2015-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 3

3. To improve the utility of CALPADS and fulfill the legislative intent of the system, the department should work with the Legislature, the State Board of Education, and the governor to identify priorities for building upon the system when funding is available. These priorities could include tracking student participation in dropout prevention programs or strategies to measure the effectiveness of those programs or strategies over time.

1. To minimize the potential for disagreement over allowable migrant program costs, Education should better define the criteria by which it will consider program costs allowable and include those criteria in the migrant program fiscal handbook it provides to the regions.

8. To address problems with its methodology for calculating administrative costs, Education should review the regions' current use of accounting codes to identify the areas in which regions differ in accounting for similar migrant program costs.

9. To address problems with its methodology for calculating administrative costs, Education should provide regions with more specific direction about how to charge these expenses.

10. To address problems with its methodology for calculating administrative costs, Education should revise its list of accounting codes that it considers administrative in light of its review of regional coding.

15. To ensure that it receives satisfactory services and outcomes for the funds spent on statewide contracts for the migrant program, Education should develop and execute a plan to monitor each of its contracts and cancel any it determines do not provide adequate or cost-effective services.

63. To ensure that the spending plans Local Education Agencies (LEAs) create to eliminate excess net cash resources in their cafeteria funds are adequate, effective, and fully executed, the California Department of Education should, by July 1, 2015, make adjustments in the rate of reimbursement to an LEA under the child nutrition programs if that LEA cannot eliminate its entire excess net cash resources within a defined time frame.

5. To effectively monitor and ensure that the campuses set self-supported fees in accordance with state law and Executive Order 1054, the Chancellor's Office should immediately take the following action: require campus chief financial officers to develop, and presidents to consider, the statement of revenues and expenditures described in Executive Order 1054 before making a determination on self-supported extended education program fees.

35. All universities should appropriately post the university's policy on sexual harassment. The policy should be posted prominently in the university's main administrative building and in other areas on campus where notices are posted, including key locations such as residence halls and athletic facilities. Similarly, the notice of nondiscrimination should be posted prominently throughout the university. If, because of the length of the policy on sexual harassment, it is not effective to post it in its entirety, the universities should post summary information that explains how students can access the full policy.

3. To help improve accountability in the university's budget process, and to help minimize the risk of unfair damage to its reputation, the university should take additional steps to increase the transparency of its budget process. Specifically, the Office of the President should update its budget manual to reflect current practices and make its revised budget manual, including relevant formulas and other methodologies for determining budget amounts, available on its Web site.

1. The university should take steps to increase the transparency of its campuses' health system support transfers. Specifically, the university should establish a process ensuring that it annually issues a report through its Web site that is available to the public and that describes the financial and programmatic impact of each campus's health system support transfers.

24. The university should revise the policies to allow employees to claim only actual lodging expenses up to established rates for international travel.

9. After the department has implemented a formal OPS recruiting program, if it can demonstrate that it is still having trouble filling vacant OPS positions, the department should evaluate how it can reduce some of the compensation disparity between OPS and the local law enforcement agencies with which it competes for qualified personnel.

1. To ensure that it monitors counties to the fullest extent as the MHSA specifies and that it implements best practices, Health Care Services should draft and enter into a performance contract with each county that contains assurances for effective oversight and furthers the intent of the MHSA, including demonstration that each of the county's MHSA programs are meeting the MHSA's intent.

8. Health Care Services should, as soon as is feasible, revise or create a reasonable and justifiable allocation methodology to ensure that counties are appropriately funded based on their identified needs for mental health services. Health Care Services should ensure that it reviews the methodology regularly and updates it as necessary so that the factors and their weighting are appropriate.

15. The Planning Council should document and make public the reviews that it performs of MHSA programs to demonstrate that it is performing all required reviews.

7. To ensure that it is able to measure its progress toward fulfilling the requirements of the health and safety fund, Public Health should establish performance measurements for the Kids' Plates Program.

8. To ensure that it is able to measure its progress toward fulfilling the requirements of the health and safety fund, Public Health should periodically assess its progress toward meeting its measureable outcomes.

3. When Public Health enters into new contracts with local entities to conduct compliance inspections, it should evaluate its historical costs of conducting these inspections to ensure that the existing rates are adequate to recoup its costs. If it determines that the existing rates are not adequate, it should develop a new rate that accurately reflects its true costs.

4. When Public Health enters into new contracts with local entities to conduct compliance inspections, it should ensure that it maintains adequate documented support for the rate it charges for a compliance inspection.

5. Public Health should amend its recent contract with the city of Los Angeles to correct the rate it charges for a local compliance inspection to reflect its true cost.

6. To ensure that Public Health can more effectively monitor and enforce compliance with the STAKE Act, it should take appropriate steps to ensure that there are no restrictions placed on the use of the data acquired during the annual retailer assessment that would preclude its use for compliance inspection purposes.

7. To ensure that Public Health can more effectively monitor and enforce compliance with the STAKE Act, it should annually obtain the identifying information regarding the retailers that sold tobacco to minors during the annual retailer assessment and provide that information to the Food and Drug Branch.

8. To ensure that Public Health can more effectively monitor and enforce compliance with the STAKE Act, it should include the retailers that sold tobacco to minors during the annual retailer assessment when selecting the retailers it plans to inspect as part of the statewide compliance inspections.

5. To ensure the accuracy and consistency of the information on welfare fraud activities that counties report and that Social Services subsequently reports to the federal government, the Legislature, and internal users, Social Services should take the following steps: Remind counties that they are responsible for reviewing the accuracy and consistency of investigation activity reports before submission.

1. To ensure that its licensees, including state-licensed foster homes, foster family agencies, and group homes, are in compliance with applicable requirements and that children are protected, Social Services should complete on-site reviews at least once every five years as required by state law.

7. To encourage continued progress and innovation in keeping children safe, Social Services should add to its current CWS performance metrics a measure of the percentage of investigatory visits (both immediate and 10-day) completed on time that excludes attempted investigatory visits from its calculation of successful outcomes.

18. To ensure that its efforts funded by the trust fund are preventing or reducing incidences of child abuse and neglect, Social Services should evaluate the performance measurements annually to assess whether the trust fund's programs and services are effective in reducing incidences of child abuse and neglect.

11. To assist the Legislature in its effort to revise state law to specify the intended goals of juvenile justice realignment, the board should work with stakeholders to propose performance outcome goals to use to measure the success of realignment.

6. To determine whether the additional expansion of telemedicine is cost-effective within the California correctional system, Prison Health Care Services should further analyze the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine through a more robust estimate of savings, including considering factors such as the percent of telemedicine consultations that required subsequent in-person visits because the issue could not be addressed through telemedicine.

11. Establish a system of oversight at headquarters and at each adult correctional facility to ensure that personnel specialists are charging the correct number of leave hours for those nonmanagerial, exempt employees working an alternate work schedule.

13. Establish a system of supervisory oversight that involves reviewing employees' time sheets and leave balances to ensure that personnel specialists are entering information into the leave accounting system correctly.

15. Establish a system for correcting mischarged leave in the leave accounting system and for reviewing errors with the responsible employee whenever mischarged leave hours are discovered.

2. To address the erroneous sentencing information and inappropriately assigned convictions in its data system, Corrections should create a schedule for regular checks of the accuracy of existing sentencing information, as well as the accuracy with which sentencing information has been assigned to convictions.

10. To better communicate to policy makers the annual cost of incarceration, and to provide a more accurate estimate of expenditures associated with changes in the large leave balances of custody staff—many of whom require relief coverage when they are absent—Corrections should provide a calculation of the annual increase or decrease in its liability for the leave balances of custody staff to better explain the cause of changes in expenditures to the relevant legislative policy and fiscal committees.

11. To better communicate to policy makers the annual cost of incarceration, and to provide a more accurate estimate of expenditures associated with changes in the large leave balances of custody staff—many of whom require relief coverage when they are absent—Corrections should provide an estimate of the annual cost of leave balances likely to be paid for retiring custody staff to the relevant legislative policy and fiscal committees.

3. Once Corrections resumes its use of COMPAS core and reentry assessments, it should provide ongoing training to classification staff representatives, parole agents, and others that may administer or interpret COMPAS assessment results to ensure that COMPAS is a valuable inmate assessment and planning tool.

2. To ensure that its expenditures are appropriate, the board should competitively bid contracts with physicians who perform physical examinations of pilots.

5. Motor Vehicles should periodically assess the cost and benefits of updating its automated systems to reflect current per-plate administrative costs. If Motor Vehicles determines that doing so is cost-effective, it should update its automated systems to reflect the up-to-date administrative costs for all these plates.

10. To safeguard cost recovery program revenue, Cal Fire should, within the next six months, develop a process to track civil cost recovery cases statewide to monitor compliance with policies as well as monitor collection status.

11. Cal Fire should continue its efforts to determine what happened to the $13,470 check that was not deposited in the Wildland Fire Fund.

2. The department's executive management should monitor the budget process closely to prevent any future variances from established policies and procedures designed to ensure accurate reporting.

4. To ensure that any significant changes affecting fund balances proposed by Finance for presentation in the governor's budget are presented accurately and transparently, the department should develop procedures to require higher-level review and approval of such changes by its chief deputy director, director, and potentially the secretary for the Natural Resources Agency. The department should identify levels of significance for the proposed changes in fund balances that would trigger seeking these higher-level approvals.

1. To ensure that districts receive timely budget allocations, the department should establish and implement a formal allocation process by January 2014 that includes the following:

- A timeline that mirrors the State's budget process and describes when the department will provide park districts with draft allocations, revisions to draft allocations, and final allocations.

- A description of the roles and responsibilities of key staff involved in the process, including budget office staff, the deputy directors and division chiefs for park operations and the OHMVR division, and district superintendents.

3. To ensure that it can comply with state law in the event that it must close parks or reduce park services in the future, the department should improve its methodology for developing individual park unit budgets and determining and tracking park-level costs. Specifically, the department should update its description of phase one to adequately explain how it will reconcile individual park costs for fiscal year 2010-11 to the department's total actual expenditures to operate the parks.

5. To ensure that it can comply with state law in the event that it must close parks or reduce park services in the future, the department should improve its methodology for developing individual park unit budgets and determining and tracking park-level costs. Specifically, the department should provide training as soon as possible to park operations staff to ensure that they consistently collect the data necessary for phase two.

7. To ensure that the Legislature has the information necessary to make any future decisions related to service reductions or park closures, beginning in fiscal year 2014-15 the department should provide it with an annual report that details the costs to operate each park unit.

9. To prevent unauthorized leave buyback transactions, the department should establish written policies and procedures requiring the personnel office's transactions unit to obtain documentation from managers who request leave buyback transactions. The documentation should specify the authority for the leave buyback and include appropriate authorizing signatures.

10. To prevent unauthorized leave buyback transactions, the department should increase the level of supervisory review to ensure that transactions unit staff process only authorized and properly coded leave buyback transactions.

12. To improve the effectiveness of the EPRC, the department should update its administrative manual by March 2014 to specify the members of the EPRC, the members' roles and responsibilities, and the personnel actions that the EPRC is responsible for reviewing.

13. To improve the effectiveness of the EPRC, the department should establish policies and procedures by March 2014 to govern the EPRC's decisions on personnel actions. These policies and procedures should include the specific factors and their relative importance that the members must consider when making decisions and should require the EPRC to document its decisions and the reasons for those decisions.

14. To improve the effectiveness of the EPRC, by March 2014, the department should require the EPRC to periodically provide a summary report of its decisions to the director's office so that the director can monitor whether those decisions are consistent with his priorities.

16. To ensure that its position control unit staff do not circumvent state law to preserve vacant positions, the department should establish procedures that include a process to periodically review any personnel transactions that are not subject to EPRC review. It should provide a summary report of this review to the director's office and the EPRC.

10. To complete its rent reviews promptly and obtain a fair rental amount for its leases, the commission should conduct rent reviews on each fifth anniversary as specified in the lease agreements or consider including provisions in its leases that allow for the use of other strategies, such as adjusting rents annually using an inflation indicator.

11. To ensure that it is charging rent based on the most current value of its properties, the commission should appraise its properties as frequently as the lease provisions allow—generally every five years.

23. To ensure that as few leases as possible go into holdover, the commission should continue to implement its newly established holdover reduction procedures and periodically evaluate whether its new procedures are having their intended effect of reducing the number of leases in holdover.

5. To ensure that it maximizes the recovery of its costs from responsible parties, by October 2014, the department should do the following:
- Continue its plan to update policies and procedures for using liens whenever appropriate.

11. The department should continue to resolve its questions about its authority to write off outstanding costs under $5,000. To the extent that it determines it cannot write off outstanding costs, it should pursue collecting the costs.

3. To meet the intent of the law, HCD should approve and fund for the Catalyst Program only those projects that more directly create or preserve housing opportunities.

3. Consumer Affairs should establish procedures for ensuring that board members attend board member orientation and that those individuals and other designated employees receive all required ethics training. In addition, Consumer Affairs should adhere to the record retention period of five years specified by law for the certificates documenting that designated employees received ethics training.

1. To ensure that it does not create unnecessary delays for institutions that desire to operate within the State, the bureau should reduce its backlog of licensing applications by reviewing and streamlining the applications process.

8. To ensure that the unlicensed institutions it identifies cease to operate, the bureau needs to use the enforcement mechanisms that state law provides for sanctioning unlicensed institutions and track all relevant information related to its enforcement actions against these institutions.

9. To comply with state law and to ensure that it effectively manages its inspections of institutions, the bureau should establish a schedule that maps out its anticipated announced and unannounced inspection dates for each of the institutions it regulates, and ensure that the schedule is consistent with state law.

12. To comply with state law and to ensure that it effectively manages its inspections of institutions, the bureau should establish a mechanism for tracking the amount of time its staff take to complete each step of its announced inspection process.

16. To comply with state law and to ensure that it effectively manages its inspections of institutions, the bureau should establish a mechanism for tracking the amount of time it takes to complete each step of its unannounced inspection process.

22. To reduce its backlog of unresolved complaints involving institutions, the bureau needs to establish benchmarks and monitor them to ensure that the additional staff it requested and Consumer Affairs' complaint program staff resolve the backlog as expeditiously as possible.

8. To ensure that it accurately collects revenue, the commission should formalize policies and procedures directing inspectors to take the necessary steps to make sure they correctly and consistently calculate taxes, assessments, and fees in accordance with state law and regulations.

3. To further enhance its corrective action planning process as a means of improving the unemployment program, the department should establish several key performance targets or benchmarks that are tied to each specific corrective action, to effectively gauge the impact of the actions on its goal of achieving the acceptable levels related to the timeliness measures.

1. To improve the quality of the performance reporting it submits to Labor, the department should work with Labor to develop reasonable controls to avoid reporting overstated and inaccurate performance measures.

9. To assess whether it is doing enough to take advantage of federal requirements that federal contractors give preference to veterans when hiring, the department should determine why the reported number of veterans receiving employment with federal contractors is so low relative to the number of job referrals made and it should provide appropriate direction to the veterans employment representatives to better leverage the federal contractor job listing.

2. To ensure that EDD efficiently acts to take advantage of future collection opportunities, we recommend EDD institute a routine process for staff to identify and thoroughly evaluate ideas for improving EDD's ability to collect overpayments. This process should require staff to bring promising ideas to the attention of EDD's senior management so it can give prompt, informed consideration to these ideas and document in detail the substance of that consideration.

4. To ensure that the State enforces its contractual right to obtain a complete copy of its procurement data, General Services should take all necessary steps to ensure that it can extract a reliable copy of all of the State's procurement data from BidSync so that the data can be used and analyzed to the State's benefit. These steps should include testing that the data it obtains from BidSync is accurate and complete, and it should be completed before the end of the contract term with BidSync, in September 2014.

11. To ensure that it does not further overcharge the transportation account, the commission should require the branch to review annually all branch staff funding distributions and align them with recent time charges.

1. To ensure that it has the necessary information to identify armed prohibited persons with mental illness, Justice should coordinate with the AOC at least once a year to share information about court reporting levels and to determine the need to distribute additional information to courts about reporting requirements and the manner in which to report. In coordinating with the AOC about potential underreporting, at a minimum Justice should consider trends in the number of reports each court sends and the number of reports that it might expect to receive from a court given the court's size, location, and reporting history. Whenever Justice identifies a court that it determines may not be reporting all required information, it should request that the court forward all required case information.

15. To ensure that it keeps an accurate and up-to-date list of all mental health facilities that are required to report individuals with mental illness, at least twice a year Justice should update its outreach list of mental health facilities by obtaining a list of facilities from Health Care Services.

17. To ensure that it continues to receive information from facilities that currently report individuals with mental illness and that should continue to report such individuals, by January 31, 2014, and at least twice a year thereafter Justice should implement a review of the number of reports it receives from individual mental health facilities. These reviews should focus on identifying any significant drops in a facility's reporting levels and include follow up with facilities that may require additional assistance in reporting.

20. To ensure that it makes correct determinations about whether an individual is an armed prohibited person, by January 31, 2014, Justice should implement quality control procedures over APPS unit staff determinations. These procedures should include periodic supervisory review of staff determinations to ensure that staff decisions correctly identify all armed prohibited persons.