Report 2021-102 Recommendations

To ensure that the conditions requiring tribes to make additional payments into the distribution fund have been fulfilled, Finance should, by December 2022, determine annually whether the distribution fund has satisfied the terms of the relevant compacts and immediately notify the Governor's Office when these provisions have been met.

To ensure that it compensates the distribution fund for improper charges for nontribal activities including card room and other enforcement activities, by October 2022, the Bureau should do the following:

-Reimburse the funds due to the distribution fund for time that employees spent working on nontribal activities during fiscal years 2020-21 through 2021-22.

-Establish and implement a policy requiring supervisory review and approval of its periodic reimbursements to the distribution fund, as necessary, for time that employees spend on nontribal activities.

To ensure that its employees allocate their activities to the correct funding sources, the Bureau should:

-Formalize procedures for employees on how to properly track their time, including which activities may be charged to the distribution fund, and provide training on those procedures by October 2022.

-Conduct quarterly audits of employee timekeeping to ensure that employees appropriately track their time and that supervisors appropriately review and approve employee timesheets, beginning with the first quarter of fiscal year 2022-23.

-Continue with its planned rollout of a new timekeeping system in January 2025 and ensure that the new system does not allow employees to charge nontribal activities to the distribution fund.

To ensure that it uses the distribution fund only for appropriate purposes, the Bureau should cease its use of the fund to pay for nontribal activities and instead pay for those activities using an appropriate source, such as the General Fund.

To ensure that the distribution fund maintains a prudent balance, the Legislature should require Finance to collaborate with the Gambling Commission to determine an appropriate reserve fund balance. The Legislature should then appropriate the excess reserve consistent with federal and state law. For example, it could increase the funding for the problem gambling prevention and treatment programs or it could return excess funds to tribes by refunding a portion of distribution fund fees.

To ensure that the distribution fund receives the remaining amount loaned to the Charity Bingo Mitigation Fund, the Legislature should appropriate $1.7 million plus interest from the State's General Fund to repay the loan.

To determine the amount for the nontribal activities that the Bureau paid for using the distribution fund during fiscal years 2015-16 through 2019-20, the Legislature should require the Department of Justice's Bureau of Gambling Control to calculate and report that information to the Legislature by April 2023. To compensate the distribution fund for these improper expenditures, the Legislature should then create a special appropriation to reimburse the distribution fund.

To ensure that its training conference expenditures are reasonable, the Office of Problem Gambling should, beginning with its next planned catering expenditure, obtain quotes from multiple vendors, document those quotes, and select the vendor that offers the best value.

To ensure that it is able to adequately evaluate its progress toward meeting program goals in its next strategic plan, by February 2023 the Office of Problem Gambling should revise its existing goals. As a part of that process, the office should require staff to do the following:

-Create policies or procedures that guide the quarterly Advisory Group meetings, the development and assessment of its strategic plans, and the evaluation of its programs for these processes.

-Create measurable goals with quantifiable metrics and include them in its strategic plans.

-Evaluate progress toward meeting its goals at least biennially.

-Include any effort remaining to meet program goals in its biennial evaluations.

-Record all Advisory Group meeting minutes and document decisions reached during these meetings.

To ensure that it can better identify which populations need problem gambling prevention or treatment services and the factors that contribute to problem gambling, the Office of Problem Gambling should, as soon as possible, obtain data on the number of Californians who currently suffer or have recently suffered from problem gambling. The office should also update this information annually and use it to identify the locations and populations most in need of program service and to evaluate how well it is serving that population. Until it obtains this information, the office should take additional steps to determine whether it is providing services to a reasonable number of individuals by comparing its programs to those in other states.