(1) The Public Employees' Medical and Hospital Care Act (PEMHCA) , which is administered by the Board of Administration of the Public Employees' Retirement System, governs the funding and provision of postemployment health care benefits for eligible retired public employees and their families. PEMHCA requires the employing office of a state employee or state annuitant, pursuant to standards established by the Department of Human Resources, to possess documentation verifying eligibility of an employee's family member prior to the enrollment of a family member in a health benefit plan and to verify continued eligibility pursuant to a specified schedule. PEMHCA requires the employing office to obtain verifying information for certain family members, including children and stepchildren, at least once every 3 years.
This bill would repeal those PEMHCA provisions and reenact revised provisions in existing law relating to general powers and responsibilities of the department. The bill would revise the specified verification schedule to require the employing office to obtain verifying documentation to substantiate continued eligibility at least once within a 3-year period from the initial enrollment for children and adopted children, and at least once every 3 years for stepchildren and domestic partner children. The bill would additionally require that the department consult with, but not be required to obtain the approval of, the Public Employees' Retirement System prior to adopting related regulations. The bill would require these provisions to be interpreted in accordance with definitions in PEMHCA.
(2) The Public Employees' Retirement Law (PERL) creates the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS) for the purpose of providing pension and benefits to state employees and their beneficiaries and prescribes the rights and duties of employers participating in the system. Under PERL, benefits are funded by investment income and employer and employee contributions, which are deposited into the Public Employees' Retirement Fund, a continuously appropriated trust fund administered by the system's board of administration. PERL prescribes methods for the calculation and payment of the state employer contribution for its employees who are PERS members. PERL provides for an annual adjustment of the state's contribution in the budget and quarterly appropriations to the Public Employees' Retirement Fund from the General Fund and other funds that are responsible for payment of the employer contribution.
Existing law makes additional supplemental General Fund appropriations to the Public Employees' Retirement Fund for the 2020–21, 2021–22, and 2022–23 fiscal years. Supplemental payments connected with appropriations for the 2021–22 and 2022–23 fiscal years are to be apportioned to the state employee member categories generally, as directed by the Department of Finance.
The California Constitution establishes the Budget Stabilization Account in the General Fund and requires the Controller, in each fiscal year, to transfer from the General Fund to the Budget Stabilization Account amounts that include a sum equal to 1.5% of the estimated amount of General Fund revenues for that fiscal year. These provisions further require, until fiscal year 2029–30, that the Legislature appropriate a percentage of these moneys, the amount of which is generated pursuant to specified calculations, for certain obligations and purposes, including addressing unfunded liabilities for state-level pension plans.
This bill would appropriate $1,881,000,000 from the General Fund for the purposes identified in the constitutional provisions described above, to supplement the state's appropriation to the Public Employees' Retirement Fund. The bill would specify that this appropriation represents a portion of the amount identified in a specific provision of the Budget Act of 2021. The bill would require the Department of Finance to provide the Controller with a schedule establishing the timing of specific transfers. The bill would require the supplemental payment to the Public Employees' Retirement Fund to be apportioned to specified state employee member categories, not to exceed $865,017,000 to the state miscellaneous member category, $50,499,000 to the state industrial member category, $112,346,000 to the state safety member category, and $853,138,000 to the state peace officer/firefighter member category. The bill would require the appropriation described above to be applied to the unfunded state liabilities for the state employee member categories that are in excess of the base amounts for the 2021–22 fiscal year.
(3) The Public Employees' Medical and Hospital Care Act (PEMHCA) , which is administered by the Board of Administration of the Public Employees' Retirement System, prescribes methods for calculating the state employer contribution for employee health care and other postemployment benefits for eligible retired public employees and their families and for the vesting of these benefits. PEMHCA establishes the Annuitants' Health Care Coverage Fund, which is continuously appropriated, for the purpose of prefunding health care coverage for annuitants, including administrative costs.
PEMHCA requires the state and employees in specified State Bargaining Units to prefund retiree health care and other postemployment benefits, subject to certain conditions. PEMHCA suspends those employees' monthly contributions for prefunding other postemployment benefits for the 2020–21 fiscal year.
This bill, in addition to the appropriation required for state contributions to prefund retiree health care and other postemployment benefits, as described above, would appropriate $616,000,000 from the General Fund on behalf of employees for the 2020–21 employee prefunding contributions that were suspended. The bill would provide that this appropriation represents a portion of the amount identified in a specified provision of the Budget Act of 2021. The bill would require the Department of Finance to provide the Controller with a schedule establishing the timing of specified transfers, as described below.
The bill would require the supplemental payment to the Annuitants' Health Care Coverage Fund to be apportioned to specified state employee bargaining unit subaccounts, as directed by the Department of Finance. The bill would specifically provide for amounts to State Bargaining Unit subaccounts not to exceed the following: $251,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Units 1, 3, 4, 11, 14, 15, 17, 20, and 21; $11,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 2; $65,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 5; $115,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 6; $25,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 7; $23,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 8; $28,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 9; $9,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 10; $32,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 12; $3,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 13; $6,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 16; $17,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 18; $17,000,000 for employees in State Bargaining Unit 19; and $14,000,000 for specified employees who are not related to a State Bargaining Unit and are excepted from the general definition of state employee and officers or employees of the executive branch of state government who are not members of the civil service.
The bill would require the appropriation, beginning July 1, 2021, to be applied to the employee contribution required to prefund retiree health and other postemployment benefits, as described above, that equates to the suspended contribution amount for the 2020–21 fiscal year.
(4) Existing law requires every person engaged in the business of garment manufacturing, as defined, to register with the Labor Commissioner and to pay registration fees, as specified. Existing law makes garment manufacturers liable for payment of applicable minimum wage and overtime compensation to employees of their contractors. Existing law provides that employees may enforce this requirement by filing a claim with the Labor Commissioner for unpaid wages against the contractor and the manufacturer.
This bill would, upon appropriation, establish the Garment Worker Wage Claim Pilot Program. The program would provide funding to the Department of Industrial Relations to contract with qualified organizations, as defined, for the purpose of providing educational services to garment workers regarding wage violations.
(5) Existing law requires the Employment Development Department to administer a program for the payment of unemployment compensation to the eligible unemployed. Existing law requires the department to periodically review policies and practices used to determine eligibility and benefits that result in delayed eligibility unemployment determinations or benefit payments and that fail to identify or prevent fraud. Existing law requires the director of the department to report the results of the first review to the Legislature on or before July 1, 2015, and authorizes the submission of subsequent reports.
This bill would require the department to provide specified committees of the Legislature with a plan for assessing the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools by May 1, 2022, and to provide a report to those committees with an update on its progress on performing this assessment by July 1, 2022. The bill would require the department, on or before January 1, 2023, and annually thereafter, to analyze and assess the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools and to submit this analysis and assessment to those committees, and would provide that some information may be excluded or redacted from that report.
Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest.
This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.
(6) Existing law establishes the Employment Development Department within the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and sets forth its powers and duties, including job creation activities, computation of benefits, and determination of contribution rates and collection of contributions for benefits.
Existing law provides for the payment of unemployment compensation benefits to eligible persons who are unemployed through no fault of their own through a federal-state unemployment insurance program administered by the department. Unemployment compensation benefits are paid from the Unemployment Fund, and the expenses for administering these provisions are paid from the Unemployment Administration Fund, which is continuously appropriated for these purposes. Under existing law, workers are required to pay contributions to the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund, and those funds are continuously appropriated for the purpose of providing disability benefits and making payment of administrative expenses.
Existing law requires all standard information employee pamphlets provided by the department concerning unemployment and disability insurance programs to be printed in English and the 7 other most commonly used languages among participants in each program. Existing law also requires the department to make the pages on its internet website that provide information regarding applying for, and receiving, unemployment insurance benefits available in the 7 languages, other than English, most commonly used by unemployment insurance applicants and claimants.
This bill would require all standard information employee pamphlets concerning unemployment and disability insurance programs to be printed in English and the primary languages, defined as the top 7 non-English languages used by limited English proficient adults in California according to the 2019 American Community Survey by the United States Census Bureau. The bill would delete the requirement to make specified pages on the department's internet website available in the 7 languages other than English, as described above, and would instead require the department, by February 1, 2024, to establish and host a primary language multilingual access portal for unemployment insurance, as specified. The bill would also require the department, by April 1, 2024, to translate the UI Online interface in the primary languages.
This bill would require the department, by January 1, 2022, to provide oral and signed language unemployment insurance services in real time by qualified interpreters or qualified bilingual staff. If the department staff cannot obtain interpretation in the individual's language and linguistic variant in real time after good faith efforts to acquire language services, the bill would require the department to provide the individual with a return telephone or relay call in the individual's language within a reasonable timeframe. The bill would require the department, by March 1, 2022, to engage linguistically marginalized communities to assist in expanding access to available unemployment insurance programs and services, as specified, and to employ a multilingual access coordinator and multilingual access unit to coordinate the department's multilingual access services, provide technical assistance to department staff, and monitor the provision of multilingual access services. The bill would require that, by June 1, 2022, each application for unemployment insurance contain a section asking the individual to identify their preferred written and spoken or signed languages to be kept in the individual's claims record. The bill would require the department, by December 1, 2022, to, among other things, provide dedicated phones lines for unemployment insurance claims in the primary languages and to translate static, nonpersonalized documents containing unemployment insurance vital information into the primary and additional languages, as defined. The bill would prohibit the provision of unemployment insurance language services from causing an undue delay in receipt of services or benefits. If the department's provision of language services unduly delays an individual's receipt of services or benefits, the bill would require the individual's time to meet the department's deadlines to be extended for the period of time necessary to receive the language services.
This bill would require the department to engage in regular data collection, monitoring, and oversight of multilingual access unemployment insurance services and to annually report this data to the legislative budget committees. Specifically, the bill would require the department, by July 1, 2022, to report to the legislative budget and policy committees on the status of multilingual access services to be delivered to individuals participating in the State Disability Insurance and Paid Family Leave programs. The bill would define related terms, and would include related legislative findings.
Because this bill would authorize the expenditure of funds from the Unemployment Administration Fund, and the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund, for new purposes, the bill would make an appropriation.
(7) Existing law provides for the financing of unemployment insurance for public school employees. Under existing law, public school employers may elect to budget and remit to the Treasurer moneys for deposit in the School Employees Fund, a continuously appropriated fund, for the purpose of payment by each school employer of unemployment compensation benefits and other expenses of unemployment insurance for school employees. The amount of remitted moneys is determined by multiplying a contribution rate for the fiscal year by total wages, as specified. Existing law, except as specified, requires the contribution rate to generate revenue equal to twice the amount of benefits disbursed during the prior calendar year, less the fund balance at the end of the prior calendar year, and divided by total wages, as prescribed.
This bill, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2021, and for the subsequent fiscal year, would establish the contribution rate at 0.5%.
(8) Under existing law, the information obtained in the administration of the Unemployment Insurance Code is for the exclusive use and information of the Director of Employment Development in the discharge of the director's duties and is not open to the public. Existing law permits the use of the information for specified purposes, including to enable the California Workforce Development Board and other entities to access any relevant quarterly wage data necessary for the evaluation and reporting of specified workforce program performance outcomes. Existing law makes it a crime for any person to knowingly access, use, or disclose this confidential information without authorization.
This bill would add the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to the list of entities permitted to use information obtained in the administration of the Unemployment Insurance Code, and would authorize the department to use the information to carry out its duties, including ensuring compliance with specified pay data reporting requirements. This bill would provide that conduct related to information disclosed pursuant to its provisions shall not be subject to the criminal sanctions.
(9) Existing unemployment compensation disability law provides a formula for determining benefits available to qualifying disabled individuals. Existing law provides that for periods of disability commencing on and after January 1, 2018, but before January 1, 2022, an individual's weekly benefit amount would be $50 if the individual's wages during the quarter of the individual's disability base period in which those wages were highest was less than $929, but if the individual's wages for the same period was $929 or more, and was less than 13 of the amount of the state average quarterly wage, then 70% of the amount of wages paid to the individual for employment during the quarter of the individual's disability base period in which these wages were highest, divided by 13, is the amount of the benefit. Under existing law, for periods of disability commencing on and after January 1, 2022, if the amount of wages paid an individual during the quarter of their disability base period in which those wages were highest exceeds $1,749.20, the weekly benefit amount is 55% of those wages divided by 13. Under existing law, for both calculations, a benefit that is not a multiple of $1 shall be computed to the next higher multiple of $1, and the amount of the benefit is prohibited from exceeding the maximum workers' compensation temporary disability indemnity weekly benefit amount.
This bill would extend the January 1, 2022, date for both those calculations to January 1, 2023. Because the bill would continue to allow an increased payment from the Unemployment Compensation Disability Fund, a continuously appropriated fund, this bill would make an appropriation.
(10) Existing law authorizes the Employment Development Department to administer the state unemployment insurance compensation program and the disability insurance compensation program, which includes family temporary disability insurance benefits. Existing law requires the department, among other duties, to make unemployment and disability compensation payments, as prescribed by the Director of Employment Development. Existing law requires unemployment insurance compensation benefits that are directly deposited to an account of the recipient's choice to be deposited to a qualif