads to inconsistencies in the way the state funds this work but it also increases pressure on the general fund as you can see in that graph which is obviously a significant consideration given the fiscal difficulties facing the state. This is why we're recommending that DOJ provide by 01/10/2027 a framework for determining what firearm and ammunition workload should be funded by special fund revenues.
Now once the legislature has this framework in hand it could use it to inform its future decisions about how to allocate its general fund resources whether or not fees need to be changed and how to address this workload. And if the legislature determines that a fee level is appropriate that doesn't cover all this workload, how to address that situation and whether we need to look at ways to create efficiencies so that the workload can fit within their fee revenue or changing the way we approach these regulations to reduce their costs. With that, I'm happy to take any questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Any questions from the Department of Finance or comments?
Speaker 9
Chen, Department of Finance. We appreciate the LAO's recommendation, with respect to the LAO's recommendations regarding the SB seven zero four BCP. We disagree with the recommendation to take a loan from the Firearms Safety and Enforcement Special Account Fund. Although the fund has a sufficient balance, we project the fund to be structurally in balance in the out years. So a loan from the fund would not be prudent and they also note the insolvency of the Dros account.
We note SB seven zero four allows DOJ to charge a fee, but it would still need to go through the regulatory process for it to be implemented that could take, at least a year to be implemented. It is also unclear if revenue collected will be sufficient to cover the cost of the bill. Unfortunately, ultimately, propose general fund to provide consistent funding to support the implementation of SB seven zero four. We note this funding is consistent with the fiscal estimates of this bill. On the LA on the LAO's recommendation on the Dose Authority alignment BCP, we disagree with the recommendation to approve only one year of funding.
Approving the three years of funding as proposed allow us for the Department of Justice and the administration to monitor the condition of the fund, assess options to support the solvency of the fund while also providing a consistent level of resources in the short term. Lastly, we appreciate the LAO's recommendation regarding the framework for the funding the firearm related workload, and we're happy to consider proposals the legislation may have. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Thank you. I think the LAO covered all the issues that I I was gonna raise. But to see, you know, before 2019, it was fully funded by fees, and and here we are now where two thirds is funded by the general fund. So we really do need a framework addressing that issue. And I just wanted to ask from the Department of Justice, are you working on such a framework?
Are you going to how how do you see moving forward with that recommend do you agree with the recommendation?
Speaker 15
Thank you, senator D'Arrazzo. Based on LEO's 2025 recommendation that the legislature direct DOJ to provide a potential framework for determining what firearm and ammunition workloads should be funded by special funds versus general fund, DOJ has already begun working on a framework to propose. This involves evaluating our firearm and ammunition related regulatory and enforcement workloads and reviewing historical and anticipated transaction levels. We are also considering the requirements of existing federal and state statute and case law. If the legislature ultimately adopts LEO's recommendation to direct DOJ to propose a firearm and ammunition funding framework regarding special fund fee revenues, DOJ, will plan to do
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Just a few questions here that I have. When s p seven zero four was being brought forward by the legislature, did the DOJ make a note of what those revenues would be required at that time?
Speaker 15
We anticipate that approximately 750,000 in revenues could come in as a result of this bill annually. However, we note that that is a high estimate and will be subject to the transaction levels that we see coming in, which at this time are purely just that estimates.
Speaker 1
Okay. But I mean in terms of the cost, thought you said that you needed 1,200,000.0 from the general fund for the implementation of SB seven zero four.
Speaker 15
Correct. That is in the first year with the following year being two hundred and fifty nine thousand ongoing.
Speaker 1
Okay. Did the so building on senator D'Arazo, did the DOJ consider fee increases or other options aside from requesting money from the general fund?
Speaker 15
We we have considered that, and I think along the lines of some of the concerns that LAO has outlined regarding firearms fees, we are very cautious as it relates to augmenting or increasing firearms fees due to potential constitutionality concerns.
Speaker 1
So since you are the DOJ and we did hear that you defend departments, it seems to me that there should be a happy medium. It's one thing to say, you know, our fees are insufficient. It's another thing to say, oh, you're charging too much fees. But based upon the graph that was provided, it seems like we have a case to make that the fees are not sufficient. So has the DOJ considered actually, we're back to talking about this framework to figure out what the fair amount of fees would be and then be prepared to fight that, that we shouldn't be expected to pay for to supplement through the general fund something that should pay for itself.
Speaker 15
Yes. DOJ is certainly supportive of the framework project and is actively working on that. As it relates to the specific fee, just wanted to provide a little bit of background. The Dros fee is currently $31.19. That was an increase effective 2020.
Prior to that, it was nineteen dollars. Another Dros fee increase at this time is is not advisable. Given recent trends in second amendment litigation. We anticipate that increasing the fee even incrementally would draw a litigation challenge as opponents would likely claim that the increase would be exorbitant and infringing on their second amendment rights. Under current second amendment jurisprudence, defending this challenge would require DOJ to provide evidence of historical analogs to this fee.
The litigation landscape is highly contested, we cannot predict the outcome of any lawsuit. This litigation would also be extremely costly to the department.
Speaker 1
Okay. But costly, we also have the argument to make that we don't have the money sufficient in the general fund to supplement paying for things that really should be paying for themselves. So maybe we could have a follow-up discussion. I'm willing to have that. I don't know if any other members would like to participate, but I really, I don't think the answer is sufficient, frankly, from my perspective.
We cannot continue to supplement and pay for things that need to more pay for themselves. We just don't have the money. And if we're choosing between this and education and health care and all the things that we're facing, I get it that we've had a prior legal challenge. But again, I'm asking the question, where is the happy medium in that? And for us to be afraid and not charge anything more, now six years later, given the increased cost of what's shown in the graph, just doesn't seem to be reasonable.
So I'd like to have a follow-up conversation to understand that better. When do you anticipate having this framework done?
Speaker 15
At this time, we don't have a a date. I would I can certainly circle back to you with a potential timeline for that. Given the recommendation hasn't been officially adopted, I know we are actively working on a framework just as part of DOJ's active, review of of our special funds, but I could circle back to you on a potential timeline if this were to be adopted.
Speaker 1
So what needs to happen in order for it to be adopted? So Is that on us or on you or who?
Speaker 15
Yes. It's an LEO recommendation. We are on our own conducting internal review of the special funds. At this time, it's not a legislative mandate at this time.
Speaker 1
Okay. So if we could our committee consultant, if we could follow-up more on this point. Okay. Any further questions? No?
Speaker 5
getting the fees increased, and I think it's always been it's always fallen on the side of, you know, we're taking too big of a risk, like, for the especially now in this environment to be able to move it forward. But I think it's good to have a framework that we would be working on versus just letting it go year after year after year. Thank you, madam chair.
Speaker 1
Thank you, senator. With that, that's gonna conclude issue number four. We're now gonna move to issue number five. And I see most of you, I think, are still here except for we have Christina Bull Arndt, chief counsel of special litigation that's coming forward, Alicia Stang, miss Harp, miss Danielle O'Bannon who spoke earlier is coming forward, and then we have the same representatives from LAO and Department of Finance. With that, we'll begin with, DOJ.
Speaker 15
Thank you. The governor's, proposed budget includes an additional $10,000,000 general fund in twenty twenty six, twenty seven through twenty twenty eight, twenty nine to help address increased workloads stemming from the current federal administration and federal actions that violate the law and threaten the constitutional rights of Californians. I have Danielle O'Bannon and Christina Bullardt here with me today to share specific details on the critical work that's being performed, with this investment.
Speaker 16
Thank you. It's a pleasure. Danielle O'Bannon, the chief of the public rights division. My particular division handles quite a bit of the work that the presidential federal accountability work that office is doing. We partner also with the civil division as well as our solicitor general's office to bring and address this important work.
Like I previously indicated, this particular request is a request for additional resources because of the increased workload that we have seen in this particular work. The federal administration has spent and has been very aggressive in its attacks on some of the civil rights of our citizens of the state. There's been attempts to curtail civil rights, restrict labor protections, restrict access to education and health care within the state. There was an attempt to end nutritional programming for the most vulnerable populations that we do have in the state. There was an attempt to impose martial law through the federalization of the National Guard in this particular state as well as significant attempts to freeze funding.
And a lot of those funding freezes were an attempt to coerce us to eliminate pro immigration policies that we have within the state. Our work in opposition to the Trump administration has seen a lot of successes so far over the first year. We've we're able to obtain orders to protect birthright citizenship, stop the intrusion of federal limitations on our voting rights. We've also been able to prevent the dismantling of numerous federal agencies, including h s HHS a as well as as AmeriCorps Corp. And we were able to put an end to the National Guard not only in Los Angeles but in Portland.
Like I mentioned previously, there's a lot of defensive work that we're doing as well, and I mentioned those. I won't repeat them here again. But the work that we're doing is really resource intensive, and it's really impactful. I have with me here today Christina Bull Arndt who is one of the positions that we were able to create. She is coordinating the PFA work within our office as well as with our multi state partners across the state.
And, I would like for her to be able to talk today about the outstanding work that we're doing to protect the federal funds from being taken from California. Christina. Hi. Christina Bullhorn, Chief Counsel for Special Litigation at the California Department of Justice. Let me
Speaker 19
give you a brief overview. I'll build on what Danielle just said about our work in federal accountability. You've heard a couple times this morning that we've filed 59 lawsuits as about a half hour ago. That is not accurate. We filed our sixtieth lawsuit today challenging the president's new imposition of tariffs.
Once again, the statute that the president is relying upon is not does not give him the authority to impose those tariffs. So you can see our federal accountability work as falling into a few different buckets. Most importantly perhaps is the federal funding because about half of our lawsuits challenge the funding cuts to California. Sometimes those are simply impositions of funding cuts. In fact, the first week of the Trump administration, the office of management and budget issued a memo that froze funding $3,000,000,000,000 nationwide, but a 168,000,000,000 to California, about a third of our budget.
We filed a lawsuit the next day, got a TRO, and that funding was released. And, we've relied on that injunction, that case multiple times when we've gone back when they have attempted to freeze our funding. We've also there's been some funding restrictions like for the immigration enforcement that they placed on Department of Transportation funds. And so, we've gone in and and gotten injunctions. We've had success about 80% of the time.
And, we have injunctions in place in many of our lawsuits. And, in seven of our lawsuits, the Trump administration has just caved and said that, fine, they'll release the funding. They'll do what it is that they're responsible to do. Highlighting a few other things, there has been a couple of our cases address data sharing that the Trump administration seeks the personal identifying information on Californians. We see that in both the SNAP nutrition assistance context as well as Medicaid.
We have injunctions in place in both in both of those cases. We have also seen a lot of work in the immigration context. Our first lawsuit was on birthright citizenship, and that injunction is still in place, as well as the funding restrictions and efforts to limit the access of immigrants to public benefits that they would otherwise be entitled to. And the National Guard, of course. I live in Los Angeles, and that felt like a real pivot point to me when you have the president imposing martial law on our streets when people are expressing their First Amendment rights.
And I'm tremendously proud of the work that we've done there. And I'll mention also a couple of other things. I could go on. I'm tremendously proud of the good work that our office does in this capacity. I'll mention our work in the election space, including the opposition the successful opposition to the election executive order, which attempted to impose restrictions on voting.
The constitution is very clear that congress and the states administer voting. And so the court agreed with us on that one. And also in the area of health care, we filed a lawsuit opposing their interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, which would make it much more difficult for people to access afford to access Medi Cal. And and other lawsuits with supporting gender affirming care as well. So I will stop there.
Happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 17
Drew Soderborg, legislative analyst office. We didn't raise any concerns with this proposal.
Speaker 9
Victoria Chin, Department of Finance. This funding is necessary to support the state's efforts to protect Californians' rights and interests, including the protections of billions of federal funding that supports critical programs.
Speaker 5
Thank you. Thank you all so much. It's been extraordinary to proud to be a Californian with all the work that you are doing for our communities. And although our communities are suffering a lot and will suffer more needlessly, I know that you are working really hard. So I'll also congratulate and thank the attorney general and all of you for your leadership and for being out there up front.
It really, really has made a difference in in our community, so I wanna thank you. In particular, I wanna thank you also for working on my bill, s b five eighty, on the model policies. So I look forward to getting that getting that through to the to the final. So, again, thank you all so much for your hard work and for your deep heart and soul commitment.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. With that, I'd just like to ask miss O'Bannon and miss Arndt if you could please supply to the committee the list of the successes that we've had just in these last, you know, fifteen, sixteen months that we can share with our colleagues because it's very helpful to talk about what we are doing to, you know, advance justice in the advance and protect justice in the state of California. With that, thank you very much for your participation in issue number five, which was federal accountability, I believe. And now we're gonna move to issue number six. For the members of the public, this is the last issue we have, and then we'll be going to public comments.
So thank you very much, for your patience with us. Now we're gonna move to issue number six, which is our final issue. It's regarding online and app based illegal gambling enforcement. We will be joined by the following panelists, most of which who are here in the front already. We have miss Harp, miss Christine Williams, both with the DOJ, mister Soderborg with the LAO, and miss Chin and mister Jimenez from the Department of Finance.
We'll move forward first with the DOJ.
Speaker 15
Thank you. The proposed budget includes three positions and 1,100,000.0 in unfair competition law fund in twenty twenty six, twenty seven, and ongoing to conduct investigations and litigation against illegal online and app based gambling operations and their providers, including online sweepstakes casinos and online sports gambling, both of which represent themselves to the public as legal but are not. Today, I have with me Danielle O'Bannon and Christine Williams available to answer specific questions on the proposal, and I will, hand it over to Danielle now.
Speaker 16
Hi. Danielle O'Bannon again. I'm, the chief of the public rights division. I actually also oversee the Native American and travel affairs section who is gonna be responsible for the illegal gambling work for the department. This particular request really is just a request so that we can get some staffing on board to have focused attention on the e online illegal gambling that's been taking place in the state.
Online gambling has just grown because there isn't any enforcement in this area. We've moved from brick and mortar to online, and there needs to be a particular focus on it. Our current funding structure does not allow for us to use some of the special funds for this particular purpose and so that's why we have a request out. We would need some UCL would work, but we would need to have an additional appropriation in spending authority for us to be able to use those funds. I think it's extremely important for us to be working in this particular area and have a focus team so that we can address some of the illegal gambling issues that are prevalent in in the state.
It's detrimental to both the citizens and our regulated gambling communities out there illegal gambling generally is this concern because there aren't adequate age verifications for minors and so that's a concern We need to be able to protect them. There isn't a mechanism to prevent or protect those who have gambling issues and problems and are also we need to ensure that there's fair play that the funds are are distributed appropriately are out there. The focus of these cases will be on injunctive relief really to stop the bad actors in their tracks and it will also be for consumer protection. I also have with me today Christine Butler Williams who is the lead of my native american and tribal affairs section and if you can add to that.
Speaker 20
Thank you. Christine Butler Williams I'm a member of the york tribe and honored to serve as the senior assistant attorney general for the Native American and tribal affairs division at the Department of Justice. And just to add to what chief O'Bannon has already said, we are primarily currently funded by two funds. So the Gambling Control Fund and the Indian Gaming Special Distribution Fund, which is often referred to as the SDF. Those two funds cannot be used for this type of work.
Those are really to be focused on enforcement of licensed gambling entities including card rooms, third party providers of proposition player services, and also tribal casinos. And they're strictly prohibited for being used for illegal online gambling. And so to that end, in the past when this works been performed, we focus primarily on physical illegal gambling dens and relied a lot on our local law enforcement partners to both detect, investigate, and enforce those actions. But since the advent of online gambling, we have seen those same illegal providers shift to the online app based market where they're providing direct access to this gambling with and removing their physical presence. So, through that, we have sort of a blind spot now where we don't have those partners on the ground in local law enforcement that we've previously relied on to enforce these actions.
So, three are the three new positions will allow the Department of Justice to develop a sustainable approach to pursue consistent enforcement against these online illegal gambling operations at a statewide level which is what we're looking at as the online gambling is targeted to anyone with a phone and app computer access to the Internet. As chief O'Bannon already said, these illegal gambling operations routinely lack safeguards present in legal regulated gambling for instance minimal if or if any mechanisms for age verification additionally nothing in terms of recognizing problem gambling, which is a requirement for our legal regulated gaming. This thus, the primary focus will be on injunctive relief and consumer protection. And I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Want to make sure here. There this is not it's online. So but you mentioned the card rooms. This is not connected or connected, or how is it connected to card room situation?
Speaker 20
It's connected in the sense that anytime someone engages in illegal online gambling, they're threatening our legal license gambling such as card rooms. But in terms of the enforcement to ensure that card rooms are following all the regulations, that's a totally separate fund that we cannot use for this enforcement, which is going after the illegal online gambling.
Speaker 5
Okay. And and what is the scale of the illegal sports betting that's going on?
Speaker 20
I hate to say immeasurable, but it literally grows every day. It's it's off it's offshore. It's hard to track. There's huge huge growth it's spreading across the nation rapidly and dynamically and growing from just sports gaming to being more and more every day so I we we this is what we would be doing. We need to investigate to collect the data to even see how big is this and how do we tackle kind of what's become an industry.
So the instead of, you know, physical illegal gambling dens, we're looking at an entire industry that's illegal and operating within our state and threatening our our public safety.
Speaker 5
So it sounds like something that's not it's not three positions for now and, you know, you have a an idea of when that's gonna not gonna be needed anymore. Sounds like you're looking to the future growth.
Speaker 20
That is correct. We are asking for sustainable funding as well as the beginning. I hate to say you start up in the Bay Area, but for our initial funding, we'll have our three positions plus the 1.1, and then we're looking for sustainable funding after that ongoing because we don't see an end in sight, unfortunately. But we do think, know, we're hopeful we can get this under control and help to drive out this illegal gambling from our state.
Speaker 1
Thank you, senator D'Arzo. I just have one question. If it sounds like probably either miss Williams or miss O'Bannon. If you could you may not have the answer today, but if there's any specific legislative fixes that we could do on our part to assist as you go into this new area, If you could please supply that to the committee, that way we can bring forward legislation to be helpful.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Alright. Seeing no further questions on issue number six, we thank you for your participation not only on this issue but on several others. We look forward to working with all of you as we go forward. As senator D'Arrazzo very appropriately said, thank you for all of your work that you've been doing thus far.
With that, we're now going to turn to the public, and, we have a few instructions with that. We're going to ask the public to form a line over here to my left, is your right where you see the microphone. If you could keep your comments to thirty seconds, that way, hopefully, we can get to everyone before we have a hard stop to end this meeting.
Speaker 21
Good morning chair and committee. Denise Choisell with the California Collision for Youth. We are a statewide advocacy organization representing our children and youth who are experiencing homelessness on their own respectfully requesting the inclusion of 75,000,000 the twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven budget for homeless youth emergency services and housing program y e and the homeless youth emergency services pilot program h y to preserve and expand critical services for homeless youth, another five year grant cycle. The most current data from OES on these two programs showed that they have collectively provided 2,400 youth with housing support, over 4,000 nights of shelter, and 30,000 meals. These youth in crisis will have nowhere to go and and stay safe if these programs close this budget year.
Studies show twenty to forty percent of our young people experiencing homelessness are victims of human trafficking and sixty eight percent engage in survival sex because they don't have a place to stay. There's no safe space for them to put their head down at the at night, and we can't afford to let these youth experience the trauma of being on the streets. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Because you're a young adult and we thank you for your participation, we let you go a little bit longer because we wanted to make sure you got all your key points out. But everyone, please try to stick to the thirty seconds if possible. Thank you.
Speaker 18
I'm a young adult. Just kidding. Hi. Marni Regan. I'm a division director with Larkin Street Youth Services in the Bay Area.
Thirty seconds. I'm also here to respectfully request 75,000,000 for h for y e and h y in the o e s budget. We Larkin Street, for forty two years, we've been serving minors and young adults who are homeless with shelter housing wraparound services for forty two years in the Bay Area. We're a YE grantee. These funds are absolutely critical to saving homeless youth from a life of harm, exploitation, and chronic long term homelessness.
I do want to connect it to the discussions earlier around the international events like Olympics and FIFA, as well as the Super Bowl that just passed. The homeless youth providers across the state are really worried and doing everything we can gearing up for sadly the spike in youth home exploitation and trafficking that comes with international events. We scrambled during the recent Super Bowl. If OES, if this YE and HY funding are cut, we will close programs, sadly. One of the programs we run with this funding is for minors.
Speaker 18
These youth deserve help in the they're depending on us. They deserve the help that you're in the position of providing. Please don't let these funds sunset forever. On behalf of the young people we serve, I thank you.
Speaker 13
Good afternoon. My name is Adriana Pereira, and I'm from Legal Aid of Marin. In my position as an employment law attorney, I have witnessed the hardships endured by domestic workers, hospitality and restaurant workers, and other low wage workers who work tirelessly to provide for their families and for themselves. VOCA funding not only helps to alleviate these struggles, but also ensures the voices of these individuals are heard. I respectfully request inclusion inclusion of a 100,000,000 in the May revised budget to address the gap in federal victims of crime act funding.
Thank you for your time
Speaker 22
Good morning chair Richardson and members. I would like to echo the sentiments of my colleague Adriana. I'm Giovanna Torres Ornzotti and lead the development operations at Legal Aid of Marin. And here also to request inclusion of VOCA funding in the $100.100000000 dollar budget revised in May. Thank you so much for your time and attention.
Speaker 9
Good afternoon Chair Richardson, Senator D'Arrazzo. Grace Glazer on behalf of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, the statewide DV program representing a 140 programs across the state. I would like to respectfully request a 100,000,000 in this year's final budget negotiations to support the victims of crime act federal backfill. Thank you.
Speaker 12
Good afternoon, chair Richardson and members. My name is Jessica Macias, and I'm the CEO for the YWCA in Monterey County. We've been in the county for over a hundred years. Our agency provides comprehensive wraparound services to our survivors of domestic violence and other violent crimes. I respectfully request the inclusion of a 100,000,000 in the May revised budget to address the gap in federal Victors of Crime and Act funding through VOCA supported programs.
Survivors are able to access safety planning, mental health support and critical resources. And I thank you for your time.
Speaker 7
Good morning, Terry Richardson and members. My name is Paula Chavez. I'm a housing service manager with the YWCA in Monterey County. We support survivors of domestic violence and their families throughout Monterey County. Every day we see how violence is shaped by broader systemic conditions and social determinants that influence safe health and opportunity, housing and security, economic hardships, limited access to mental health, and the weight of generational trauma.
For that, we respectfully urge the inclusion of a 100,000,000 in the May revised budget to address the gaps in federal funding under the Victims of Crimes Act. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 6
My name is Sarah Brennan. I'm representing Valor, California sexual assault coalition consisting of 84 rape crisis centers and other organizations supporting sexual assault survivors throughout California. I respectfully request the inclusion of a 100,000,000 in the May revision to address the the gap in federal victims of crime funding. This funding provides a key safety net for victims of crime and thank you for your time.
Speaker 23
Madam chair members, Dan Filsado on behalf of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office also requesting a 100,000,000 for VOCA funds. LA County DA, we provided services to 16,000 new victims of violent crime last year. Without this backfill, we would be we wouldn't be able to provide services to nearly 8,000 of those victims. Thank you.
Speaker 24
Thank you, chair members. Dan Seaman on behalf of Californians for safety and justice are related but as somewhat different we're requesting the restoration of 50,000,000 for the flexible cash assistance program for victims of violent crime in the OES budget this was funding that as senator critical and in achieving couple years back unfortunately was cut in last year's may revise just as the department was ready to add give out those grants we also support the vocal funding add that was referenced before Encourage any work you can do to get flexible cash for victims back in the budget thank you.
Speaker 8
Thank you chair committee members and staff Ryan Moore meaning with the California state association of counties representing all 58 counties here to echo the comments as well as the request from previous speakers also I'd be remiss if I didn't express our deep gratitude for the work of this committee as well as other champions in both houses of the legislature for the critical funding to supplement the the federal shortfall. Also would would like to note you know that this this funding is absolutely paramount for both county and community service providers that deliver lifesaving services to hundreds of thousands of individuals annually. Thank you.
Speaker 25
Hi there, Savi Christian on behalf of encode AI, the California policy director were a nonprofit advocacy organization that strives to promote public policy in the field of AI for public interest we're grateful for the inclusion in the governor's budget for always and DOJ for purposes of implementing SP 53 and just highlighting that while the bcp for oes specifically request an attorney for purposes of drafting regulations and an agpa to receive the critical safety incidents and assessments that are required under s p 53 it's very important that technical expertise for whoever is on staff is present a lack of technical expertise in this area could lead to a lack in public safety if they're not knowing what to look out for when receiving those reports so thank you and just encourage the budget committee to pay special attention to that.
Speaker 26
Good morning. I'm chair Richardson and members. Thank you very much for your time today. My name is Louisa Quella. I'm chief program officer representing stand up plaster, a victim services provider providing domestic violence, sexual assault, and sex trafficking survivors with services in Plaster County.
I echo what my counterparts have said and I would like to remind everyone that in 2024, seventy four thousand adults and twenty four thousand of their children became homeless due to domestic violence last year. Our agencies were able to shelter 13,000 of them and turned away another 15,000 individuals because of lack of capacity. VOCA funds fund victim service providers like mine, victim witness programs, child abuse prevention and treatment programs across the state. It's over 400 agencies. I respectfully request the inclusion of a $100,000,000 in the May revised budget to address the gap in VOCA funding.
Thank you very much for your time and attention today.
Speaker 20
Bringing up the rear. Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Jennifer Dowrell. I'm the executive director of safe alternatives to violent environments or save. We're located in Alameda County and we serve thousands of survivors of IPV every year through our crisis line shelter, housing, and supportive services, and all of this is made possible because of VOCA funding.
I'm here today to request respectfully request that you include the $100.100000000 dollar backfill in the may revise because without bridging this gap, it will result in real and dangerous cuts for survivors across the state. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you for all of members of the public who patiently waited. We did record, all of your requests, and we'll be rolling those up and evaluating them in the subcommittee. Having heard from all the members of the public, senator D'Arrazzo, any final questions or comments? Thank you for hanging in there, and we appreciate all your comments and your knowledge, that's been covered today.
Thank you to all the individuals who participated in public testimony today. If you were not able to testify today, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the budget and fiscal review committee or visit our website. Your comments and suggestions are important to us and we want to include your testimony in the official hearing records. Thank you everyone for your participation. We have concluded now the agenda for today's hearing.
The senate budget subcommittee number five on corrections, public safety, judiciary, labor, and transportation is hereby adjourned. Have a very wonderful weekend. Thank you.
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