2014-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 2

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.

2. To demonstrate its willingness to fairly evaluate regional expenditures, Education should allow San Joaquin to reimburse its general fund for the vehicle purchase Education incorrectly disallowed.

3. To improve its understanding of regional expenditures, Education should increase the level of detail required in its quarterly expenditure reports. The level of detail should allow Education to select expenditures for review.

4. For regions that have not recently received a federal monitoring review, Education should use the detailed expenditure reports to select a sample of expenditures, request supporting documentation from the regions, and then review the expenditures to determine if they meet applicable federal and state criteria.

5. As part of the reviews based on quarterly reports, Education should verify that regions are using the appropriate accounting codes to classify their expenditures.

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.

11. Once it has addressed the underlying issues with regional accounting, provided direction to regions about which expenditures it will consider administrative, and obtained accurate expenditure data, Education should review its administrative cost goal to ensure that this goal is reasonable given the requirements of the migrant program.

12. To address past federal findings that are not yet resolved, Education should respond as recommended in Appendix B of this report.

13. To determine if the statewide migrant education program is effective, Education should finalize its current evaluation of the program and begin developing the capacity to produce a more robust annual evaluation of the program.

14. To address a lack of detailed migrant program service and outcome data, Education should either expand the capabilities of its existing statewide databases or implement additional systems that would allow regions to capture more detailed data about migrant students.

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.

17. To provide stronger leadership with respect to school safety and nondiscrimination laws, Education, with direction from the superintendent of public instruction, should prioritize the review of parent, student, guardian, or interested party appeals to ensure that the EO office follows state regulations by processing appeals more promptly, notifying LEAs of when appeals are filed, and obtaining the investigation files and other documents when reviewing complaint appeals.

19. To provide stronger leadership with respect to school safety and nondiscrimination laws, Education, with direction from the superintendent of public instruction, should use data from the kids survey and reported suspensions and expulsions to evaluate the levels of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying students encounter and to determine the effectiveness of its own and the LEAs' efforts, and report the results to the Legislature by August 1, 2014.

21. To provide stronger leadership with respect to school safety and nondiscrimination laws, Education, with direction from the superintendent of public instruction, should within the next six months and annually thereafter, update and replace the resources on its Web site to provide more relevant information on best practices, such as preventing and responding to incidents related to a protected characteristic or that occur through cyberbullying, the U.S. DOE report on state bullying legislation, and best practices in other states, such as the Massachusetts law on LEA staff training requirements.

1. To address the variations in per student funding of its campuses, the university should complete its reexamination of the base budgets to the campuses and implement appropriate changes to its budget process. As part of its reexamination of the base budget, it should:
• Identify the amount of general funds and tuition budget revenues that each campus receives for specific types of students (such as undergraduate, graduate, and health sciences) and explain any differences in the amount provided per student among the campuses.
• Consider factors such as specific research and public service programs at each campus, the higher level of funding provided to health sciences students, historical funding methods that favored graduate students, historical and anticipated future variations in enrollment growth funding, and any other factors applied consistently across campuses.
• After accounting for the factors mentioned above, address any remaining variations in campus funding over a specified period of time.
• Make the results of its reexamination and any related implementation plan available to stakeholders, including the general public.

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.

8. To ensure that campuses do not inappropriately use revenues generated from student fees imposed by referenda, the university should ensure that it, the regents, and the campuses do not expand the uses for such revenues beyond those stated in the referenda.

23. To address the improper acts we identified, the university should collect $1,802 from the official for the wasteful expenses he claimed for lodging and meals during his trip to England, the expenses he incurred within the vicinity of his headquarters, and the business meal expenses.

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

27. The university should revise policies to establish defined maximum limits for the reimbursement of domestic lodging costs and establish controls that allow for exceptions to the limits under specific circumstances only.

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.

2. To comply with federal requirements, Covered California should develop a plan and procedures for monitoring, recertification, and decertification of qualified health plans.

3. To ensure the success of its outreach effort, Covered California should track the effect on enrollment figures of its planned outreach and marketing activities and of its assister program.

4. To ensure financial sustainability, Covered California should conduct regular reviews of enrollment, costs, and revenue and make prompt adjustments to its financial sustainability plan as necessary.

1. To ensure that consumers receive high-quality, cost-effective services that meet the goals of their individual development plans (IPPs) consistent with state law, Developmental Services should require the regional centers to document the basis of any IPP-related vendor selection and specify which comparable vendors (when available) were evaluated.

2. To ensure that consumers receive high-quality, cost-effective services that meet the goals of their IPPs consistent with state law, Developmental Services should review a representative sample of this documentation as part of its biennial waiver reviews or fiscal audits to ensure that regional centers are complying with state law—and particularly with the July 2009 amendment requiring selection of the least costly available provider of comparable service.

3. To ensure adequate guidance to OPS personnel, once the department has amended OPS's policies and procedures to reflect the recommendations we have included here, the department and OPS should place a high priority on completing and implementing its planned updates to the OPS policy and procedure manual.

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.

11. To minimize the need for overtime, the department should reassess its minimum staffing requirements, hire a sufficient number of employees to cover these requirements, and examine its employee scheduling processes.

13. The department should create specific measurable goals for OPS that include existing and new measures associated with each one, such as staffing, overtime, and the timely completion of investigations. In addition, the department should perform a regular review of the quality of OPS's activities and investigations to achieve those goals. The department should track progress in quality measures over time and adjust its training plans to increase OPS law enforcement personnel's skill and compliance with established policies and procedures.

1. To comply with requirements in the State Administrative Manual, Health Care Services should refrain from funding permanent full-time employees with the State's funding mechanism for temporary-help positions.

2. To readily identify active IT and other contracts, Health Care Services should either revise its existing contract database or develop and implement a new contract database.

2. To ensure that Medi-Cal recipients receive timely access to prescribed drugs, Health Care Services should abolish its policy of responding to drug TARs by the end of the next business day and should instead ensure that prior-authorization requests to dispense drugs are processed within the legally mandated 24-hour period. Alternatively, it should seek formal authorization from CMS to deviate from the 24-hour requirement, and should seek a similar modification to state law. In addition, Health Care Services should begin recording the actual time it receives paper TARs so that it can begin to measure accurately its processing times.

3. To ensure that Medi-Cal recipients are receiving timely medical services from providers, Health Care Services should start tracking prior-authorization medical TARs separately and should ensure that such TARs are processed within an average of five working days. Although state law and regulations specifically require prior authorization for certain medical services, Health Care Services generally does not require prior authorizations in practice. Consequently, Health Care Services should seek legislation to update existing laws and amend its regulations to render them consistent with its TAR practices.

1. To the extent that Public Health continues to fund its various contracts, it should establish clearer expectations with its contractors concerning how much money is to be spent directly on the different aspects of the EWC program and should monitor spending to confirm that these expectations are being met.

2. To ensure better public transparency and accountability for how the EWC program is administered, Public Health should comply with state law to develop regulations, based on input from the public and interested parties, that will direct how Public Health administers the EWC program. At a minimum, such regulations should define the eligibility criteria for women seeking access to EWC screening services.

4. Caltrans, the Energy Commission, Food and Agriculture, and Health Care Services should put in writing those policies and procedures related to intellectual property that they believe are necessary and appropriate to enable their staff to identify, manage, and protect their intellectual property.

6. Health Care Services should ensure that it performs annual medical audits of local initiatives as required by law.

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.

2. To ensure that it monitors counties to the fullest extent as the MHSA specifies and that it implements best practices, Health Care Services should conduct comprehensive on-site reviews of county MHSA programs, including verifying county compliance with MHSA requirements.

3. To ensure that counties have the needed guidance to implement and evaluate their MHSA programs, Health Care Services should coordinate with the Accountability Commission and issue guidance or regulations, as appropriate, for Facilities programs and for other MHSA requirements, such as a prudent reserve.

5. To ensure that counties have the needed guidance to implement and evaluate their MHSA programs, Health Care Services should collaborate with the Accountability Commission to develop and issue guidance or regulations, as appropriate, to counties on how to effectively evaluate and report on the performance of their MHSA programs.

6. To ensure that Health Care Services and other state entities can evaluate MHSA programs and assist the Accountability Commission in its efforts, Health Care Services should collect complete and relevant MHSA data from the counties.

7. To ensure that Health Care Services and other state entities can evaluate MHSA programs and assist the Accountability Commission in its efforts, Health Care Services should resolve all known technical issues with the partnership and client services systems and provide adequate and expert resources to manage the systems going forward.

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.

18. Health Care Services should develop standardized data collection guidelines or regulations, as appropriate, that will address inconsistencies in the data that counties report to the State. In developing these guidelines or regulations, Health Care Services should consult with the Accountability Commission to ensure that data collected reasonably fulfill statewide evaluation purposes.

19. To help ensure county compliance with stakeholder regulations, Health Care Services should provide technical assistance to counties on the MHSA local planning review process and ensure that its guidance to counties is clear and consistent with state regulations.

9. To ensure that counties have needed guidance to implement and evaluate MHSA programs, the Accountability Commission should issue regulations, as appropriate, for Prevention and Innovation programs.

11. To fulfill its charge to evaluate MHSA programs, the Accountability Commission should undertake the evaluations specified in its implementation plan.

1. To ensure that citation review conferences are completed expeditiously, Public Health should continue to take steps to eliminate its backlog of appeals awaiting a citation review conference.

2. To increase revenue for the penalty accounts, Public Health should seek legislation authorizing it to revise periodically the penalty amounts to reflect an inflation indicator, such as the CPI.

3. To increase revenue for the penalty accounts, Public Health should ensure that it conducts all state surveys of facilities every two years, as required by state law.

4. To ensure that it complies with current state law and increases transparency, Public Health should adopt regulations for the administration of temporary management companies.

5. To increase revenue for the state account, Public Health should seek legislation authorizing it to require facilities that want to contest the monetary penalty to pay the penalty upon its appeal which could then be deposited into an account within the special deposit fund. The original monetary penalty deposited, plus interest accrued in the account, should then be liquidated in accordance with the terms of the decision.

6. To ensure consistency with federal guidance related to federal requirements, and that it is not creating incentives for facilities to appeal citations issued for noncompliance with state requirements, Public Health should provide guidance to its staff that discourages settling appealed monetary penalties for a better term than had the facility not contested the citation and paid the penalty within the time frame specified in law to receive a 35 percent reduction. If Public Health believes instances occur when it is appropriate to reduce a monetary penalty by more than 35 percent, it should document which statutory or regulatory factors that formed the basis for concluding that the original class of citation and corresponding monetary penalty amount were no longer considered valid or relevant.

7. To increase revenue for the penalty accounts, Public Health should seek legislation specifying a time frame within which facilities with nonappealed citations that do not qualify for a 35 percent reduction must pay their monetary penalties and allowing Public Health to collect interest on late payments of monetary penalties.

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.

15. To conduct licensing surveys at required intervals while minimizing additional workload, Public Health should explore further opportunities to coordinate the licensing and certification surveys. If Public Health questions the value of these surveys, it should seek legislation to modify the surveying requirements.

17. To ensure that investigations are conducted on a timely basis across priority levels, Public Health should develop and implement target time frames for the priority levels that lack them. Public Health should ensure that the timelines are being met and, if not, explore new ways to increase efficiency and manage its workload, thereby facilitating timely investigations.

18. To improve its enforcement, each year Public Health should evaluate the effectiveness of its enforcement system across all types of health facilities, including those in developmental centers, prepare the required annual report, and, if called for, recommend legislation to improve the enforcement system and enhance the quality of care.

2. To make certain that counties receive the greatest benefit from the resources they spend on antifraud efforts related to CalWORKs and food stamp cases, Social Services should, using the results from the recommended cost-effectiveness analysis, determine why some counties' efforts to combat welfare fraud are more cost-effective than others.

3. To make certain that counties receive the greatest benefit from the resources they spend on antifraud efforts related to CalWORKs and food stamp cases, Social Services should seek to replicate the most cost-effective practices among all counties.

4. To make certain that counties receive the greatest benefit from the resources they spend on antifraud efforts related to CalWORKs and food stamp cases, Social Services should continue to address the recommendations of the steering committee and promptly act on the remaining recommendations.

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.

7. 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 continue with regular meetings of its workgroup to further its efforts to clarify its instructions for completing the counties' investigation activity reports.

8. To ensure that counties are consistently following up on all match lists, Social Services should remind counties of their responsibility under state regulations to follow up diligently on all match lists. Further, it should work with counties to determine why poor follow-up exists and address those reasons.

9. To ensure that counties are consistently following up on all match lists, Social Services should revive its efforts to work with counties and federal agencies to address the counties' concerns about match list formats and criteria.

10. Social Services should track how counties determine prosecution thresholds for welfare fraud cases and determine the effects of these thresholds on counties' decisions to investigate potential fraud, with a focus on determining best practices and cost-effective methods. It should then work with counties to implement the consistent use of these cost-effective methods.

11. Social Services should either ensure that counties follow state regulations regarding the use of administrative disqualification hearings or pursue changing the regulations.

14. Recognizing that the deterrence effect is difficult to measure, Social Services should develop a method that allows it to gauge the cost effectiveness of SFIS. Social Services should include in its efforts to measure cost effectiveness the administrative cost that counties incur for using SFIS. Based on its results, Social Services should determine whether the continued use of SFIS is justified.

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.

2. To encourage more effective communication from county CWS agencies regarding its licensees, Social Services should specify in regulations what types of situations or allegations the agencies should forward to its licensing division.

3. To ensure that rates paid to foster family agencies are appropriate, Social Services should analyze the rates and provide reasonable support for each component, especially the 40 percent administrative fee it currently pays these agencies.

4. Social Services should create and monitor compliance with clear requirements specifying that children placed with foster family agencies must have elevated treatment needs that would require a group home placement if not for the existence of these agencies' programs. Specifically, Social Services should revise its regulations so licensed foster homes have higher priority than foster family agencies for children that do not have identified treatment needs.

5. Social Services should require county CWS agencies to file in CWS/CMS a detailed justification for any child placed with a foster family agency.

6. Social Services should create a mechanism by which it can efficiently check for compliance with the needs-justification requirement.

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.

8. To determine whether the hold harmless provision has been effective in reducing caseloads and whether it should be revised or rescinded, Social Services should refine and use CWS/CMS to calculate and report county CWS caseloads.

9. To encourage county CWS agencies to conduct formal internal death reviews, Social Services should revise its annual report on child deaths resulting from abuse or neglect to provide information on whether county CWS agencies conducted such a review of child deaths with prior CWS history. To obtain this information, Social Services should revise its regulations to require all county CWS agencies to not only report child deaths resulting from abuse or neglect but to also require a subsequent report indicating whether an internal child death review was completed.

11. To provide more useful information in its annual report, Social Services should provide child death information broken out by county, not just statewide totals. Further, Social Services should provide more analysis, such as comparing child death information over multiple years and presenting each county's child deaths as a percentage of its total child population.

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.

3. To ensure that all overtime hours worked are necessary, and to protect the health and safety of its employees and patients, Mental Health should implement the Legislative Analyst's suggestion of hiring an independent consultant to evaluate the current staffing model for Mental Health's hospitals. The staffing levels at Mental Health should then be adjusted, depending on the outcome of the consultant's evaluation.

2. To eliminate duplicative effort and increase efficiency, Corrections should not make unnecessary referrals to Mental Health. Corrections and Mental Health should jointly revise the structured screening instrument so that the referral process adheres more closely to the law's intent.

6. To reduce costs for unnecessary evaluations, Mental Health should either issue a regulation or seek a statutory amendment to clarify that when resolving a difference of opinion between the two initial evaluators of an offender, Mental Health must seek the opinion of a fourth evaluator only when a third evaluator concludes that the offender meets SVP criteria.

1. To improve the usefulness of its reports so that they can be used to assess the outcomes of realignment, the board should work with counties and relevant stakeholders, such as the committee that established performance outcome measures for the block grant, to determine the data that counties should report. To minimize the potential for creating a state mandate, the board should take into consideration the information that counties already collect to satisfy requirements for other grants.

2. To improve the usefulness of its reports so that they can be used to assess the outcomes of realignment, if the Legislature chooses not to change the law as suggested, or if the counties are unable to report countywide statistics, the board should discontinue comparing outcomes for juveniles who receive block grant services to those who do not in its reports.

3. To maximize the usefulness of the information it makes available to stakeholders and to increase accountability, the board should create policies and procedures that include clear, comprehensive guidance to counties about all aspects of performance outcome and expenditure reporting. At a minimum, such guidance should include specifying how counties should define when a juvenile has received a service and whether certain services, such as training, should qualify as serving juveniles.

4. To maximize the usefulness of the information it makes available to stakeholders and to increase accountability, the board should publish performance outcome and expenditure data for each county on its Web site and in its annual reports.

5. To maximize the usefulness of the information it makes available to stakeholders and to increase accountability, the board should consider verifying the counties' data by conducting regular site visits on a rotating basis or by employing other procedures to verify data that counties submit.

6. To increase the amount of juvenile justice data the counties make available to the public, the board should work with counties on how best to report these data.

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.

12. To ensure that counties do not maintain excessive balances of unexpended block grant funds, the board should develop procedures to monitor counties' unspent funds and follow up with them if the balances become unreasonable.

5. To determine whether the additional expansion of telemedicine is cost-effective within the California correctional system, Prison Health Care Services should identify and collect the data it needs to estimate the savings of additional telemedicine through an analysis of the cost of specialty care visits currently provided outside of the institution that could be replaced with telemedicine.

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.

1. To help it assess the effect of policy changes and manage operations in a cost-effective manner, Corrections should do the following:
• Ensure that its new data system will address its current lack of data available for statewide analysis, specifically data related to identifying the custody staffing cost by inmate characteristics such as security level, age, and custody designation.
• If implementation of its new system continues to be delayed, or if Corrections determines that the new system will not effectively replace the current assignment and scheduling systems used by the institutions, it should improve its existing data related to custody staffing levels and use the data to identify the related costs of various inmate populations.

5. To more closely align its operations with state law and its own policy, make certain that inmates are provided with an adequate level of supervision, and protect the health and safety of employees and inmates, Corrections should encourage the Department of Personnel Administration** to negotiate a reduction in the amount of voluntary overtime a correctional officer is allowed to work in future collective bargaining unit agreements, in order to reduce the likelihood that involuntary overtime will cause them to work more than 80 hours of overtime in total during a month.

6. To more closely align its operations with state law and its own policy, make certain that inmates are provided with an adequate level of supervision, and protect the health and safety of employees and inmates, Corrections should better ensure that it prevents the instances in which correctional officers work beyond the voluntary overtime limit in a pay period.

8. To ensure that it can determine whether it is in compliance with state law and can measure the efficacy of its programs in reducing recidivism, Corrections should track, maintain, and use historical program assignment and waiting list data by inmate.

1. To address the erroneous sentencing information and inappropriately assigned convictions in its data system, Corrections should complete its cleanup of data that will be transferred into the new system, ensuring that this review includes a detailed evaluation of convictions that have been assigned outdated sentencing information as well as deleting erroneous sentencing information, before it begins using its new data system.

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.

1. Corrections should take appropriate disciplinary actions against the employee and pursue collection efforts for the compensation she did not earn.

6. As Corrections prepares to move CalParole data into the Strategic Offender Management System (SOMS), it should modify existing employment-related fields and add to SOMS new fields that are currently not available in CalParole so that Corrections can minimize the opportunity for erroneous data entries and make employment data more reliable.

3. To eliminate duplicative effort and increase efficiency, Corrections should not make unnecessary referrals to Mental Health. For example, Corrections should better leverage the time and work it already conducts by including in its referral process (1) determining whether the offender committed a predatory offense, (2) reviewing results from any previous screenings and evaluations that Mental Health completed and considering whether the most recent parole violation or offense might alter the previous decision, and (3) using STATIC-99R to assess the risk that an offender will reoffend.

4. To eliminate duplicative effort and increase efficiency, Corrections should not make unnecessary referrals to Mental Health. Corrections and Mental Health should jointly revise the structured screening instrument so that the referral process adheres more closely to the law's intent.

1. To ensure that the State does not spend additional resources on COMPAS while its usefulness is uncertain, Corrections should suspend its use of the COMPAS core and reentry assessments until it has issued regulations and updated its operations manual to define how Corrections' use of COMPAS will affect decision making regarding inmates, such as clarifying how COMPAS results will be considered when sending inmates to different prison facilities, enrolling them in rehabilitative programs to address their criminal risk factors, and developing expectations for those on parole.

2. To ensure that the State does not spend additional resources on COMPAS while its usefulness is uncertain, Corrections should suspend its use of the COMPAS core and reentry assessments until it has demonstrated to the Legislature that it has a plan to measure and report COMPAS's effect on reducing recidivism. Such a plan could consider whether inmates enrolled in a rehabilitative program based on a COMPAS assessment had lower recidivism rates than those provided rehabilitative programming as a result of non-COMPAS factors.

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.

4. Once Corrections resumes its use of COMPAS core and reentry assessments, it should develop practices or procedures to periodically determine whether its staff are using COMPAS core or reentry assessments as intended. Such a process might include performing periodic site visits to corroborate that COMPAS is being used as required.

5. Once Corrections resumes its use of COMPAS core and reentry assessments, it should develop practices or procedures to periodically compare the demand for certain rehabilitative programs, as suggested by a COMPAS core assessment, to the existing capacity to treat such needs.

2. Conduct an audit of the leave accounting system during the past three years to identify instances of nonmanagerial, exempt employees working an alternate schedule at an adult correctional facility being charged incorrect amounts of leave for missed days of work.

4. Adjust current employees' leave balances in the leave accounting system to correct any improper charging of leave identified by the audit.

6. In instances where the audit has determined that an employee's leave balance was mischarged but the employee subsequently departed state service, take appropriate measures to remedy any resulting incorrect compensation of the employee for unused leave upon his or her departure, including by seeking repayment of any amount overpaid to the employee.

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

1. To ensure that it collects fair market rents for the SR 710 properties on the State's behalf, Caltrans should, using the fair market rent determinations for all SR 710 properties it recently prepared and excluding those in its affordable rent program, adjust the tenants' rents to fair market after providing them with proper notice.

2. To ensure that it collects fair market rents for the SR 710 properties on the State's behalf, Caltrans should make only limited exceptions to charging fair market rent and document the specific public purpose that is served in any case that it does not charge fair market rent.

39. To comply with the 2007 court ruling and the APA until such time as the Legislature may choose to act, Caltrans should establish regulations to govern the sales process for the SR 710 properties affected by the Roberti Bill.

40. To pursue alternatives to its management of the SR 710 properties, Caltrans should prepare a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the State would save money by hiring a private vendor to manage the properties. If such savings would occur, Caltrans should seek an exemption under Government Code, Section 19130 (a), to hire a private vendor.

1. To ensure that it can respond adequately to funding levels that may vary from its business plan, the Authority should develop and publish alternative funding scenarios that reflect the possibility of reduced or delayed funding from the planned sources. These scenarios should detail the implications of variations in the level or timing of funding on the program and its schedule.

3. To avert possible legal challenges, the Authority should ensure that the review group adheres to the Meeting Act or seek a formal opinion from the Office of the Attorney General regarding whether the review group is subject to this act.

1. To ensure that it can respond adequately to funding levels that may vary from its business plan, the Authority should develop and publish alternative funding scenarios that reflect the possibility of reduced or delayed funding from the planned sources. These scenarios should detail the implications of variations in the level or timing of funding on the program and its schedule.

3. To avert possible legal challenges, the Authority should ensure that the independent peer review panel adheres to the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act or seek a formal opinion from the Office of the Attorney General (attorney general) regarding whether the panel is subject to this act.

7. To add clarification to the first recommendation we made in our prior report that stated, “To ensure that it can respond adequately to funding levels that may vary from its business plan, the Authority should develop and publish alternative funding scenarios that reflect the possibility of reduced or delayed funding from the planned sources. These scenarios should detail the implications of variations in the level or timing of funding on the program and its schedule,” the Authority should also present viable alternative funding scenarios for phase one in its entirety that do not assume an increase in the federal funding levels already identified in the 2012 draft business plan. If the Authority does not believe that such alternatives exist, it should publicly disclose this in its 2012 final business plan.

9. To ensure that the public and the Legislature are aware of the full cost of the program, the Authority should clearly disclose that the 2012 draft business plan assumes that the State will only be receiving profits for the first two years of operation in 2022 and 2023, and potentially not again until 2060 in exchange for the almost $11 billion the Authority assumes it will receive from the private sector over a four-year period.

1. To ensure that programs supported by special plates receive appropriate amounts of revenues due to them, Motor Vehicles should annually collect all fees for special plates that are no longer on a vehicle but are retained by the plate owner.

2. Motor Vehicles should ensure that the fees it lists in its application for special plates, as well as any other publications, are supported by the appropriate statutes.

3. Motor Vehicles should assess the extent to which it has charged fees for special plates that are not consistent with those prescribed in statutes and take appropriate action.

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.

15. To make certain that money from the special plate funds pay only for allowable and supportable activities, Resources should use all appropriate funding sources to pay for any expenses that benefit multiple programs in proportion to the benefits these programs actually receive. Further, it should ensure that its allocation of such expenses to different funds is equitable and supported.

16. To ensure that the governor and Legislature have sufficient and appropriate information with which to make decisions on the most effective use of environmental fund money, Resources should submit to the governor and Legislature the annual and triennial reports containing the information that state law requires.

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.

14. To make certain that money from the special plate funds pay only for allowable and supportable activities, Parks and Recreation should ensure that environmental fund money budgeted to its offices is supported by the proportion of the offices' activities that state law allows.

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.

2. To reduce duplicate expenditure tracking and increase the effectiveness of its budget process, the department should develop procedures requiring the districts to prepare and submit spending plans and to periodically submit their total expenditures after reconciling them with the FTS. The procedures should specify how often districts should provide this information to the department to ensure that the budget office and park management can appropriately oversee the districts' budgets and spending.

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.

4. 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 develop specific time frames and deliverables for the completion of phases two and three of its plan. These time frames should include specific completion dates for each key component of the phases.

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.

6. 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 determine how it will define service levels and measure whether those levels are being met so it can provide budgets for each park unit, as phase three of its process requires.

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.

8. To prevent unauthorized leave buyback transactions, the department should provide training by December 2013 to all department managers and personnel staff who might be involved in leave buyback transactions to ensure that they understand the State's requirements regarding leave buybacks.

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.

11. To prevent unauthorized leave buyback transactions, the department should limit access for keying transactions to the payroll system only to authorized personnel staff.

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.

15. To improve the effectiveness of the EPRC, the department should establish a process by March 2014 through which the director's office provides formal direction to the EPRC regarding staffing 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.

1. When the commission determines that it will pursue delinquent lessees itself, it should use a collection agency or a program such as the Franchise Tax Board's Interagency Intercept Collections Program.

2. To ensure that it receives rent from the lessee that reflects the approximate value for the State's property at those times when a lessee disputes a modification to the rental amount after the commission exercises its right to perform a rent review or because the lease expired, the commission should include in its lease agreements a provision that requires lessees to pay the commission's proposed increased rental amount, which would be deposited into an account within the Special Deposit Fund. The increased rental amounts deposited, plus the corresponding interest accrued in the account, should then be liquidated in accordance with the amount agreed to in the final lease agreement.

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.

21. To ensure that it manages delinquent leases in an effective and timely manner and collects all the amounts owed to it, the commission should develop and adhere to policies and procedures that incorporate the administrative manual’s guidance, including the steps staff should take when a lessee is delinquent, time standards for performing those steps, and a process for consistently tracking the status of delinquent leases between divisions.

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.

24. To ensure that as few leases as possible go into holdover, the commission should consistently assess the 25 percent penalty on expired leases.

4. To provide the public with accurate and complete information on the bond-funded projects it administers, Water Resources should develop and consistently use a formalized, documented review process that will provide greater assurance that project information posted to the Bond Accountability Web site is regularly updated and contains accurate information.

4. The department should weave benchmarks, coupled with metrics to measure the quality of its activities, into the strategic plan for the beverage program to allow it to better measure progress in meeting goals.

5. The department should ensure that the strategic plan incorporates all relevant activities of the beverage program.

19. To improve oversight of grants and ensure that the intended value is received from the grant funds it awards, the department should implement policies to ensure that cities and counties spend grant funds for recycling purposes by requiring periodic reporting of expenses or reporting of how funds were used after the grant ends.

6. When regional water boards include staff enforcement costs in the penalty actions they issue, the state water board should require that they use a systematic method for tracking the hours staff spend on enforcement activities related to penalty actions and maintain documentary support for these staff enforcement cost calculations.

7. If regional water boards continue to include staff enforcement costs in the penalty actions they issue, the state water board should revise its staff cost rate to reflect actual staff salaries and overhead cost for the certification program.

16. To ensure that all designated parties complete statements of economic interests as the law requires, Consumer Affairs should improve its policies and procedures to ensure that it identifies any incomplete statements and promptly notifies the Fair Political Practices Commission when necessary.

1. The physical therapy board should explore the feasibility of establishing a state position to perform the duties of its current in-house consultant at a reduced cost.

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.

2. To ensure its future financial stability, the commission should work with Consumer Affairs to establish a long-term financial plan that contains the following:
• A reasonable annual budget with an accurate forecast of planned expenditures. The commission should determine this budget based in part on its ability or inability to meet the expenditure limitations stipulated in the solvency plan.
• The number of inspectors necessary to regulate each type of event. In establishing this number, the commission should take into account the varying size and complexity of the events. It should also determine the cost for each inspector to regulate an event.
• An estimate of its costs to regulate different types of events. To arrive at a reasonable estimate, the commission will need to track at least six months of actual expenditures.
• The number of staff necessary to perform all of the commission's necessary functions. The commission will need to conduct a workload analysis as soon as possible to determine how many staff it requires and adjust its planned expenditures accordingly.
• Funds for athletic inspectors' training that are sufficient to meet the requirement that inspectors receive training within six months of an event that they are scheduled to work.
• Strategies to increase revenue. The commission may need to conduct analyses to determine whether the opportunities it is currently considering are legally permissible and fiscally prudent. If so, the commission should take steps to implement those strategies, including seeking any necessary legislative changes.

7. To ensure that it adequately tracks critical information related to its basic functions and mission, the commission should work with Consumer Affairs to ensure that the new online program will meet its needs and requirements. Once the program is in place, the commission should use it as its central means for tracking its operations.

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.

9. To ensure that it accurately collects revenue, the commission should calculate the pension assessment by counting all the complimentary tickets issued, except for working complimentary tickets, not merely the complimentary tickets that are redeemed. If the commission does not agree that it should calculate the pension assessment by counting all the complimentary tickets issued, it should seek a change in its regulations to calculate the fee based only on the number of complimentary tickets redeemed.

22. The commission needs to establish regulations that describe its process for determining its ticket assessment for the neurological account so that it avoids the use of underground regulations.

25. To operate the pension plan effectively and maximize boxers' benefits, the commission should create policies and procedures for its administration to ensure that it transfers funds on a regular basis from the pension fund's state account into its investment account.

28. To comply with state law governing the pension plan, the commission needs to, after it has an accurate and complete listing of all licensed athletes and box office information by event type, conduct the analysis to determine the feasibility of expanding the pension plan to cover all athletes and report the results to the Legislature.

2. To assist the governor in the development, oversight, and continuous improvement of California's workforce investment system, the state board should collaborate with state and local workforce investment partners to promptly develop and implement a strategic workforce plan as state law requires. The strategic plan should include, at a minimum, the following elements: clear roles and responsibilities pertaining to the state board, EDD, and other state and local workforce partners; clear definitions for terminology used in the strategic plan, such as quality services; performance measures that are specific to California for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of WIA-funded programs and activities; and procedures for approving the addition of data elements to EDD's Web-based system and for the exchange of data between EDD and the state board to facilitate the development and implementation of performance measures that are specific to California.

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.

4. As part of an overall strategy to limit the number of calls it receives while still providing timely and effective customer service, the department should use existing data and additional data from the new phone system to gain a better understanding of why people request to speak to an agent. Using this information, the department should further develop strategies and measurable goals related to achieving a reduction in call volumes. For example, to ensure that virtually all calls are able to gain access to the voice response portion of its new phone system, the department should monitor the volume of blocked call attempts and work with its phone system vendor if necessary to increase the system's capacity.

5. To evaluate the effectiveness of its other efforts to provide services to claimants in ways that do not require them to speak to agents, such as Web-Cert and Tele-Cert, the department should periodically summarize and assess the more robust management information available under its new phone system.

4. To assist the state board and other workforce investment partners in the development and implementation of state-specific performance measures, EDD should ensure that it works with the state board to develop procedures for approving the addition of data elements to its Web-based system and for the exchange of data between EDD and the state board.

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.

5. To identify ways to better serve veterans in California, the department should assess the success or struggles of veterans within demographic categories in finding employment, such as age, race, or educational attainment, by comparing veterans' performance to that of nonveterans in the same demographic categories and across demographic categories and use this analysis to determine whether specific populations of veterans could be better served through more targeted efforts and to identify best practices for improving employment outcomes for these specific populations. Further, the department should provide the results of this analysis annually, beginning in 2014, to stakeholders, including local workforce agencies, the state workforce board, the interagency council, the Legislature, and the public.

7. To better optimize its leadership role in the interagency council's employment workgroup, the department should ensure that the employment workgroup develops a timeline for completing its action items and develops a process for measuring its success in improving employment outcomes for veterans. Specifically, the department should take the lead for establishing a time frame for evaluating tools to help assess and translate military skills into finding civilian jobs and establishing a transition assistance program for veterans.

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.

1. To ensure public safety and provide public assurance that school districts construct projects in accordance with approved plans, the department, in conjunction with the division, should pursue legislative changes to the Field Act that would prohibit occupancy in cases in which the division has identified significant safety concerns.

37. To ensure that the construction unit complies with the State's procurement laws and policies, General Services should continue its efforts to implement regulations that govern the small business certification process related to defining and enforcing violations of commercially useful function requirements.

5. To comply fully with state law, the commission should conduct a comprehensive market rate study and update it periodically.

1. To ensure that it maximizes its use of CaRES, the board should address the structural and operational flaws that prevent identification of erroneous information and implement edit checks and other system controls sufficient to identify errors.

1. To enhance the value of the Bond Accountability Web site, Finance should require administering agencies to provide information about the actual amounts of bond funds spent on posted projects at least semiannually.

2. To enhance the value of the Bond Accountability Web site, Finance should develop a tracking and review process to periodically assess the completeness of the project information posted to the Web site. Such a process should include a review of whether state agencies are describing, in terms the public can easily understand, the expected or realized benefits of bond-funded projects.

2. To ensure that it maximizes its ability to generate revenue at all the veterans homes and better cover the costs of providing care to its members, CalVet should analyze its cost-recovery model, including an evaluation of the state laws that limit the amount of revenue that CalVet can collect for the care it provides to its members at the veterans homes.

5. To better utilize unused space at the veterans homes, and to serve more veterans within legal restrictions, CalVet should use the information in the Yountville veterans home master plan to develop a plan for using unused space at that home to generate revenue and/or serve more veterans.

11. To ensure it is maximizing its ability to serve veterans in the State's veterans homes, CalVet should follow through with its plan to assess the bed capacity of the homes for veterans' needs after the homes in Fresno and Redding are licensed, to determine the most appropriate number of beds for the different levels of care offered at each home.

14. To ensure that it is providing the highest quality of services to veterans, CalVet should improve its tracking system policy by developing oversight controls so that the system is used consistently by all of the veterans homes.

15. To allow for public input and to prevent any legal challenges that its policy of capping members' fees, its $165 monthly income-retention policy for members, and its age and admission policy are unenforceable underground regulations, CalVet should adopt these policies as regulations in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act.

16. To more effectively and efficiently meet state purchasing and procurement requirements, CalVet should analyze its current purchasing model to ensure that it is the most efficient and cost-effective to use when purchasing non-IT goods and services for the veterans homes.

17. To more effectively and efficiently meet state purchasing and procurement requirements, CalVet should continue implementing quality assurance policies to strengthen its oversight of its purchasing practices, including conducting on-site reviews of the purchasing practices of the veterans homes.

1. For all contracts that involve recreation fund moneys or involve recreation fund enterprises, as a best practice, institute policies that require the contracts be awarded and administered in a manner consistent with the policies and procedures set forth in the State Administrative Manual and the State Contracting Manual.

3. For all contracts that involve recreation fund moneys or involve recreation fund enterprises, institute policies that require the contracts to be reviewed and approved by the secretary of Veterans Affairs, or upon delegation of the authority to do so, by a deputy secretary, prior to the contracts being executed.

4. Institute a policy that requires all payments of recreation fund moneys to a person or business in the amount of $5,000 or more during a fiscal year and any contract involving recreation fund enterprises be presented to the recreation fund advisory board (now known as the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Committee) at a public meeting for an advisory vote prior to the payment being made.

5. Institute a policy that requires any expenditure of recreation fund moneys to a person or business in the amount of $5,000 or more during a fiscal year be listed as a separate line item in the budget of the recreation fund as presented to the secretary for approval.

7. Consider legislation to establish increased statutory controls over the management of the recreation fund maintained by each of the veterans homes to require that the funds be managed by the secretary of Veterans Affairs, in consultation with the administrator of each home, and be managed in a manner that is transparent to the public, takes into account the feelings of veterans, is consistent with the mission of the veterans homes, and is fiscally prudent.

1. To make certain that emergency response agencies receive reimbursements on time, Cal EMA should establish procedures to ensure that paying entities do not delay reimbursements.

4. To make certain that local agencies calculate correctly their average actual hourly rates, Cal EMA should audit a sample of invoices each year and include in the review an analysis of the accuracy of the local agencies' average actual hourly rates reported in the agencies' salary surveys.

5. To make certain that local agencies calculate correctly their average actual hourly rates, if Cal EMA determines that the local agencies' rates are incorrect, it should advise the agencies to recalculate the rates reported in their salary survey. Local agencies that fail to submit accurate average actual hourly rates should be subject to the base rates.

7. If FEMA determines that the calculations and claims identified in the Office of Inspector General's audit report were erroneous, Cal EMA should modify the time sheets to track the actual hours that the responding agency works as well as the dates and times that the agency committed to the incident and returned from the incident.

8. If FEMA determines that the calculations and claims identified in the Office of Inspector General's audit report were erroneous, Cal EMA should ensure that the replacement for its current invoicing system can calculate the maximum number of reimbursable personnel hours under both FEMA's policy and the CFAA.

11. To make certain that money from the special plate funds pay only for allowable and supportable activities, Cal EMA should maintain documentation to support its charges to the antiterrorism fund. For example, it should ensure that employees submit signed time reports to support the time they spend on antiterrorism-related activities.

23. To reduce the risk that it may not identify an armed prohibited person, Justice should revise its electronic matching process to use all personal identifying numbers available in its databases.

24. To ensure that timely information is available for its efforts to identify armed prohibited persons and confiscate their firearms, Justice should manage staff priorities to meet both its statutory deadline for firearms background checks and its internal deadline for initially reviewing potential prohibited persons. Justice should report annually to the Legislature about the backlog of unreviewed potential prohibited persons and what factors have prohibited it from efficiently reviewing these persons.

28. To ensure that it meets its goal of eliminating the historical backlog of reviewing firearms owners by the end of 2016, Justice should manage its staff resources to continually address the backlog, and should notify the Legislature if it believes that it will not be able to fully process this backlog by its goal date. To help guide this effort, Justice should establish benchmarks that will indicate whether it is on track to meet its goal.

33. Justice should update and maintain its system documentation for the mental health and APPS databases to ensure that it can efficiently and effectively address modifications and questions about these databases.

34. To ensure that it fully supports its decision to apply federal
prohibition terms to individuals, Justice should review all applicable
federal and state laws and continue to seek clarification from the ATF and any other appropriate federal agencies to determine whether California's firearms restoration process meets federal criteria and, if not, why it does not. Justice should issue a report to the Legislature, within one year, detailing the results of its review and, if applicable, communicate why California's restoration process does not meet federal criteria and the impact that it has on prohibited persons who live in California.

4. To enhance the value of the HAVA spending plan as a transparency and accountability tool for the Legislature, the Office should make the following modifications to its annual HAVA spending plan:
• Clearly state the methodology used to report prior HAVA expenditures in the HAVA spending plan. Such a methodology should use the financial information contained in its accounting system.
• Reconcile the prior HAVA expenditures with the year-end financial reports the Office provides to the California State Controller's Office.
• Present prior HAVA expenditures by activity and by specific appropriation.

5. To ensure the State complies with the NVRA, the Office should take all necessary steps, including seeking any necessary legislative changes, and work with the DMV to modify the driver's license application so that it may simultaneously serve as a form for voter registration.

6. To make certain that the FCS evaluators are qualified, the Sacramento family court should develop processes to ensure that it signs all FCS evaluator declarations of qualifications annually.

7. To make certain that the FCS evaluators are qualified, the Sacramento family court should ensure that its unlicensed FCS evaluators complete the licensing portion of the annual declarations of qualifications.

8. To make certain that the FCS evaluators are qualified, the Sacramento family court should identify the training each of the FCS evaluators need to satisfy the court rules' requirements and ensure that they attend the trainings.

10. To make certain that the FCS evaluators are qualified, the Sacramento family court should develop processes to ensure that evaluator declarations of qualifications include all relevant information, such as the evaluator's experience.

12. To make certain that the FCS evaluators are qualified, the Sacramento family court should take all reasonable steps to ensure its FCS evaluators meet the minimum qualifications and training requirements before assigning them to any future Family Code Section 3111 evaluations. If necessary, and as soon as reasonably possible, the court should require the FCS evaluators to take additional education or training courses to compensate for the minimum qualifications and training requirements that were not met.

16. To verify that its private mediator and evaluator panel members meet the minimum qualifications and training requirements before appointment, the Sacramento family court should obtain any missing applications and training records for private mediators and evaluators on its current panel list before appointing them to future cases.

20. To verify that its private mediator and evaluator panel members meet the minimum qualifications and training requirements before appointment, the Sacramento family court should reinstate its local rules for private mediators and evaluators to provide a minimum of three references, and for private evaluators to provide a statement that they have read the court's evaluator guidelines.

23. To make sure that the minor's counsel it appoints meet the additional standards required by the superior court's local rules, the Sacramento family court should obtain any missing applications for minor's counsel before appointing them to any future cases.

42. To strengthen its accounting process for California Family Code Section 3111 evaluations, the Sacramento Superior Court should update its accounting procedures related to billing FCS evaluation costs to include steps for verifying the mathematical accuracy of the FCS summary and the proper allocation of costs between the parties.