Assembly Budget Committee

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you All right, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the Assembly Budget Committee. We are delighted that you could join us today as we face our constitutional deadline. We are here today to consider the 2026 Budget Act, which we anticipate will be up for consideration on the floor later this evening. And this bill, which represents the compromise between the Assembly and our partners in the Senate, is what we're going to be discussing at our hearing today. And just to give people a sense of what our agenda is, I'm going to make some opening remarks. I'm going to turn it over to our vice chair for any opening remarks. We are then going to have an opportunity to hear from the Assembly Budget Committee and from Jason Sisney and the Speaker's Office about our legislative budget. And then I'm going to turn it over to our partners at the Department of Finance for any of their comments or thoughts. And then I'm going to invite our budget subcommittee chairs to offer some remarks as well. and just want to take the first of what I hope will be many opportunities to thank our budget subcommittee chairs for their tremendous work this year. After that, we're going to go turn to questions and comments from members. And then finally, we will open it up for public comment before we adjourn the hearing. I did also just want to start by thanking our Assembly Budget Committee staff for their incredible work over the past several months. we have had 62 hearings. So I want to thank both the staff and then especially the members of the committee who were deeply engaged in all of those hearings, doing all of the hard work and helping to bring us to this moment. So thank you to everybody who has done that. Mr. Aaron's always bringing the good energy. We appreciate it. Just to just to level set, I'm really proud of the fact that we have gotten to this moment after 62 hearings. I'm really grateful that the budget that we're going to be discussing today follows the general themes of the that the assembly's budget roadmap set forwards trying to navigate this moment in a thoughtful manner. We have talked in previous years and again this year about the balance between compassion and fiscal responsibility that is at the centerpiece of our budget conversation. And so what we are discussing today, the 2026 Budget Act aligns with the governor's May revision in that it balances the budget for both this year and next year. It reduces the structural deficit by more than half, so we refuse to kick the can down the road. And it builds up $29 billion in total reserves. And also, we anticipate that as part of this budget, final budget deal, that we will make much-needed important reforms to our rainy day fund that we will put before the voters so that we can continue to make sure that we are prepared for whatever the future may bring us. At the same time we also leaned in very hard on the compassion aspect of balancing compassion and fiscal responsibility And even though we have faced just devastating cuts at the federal level tens of billions of dollars of cuts at the federal level from H 1 and otherwise We have worked hard to protect the programs and services that serve working families that benefit our most vulnerable communities that are core to affordability and that are core to protecting our safety net here. And you'll hear from some of our subchairs about the important work that they've done to protect health coverage, to protect hospitals and clinics and food banks to secure record funding for public education, to protect our world-class higher education institutions, and to make important progress on priorities like child care, wildfire prevention, housing, and of course, to keep our community safe. And so with that, I again just want to thank our extraordinarily hardworking and talented budget subcommittee chairs for the work that they have done in. They have not shied away from the task in front of them, rolling up their sleeves, working with members of the committee, asking the tough questions, and to quote Dr. Jackson, really being surgical in the way that they have made their choices as we have thought to navigate these tough waters. So thank you to everyone who has joined us today. I look forward to the conversation ahead of us. And then, of course, we are very much looking forward to the conversation with our partners in the administration as we look to bring this lengthy but important process to its conclusion before the new fiscal year. So with that, I will again extend my thanks to everybody who has worked hard to bring us to this milestone in the moment and turn it over to our vice chair for any opening remarks.

Thank you very much to our vice chair. With that, I'm going to invite Jason Sisney from Speaker Rivas' office and our partners from the Department of Finance and, of course, our legislative analysts to come forward. Mr. Sisney, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Mr. Sissni. I just wanted to take a moment of personal privilege to thank you for all of your incredible hard work and thoughtful guidance over the past couple months. And I think I speak for everyone on this dais, Democrat and Republican, and I say we are really, really grateful for everything that you have provided to us as we have navigated these choppy waters. So thank you for your hard work. With that, I see we have our good friend Erica Lee here from the Department of Finance. would like to invite DOF to comment. Any thoughts you would like to share on the legislative budget package and also on any of the tax proposals?

Thank you very much, Leslie. appreciate that and appreciate the clarification on SB 122. With that, I just want to invite our legislative analyst to offer any comments he may have. If you're wondering if anybody reads your

All right. With that, I want to now turn back to the dais. I'd like to begin with what was really the heart and soul of our Assembly Budget Committee team, which is our subchairs who have done the hard work of rolling up their sleeves and looking through each of the programs and services and making the tough decisions. And so just, again, want to uplift them and the staff for their really hard work. And so let's begin with Ms. Addison.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much, Ms. Addison. I just want to thank you for really leading with your values in these important and really difficult conversations that you helped to work through with the members of your subcommittee and for always reminding us about the human consequences of the decisions that we're making. These are much more than numbers. These are the people that we are charged to serve in really profound consequences for some of these choices. So thank you. I really, really appreciate your hard work. With that, let's continue on to Dr.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, Dr. Jackson. It is an honor to be stalked by you. And I will say that your fingerprints are all over this budget, and particularly when it comes to kids and seniors in our most vulnerable communities. and everywhere we see your fingerprints, we see progress for those who are most in need. So thank you for your very able leadership. With that, I want to turn to Mr. Alvarez.

year thank you thank you very much mr alvarez i want to thank you and your all-star committee for the incredible work on education policy and also as you mentioned for the sensitivity that you you brought to understanding the bigger picture and being the ultimate team player. So thank you guys for both the really wonderful progress we've made in the education space and also your contributions to the larger effort. With that, we will turn over here to Mr. Bennett.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember, and I will underscore the thanks to the exceptionally capable staff and also just to you. Thank you for the attention to detail, the thoughtfulness, the conscientiousness. Rarely a floor session went by when you didn't pull me aside to update me or have a conversation or check in on something in the area. And I just appreciate the incredible sense of public service that you bring to this work. So thank you for so ably leading that subcommittee. With that, we are going to turn to the – so many superlatives, but we'll just turn for now to Assemblywoman Cork-Silva.

And so I appreciate the work. And thank you to Assemblymember Liz Ortega, who participated fully. Assemblymember Chris Ward, Assemblymember Colosa, who added to the conversation. We're there and we're present. And I believe the work we did will not only uplift Californians, but it's essential work. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair. First, I'd like to thank my sub-six colleagues, Assemblymember Schultz and Assemblymember Lackey, for their dedication to issues of public safety. And as this is his last year, Mr. Lackey added insight to the budget and to the process that we went through. serving members of this committee for all of his hard work and collaboration and commitment to public service. Mr. Lackey has truly been a joy to work with in areas that we agree to. In addition, I'd like to appreciate the members of the Legislative Women's Caucus, Assembly Members Bonta, Kirk Silva, and Alawari, for joining us in our hearing to discuss violence and abuse in women's prisons. I also want to thank the Budget Chair and the Speaker for their leadership in shepherding this long process and our Senate partners for crafting a budget that supports the people of the State of California. I also want to thank our Budget Staff, Bernie and Jennifer and Lindsey, the LAO, Drew, Caitlin, Orlando and Heather, the Department of Finance, our committee secretaries Marco, Irene and Alexa, the sergeants, tech experts and all of the panelists and members of the public that came to testify on these issues. We had a series of hearings from a wide range of topics including issues around the judicial branch in the state of California, tackling issues of Prop 36, remote courts, and courts needs. We also had hearings on VOCA and women's prisons and also the Department of Justice. I am proud of the public safety package that is in this budget bill, which includes investments for victims, rehabilitation, legal aid, and ongoing commitment to addressing the missing and murdered Indigenous persons crisis in the state of California. Many of these investments have laid a foundation for progress that needs our continued investment and commitment in the state of California In addition the solutions that are included in the budget also indicate the legislature commitment to fiscal responsibility at a time when everyday Californians are struggling to make ends meet. We look forward to continuing to work with the administration in reaching a final agreement that protects people and programs in the responsible manner that we come together here on the budget to be able to move forward. And the voices of the state of California and the leadership within the Assembly continues to move forward. I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve as Public Safety Chair Sub-6 and bringing full circle around the issues that we just addressed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The composition of the budget subcommittee number seven on accountability and oversight is very eclectic. We don't have a set roster. We invite members to join us depending on the subject matter. So I want to thank everybody, virtually all the staff of the budget committee worked with me on the various hearings that we had. And we did a lot of hard work, and I just really appreciate this opportunity to highlight some of the work that we did and how it's reflected in the legislative budget. Over the past several months, our subcommittee has examined a common theme across multiple policy areas, ensuring the taxpayer dollars are producing measurable results, increasing transparency, and protecting Californians from growing uncertainty at the federal level. Our hearing on homeless housing assistance and prevention funding focused on the simple but important question, are billions of dollars invested in homelessness programs producing measurable outcomes, and do we have the accountability tools necessary to evaluate success? We heard that flexibility for local governments must be paired with transparency, clear reporting requirements, meaningful performance metrics, and public access to information. The legislative budget advances these same principles by continuing investments in homelessness programs while strengthening accountability and oversight measures to ensure limited state resources are aligned with measurable progress. Our oversight hearing on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation examined another critical challenge, how to responsibly manage one of the state's largest budgets during a period of declining prison populations and significant fiscal pressures. I'm pleased that the budget reflects those principles by continuing efforts to right-size our correctional system, including the closure of an additional state prison. This action will generate substantial ongoing savings that can be reinvested in higher priorities while ensuring public safety remains protected through a more efficient use of state resources. More recently, this committee examined the serious threat posed by federal efforts to eliminate child care funding that supports working families across California. Fortunately, those cuts have been temporarily halted by court action. The hearing underscored a broader reality. California must be prepared to respond when federal actions place vulnerable presidents at risk. Child care is not simply a family issue It is a workforce issue an economic issue and a critical support for children development The legislative budget responds to that challenge by expanding access to child care and supporting the providers who make that care possible. The agreement adds nearly 23,000 new child care slots, prioritizes infants and toddlers ages 0 to 3, protects 6,800 existing child care slots from proposed reductions, and provides a 2% cost of living adjustment for child care providers. These investments will help working families remain in the workforce and ensure children continue to have access to safe, high-quality care. Our committee also held a hearing examining the impacts of H.R. 1 and the significant challenges counties will face in administering Medi-Cal and CalFresh as new federal requirements take effect. We heard that counties are on the front lines of these programs and eligible Californians could lose access to health care and nutrition assistance simply because of bureaucratic barriers. The hearing highlighted the need for additional state support to local governments to keep eligible residents enrolled in these critical safety net programs. I'm pleased that the legislative budget recognizes this challenge by providing additional funding to counties to help implement these new federal requirements and protect access to essential services for millions of Californians. Taken together, these hearings reinforce three principles that are reflected throughout this budget agreement. First, accountability matters. Californians deserve to know how public dollars are being spent and what outcomes those investments are producing. Second, fiscal responsibility matters. In a challenging budget environment, every dollar must be directed toward programs that demonstrate results and deliver value for taxpayers. And third, protecting vulnerable Californians matters. Whether we're discussing homelessness, child care, health care, nutrition assistance, public safety, or other essential services, our responsibility is to ensure that government works effectively for the people who depend on it most. The legislative budget reflects those priorities, and I appreciate the very hard work of our speaker, our budget chair, our subchairs, the committee members, the staff, and advancing a budget emphasizes accountability, transparency, fiscal stewardship, and protection of essential resources.

Thank you, Ms. Bonta. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to all of our subcommittee members. Clearly a lot of work, a lot of months, time, and dedication is going into all the subcommittee hearings that we've had to really vet across all the subject areas, the jurisdictions that we've had. Being a member of sub-5 has given me that front row seat and that pleasure to be able to continue to work on things that, unfortunately, we've had to continue to fight for as a legislature right now to make sure that we are doing our state's commitment that's necessary to do so to be able to resolve housing and homelessness programs. And you don't do that with zero dollars. and to start out in a position every January where effective programs that could always have improvements and could always have more accountability continue to be zeroed out, has continued to be an outcome that the legislature is focused on, and we rightfully should own that win that we have been the ones to be able to lead this charge and make sure we thinking about HAP funding and indeed responding to our city needs our local COC needs and responding with even more than we were able to allocate last year is going to go a long way to be able to make sure that the programs that are working out there right now have the resources to be able to continue Quick plug that we want to think about this in a multi-year fashion. It's very difficult on that, on LIHTC, on HAP, excuse me, on the multifamily housing program. We hear that from those that are trying to build more affordable housing that we need to think a little bit more about the out years so that they can be able to plan for developments that will take some time to be able to develop, but that the guarantees will be there. As a chair of the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism, I'm grateful that I saw there was some support there from a letter that a number of members had reached out to as well to support a lot of our cultural programs, cultural institutions. We've never funded our cultural districts. It's a great program that we laud and celebrate and put out press releases on. But despite the fact that we have a very, very difficult time and we're balancing, righteously balancing a lot of other needs to fully fund public education, to work on the responses that our counties and other systems need for H.R.1-related impacts that we're able to do a little bit more for longstanding needs that Californians have out there. That said, you know, we've got some continued ongoing need and challenges with the California Arts Council that we're not seeing yet. I know we'll have more conversations in late June and into August as the situation continues to develop. And I would certainly encourage the committee and others to be able to take that into consideration as an ongoing need and a priority, especially with California on the world stage in the coming years. We also had a number of members that were interested in supporting a lot of our local media outlets right now. And while that's not here today, that is going to be an ongoing need. We are seeing trusted local media partners closing their doors altogether, reducing their staff. And that's just going to continue to erode democracy and erode the ability to be able to connect people with their local governments, with their local communities, and further consolidate a lot of our media outlets into corporate media outlets that are otherwise changing, I think, the entire way that we reflect and interact with the public. And so it's a righteous public investment that we may want to take a second look at as well. As the chair of the LGBT caucus, I wanted to express my gratitude for all those out of hand across several subcommittees as well to be able to support some modest, but in the eyes of those individuals or those programs, life-saving investments that we have when we think about the need that we have. And all these are largely coming from the hate that we're getting out of Washington, D.C., but the need for California to stand up and match, as you heard my colleague from Sub5, Ms. Cork-Silva, had mentioned, you know, the values and the moral response that we have right now through our budget to support gender-affirming care needs that are out there, support our community centers, support our community colleges, support service members who have been ungraciously discharged just because simply who they are. And importantly, and finally, the work that we're doing right now to finally address the rebate fund that we have for the ADAP program, the AIDS drug assistance program that we have that has been longstanding out there right now, helped solve a budget challenge in previous years right now. but with the significant investment out there on the books, right, to make sure that we are committing ourselves in the coming years to be able to support the programs and pay that back for life-saving support for HIV care and for those afflicted with AIDS. I would also like to be able to get on record, and we may talk about this later tonight as well, too, some concern I have representing the Select Committee on Biotechnology and the cluster that we have, certainly in San Diego. You know, we've had a disinvestment in our response, our need to be able to support the biotech community. And while things are happening, we're going to be able to support the biotech community were very difficult from a budget perspective in recent years. And, you know, they were a partner like anybody else to be a solution in those years. It has sadly become the norm that we are looking at the R&D tax credit in a way and not realizing, I think, the benefit that it comes to California jobs, to the advancements that we have in health care discoveries, and making sure those advancements and those investments are happening right here in California. So I know there's been some late news there about the permanent utilization of that tax credit. And so as things continue to move forward, I hope that we'll take a fresher look at that as well and try to get that right. All this is to say, you know, I know that budgets are compromises and there's a lot that goes into it. And I'm very happy and grateful for everyone's partnership and being able to get us to where we are here today because not everything is going to get – not everyone is going to get everything they want out of this. But I would just kind of close and note that, you know, I'm sort of at the midpoint in my career in the legislature and certainly many budgets to look forward to as well. And I know that there are going to be challenging times, and I'm grateful for and attention this year to think about those out years and try to make sure that we're addressing in a better way some of the structural challenges that we have. But we've looked really closely at a lot of the expenses and a lot of the detail that we have in so many of our programs. And we have to look at the other side of the ledger as well to make sure that we're thinking carefully about revenue questions as well. There's a lot of unjust application of our tax code loopholes and other areas that could provide solutions. And I understand that the will and the interest was not close to there to be able to, I think, fully vet that conversation here this year. But we're going to continue to have these incredibly difficult conversations unless we are thinking about right-sizing that and trying to make more just and more fair some of the revenue side of the equation that I think governs what we have to be able to work with because there are so many public demands out there that we weren't able to meet this year. And we recognize that, and we're doing the best that we can with what we have. But we probably want to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and appreciate whether or not we're doing everything that we should be doing. So with that, really grateful for all the work that went into this, and I know we're going to have a lot more conversations ahead in the months and the years to come. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Chair and Members. I want to start out by thanking the Speaker and Budget Chair Gabriel, our Budget Subcommittee Chairs, and their staff for their tireless work on this budget agreement. I think many of you have fielded probably dozens of calls in every single one of these areas where I have engaged. Our budget reflects our values, and I believe this agreement is so much more reflective of California's values than prior iterations, and I'm very thankful for that. The May revised proposal included provisions such as the $2,000 asset limit test that were untenable for our communities. The asset test limit alone would have threatened coverage for seniors and people with disabilities at the exact moment they can least afford to lose it. What is in the budget pushes back against the most harmful proposals and buys our communities a very important thing, which is critical time to pursue creative structural solutions to some of the challenges that we will continue to face. It also acknowledges that with several revenue proposals that we cannot avoid the great harm to Californians that have been imposed to us by the federal administration by simply cutting our way to it. So I thankful that we have begun the work with the revenue generation measures in this agreement and I look forward to the conversations through both our legislative process and the next budget cycle on additional measures to close the gap particularly in ensuring large employers do their fair share Our state is bearing $28 billion annually in cost for working people whose employers don't provide health care. It's time the legislature had this conversation, and this budget agreement ensures we do so in the forthcoming budget cycles. I want to talk a little bit about health care as Assembly Health Chair. I know that after we went on several roundtable conversations throughout the state of California, that people spoke loud and clear about the harms that they knew that they would be facing under H.R. 1 and Donald Trump's cuts. He threw our health care infrastructure into absolute chaos, and California cannot accept that chaos. For instance, families in Alameda County are already bracing for the impact. 127,000 people. Our residents, roughly 7.5% of our county, are projected to lose Medi-Cal coverage by 2028 due to H.R. 1 and state budget cuts combined. Those are our neighbors in Oakland, Alameda, and Emeryville. Those are our hearts, the people that we care about, who depend on Medi-Cal for a doctor's visit a prescription, prenatal care, and for somebody to take care of them when they need the most help. This budget delivers some relief. I want to note some relief from my perspective for those families. Communities across the state fought hard to protect as many people as possible from Washington, D.C.'s chaos, and this budget reflects that fight, that fight that we will continue. It rejects the immediate $2,000 acetamin limit. It delays harmful dental cuts and cuts to our clinics. It invests $125 million in county indigent care for uninsured Californians and $250 million to shore up our public hospital system. It delays the imposition of increased Medi-Cal premiums. It seeks to retain and ensure our undocumented patients stay in managed care for non-emergency services and keeps our FQHCs and our community health clinics who serve our immigrant communities, in particular our frontline people, our most vulnerable communities, from ensuring that they have the ability to continue to do that work. For immigrant families and our advocates who have stood with them for years, this budget delivers $80 million more than the governor proposed for immigration legal services. This means removal defense for access to counsel for immigrant communities' right to have a fair day in courts and civil proceedings. This is a partial win for East Bay immigrant community, and it is a win for every family that calls their assembly members, this one included, who showed up to our hearings and refused to be erased. For communities in crisis, it ensures $125 million will sustain mobile crisis response teams dispatched through our 988 network, teams that show up when people are in their darkest moment and need help the most. instead of being held and helped by putting handcuffs on them, they now have the ability to make sure that they have a chance to be stabilized in their behavioral health and mental health. And it seeks to ensure that we stabilize care for our gender-affirming, for our patients who seek gender-affirming care with $25 million of support for our providers to stabilize that community and $10 million to support our LGBTQ centers. For families who rely on reproductive care this budget secures a million uncompensated care fund because the right to make decisions about your own body cannot be contingent on your ability to pay I want to thank my colleagues including of course Chair Dawn Addis, for facing these challenges head on. Despite unprecedented cuts to our healthcare system, she fought to provide and protect dental coverage, Medi-Cal coverage for our asylee and refugee community, and protection for our LGBTQ community. And I know it was a challenge. And I want to thank her for supporting us that meet this moment, including on reproductive health access. To our subchairs, Alvarez, Cork Silva, and Dr. Jackson, I also want to thank you personally for making sure that we are protecting community school investments and recognizing the critical role that partnerships that are created through Gradle to Career Work do to ensure positive child outcomes for everyone and for prioritizing and recognizing the essential nature of our early child care and education system on the positive development of all of our children and for making sure to invest particularly in our community colleges in a time when so many are seeing thinking that college is something that they can't continue to dream about for our HAP funding for securing CalWORKs or SNAP our basic food assistance for ensuring that we will change the terrible trajectory that we are on when in the fourth largest economy in the world, we could see people dying on the streets from hunger. I want to thank you for your diligence and your work in that. I also wanted to just speak a little bit to public safety. It's a shared responsibility, and this budget begins to reflect that. Achieving shared community safety requires more than any single system can deliver alone. It's our criminal justice systems, health, behavioral health, housing, and social services, and they must work together. And this budget takes meaningful steps in that direction. And I'm glad to see that one of the budget solutions in this agreement includes a prison closure. This is one of the most straightforward fiscal decisions we can make. California's incarcerated population has declined significantly, and responsible stewardship of public resources means our infrastructure should reflect that reality. Investing those savings into the services that actually break cycles of harm, behavioral health, reentry, workforce development is exactly what communities have been asking for. And this budget delivers towards that goal. And I want to thank Assemblymember Hart for having a hearing that helped to kind of put that into context. I also want to thank Assemblymember Ramos in recognizing his incredible leadership for certainly our missing and murdered Indigenous women, and also for the women in our prison system and for inviting members of the Women's Caucus and our working group to sub-6 to talk about the violence and sexual abuse in our women's prisons. That urgent discussion, driven by the testimony of incarcerated women and the advocates who stand with them, produced real results. $5.5 million for the Home After Harm program, $20 million for the RITE grant to fund community-based restorative justice programming in our prisons. These investments don't just help incarcerated people. They reduce recidivism, they reduce cost, and they make communities safer. And I want to specifically highlight the restoration of funding for the inspector general, an office whose budget was cut by nearly 7% as a budget solution for a couple years, just a couple years ago. This oversight agency of the largest state department operates on less than half of 1% of CDCR's entire budget. At a time of documented abuses and costly litigation accountability as Assemblymember Cork said is both the right thing to do and the fiscally responsible one I want to thank the sub chair the budget chair and the speaker office for making this a priority And finally, I want to thank Chair Gabriel and all the sub chairs who prioritize issues communities across the state care deeply about. Your partnership makes this work possible for the beautiful people of Oakland, Alameda, and Emeryville, and for the Californians everywhere who are counting on this body to hold the line. And certainly, I want to thank you all for really engaging with me and the many conversations and questions that I approach related to healthcare, our education system, our public safety, housing, and safety net services. It's a thing to continue to be very persistent, and I thank you for always being welcoming of my inquiries and for orienting us entirely around solutions that will benefit every Californian.

With that, we will go to Assemblymember Patel. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr. Speaker. I know you're listening. Budget subchairs, of course, and our Senate counterparts want to also include staff in my thanks for their hard work through this negotiation process and the two-party agreement. We all understand the difficulties of this budget cycle, and yet there is justification to celebrate some important wins in our budget, including being balanced for two years and beginning the process of reducing the structural deficit and meeting this moment with compassion as we try to remain fiscally responsible. I'm prepared to support AB 109 and many aspects of the two-party deal, and at this time I would like to highlight a few strong points. This budget includes essential financial supports and strategic shifts to assist counties with the increased workload due to the H.R.1 passage for Medi-Cal redeterminations as well as CalFresh enrollment. There's additional funding for wildfire mitigation. It's an existential threat for the communities I represent in San Diego and across California, and continuing to invest in wildfire mitigation is critical to save lives and property across our state. I want to highlight continuing the grant funding for distressed hospitals facing significant financial distress and possible closure, whose financial strain will continue to increase with the likely increased number of uninsured seeking emergency and urgent care due to H.R.1. highlighting protecting funding for our public institutions of higher learning, the very same institutions that strengthen our economies and produce our next generation of highly skilled workforce, and yet face federal research funding cuts that undermine California's ability to lead across so many sectors of innovation and who work to address pressing issues facing humanity and also provide substantial revenues as return on investment to California. There is a significant investment for increased funding to support our students with disabilities and special education, and I want to highlight that. That is an area of focus for me as an Assembly member and as chair of the Assembly Education Committee and want to praise the investments towards those programs. This increased funding is absolutely essential as we continue to move towards least restrictive environment in California. I want to also highlight increased one-time investments for the Golden State Teacher Grant to help addressing teacher workforce shortages as our teachers do experience burnout and challenges, live and meeting the needs of high-cost communities. The budget does present a thoughtful approach to helping working families, and I want to highlight some aspects that are intersectional in this area. We're increasing child care slots, re-benching Prop 98 to include early childhood education, maternity leave for teachers, and putting forth a framework to transition more seniors to home and community-based services while simultaneously rejecting reductions to in-home supportive care services. Those things need to go together to make sure that they're functional. I want to also highlight one area, a couple areas of continued concern. One, as chair of the Assembly Education Committee, the underfunding of Prop 98. I remain hopeful that conversations with the governor will continue towards fully funding Prop 98. I want to just leave it at that and hope that negotiations continue in that direction. Additionally, having spent years in biotech research myself and as a member of the Select Committee on Biotechnology and Medical Technology, I know firsthand how sensitive R&D investment decisions are to incentive structures within the state of California. And I worry that cuts could tip the scales towards other states instead of providing long-term returns on investment and steady, high-paying jobs that provide significant return on investment to the state of California. I want to thank our community members who have reached out to our office and our advocates for continuing dialogue with us as we make our considerations on many aspects of the budget and the two-party deal. I look forward to the governor's response, and that concludes my remarks.

All right. I want to take I would like to take a moment to appreciate the incredible work of our budget chair and our sub chairs and budget staff for guiding us through this this difficult budget process. This was a complicated budget year that forced hard choices in order to protect critical lifesaving programs. And having been new to serving on budget sub two with Dr. Jackson, I just wanted to highlight him and let him know that you are truly a phenomenal chair and the way you handle that that committee. You know, that is a tough committee. Also, as co-chair of the Select Committee on CalFresh enrollment and also the nutrition, I would like to also thank my co-chair, Assemblymember Bonta, for all of her hard work as well as we did everything we could to continue to advocate for CalFresh. And so with that, I want to applaud our collective efforts to fight for CalFresh programs. The $30 million plus additional $215 million in the multiyear spending to support our county eligibility work will literally truly save lives. With average benefits equaling $6 a day, the over 700,000 vulnerable California's who stand to be kicked off the program are not prepared to withstand these changes. We desperately needed resources to support county employees who now will have to spend more time helping their recipients maintain their eligibility. So we are seeing reports from other states that when people are kicked off of social safety net programs for eligibility, there are a large number of eligible people that are also kicked off the program. So it is truly essential that we provide resources to county workers to support putting eligible people back on the program as well. Additionally I was proud to fight for a rejection of IHSS cuts to actually protect seniors to protect our children and people with disabilities And without these rejections we will be robbing these individuals of the dignity of receiving care in their own homes. So I'm just excited to see that our budget is still moving forward with those rejections. Additionally, we will be pushing people in vulnerable economic situations to nursing facilities that cost three times as much as it is to care for someone at home. So, again, I want to thank our budget chair, our subcommittee chair, and also my colleagues. And finally, there is one thing that I do have to speak about that is a painful point for me as I think about my district and go back to reflect on the different calls and emails and meetings that have happened just in the last couple of days. I have heard from many constituents and advocates in health care systems that are extremely concerned about the proposed MCO tax. We have it inside our budget here. And I understand that the existing tax does not comply with federal guidelines and that we need to make a change. But this will have some serious, some very serious impacts to my district. One of my plans within my district, for example, told me that their tax contribution will go up from just over a million dollars to more than $15 million annually. So that cost will have to get passed along somewhere, meaning more cost to businesses that will either hire fewer people or scale back coverage, leading to more cost and insurance for employees, or worse, meaning people are being laid off. So it also means increased cost for individuals at a time where we have promised to focus on affordability. So I understand that we are here now and that something had to change. But I just wanted to make it clear that this portion of the budget deal is an actual real problem for my district and can be really dangerous for people as we continue to move forward. I want us to remember that we are here and we were sitting here to fight for and also to protect various people, and we need to continue to do that work. But I know that it's here in the budget. I know why we're here. I know how it got there. But I will hope that we continue to have ongoing conversations as it pertains to the MCO tax moving forward. But otherwise, thank you guys for guiding us through this work. I'm happy to see some things pertaining to some other areas that San Diego can count on and pull from for budget concerns. But not only—well, not budget concerns, but being able to address our flooding issues that happened down in San Diego, but also being able to help address more emergency services for our local fire departments, especially those that are listed in our unincorporated areas. So I'm glad to see that there is some additional support to help all of our fire departments, but also Senegal can get some help for the stormwater infrastructure based on the way I've been able to articulate the budget. But thank you guys so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to also extend my appreciation to your hard work, as well as your team and everyone that was involved in crafting this budget. I know that it is difficult and challenging, especially with limited resources and quite a bit of priorities that you've heard already from my colleagues. I do want to give a special shout-out to Assemblymember Jackson and—Assemblymember Addis, or I should say Chair Jackson and Chair Addis. They have the most, I think, critical parts of this budget as it relates to human beings. And it is hard work when you know the decisions that you make have a significant and outsized impact on someone's ability to survive, let alone thrive, in our state. And of course I have to give a shout to my own chair Chair Bennett as we grappled with good work as it relates to climate energy and transportation and had a chance to weigh in on those I just keep my comments brief I like to highlight some comments from my colleague from San Diego and echo those sentiments, especially as it relates to local news and journalism. You know, we know that they play a key role in our communities, in particular ethnic media. That is a key communication tool for our underserved communities. And when you consider the headlines of late, whether it be wildfires, attacks on immigrant communities, public health emergencies and federal cuts to health care system, the losses that we've seen in journalism, jobs, as well as newsrooms closure, are particularly pronounced. And so, we should continue to examine how our state can help support our local journalism. We have the $10 million investment in our civic media programs. But I hope that as we continue on this budget, that we'll make opportunity for programs such as our local news fellowship and Propel. As chair of—oh, sorry, another comment that my colleague made from San Diego was about our R&D tax and our business credits. And here's the deal. Innovation is what carries California. It is what spurs us—what makes us California uniquely, apart from other states. And I think that that credit plays a role into that. And so I hope that that's something, as we work towards a three-party deal, would be considered. Last but not least, as my role as chair, there were a couple of things that stood out to me in this budget. had a chance to weigh in during committee, but I'll bring up two that was highlighted post having a chance to weigh in on committee. So our budget includes language that imposes additional limits related to automation on programs like the port and freight infrastructure program. Now we have agreed language within each of the allocation of those types of programs. But here's the deal. It is a blanket prohibition, and it doesn't allow for us to make adjustments based on the specific program. So I think that is something that we should be looking at and considering, because like I said, it is a blanket prohibition to use those resources. And then last but not least is, you know, we've had these recent changes as it relates to GGRF. We know that it is a continuing discussion. It says it in our floor report. We've talked about it quite a bit. But I do think, as we consider working towards this three-party deal, is the impact that this has on transit, the way those—the regulations, the way they changed, and those operations. And they've been facing fiscal cliffs, and we've talked about that a number of times. And we weren't—when we were factoring those fiscal cliffs, we weren't considering the impact of the recent language. And so I think we should be doing something as it relates to that in our regular general fund or from somewhere if we're not going to make changes to GGRF. And also noting that these types of transit agencies are impacted by our ZEV requirements, that private fleets, because of things that we've done, whether it was pulling waivers or additional language, they have been relieved from. So I think that if we're not going to make any changes related to GGRF, we need to consider the impact that our own regulations are having on our public fleets in comparison to our private fleets But I just want to echo those as chair of Transportation echo the comments from my colleague from San Diego, and note that I know there's still more work to be done. I appreciate every single person that has been involved in crafting this budget and getting to this place, especially LAO, for your work. You help us, you guide us, and you give great information, not only for us, but for members of the public. Thank you so much.

Solache. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I begin, I want to just really thank all the amazing staff that are under this department, finance department. As a former local mayor and council member, I know the important work that our staff does and our team. So I just want to thank everyone who is part of this process. Of course, it's under the leadership of our speaker and our budget chair, who I've seen him, you know, getting a little older per month, but per day, based on all his amazing work he's doing.

Thank you very much, Mr. Solache. I appreciate it. Now I'll turn it over to our vice chair. Thank you. Despite this progress, the underlying budget condition is not sound. First, the existence of any operating deficits during a revenue boom of this magnitude is itself a warning sign. Further, given the state's diminished reserves and an already accumulated wall of debt, California is ill-prepared for even a slip-up in revenues. Stock market runs like the one that we have seen in the last three years almost always ends in a dramatic reversal. Many revenues would decline significantly, even just a repeat of the 2022 market declines, which were mild by historical standards, could quickly push the budget into deep deficits. Specifically, income tax revenues across 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 fell $65 billion below 2022-2023 Budget Act estimates. Alarmingly, given current market conditions, the dot-com bust probably is better paralleled. If such scenario were to repeat, the revenue hole would be $100 billion. Using this year's budget to build resilience would allow the state to weather this kind of shock without immediately needing to turn to tax hikes or cuts to ongoing services. Now, I share that because that is not my opinion. That was written by the LAO. And as we just shared a thank you to the LAO and to a lot of the staff here, they are warning us that we are not prepared for a lot of these issues. I wanted to make sure that I was asking the Department of Finance their opinion. With the proposed budget, is it accurate to say that this would be the largest state budget in California's history? I believe that is correct, not looking at the data in front of me, sorry.

Would it also be accurate to say that we have record revenues right now in the state of California?

Are you including American Rescue Plan funds in that as part of the estimates?

But earlier this year when I asked that this was record revenues in January the answer was yes And so I would assume that with more revenues now the answer again would be yes I will turn to my colleague who has more of that detail

Department of Finance, one moment.

Well, yes. Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's as I've read the LAO's report, you know, the part that I'm really just trying to reflect is that right now in the state of California, we do have a record budget. There's never been more money available to the state of California before. We also have record revenues. And yet the proposal in front of us today has multiple tax increases. We are multiple. There is a new software tax increase. There's a new MCO tax increase. And the concern for me is if we're in a record position and we're adding more tax increases and we're pillaging the rainy day fund, is that not indicative of a larger warning that we have a spending issue here in the state of California than it comes to anything else?

And I share that mainly because the LAO is talking about a correction in the stock market. If we see a correction there, how well prepared is the budget to handle a 10% reduction in the market?

I think the Legislative Analyst's Office has also made that point.

And I appreciate you sharing that. And the main reason why I read the report is because it's just filled with data And it if we in a record revenue year and a record budget year and we already talking about structural deficits as your report warns that is indicative of a major problem And if and when a correction in the market happens with the way that we built our revenue system here in California with boom or bust budgeting there will be a day where having the hard conversation doing the hard things will not be a choice for us It will be something that we must do. And so in this budget and for the Department of Finance, in just a very clear way, does this budget increase the cost of private insurance policies for all Californians with the new tax?

I think my colleague actually already covered the issue, but I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

Mr. Sissou, do you want to speak to that?

And how proud we are of that? There are increases of funding for legal aid assistance, I believe, as Ms. Bonta and others pointed out.

Actually, legal aid funding in parts of the budget are available for citizens who are in need, for example, low-income citizens dealing with eviction defense and other matters. So there is funding in the budget for legal aid for those individuals in certain cases.

It's more than in the governor's proposal because the legislative budget plan augments that investment.

Thank you very much, Professor.

Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you for your tremendous leadership. Thank you to our speaker, our budget subchairs, all of our staff, consultants. And, of course, thank you to our advocates and members of the public who were with us every step of the way at all these budget hearings. It's my first year serving on budget sub-five, which is led by Assemblymember Quirk Silva. And, you know, today's agreement really reflects the values that I know so many of us hold dear. As we heard from our budget chair, those values are tested on a daily basis, sometimes hourly basis. And so much of what we are responding to is really a response from what Washington has been doing, what the Trump administration has been doing, devastating impacts of H.R.1, the ongoing federal funding reductions. And it's really the assembly, the state legislature, everyone here, and thanks to the help of the LAO and Department of Finance, who's really taking responsibility and taking action to protect our most vulnerable. As we heard from my colleagues already, H.R. 1 shifts billions of dollars of costs onto states and local governments. It's threatening health care access, safety net programs and services that millions of Californians depend on. And rather than turning our backs on our constituents, on working families, on seniors, on children, immigrants, our vulnerable communities, this is a budget that is working really hard to lessen a lot of those impacts that we know are going to hurt people. and for me some of the things that I was really proud to see and many of them my colleagues did a really wonderful job of highlighting already but I would be remiss if I didn't also highlight them was the HHAP dollars of 900 million the stop the hate funding for 30 million dollars which is an API caucus priority, rejecting the IHSS cuts, the expansion of the child care slots, rejecting the Medi-Cal asset limit cuts, supporting our food banks, rejecting the elimination of the Medi-Cal adult acupuncture benefit, increase in the MMIP grants, and also as chair of the Asia-California Trade and Investment Select Committee, was also really heartened to see the CalCompetes tax credit extension. And so I look forward to the ongoing negotiations from the Assembly, the Senate, and of course the governor's office and thank again our budget chair for his leadership on this. And so in closing, just wanna say that we can't replace every dollar that the federal government has taken from us, but we know that as leaders on the federal side choose to disinvest in California, we are working really hard to do the opposite, to make sure that we keep our working families and just everyday people as whole as possible. So thanks everyone for all the staff, for all of your hard work. Thank you. Thank you very much, Assemblymember.

I think you, Mr. Chair, look youthful and vibrant as ever as the day you arrive, sir. Now, to a serious matter, I do have a question for the Department of Finance. And I'm going to, of course, talk about public safety, building on the comments from our vice chair and our member from Oakland. Before I do, I just really want to say a profound thank you to sub-six chair Ramos and our talented staff, including Bernie and Jennifer, LAO. We tackle a lot of really significant issues this year, from sexual abuse in our facilities to mental health investments in prison to the missing and murdered indigenous peoples crisis. And so I just want to thank you all. It was really an honor to work with you on that. So here's my question for the Department of Finance. I believe, and I could be mistaken, but in reviewing the budget, I believe that Sub-6 has the only department in the state of California that's receiving nearly a billion dollars in new funding in this fiscal climate, all while serving fewer people. The department in question that I'm referring to is the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I'd like to hear from the Department of Finance as to whether they potentially support the savings proposals that are baked into this two-party agreement, this proposed budget, and specifically the additional prison closure and the additional unallocated reduction to CDCR.

Director Lee mentioned, I would just note that the billion-dollar figure you're referring to, I think, needs a little bit more context for the committee and both for the public. Of that amount, excuse me, it's about, I think, $882 million that's been added to CDCR, both in the governor's budget and mayor vision combined. Of that amount, about $660 million alone is just for employee compensation. So a vast majority of that figure is outside of CDCR's control. There's been additional investments, $100 million for workers' compensation costs, about $91 million for lump sum payments. So again, another big chunk is for what I would describe as baseline ongoing cost pressures that are largely outside of the department's control. There are things they can do to mitigate those costs, but they are true cost pressures. Beyond that, there's $23 million, I think, for ADA improvements, $15 million for Firewatch. So again, kind of within the fire life safety realm. So I would say there aren't a lot of new policy proposals for CDCR in this budget. So I just wanted to add some context there about the costs that are included in this budget for CDCR I appreciate it And I not going to pose another question I just conclude with a couple observations I think there are some wonderful things contemplated in this budget

Thank you very much, Assemblymember. I now want to go to Assemblymember Petrie-Norris.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember. Let's go to Assemblymember Rogers and then Assemblymember Fong.

Now let's go to Assemblymember Fong. Thank you so much, Chair Gabriel, and thank you so much to

Thank you very much, Assemblymember. With that, I believe we have exhausted—unless any last folks—all right, I believe we have exhausted questions and comments from members, which means that we can turn ourselves over to public comment. I want to thank all of the members on both sides of the aisle for their thoughtful comments and questions. I also want to thank, again, thank our staff, both Republican and Democratic staff, with a special acknowledgement to Christian Griffith, the chief consultant for our Assembly Budget Subcommittee, and all of our very talented Assembly Budget Committee staff. And with that, I will invite folks to come forward and offer a public comment. And if we could, recognizing that there is a very long line and understanding that people are really passionate about the issues and that we are very grateful for all of you who have come forward to provide public comment. And it is important. And I do want to lift up what what chair Adas said, that your comments are really important and have helped shape this budget process. Out of respect for those in line behind you who have traveled great distance to Sacramento I would ask that you keep your comments brief to your name the organization and the issue on which you wish to speak So thank you. Christine Smith, Health Access California. We appreciate the work done on this budget and are supportive of it overall and appreciate the delaying of the worst of the cuts for California's immigrants. also super appreciate the inclusion of revenue in the budget trailer bills. Thank you. Ken Hartman, Executive Director of Transformative Programming Works. I just want to thank the committee chair and subcommittee chair, Mr. Ramos, and of course, Ms. Bonta for championing the right grant again this year. And Mr. Dr. Jackson, you inspired me a quote that I know when I was listening to you, which is societies are also judged by how they treat people in prison. So thank you. Hi, Dr. Tetiar. I'm the CEO of Cardia Health. We're a nonprofit that provides clinical services to people experiencing homelessness. I'd like to thank the members of this committee for your thoughtful leadership and collaborative approach to stabilizing California's safety net system. Be Home Soon expands access to home and community-based services for Medi-Cal beneficiaries with chronic care needs. That includes unsheltered individuals with complex chronic care needs, children with complex health issues, adults who want to, elders who want to age at home, and adults who have sustained serious injuries. Providing long-term care in institutions like nursing homes, yields poor quality of life, high healthcare costs, and worse health outcomes. Then providing care in people's homes. I just want to urge you to support Be Home Soon as a component of the budget that will be adopted. And again, really want to thank you for your leadership in this area. Mr. Chair, Chris McKaley on behalf of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. We understand that there's a deal between the legislature and administration on the tax increases. We remain opposed to those measures and would like them not to be permanent. I also want to remind you that employers are paying a $1.6 billion cost each and every year to repay the UI debt to the federal government. Thank you. Hi, Jim Lindberg on behalf of the Friends Committee on Legislation of California. I would like to thank the legislature for prioritizing prison closure. We do agree that there is room for a lot more. I believe we have vacancies of something like 14,000 surplus, 14,000 people in prison. It doesn't seem like a good expenditure considering what our most vulnerable citizens are facing. I would like to thank the legislature also for funding the Right Grant Program, the Jails to Job Program. These are things that can make our prison system smaller over time, and also for the funding to investigate sexual abuse in women's prisons. We appreciate that very much. We have other comments about Health and Human Services that we'll submit in writing. Thank you. Mr. Chair and members, Wendy Mitchell on behalf of LA Metro, we'd just like to reiterate the comments made by Assemblymember Wilson and the GGRF funding. We know that's something to continue to be worked on. But LA Metro alone with the LCTOP will lose $50 million, which is money used for operations. And the TIRCP money is also used. We have a big loss but that is used to leverage federal funds so that a double loss We encourage you to continue to work on that as the transportation funding deal was made with the legislation last year and we feel that it's a little bit of a bait and switch. Thank you, and we look forward to working with you and continue to work with you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Amy Costa here on behalf of the California State Sheriff's Association, the California District Attorneys Association, and the Chief Probation Officers of California. We want to thank the legislature for acknowledging and providing funding for Proposition 36. We would, however, note that $50 million is insufficient to provide the wraparound services needed for people to successfully receive and complete treatment. Also, on behalf of the Chief Probation Officers, we'd like to note we remain concerned that there is no funding provided for pretrial services. Thank you. Good afternoon, Yasmeen Pellet on behalf of Justice and Aging. We're very pleased to see the inclusion of the Be Home Soon California proposal in the joint legislative agreement. Also, the investments in HomeSafe and HDAP, and we're also in support of the fair share contribution. We appreciate that the legislature's joint agreement rejects the $2,000 Medi-Cal asset limit, and we look forward to continuing to work with the legislature to reform this inequitable policy. We're also pleased that this budget rejects the governor's proposed cuts to IHSS and APS. Thank you so much. Danica of Whole Consulting voicing some gratitude to our champions and supporters who are here right now, Assemblymember Bonta, Assemblymember Schultz, on behalf of the Vera Institute of Justice in California for the inclusion of the Jails to Jobs Workforce Development Program, on behalf of the L.A. Public Defenders Union for the inclusion of the continued funding for the Penal Code Revision Committee and the California Policy Lab to continue their partnership on behalf of Transformative Programming Works and the GRIP Training Institute for the inclusion of the right grant. Thank you. Good afternoon, Andrew Shane, on behalf of the County Welfare Directors. In gratitude to the chair, the subchairs, our champions, Dr. Sharp Collins and Ms. Schiavo, for the investments in county eligibility workers, which many members mentioned today. We urge you to fight for the full funding proposed for CalFresh and Medi-Cal, because if we don't have the workers, we are going to have the dire outcomes that Ms. Bonta and others mentioned today. So, so grateful. And Sub-7, right, it was really a team effort. Very briefly, also greatly appreciate the rejection of the cuts to IHSS, APS, the investments in child welfare in the housing and homeless development programs, homelessness prevention programs, and just knowing there are several critical pieces of trailer bill, including the match waiver and rejecting DHCS's punitive county sanctions TBL. Thank you. Mr. Chair, members, Brian White, on behalf of Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, Pacific Maritime Association, and several other stakeholders who are supportive of modernizing our ports, we are highly concerned, as City Member Wilson shared, about the concerns with the blanket prohibition and use of state funds for automation at ports. We think the language that's in the budget bill is highly expansive, and it does not—it's not consistent with what's been done in the budget before. It is a massive pivot in state policy by targeting not just the equipment, but also the infrastructure that's part of that policy. So we would highly suggest that this language be removed from the budget bill. It's policy language. It's not appropriation, and we ask for your no vote on that specific language. Thank you. CARMEN NICOLE COX, Good afternoon, Chair and members. Carmen Nicole Cox, on behalf of the Cayenne Wellness Center. I do want to start by thanking the Black Caucus and the Legislature for funding the Sickle Cell Centers for Excellence. We definitely need to have... of high-quality care for sickle cell warriors. On behalf of my client, and I also want to thank Senator Perez for championing our urgent budget request, because Cayenne Wellness Center is the statewide community-based organization that gets sickle cell warriors to and from their doctor's appointments, that provides the no-cost mental health care. That is currently not in the two-party deal, and we definitely want to continue working with you to see it added. Thank you. Thank you. Chair and members, Kathy Mossberg on behalf of the local health plans, just want to speak to the move, the administration's proposal to move the UIS population for fee-for-service. We are grateful to the legislature's proposal to allow us a little more time to have these discussions. Grateful to Chair Addis and Sub 1. Grateful to Assemblymember Bonta and her championship to this issue. We are continuing to have conversations with the governor's office and the administration on this, but it truly, the fee-for-service system is not available for a lot of care, for specialty care, cancer treatment, dialysis, all of that. We don't have fee-for-service solution for those needs, and we really need time to craft an alternative solution. So we'll continue to work with the administration. Thank you. Good afternoon. Jesse Hernandez on behalf of the Campaign for College Opportunity. We thank the legislature for maintaining the promise of higher education in this budget. We're especially grateful to see continued investments in the UC, the CSU, and the California community colleges, as well as thoughtful state financial aid investments, including those to carefully implement Workforce Pell. We're especially thankful for increased investments to support the crucial work of our dream resource liaisons at our community colleges and similar work at our high schools. We look forward to seeing these investments in the final budget to ensure continued college access and success for all Californians. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Daniel Rodriguez with Immigrants Rising, here to express our appreciation and support for the inclusion of funding for Dream Resource Centers. Last but not least, we also ask that in the coming days, you consider including in the budget a reinvestment in the Social Entrepreneurs for Economic Development Initiative, known as SEED, to support small businesses, especially immigrant entrepreneurs who are under deep economic strain as their access to capital has been and continues to be greatly restricted. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Connie Delgado on behalf of the District Hospital Leadership Forum here in grateful appreciation for the inclusion of the money for distressed hospital loans, distressed hospital programs and funding. For district hospitals, in the first round, they received more than half of the total pot. These funds represent a lifeline for district hospitals and the communities that they serve. Thank you. Good afternoon, Alexa Rodriguez-Chavez on behalf of the Latino Coalition for Healthy California. I want to express our thanks to the Assembly, Chair Gabriel and Speaker Rivas for working with colleagues in the Senate to come to a budget agreement that delays the most harmful cuts for the immigrant health. We are especially thankful for the delays in the elimination of dental for UIS and also thankful for the delay in the move of the humanitarian groups off of the medical coverage. We are also grateful for the progress in revenue generation and how that will help the health structures and health access. And we look forward to continue to work towards restoring all the cuts on immigrant health Thank you Good afternoon Mr Chair and members Micah Doctoroff on behalf of Smart Justice California We wanted to thank you for including prison closure in the budget and we would urge the legislature to continue to prioritize prison closure in order to fund other critical services in the coming weeks We also want to thank you so much for funding for indigent defense, for services and programs for survivors of crime, and also for rehabilitative services. Thank you so much. Darby Kernan, on behalf of In Child Poverty California, I want to thank Assemblymember Bonta and Assemblymember Jackson for their advocacy for Promise Neighborhoods and for the investment with community schools in the partnership of Promise Neighborhoods and Place-Based Initiatives. We also want to thank the subcommittee staff who have worked diligently with us to get this proposal into Traylorville. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Eduardo Martinez here on a couple of items. First, on behalf of Ultimate Health Services, I want to thank the committee for the delay in the elimination of the clinic PPS rate for the UIS population, the adoption of the alternative fee for service for the UIS transition and the rejection of pace cuts. Also, on behalf of Western Dental, the state's largest Medi-Cal dental provider, I want to thank the committee for the delay to cuts to dental provider rates via Prop 56. Really want to shout out Assemblymember Addis, Assemblymember Salace, Assemblymember Bonta for all the great work and somewhat really much thank you for that. And then lastly, on behalf of Actors' Equity, a national labor union of theater actors, We are disappointed to see the lack of investment in the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund and urge the legislature to consider even a modest funding allocation in this extremely successful workforce development program. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mark Farouk on behalf of the California Hospital Association. I wanted to start to thank the committee and Sub 1 in particular for the inclusion of the money for the Distress Hospital Loan Program. I know that was an item that was consistently discussed in Sub 1 to really appreciate the members of that committee for following up on that commitment. I did want to denote, however, disappointment related to the MCO tax proposal. We believe that Prop 35 funds should be used to produce meaningful provider payment improvements that strengthen access to care. However, portions of the proposed budget plan instead redirect those resources to support existing state obligations, reducing the direct benefit to providers and patients. At a time when the health care system faces unprecedented financial pressures and significant federal funding reductions, California should at a minimum aim to maintain Prop 35 investments in 2026 at the same level as 2025. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Laura Lane with the California Association of Public Hospitals. Thank you for including $250 million for public hospitals in the budget due to the tireless advocacy of our champion Assemblymember Aarons and Chairs Bonta and Addis. This is an important first step as we face unprecedented challenges that HR 1 brings when fully implemented HR 1 will cost our systems nearly three billion dollars annually So we urge expanded and continuing funding to stabilize our safety net We also appreciate the PPS delay and finally we look forward to continuing conversations on the UIS transition to fee-for-service. Thank you Mr. Chair and members I'm Erin Evans on behalf of the County of Santa Clara Clara. We really appreciate the assistance offered in this agreement for working to mitigate the impacts of the federal H especially as our county faces a billion annual impact from that bill Specifically we like to echo the thanks of CAPH for providing million for public hospitals, and special thanks to Assemblymember Arons and Chairs Addison Bonta for their work on this proposal. We also appreciate funding included for eligibility workload for both CalFresh and Medi-Cal, and the $125 million for emergency services alternative to indigent care. Thank you to so many on this dais for that work. We also appreciate the rejection of the IHSS proposal to shift costs to counties of increased hours per case. And we support the $900 million in HAP funding for Round 7. Finally, we'd like to lend our support for the additional revenues, including the fair share contribution. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Natalie Spivak with Housing California. on behalf of a coalition of over 100 affordable housing, homelessness, and tenant protections organizations statewide. I want to say thank you for fighting for critical investments in HAP, state low-income housing tax credits, and the multifamily housing program. We also deeply appreciate the legislature's support for an affordable housing bond and its commitment to maintaining GGRF investments in affordable housing, transportation, and clean air programs promised last year. We also urge the legislature to ensure that funding in the final budget includes three programs not named in the joint legislative budget, Cal Home, the Joe Cerna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program, and the Portfolio Reinvestment Program. We look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you. Kim Rothschild on behalf of the IHSS Public Authorities and the Collaborative for Long-Term Services and Supports, thank you for rejecting the cuts to IHSS, and thank you to Chair Jackson and Nicole for working with our advocates on the program. Mr. Chair and members, Michael Pimtel here on behalf of the California Transit Association, as well as a coalition of more than 60 transportation, housing, local government, environmental, labor, business, and disability rights organizations asking you to protect the Tier 3 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund programs. We appreciate that the budget includes placeholder language that keeps the conversation open. We look forward to engaging with you to help move that forward and into completion. In particular, we're supportive of the affordable housing program, the transit capital and intercity rail capital program, and the low-carbon transit operations program. And then finally, on behalf of the California Transit Association, ask for the appropriation of the $230 million for the zero-emission transit capital program. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair members. Michelle Gibbons with CHIAC, representing local health departments. First, I want to express our huge appreciation for maintaining the public health information technology systems, as well as the disease intervention specialists. We also want to thank the legislature for the mitigation on H.R. 1 impacts to counties, and in particular, I want to thank the Assembly for your leadership on the indigent care piece. I will say in order for this to be an effective solution, we need to make sure that these funds are used to create a state benefit that's state-funded, state-administered emergency medical services. This way it maximizes the connection to Medi-Cal and helps to get people back into full scope Medi-Cal as soon as they meet an exemption and or fulfill the requirements. So appreciate your leadership and hope that these elements will make it into the final budget agreement. Thank you. Kelly Brooks here on behalf of several clients. First, on behalf of the urban counties of California, the counties of Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Ventura, Riverside, Calusa, Plumas, and Alpine, Thank you so much for your work to mitigate the impacts of HR1 We appreciate the package included in the budget Additionally counties are thankful for your actions on IHSS Adult Protective Services and the Behavioral Health Services Act Revenue Stabilization, Trailer Bill Language. On behalf of UC Health, thank you for the funding for public hospitals, as well as the Prop 56 dental funding. Special shout out to Assemblymember Arons, Assemblymember Addis, and Assemblymember Bonta. On behalf of the Center for Elders and Independence, thank you for your PACE actions. On behalf of Lifelong, Thank you for the delay of the PPS elimination. And finally, on behalf of diaper banks, thank you for the $16.5 million to make sure there are diapers available for children of all ages. And a special thanks to Assemblymember Ortega for all of her advocacy. Good afternoon, Chairmembers. Whitney Francis with the Western Center on Law and Poverty. We appreciate progressive revenue solutions that prevent people from losing their health and food benefits and echo our support for the Fair Share Contribution Plan. We also appreciate the inclusion of the Be Home Soon California proposal that recognizes keeping people in community is not just the preferred choice, but results in savings. And we support the rejection of the governor's proposal to drastically reduce the asset limit to $2,000 and rejection of IHSS cuts. Finally, while the legislature's delay in Medi-Cal cuts targeted at immigrants is a vast improvement from the May revise, we remain concerned with the discriminatory cuts and look forward to the work ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. We'd first of all like to express our thanks for your leadership this year on what we know has been a challenging budget. First of all, thanking you for community schools funding, the $1 billion, and the intent to implement the program with fidelity to the existing framework. We also urge you to consider also making sure that there's regional technical assistance for existing and the expanded school sites that will be implementing the program. Also, for universal pre-kindergarten, we urge you to continue. Well, first of all, we thank you for your support, the legislature's version of funding for that program, which would provide technical assistance for county offices of education and local education agencies to help the universal pre-kindergarten schools to get training and development and also to help them improve and continue to provide support and assistance for this still very new program, which was adopted in 2023. And lastly, we want to urge your continued support for school teachers who are part of the educator workforce package that you've adopted. We want to make sure that teachers can continue to seek leadership positions on school sites as principals and continue that pipeline. So thank you very much for your support again, and we look forward to working with you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. J.C. Lee with the California Taxpayers Association. and on behalf of a broad coalition of taxpayers and industry associations opposed to SB122, the tax on digital software and software as a service and the limitation on tax credits. If enacted, this would be one of California's largest tax increases in recent memory. This is not the time to make California less affordable and more expensive, particularly for the industry striving its future. For these reasons, we urge you to reject this bill. Thank you. Hello, Vanessa Flores on behalf of Alameda County Board of Supervisors. We appreciate your leadership in providing funding to establish county indigent care programs and for your continued support of California's public health hospital system. We also appreciate your commitment to maintaining funding and administrative support for Cal Fresh and Medi-Cal and Cal Fresh County eligibility operations. Additionally, we thank you for rejecting the governor's proposals related to IHSS, including the proposed cost-chefs to counties. Thank you. Mr. Chair, Brendan Rupicki, on behalf of a number of transit clients, Monterey-Salinas Transit District, Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit, Caltrain, San Mateo County Transit, Solano County Transit, San Francisco Bay Ferry, San Joaquin Regional Transit, Sunline Transit, County Connection via Transportation. I want to echo the comments made by the California Transit Association as it relates to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. I would ask that the legislature prioritize fully funding Tier 3 programs in the forthcoming negotiations. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members and staff. Keely O'Brien with the Western Center on Law and Poverty. Here to thank the legislature, especially Subcommittee Chair Dr. Jackson, for the $5 million investment in the California Food Assistance Program Plus expansion, the automation changes, prepare California to assist people losing CalFresh due to H.R. 1 cuts, and sets us up to protect more than half a million Californians from hunger and destitution. We also thank the legislature for providing the necessary funding to support CalFood CalFresh outreach the diaper bank network for assisting counties with HR1 implementation and for funding legal services and deportation defense We also thank you for the prison prison closure proposal And we urge the legislature to stand with the people of California By adopting a budget that requires wealthy corporations to pay their fair share and look forward to supporting progressive revenue trailer bills Thank you Hello and thank you, Chair and members. My name is Sam Wilkinson, and I am a member of the In Child Poverty in California Coalition. We are thrilled to see a budget premised on progressive revenue solutions, have full support for the fair share contribution fund, as well as permanently capping corporate tax credits. These progressive revenue proposals move California closer to a tax system where wealthy corporations pay their fair share and help protect investments that family and communities rely on. In regards to health care, we'd love to align our comments with Justice in Aging and Western Center on Law and Poverty. On child care, we hope that a final budget can include a right-sized COLA for providers. Child care providers are at the heart and soul of our communities, and they should be paid an annual increase that covers the rising costs. We appreciate the 22,770 new child care spaces in the legislature's state budget proposal. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Dennis Cuellas Romero with the California Primary Care Association Advocates. Really want to express our deep appreciation for all the hard work. We know these were very hard decisions, in particular to Subcommittee One and all the hard work all year to protect and limit the harm to patients across the state. In particular, really want to express appreciation for the PPS protection for UIS patients at clinics, funding for gender-affirming care, reducing the harm to all the other rejections or delays on Medi-Cal cuts, and really express appreciation for allowing ongoing conversations on the transition for the UIS population. Thank you so much for all your work. Appreciate it. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Charlotte Neal, representing Child Care Providers United, speaking on the work of family child care providers. By offering us half the amount it the legislators saying our work is only half as valuable We are already struggling to make ends meet and providers across California are being forced to close every day because reimbursement rates cover a fraction of the cost. This COLA doesn't even keep up with inflation. Thank you for your support. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairs and Chair members. My name is Sam Sam Khalif. And I'm family home child care from San Diego and part of the UDW. I just want to share with you guys on increasing the causes. In the past year, my grocery price to provide hard nutrition meals to the children in my care. For many of them, the only nutrition food that they receive has almost tripled. And the gas I buy to transport school-aged children from school while their parenting work as nurses, journalists, and delivery drivers have increased each week by close to $100, when I already can't pay myself a salary on the state low rates, how am I supposed to stay open in my business? Thank you for listening. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Deo Agustin. I am a child care provider for 18 years and a proud member of CCPU SEIU 521. I see firsthand heavily working families in my community struggle with the crushing cost of living. But right now, the state's reimbursement system is crushing providers, too. What California pays us does not reflect the true cost of care. Everything has gone up except our rates. Nutritious meals, gas, premiums, insurance, maintaining proper staff to ratios to ensure safety and quality attention costs more than ever, yet we struggle even to meet the minimum wage. Because reimbursement rates fall behind, California's entire child care system faces constant destabilization. That's why I'm asking that all early educators receive the full 4.31 percent COLA. Again, for all early educators, 4.31 percent COLA. Thank you. Hello, my name is Yvonne Bejar, a child care provider for 24 years here in Sacramento, a member of the CCPU. On the cost of living in California, recent data show that the average Californian has to take home $30.48 per hour just to afford their necessities. We can barely pay ourselves and salary and those of us who do are taking home $7 to $10 an hour. Who do you expect us to keep our doors open? How do you expect us to survive? Please, I request you attend this matter because it's very, very urgent for my community. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Jessica Magdaleno. and I am here representing CCPU child care providers across California. When California invests only half as much in child care providers it raises an important question Is our work worth only half as much Every day, family child care providers care for California's children, support working families, and help keep our economy moving. Yet, many providers are struggling to keep their doors open because reimbursement rates cover only a fraction of the true cost of care. This proposed COLA does not keep pace with inflation. We are not asking for a special treatment. We are asking for fairness and recognition of the essential work that we do. Investing in child care is investing in children, families, and the future of California. Our work matters, and our voices deserve to be here. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair and members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm Aurora Reyes, a member of CCPU Local 99. I'm a family child care educator of 19 years from Los Angeles. I urge you to fully fund and deliver the 44,000 slots promised in 2021's budget with a strong priority on the flexible voucher-based options. Families across California are struggling to access care as child care deserts grow. Reimbursement rates are so low that providers can't keep their doors open. Even when families qualify, a lack of flexible options means that they can't find the care that meets their needs. I've worked with parents who have been told the wait list for subsidized care is up to three years. For them, this isn't delayed. This is denied. But adding slots alone is not enough. Without increased provider pay, funding new slots is an empty gesture. We cannot expand access if providers are being forced to close. Investing in child care means investing in our workforce, our businesses, and our economy. Thank you. Good afternoon, members. My name is Wendy Moran, family child care provider and probable member of Local 99. For 17 years, I have served children's support families in South Central Los Angeles. My child care program is more than a business. It's a safe place and trusted space where children learn and feel safe. Today, many providers and families are living with fear and uncertain because family child care programs operate in our homes. It is critical that providers understand their rights and responsibilities so we can protect ourselves and the children in our care and the families who depend on us. AB 2379 will ensure that family child care providers across California have access to consistent statewide know-your-rights training regardless of where they live or what language they speak. This training will help us providers to stay informed, prepared, and focus on what matters the most, keeping our children safe. I respectfully ask you to support AB 2379. Every family child care provider deserves access to information and tools needs to serve children and families who are confident. Thank you for your consideration. Good afternoon, Richard Raya, CEO of Marin Promise Partnership. and also a member of the California Cradle to Career Coalition here to thank you for your inclusion of promised Neighborhoods in the budget We know that Promise Neighborhoods result in back for every invested due to increases in kinder readiness, graduation rates, and other positive academic outcomes. And in my county, Marin, we are launching multiple Promise Neighborhoods, working closely with our community schools. And I know communities across the state are doing the same, and we are shovel ready. Lastly, I want to say thank you to Assemblymember Mia Bonta and Assemblymember Jackson for their unwavering commitment to Promise Neighborhoods. Thank you. Greetings. Edgar Chavez. I'm the Executive Director of Hayward Promise Neighborhoods. We're a 15-year place-based initiative that recently received a $13.5 million federal grant cancellation. We are here to continue advocating for emergency funding for Mission Chula Vista and Hayward to continue this backbone support in the state. We're so thrilled and thankful for the support of including promised neighborhoods and community schools funding support to continue expanding and sustaining current promised neighborhoods. We're really thankful for Assemblymember Bonta, Dr. Jackson for pushing us for years. We were there in East Oakland when we first launched this five years ago and seeing the state really adopt this model and so many ready communities across the state ready to invest in their neighborhoods. Thank you. Sarah Brennan with the Weidemann Group. First, on behalf of Valor, we want to thank the Assembly for the inclusion of $50 million in the budget for the victims of crime funding. And on behalf of NextGen California, we thank the Assembly for the critical investments in immigrant defense, healthy school foods, and higher education. We urge inclusion of Cap and Invest to protect climate funding, the Student Loan Empowerment Network to protect student borrowers, and additional Division of Apprenticeship staffing in the final budget negotiations. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. My name is Ryan Barbosa. I'm a student at UC Berkeley, and I just would like to share my personal appreciation for the proposed increase in legal counsel to undocumented folks. Immigrants are the backbone of California's economy, and as someone who is now a Brazilian-American and has navigated the brutal and confusing immigration system, I think that this is an amazing initiative that will help to support other folks who deserve just a chance for a better future, just like I did one day. So, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, members. I'm Nina Weiler-Harwell with AARP here on behalf of our 3.2 million members. I'm just here to say thank you. Thank you for rejecting that awful age of eligibility increase to adult protective services. Thank you for rejecting essentially the cut to CalPACE or the CalPACE providers. and really appreciate the thoughtful approach you're taking in terms of extending the reduction in the Medi-Cal asset test to next July, setting it at 21,000, and we look forward to further conversations on that next year. Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, excuse me, Chair and members. Beth Monowski of SEAU California. On behalf of Unrigged California and Fight for Health campaigns, strongly support the new and permanent corporate-sourced revenue and the fair share from big corporations program, including the legislative two-party agreement. We stand on their health for all coalitions, supporting the delays to the most harmful Medi-Cal cuts, and particularly grateful for the maintenance of the current Medi-Cal asset test until July 1, 2027. And we're grateful the joint agreement maintains core funding for IHSS by rejecting all of the governor's proposed cuts. regrettably without a dedicated 150 million for w quib we risk losing quality gains we've made in skilled nursing homes lastly we're grateful for the strong commitment to county health and human services. In particular, I want to align with CAPH on the dedicated funding for public hospitals, with CWDA on the funding for both CalFresh and Medi-Cal eligibility work at the counties, and lastly, align with CHIAC on the alternative for indigent care or state-funded state pilot program for Medi-Cal emergency-only services for those falling off of Medi-Cal due to HR1 work requirements. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair members. Emma Jungwirth on behalf of the California State Association of Counties. CSAC values the legislature's partnership and commitment to prioritize resources that support counties in delivering the services that Californians communities rely on. We are in strong support of several elements of the legislative budget agreement. For H.R.1, CSAC is grateful for the resources that will help counties preserve the safety net. This includes around $450 million for county eligibility work to help people maintain their Medi-Cal coverage and CalFresh benefits, $125 million for an alternative to county indigent care for the creation of the emergency-only Medi-Cal program, $250 million for public hospitals. We're also supportive of the $190 million for the existing distressed hospital loan program. We're grateful for the legislature's action to reject the administration's IHSS cost shift proposal. For HAP, CSAC appreciates the legislature's investing an additional funding for a total of $900 million for Round 7. We do continue to advocate for inclusion of the intent language to provide an additional $1 billion for the HAP program in 27-28. And finally, on Proposition 36, we greatly appreciate the legislature's recognition of the ongoing challenges counties face in delivering necessary services. And we continue to advocate for increased resources that are ongoing and sustainable across multiple impacted county departments. Thank you. Good afternoon, committee chair and members. Yareli Magallon with Political Solutions on behalf of the Business Software Alliance. Here today to voice BSA's opposition to the Software as a Service tax that was included in the larger legislative agreement. This is a major expansion of California's tax base that will increase costs for consumers, harm small businesses, undermine investment, and weaken the state's economic competitiveness. Thank you for the opportunity to voice our concerns. Good afternoon, Mandy Deese with Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, CREC. I'm here to echo our appreciation alongside other immigrant rights organizations on the delays and rejections across the board to help preserve health access and limit the harm to refugee and immigrant communities. Also want to extend our gratitude for the additional funding for legal services to meet the moment. Lastly, also want to urge the legislature to allocate ethnic studies funding to fulfill state statute for the high school ethnic studies mandate, but also to recognize its important intersection across health, education, and economic equity. Thank you. Chair and members, Tiffany Mock on behalf of CFT, a union of educators and classified professionals, we want to first thank you all for your hard work on this budget and for the augmented COLA of 4.31% as well as additional funding for special education. Nevertheless, we oppose, along with LACO, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, who wanted me to note their opposition to the $3.9 billion withholding. We believe this is an unconstitutional budget maneuver. CFT is also opposed to the inclusion of the private state preschool programs in the Proposition 98 funding. Private schools should not be funded by public dollars. The proposed change adds significant ongoing costs at the same time as the withholding of billions is part of this budget Finally on behalf of CFT only we also want to continue to support a state bank commission as championed by Assembly Members Haney and Calra and Senator Weiner Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Rachel Blucher. First, on behalf of LA Care, I want to thank the work of Sub1 and also Assembly Member Bonta and her staff on the rejections of the Medi-Cal transition for UIS to the fee-for-service system. I want to thank the continued work and align our comments with LHPC on those issues. Also, on behalf of the counties of San Diego, Contra Costa, YOLO, Lake, and Imperial, align our comments with my county colleagues, and just thank you for the commitment to these issues, Sub 1, Sub 2, Sub 7. Really appreciate the time that you spend on these issues to mitigate the impacts of HR1. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Grace Glazer on behalf of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. I really want to thank this committee for including $50 million to fund the Victims of Crime Act, VOCA, as well as the $12.5 million for trauma recovery centers, and finally support the recommendation to close an additional prison. Thank you. Good afternoon. Diego Zamayo, a policy intern with Mesa Veda, the group, and Latina Advocate. on behalf of Inclusive Action for the City to also uplift the economic mobility for all coalition's effort with Assemblymember Carrillo and Senator Brecker's request to see investments in SEED 4.0 to help entrepreneurs across the state. Thank you. Nick Luizos on behalf of the California Association of Health Plans. First, on behalf of our Medi-Cal Managed Care members, we do want to thank you for the additional time to find an alternative to the UIS to fee-for-service proposal. We look forward to those discussions. However, on behalf of our commercial health plans, we are strongly opposed to SB 125, the MCO tax proposal. It's unaffordable, unsustainable, will lead to market impacts and changes that are not going to be great for consumers. We have always been team players on the MCO tax. We've always been at the table. Getting it right requires thoughtful discussion, transparency, and time. And unfortunately, we weren't allotted those things during this May revise process. We would go on to say that we understand that, you know, CMS has changed the rules. Federal government has changed the rules on us. But other states have different have taken different approaches that actually lower the MCO tax instead of raising it exponentially and having those funds go as a general fund backfill, particularly at a time when the Medi-Cal budget is projected to increase by billions of dollars and enrollment is assumed to go down. So we think it's bad policy, and we urge you to reject it. Thank you. Good afternoon. Angelica Gonzalez with Kaiser Permanente. We also are respectfully opposed to SB 125. This health care tax will be ultimately passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums and disproportionately impacts Kaiser Permanente. While we recognize the importance of maintaining a legally compliant MCO tax in light of recent federal actions, any proposal should be developed collaboratively with stakeholders and structured in a way that's affordable, sustainable, compliant, and focused on improving healthcare access and outcomes. Thank you. Michael Henning, California Alliance of Child and Family Services. We wanted to thank you for restoring funding at the Commission for Behavioral Health, for the Innovation Partnership Fund and for behavioral health advocacy contracts, as well as providing million for Round 7 of HAP We look forward to working with the legislature to address the foster family agency insurance crisis to ensure that 6 foster youth served by these agencies receive the care and support they need to thrive. Thank you. Sarah Flox, California Federation of Labor Unions. And we thank you and are in strong support of the software as a service tax that expands our sales tax base. Also, the cap on corporate tax breaks and especially the proposal for a corporate fair share revenue measure. We urge you to enact that next year. Over 60 percent of Medi-Cal recipients are workers. In light of the cuts that are coming down from H.R.1, this begs the question, why are corporations in California not providing affordable job-based health care and paying wages so low that workers are on Medi-Cal? This is a health care safety net program, not a corporate subsidy, and corporations need to pay their fair share. Thank you. Thank you very much. Vanessa Kahina on behalf of the California Family Physicians. We thank the Assembly for your hard work to preserve access for the state's most vulnerable members in mitigating some of the harm of H.R. 1 in the transition that we look at now from view for service for people with UIS status. We also appreciate the continued dialogue on the menopause trailer bill language and adoption of placeholder until we proceed to continue those talks. We also look forward to discussions on the MCO tax, making sure that the core of Prop 35 is preserved as intended by the voters. On behalf of the promotoras of vision and compromiso, we hope to see some support for community-based organizations that those need to keep Californians enrolled in Medi-Cal and food assistance. Then on behalf of CalPACE, to our subcommittee chair Addis, and to Assemblyman Solace, we thank you. We deeply, deeply thank you. You've been stalwarts for a very important program. Thank you. Mr. Chair and members, my name is Eric Dowdy. I'm with the California Dental Association. We just want to thank the committee for protecting the Medi-Cal Dental Prop 56 rate, very important to the integrity of the Medi-Cal Dental Program. A special thank you to Assemblymember Addis, who was a stalwart for us in this issue, and we appreciate everyone's support on this. Thank you. Alexis Rodriguez with the California Chamber of Commerce. We remain opposed to SB 122 specifically to the software as a service tax and the business credit limitation. Implementing a tax on digital software will significantly increase the cost of California's businesses of all sizes. SB 122 will layer taxes on top of one another and that will be reflected in the final cost and products to consumers. to consumers. Additionally, implementing a permanent business credit limitation will weaken the importance incentives that support research, innovation, hiring, and job creations in California. Additionally, the MCO tax proposed in SB 125 will significantly increase the cost of healthcare to working families, putting those families at risk of losing healthcare themselves. And then lastly, we remain opposed to the fair share proposal in SB 177. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME California. We want to express our appreciation to the legislature for their commitment to ensure transparency at CDCR by requiring reporting to the legislature on their program requests and that the programs invest in the civil service workforce, not contractors. We appreciate the inclusion of $77 million for VLF, for counties of San Mateo, Alpine and mono And we also align our comments with the labor fed on corporate fair share and comments related to revenue We align our comments with CFT on related to Prop 98 And we appreciate the rejection of IHSS cuts and asset limit tests and align our comments with our AFSCME affiliate, UDW. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Ronald Coleman here on behalf of Chirla. Chair and members, we greatly appreciate the $350 million investments in the Dream Resource Centers. We also appreciate the $5 million investment for the Immigrant Welcome Center. We also very much appreciate the $12 million for the enhanced services for asylees and vulnerable noncitizens. That will go a long way for asylees and human trafficking victims and immigrant victims of crime to settle in our state comfortably. We also very much appreciate the robust funding for legal services for immigrant communities, including the $5 million to CHURLA for their legal services operations. We also thank you for all the work that you did on health care to delay many of the deep cuts that will hurt, significantly hurt immigrant communities. It goes a long way to make sure that, at least for another year, we can continue to hold off some of those really draconian cuts, which will certainly cause people to potentially even die. Finally, we thank you very much for deferring action on the DMV's proposal to enter into state-to-state verification until we settle TBL with guardrails for protections for California residents. We urge you to continue to hold the line until we can settle those guardrails in place and make sure that Californians' information is not going to be abused. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Taisha Watts with the California Housing Partnership. I want to first align majority of my comments with my colleague from Housing California, and to thank you all for putting forward a budget agreement that helps to limit the impacts of HR1 on our key safety net programs. We are very appreciative of the allocations to the state LIHTC program and the MHP program. The MHP program is our flagship program that enables us to reduce housing to our 1.2 extremely low-income residents. So we would like to ensure that this program is funded at adequate levels. We also urge the legislature to include funding for preservation. We saw that that was left out of the agreement, so we want to ensure that we have funding for the portfolio reinvestment program. And then finally, the CARB deal that has put GGRF revenues at risk. This will inherently impact our Tier 3 programs, which includes our ASIC program, another flagship program for how we're able to produce and sustain affordable housing in California. So we thank you for your leadership during this difficult budget deficit and we look forward to working with you all. Good afternoon. Marina Espinoza with the California Housing Consortium. We are very grateful for the legislature's investments in the low income housing tax credit program and the multifamily housing program and also appreciate the support for a statewide housing bond. I'd also like to emphasize the importance of protecting tier three programs funded by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, including the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program. Thank you so much for your work. Good afternoon, Gabriela Chavez with United Domestic Workers. Thank you to the Assembly. This has been an incredible, difficult budget year, and we truly appreciate the Assembly's commitment to centering California's in your decision making. We deeply appreciate the Assembly rejecting all cuts to IHSS and strengthening the medical as a test limit. Also, thank you for advancing the Be Home Soon California proposal and the several revenue proposals. We especially appreciate your commitment, not in the budget on the backs of low-income Californians, and instead advancing a more equitable approach by requiring corporations to pay their fair share. Regarding child care, thank you for the continued investment in child care slot. And as we move forward, we strongly urge you to increase the call-up for providers. Without fair compensations, we simply won't have the workforce needed to serve the family and the children. Lastly, we appreciate your support for the adult learning demonstration program, and we urge you to stay strong in your negotiations as this process continues. Your leadership is making a meaningful difference for Californians. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Christopher Sanchez here with the Mesa Weather Group here on behalf of the Central American Resource Center. I appreciate everything that's been done for Medi-Cal for undocumented folks. Clearly, it could go further, especially as a lot of immigrants are losing their legal status from the Trump administration pulling their legal status underneath their feet, such as folks from Temporary Protective Status, TPS. With that being said, we appreciate the investments that have been made for immigration legal services during a critical moment in time. And then also aligning my comments with my colleague from Chirla related to the DMV deferred actions right now to ensure that there's appropriate guardrails to ensure that information is protected when it's shared. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Angela here and here on behalf of the California Medical Association. I also want to thank everyone's work for protecting access to care. However, CMA is opposed to the MCO tax proposal in SB 125. In the interest of time, we align our comments with CAP and Kaiser Permanente as we do share those concerns that the proposal is going to increase health care costs for everyday Californians and employers. Thanks to all the members for the meetings, including Assemblymember Addis, to hear our concerns. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Chloe Hermosillo with the California Immigrant Policy Center. We want to thank the legislature for allocating $35.5 million for deportation, defense, and immigration legal services. We also want to thank you for maintaining the planned automation for the CFAP expansion for individuals 55 plus regardless of immigration status and allocating 5 million for the automation of CFAP plus proposal. Want to express our specific appreciation for Assemblymember Bonta and Dr. Jackson respectively for helping guide these discussions. During a time where immigrant communities and their safety nets are under attack, these investments are crucial in ensuring we keep our families safe. Thank you. Good afternoon, Krista Ramos with the California Immigrant Policy Center. I want to thank the legislator for delaying the implementation of many of the cuts made in Medi-Cal. We align our remarks regarding medical access for immigrant communities with our partners at Health Access California. Additionally, I want to thank you for the deferral of the DMV state-to-state contract with ANVA until proper guardrails are agreed upon. However, we are disappointed to not see the reinvestment of seed funding that has actually acted as a safety net for immigrant entrepreneurs amongst increasing threats to their ability to earn money and participate in the state economy Thank you Mr Chair and members Alex Torres here voicing strong support for the billion in Prop 4 On behalf of a couple clients here today, on behalf of Perimeter Solutions, Aurora Tech, and AeroFlight, all three critical partners to the state, CALFIRE and OES, on all aspects of wildfire, whether it be direct suppression, ground applied mitigation measures, or leveraging new technology for early detection. So look forward to working on the trailer bill there. Also, on behalf of the Thermalito Water and Sewer District, I want to voice, again, strong support for the Prop 4 and the process that will come from the trailer bills. I want to call out the Concow Reservoir Project as a really critical drinking water project in Oroville. This is a community that's recovering from the campfire and is in bad need of resources for a critical dredging project that will allow it to leverage 2,000 acre feet of water storage, really critical for that community. So it would raise awareness for that project and, again, look forward to the Prop 4 allocation conversations to come. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Ben O'Brien here on behalf of California Life Sciences, here to express our opposition to any proposal, any proposed permanent cap on the state's R&D tax credit program. The Life Sciences is the state's second leading sector, employing over 330,000 Californians directly with over 1.1 million in indirect jobs. And we also supply last year $20 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2025 alone. So, again, just expressing our opposition to that proposal. We would like to thank Assemblymember Ward and Assemblymember Petrie Norris specifically for their leadership on this issue. And we look forward to continuing to work together with the legislature and other stakeholders to address both the fiscal situation of the state and then maintain our life sciences leadership as well. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair members. Marcus Dettweiler with the California Special Districts Association, CSDA, also here representing the Association of California Healthcare Districts, ACHD. First, a moment to recognize undoubtedly a yeoman's effort involved in making a series of difficult budget decisions in a difficult budget environment. Regrettably, CSDA and ACHD must convey their opposition to the digital pre-written software sales tax proposal as embodied by Senate Bill 122. Unlike our sister units of local government cities and counties, special districts do not generally receive sales tax revenue. And so the tax proposal that is embodied in SB 122 represents a sort of levy of 8, 9, 10 percent on not only the tech used to power modern 21st century operations, but also the very same technology that's used by special districts to provide essential, vital local services to California's communities. We look forward to revisiting this issue so we can remediate this disparity in the coming days. Thank you. Good afternoon chair and members Edgar Guerra with SEIU California. I just want to uplift the comments made by our child care providers that joined us today here in Sacramento to advocate for a budget that works for them, the families they serve, including the kids. Thank you. Good afternoon chair and members Dan Merwin on behalf of the California School Boards Association There a lot in this budget to like for education a higher COLA a large discretionary block grant necessary small school funding But a lot of that is largely overshadowed by a few proposals particularly the withholding of Proposition 98 funding that unfairly shortchanges schools' billions in the Assembly's own words. Also adding the proposal to shift CSPP fully into Prop 98 and therefore create future conflicts as that funding expands. On the paid pregnancy leave, we're supportive of the proposal. However, there does need to be some full reimbursement mechanisms so we can capture all LEAs and all employees, regardless of what their funding source is. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, and members. Michelle Warshaw on behalf of the California Teachers Association. CTA is supportive of many components in the budget, including the revenue generation solutions and the historic paid pregnancy leave for educators. However, we strongly oppose the $3.9 billion underfunding of Prop 98 and the move of non-local educational agency preschool programs into Prop 98. Voter-approved Prop 98 was not designed to fund this program, and it would create significant cost pressures. Learning opportunities for children of all ages are important and must be a priority for California, but protecting those opportunities requires protecting the funding guarantee that makes them possible. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Gabby Vargas-Buhl on behalf of California County Superintendents. We greatly appreciate the legislature's support for universal and targeted assistance and urge the legislature to ensure that differentiated assistance criteria focus on the students with the greatest needs. We continue to urge support for the critical education governance reforms. We appreciate the legislature's support for strong technical assistance for community schools separate from the universal and targeted assistance proposal. We greatly appreciate the increased allocations to students experiencing homelessness and to the CTE incentive grant program. And finally, we respectfully oppose the Proposition 98 withholding. Thank you. Mr. Chair, members, Michael Gunning on behalf of Habitat for Humanity California. We deeply appreciate the effort the budget agreement does for homelessness solutions and affordable rental housing. But we have to admit we're profoundly disappointed that the budget agreement fails to provide any investments for CalHome. Despite the Senate's forward-thinking leadership initially included the program in its proposed budget, for the third consecutive year, California has declined to invest in working families, earning modest incomes by providing options for affordable homeownership through CalHome, the state's only program that produces and preserves ownership homes. This is simply—this is not simply a pause in funding. CalHOME has no remaining funds to support new housing projects. Without this new allocation, the state is effectively ending this critical affordable homeownership program, stalling shovel-ready homes, weakening the housing continuum, and pushing homeownership further out of the reach of California families. We urgently request that the legislature direct investment in CalHOME and support the governor's responsible revenue measures supporting corporate health care coverage, tax credit limitations digital software sales tax changes as a mechanism to ensure funding for priority for homelessness and affordable housing programs Thank you Good afternoon Mr Chair and members Raymond Contreras On behalf of Fulwell we are greatly appreciative of what is in the budget, especially addressing those Californians that are facing economic hardships. However, we are deeply disappointed in the no funding for CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT program. Since 2023, this program has served close to half a million homes in this last month of operation has seen a 5 million burn rate. This program will effectively be shut off June 30th of 2026. Without this new any allocation, California will lose one of its most important tools for improving food access, preventive health care, and helping farmers across the state. The loss of this program comes at a time when food prices remain at a high and federal food assistance programs federally are facing increased scrutiny. We urgently request that the legislature include funding for CalFresh fruit and vegetable EBT program. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Cordell Hampton with the Association of California School Administrators. While there are certainly things to be celebrated in this budget for education, acts remain strongly opposed to the withholding of Proposition 98 and fully shifting the California State Preschool Program to Proposition 98 as well. Regarding the paid pregnancy disability leave, requirement. Acts supports the intent, however, as currently proposed, exclusive certain LEA types. Acts recommends many of that proposal to shift to a more reimbursement structured program. Thank you. Good evening, Chairman and members. Marissa Hagerman with Tratton Price Consulting for Aclama. We appreciate the work done to date to reach a final balanced budget agreement. We understand conversations around GGRF will continue into the summer and end of session. To that end, we wish to express our support for fully funding and extending the statewide mobile monitoring initiative in this year's budget through the GGRF. In its first year, the program has delivered block-by-block air quality data across 64 pollution-burdened communities, reaching 5.2 million residents at a fraction of the cost of other monitoring programs. Yet, despite its proven success, SMMI is set to phase out this month at a time when California communities need this data the most. We look forward to engaging you on this topic. Thank you. Thank you very much to all of the members of the public, the advocates who have taken the time to come and enrich our conversation. And just wanted to, before I adjourn, extend some special thanks, of course, to our sergeants. Thank you for all of the work that you have done to keep us safe and to run an orderly hearing. To the good folks in Legislative Counsel's office, who I know are working around the clock these days. So thank you for your contributions. And again, of course, to our partners at the Department of Finance, to the incredible folks at the LAO, to all of our wonderful Assembly Budget Committee staff. You guys are amazing. Really appreciate your hard work. And we are excited to move on to the next step in this process. And so with that, the hearing is officially adjourned. Thank you.