2023-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 1

7. To ensure that BRN resolves complaints regarding nurses in a timely manner, by March 1, 2017, it should establish a plan to eliminate its backlog of complaints awaiting assignment to an investigator.

10. To increase its pool of expert witnesses, by June 2017, BRN should take the steps necessary to increase the hourly wage it pays expert witnesses.

2. Corrections should immediately require mental health staff to score 100 percent on risk evaluation audits in order to pass. If a staff member does not pass, Corrections should require the prison to follow its current policies by reviewing additional risk evaluations to determine whether the staff member needs to undergo additional mentoring.

16. To ensure that prisons comply with its policies related to suicide prevention and response, Corrections should continue to develop its audit process and implement it at all prisons by February 2018. The process should include, but not be limited to, audits of the quality of prisons' risk evaluations and treatment plans.

3. To improve its oversight of the State's noncompetitive contracts, General Services should, within 90 days, create plans for regularly performing statewide analyses to identify potential abuse or overuse of noncompetitive contracts. These analyses should include, but not be limited to, calculating the proportional value and number of the State's competitive and noncompetitive contracts and amendments, examining trends in agencies' use of noncompetitive contracts and amendments, and identifying unusual patterns among vendors receiving state contracts through noncompetitive means.

10. To ensure that Social Services evaluates the risk individuals may pose to vulnerable populations in its licensed care facilities as quickly as possible, by July 2017, Social Services should establish time frames for staff to evaluate individuals who are present in their facilities and who have received administrative actions from other departments. In addition, it should monitor and follow up with the appropriate staff regarding the status of their assessments of these individuals and their final decisions.

13. To comply with state law and better protect vulnerable populations in California's licensed care facilities, Social Services should immediately change its policy to require that its exemption analysts evaluate all infraction convictions, other than minor traffic violations, before granting exemptions to individuals. If Social Services believes it is not feasible to evaluate all of these convictions, it should report to the Legislature by June 2017 how it ensures that vulnerable populations are not at risk and should request that the Legislature change the law to eliminate infraction convictions as a crime category that Social Services must evaluate in order to grant an exemption.

26. To ensure that regional offices pursue legal actions in a timely manner, by July 2017, Social Services' headquarters should identify a resource—such as a unit—to monitor and follow up with the regional offices regarding the status of their legal actions related to substantiated address matches of registered sex offenders at licensed facilities.

3. To improve the oversight of CSU's management personnel, the Chancellor's Office should work with campuses, bargaining unit representatives, the Public Employment Relations Board, and others as necessary to come to an agreement on the appropriate classification of coaches. The Chancellor's Office should take into account the concerns that San Diego State has raised about the labor market for these employees.

10. The Chancellor's Office should finish developing the Common Human Resources System and implement it as scheduled by December 2019.

5. To determine the amount of money that it can reallocate to campuses and to ensure that it publicly presents comprehensive and accurate budget information, by April 2018, the Office of the President should implement our recommended budget presentation shown in Figure 11 on page 40 [of the audit report]. Specifically, the Office of the President's budget presentation to the regents should include a comparison of its proposed budget to its actual expenditures for the previous year. It should also include all its expenditures and identify changes to the discretionary and restricted reserves. The Office of the President should combine both the disclosed and undisclosed budgets into one budget presentation.

22. To determine the amount of money that it can reallocate to campuses and to ensure that it publicly presents comprehensive and accurate budget information, by April 2019, the Office of the President should continue to present a comprehensive budget based on the presentation in Figure 11 to the regents, the Legislature, and the public.

23. To ensure that its staffing costs align with the needs of campuses and other stakeholders, by April 2019, the Office of the President should set targets for any needed reductions to salary amounts using the results from its public and private sector comparison and adjust its salaries accordingly.

32. To determine the amount of money that it can reallocate to campuses and to ensure that it publicly presents comprehensive and accurate budget information, by April 2020, the Office of the President should evaluate its budget process to ensure that it is efficient and has adequate safeguards that ensure that staff approve and justify all budget expenditures. If the Office of the President determines that its safeguards are sufficient, it should begin developing a multiyear budget plan.

34. To ensure that its staffing costs align with the needs of campuses and other stakeholders, by April 2020, the Office of the President should adjust its salary levels and ranges to meet its established targets.

36. To ensure that its staffing costs align with the needs of campuses and other stakeholders, by April 2020, the Office of the President should reallocate funds to campuses when adjustments to its salaries and benefits result in savings.

39. To ensure that its staffing costs align with the needs of campuses and other stakeholders, by April 2020, the Office of the President should report to the regents on the amount of funds it reallocates to campuses as a result of implementing our recommendations.

8. To ensure that the university achieves its goals of obtaining services at the lowest cost or best value and of providing vendors with fair access to contracting opportunities, the Office of the President should revise the university's contract manual to incorporate the best practices found in the State Contracting Manual for limiting the use of amendments to repeatedly extend existing contracts.

9. To ensure that the university achieves its goals of obtaining services at the lowest cost or best value and of providing vendors with fair access to contracting opportunities, the Office of the President should revise the university's contract manual to narrow the exemption from competition to only selected professional services, similar to the State Contracting Manual.

7. To ensure the ongoing accountability of the Office of the President, the regents should require it to implement our recommendations and report periodically on its progress.

14. To ensure that the Office of the President's staffing levels are justified and that costs are reasonable and align with the needs of campuses and other stakeholders, the regents should require the Office of the President to implement our recommendations and report periodically on its progress.

1. To strengthen its administrative reviews and help ensure that school food authorities comply with the Buy American requirement, Education should update its written procedures to include a requirement that reviewers collect and retain evidence for all items they evaluate for compliance with the Buy American requirement. This update should occur no later than October 1, 2017.

23. To better understand the condition of school libraries statewide and to raise stakeholders' awareness of the State Education Board's adopted model standards, Education should identify school districts that reported employing significantly fewer teacher librarians in fiscal year 2015-16 than in previous years and verify the accuracy of their fiscal year 2015-16 reports.

3. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should distribute complaints and appeals to the correct divisions for investigation or review.

4. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should establish a single database to record and track all investigations of complaints and reviews of appeals. This database should capture all data necessary for Education to effectively make informed decisions related to UCP complaints or appeals. At a minimum, the database should capture the date on which Education received each complaint or appeal, the date on which it forwarded the complaint or appeal to the appropriate division for investigation or review, and the date on which it sent the decision to the complainant. The database should also include the type of complaint or appeal, the LEA involved, and the decision.

5. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should track the divisions' progress in processing complaints and appeals to ensure the divisions meet all UCP requirements, including documenting exceptional circumstances that constitute good cause for extending investigations beyond 60 days.

6. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should work with divisions to establish policies and procedures for the divisions to follow when investigating UCP complaints and reviewing appeals. The procedures should identify the individuals or units responsible for investigating complaints and reviewing appeals, the steps and time frames for conducting investigations and reviews, the requirements for issuing decisions, and the documentation that should be retained in the files.

7. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should establish and distribute a standard investigation report format that includes the required elements for the divisions to use when processing UCP complaints.

8. To ensure that it consistently processes complaints and appeals in a timely manner and that it investigates and reviews all UCP complaints and appeals in compliance with state law and regulations, by July 2017, Education should designate a central office to receive all complaints and appeals. This central office should monitor the divisions' decisions and reports on complaints and appeals to ensure that they comply with requirements.

16. To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of LEAs' UCP processes, Education should work with those LEAs throughout the State that receive a disproportionately high number of non-UCP complaints through the UCP process to assess the potential benefits of establishing similar mechanisms.

22. To ensure that its regulations are consistent and align with state and federal requirements, Education should revise its regulations to allow LEAs to extend investigations under exceptional circumstances that constitute good cause if the LEAs document and support with evidence the reasons for the extensions.

23. After it makes the recommended regulatory changes to allow extensions under exceptional circumstances, Education should review LEAs' extensions to investigations as part of its Federal Program Monitoring to ensure that LEAs' documentation is sufficient and that their reasons adequately justify such extensions.

20. To ensure that it is receiving all arrest information from law enforcement agencies, at a minimum, Justice should consider trends in the number of arrest reports each law enforcement agency sends it and the number of reports that it might expect to receive from an agency given the agency's size, location, and reporting history. Whenever Justice identifies a law enforcement agency that it determines may not be reporting all required information, it should request that the agency forward all required arrest information.

11. The Secretary of State should adopt regulations establishing clear criteria for mistakes in election-related materials that constitute reportable errors and require counties to report these errors to it after each election.

12. Beginning in December 2018, the Secretary of State should implement annual risk-based reviews of a selection of county election officials' offices to ensure their compliance with state election laws and regulations.

13. To inform and enhance the guidance it provides to county election officials, the Secretary of State should analyze error reports and its risk-based review results to focus its guidance on topics most relevant to improving elections throughout the State.

7. To assign purchasing cards only to appropriate staff, to ensure that the State Bar's records of employees' credit limits reflect those established with the bank, and to verify that staff use purchasing cards only for allowable and necessary expenses, the State Bar should immediately restrict the use of purchasing cards to its original purpose, which was for low-dollar and frequently occurring purchases. For purchases above $5,000, the State Bar should require the vendor to bill for payment.

9. To ensure that its costs are reasonable and appropriate, the State Bar should update its meal and catering policy to align with the meal policy of the State's Executive Branch and should require individuals attending committee meetings for the State Bar to comply with standard meal per diem rates.

13. To ensure that it properly authorizes payments and purchases only allowable items, the San Mateo court should process payments in accordance with the requirements and recommended practices of the Judicial Council and the State. Specifically, the San Mateo court should amend its bottled water service contract to ensure that water is purchased for use by jurors and court room staff only.

7. To ensure that DWR manages WaterFix in an effective manner, DWR should complete both the economic analysis and financial analysis for WaterFix and make the analyses publicly available as soon as possible.