2016-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 3

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.

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 the report.

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.

1. To make its strategic plan a more useful mechanism for accomplishing its mission, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (commission) should ensure that, to the extent possible, its goals have timelines and are measureable. Further, the commission should periodically evaluate and track its progress towards meeting its goals.

18. All universities should provide their education on sexual harassment and sexual violence to incoming students as close as possible to when they arrive on campus but no later than the first few weeks of their first semester or quarter. Further, universities should provide periodic refresher educational programs, at least annually, to all students on campus to ensure that they are aware of how to handle and report incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

68. To identify ways to better serve their students, all universities should create a summary of student incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence reported to the various departments on campus. Each university should evaluate its summary data to identify trends specific to the demographics, as well as the timing, location, and frequency of incidents, to better inform its strategies to protect students and direct its outreach efforts.

7. To help ensure that university faculty and staff do not mishandle student reports of incidents, all faculty and staff should receive training annually, consistent with their role, on their obligations in responding to and reporting incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

19. All universities should provide their education on sexual harassment and sexual violence to incoming students as close as possible to when they arrive on campus but no later than the first few weeks of their first semester or quarter. Further, universities should provide periodic refresher educational programs, at least annually, to all students on campus to ensure that they are aware of how to handle and report incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

69. To identify ways to better serve their students, all universities should create a summary of student incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence reported to the various departments on campus. Each university should evaluate its summary data to identify trends specific to the demographics, as well as the timing, location, and frequency of incidents, to better inform its strategies to protect students and direct its outreach efforts.

4. The Office of the Chancellor should direct all of the universities within the CSU system to comply with the recommendations in this audit report. Also, to ensure that its universities are complying with Title IX requirements, the Office of the Chancellor should conduct routine Title IX reviews. When conducting these compliance reviews, the Office of the Chancellor should determine whether universities have implemented this report's recommendations.

24. All universities should provide supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including sexual assault, for all student athletes on an annual basis. Further, the universities should provide supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including rape awareness, to all student members of fraternities and sororities on an annual basis. The universities should also determine which student organizations participate in activities that may place students at risk and ensure that they receive annual, supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including rape awareness. Each of the trainings should be focused on situations the members of the respective student groups may encounter.

70. To identify ways to better serve their students, all universities should create a summary of student incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence reported to the various departments on campus. Each university should evaluate its summary data to identify trends specific to the demographics, as well as the timing, location, and frequency of incidents, to better inform its strategies to protect students and direct its outreach efforts.

25. All universities should provide supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including sexual assault, for all student athletes on an annual basis. Further, the universities should provide supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including rape awareness, to all student members of fraternities and sororities on an annual basis. The universities should also determine which student organizations participate in activities that may place students at risk and ensure that they receive annual, supplemental training on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including rape awareness. Each of the trainings should be focused on situations the members of the respective student groups may encounter.

71. To identify ways to better serve their students, all universities should create a summary of student incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence reported to the various departments on campus. Each university should evaluate its summary data to identify trends specific to the demographics, as well as the timing, location, and frequency of incidents, to better inform its strategies to protect students and direct its outreach efforts.

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.

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.

2. To protect the health, safety, and well-being of residents in long-term health care facilities, Public Health should improve its oversight of complaint processing. Specifically, by January 1, 2015, Public Health should improve the accuracy of information in the spreadsheet that PCB uses to track the status of complaints against individuals and review the reports of open complaints to ensure that all complaints are addressed promptly.

6. To ensure that district offices address ERIs consistently and to ensure that they investigate ERIs in the most efficient manner, Public Health should use the information from its assessment to provide guidance to district offices by October 1, 2015, on best practices for consistent and efficient processing of ERIs.

11. Public Health should take steps to ensure that PCB has the resources necessary on an ongoing basis to complete investigations of complaints against individuals. Specifically, Public Health should assess whether the temporary resources it has received are adequate to reduce the number of open complaints to a manageable level. This assessment should also determine whether permanent resources assigned to PCB are adequate to address future complaints. Public Health should use this assessment to request additional resources, if necessary.

11. Social Services should develop a process by December 2015 to measure and evaluate its workforce and succession planning activities at least annually, and update its plans as necessary, to ensure that its activities are effective. This process should include evaluating the trends in retirements for leadership and technical positions.

13. Social Services should identify a key resource, such as a unit, by June 30, 2015, to track the results of workforce and succession planning activities across the department to ensure that the workforce and succession planning activities it implements are monitored on a departmentwide level.

15. Social Services should update its existing workforce and succession plan by December 2015 to ensure that the department is adequately prepared for the retirement of a significant number of its highly experienced employees. The plan should include current best practices that meet its organizational needs.

1. To ensure that staff monitor both counties' processing of match lists and counties' reporting of investigation activity in a consistent and effective manner, Social Services should develop and document formal procedures for the IEVS and SIU review processes.

10. To ensure that counties are consistently following up on all match lists, Social Services should better enforce the counties' implementation of its recommendations from the IEVS reviews and verify implementation of the corrective action plans that counties submit.

14. 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 perform more diligent reviews of the counties' investigation activity reports to verify the accuracy of the information submitted.

15. 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 provide counties with feedback on how to correct and prevent errors that it detects while reviewing counties' investigation activity reports.

2. To improve its review process, preserve institutional knowledge, and ensure that staff consistently implement registered sex offender reviews in the future, Social Services should better document its review procedures. For example, Social Services should better document its screening process by identifying criteria for determining when it is acceptable to exclude certain address matches from investigation and by providing an explanation to staff for why it is safe to remove address matches that meet those particular criteria.

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.

8. No later than December 1, 2015, Covered California should develop a plan to determine whether the accessibility violations we identified exist on other portions of its online presence that we did not include in the scope of our review. Once this plan is executed, it should correct violations wherever it finds them and do so no later than June 1, 2016.

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.

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.

10. To efficiently locate records pertinent to the Parental Fee Program, Developmental Services should update its retention policy and centralize all the files and records supporting the program.

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

2. To ensure that the providers receive reimbursement for only valid services, Health Care Services should immediately develop and implement new procedures for routinely identifying and initiating recovery efforts for payments that it authorizes between the effective date of a provider's decertification and the date it became aware of the decertification, in addition to the payments it authorizes between a beneficiary's death date and its receipt of the death record.

4. To ensure that the providers receive reimbursement for only valid services, Health Care Services should immediately direct its investigations division to determine whether it should recover any overpayments for the high-risk payments we identified in Table 7 on page 28 and Appendix A beginning on page 63. It should also take the appropriate disciplinary action against the affected providers, such as suspension or termination.

6. To ensure that the providers receive reimbursement for only valid services, Health Care Services should immediately direct its fiscal management and accountability branch to work with Fresno, Los Angeles, and Sacramento counties to recover the specific overpayments we identified during our visits.

15. To better ensure that some claiming units do not unfairly disadvantage other claiming units in the receipt of interim payments, Health Care Services should explore opportunities to expedite consistent, timely, and fair interim payments to those claiming units with no overpayments. Health Care Services should involve representatives of local educational consortia, local governmental agencies, and claiming units in these efforts and communicate the results to interested stakeholders.

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.

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.

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.

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 website and in its annual reports.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1. To ensure it charges fees for special plates that are consistent with state law, Motor Vehicles should begin charging the correct fees for transferring an Olympic Training Center plate and to convert a personalized plate to a personalized Collegiate plate by March 31, 2016.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

4. To ensure that all appropriate redemption payments are identified and made to the beverage program, CalRecycle should do the following:
- Contract with the California Board of Equalization (Equalization) to determine the feasibility and cost of transferring its revenue collections duties and audit reviews to Equalization.
- Should CalRecycle find that it is feasible and cost effective, it should pursue legislative changes that enable Equalization to collect revenues for the beverage program at the point-of-sale and remit the money to the beverage program.

5. To ensure that it maximizes the recovery of its costs from responsible parties, by October 2014, the department should do the following:

- Continue its plan to update policies and procedures for using liens whenever appropriate.

8. To ensure it loads only accurate billing data into FI$Cal, the department should continue evaluating projects with outstanding costs in its billing system to meet the July 2015 implementation date.

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

31. To ensure that BRN has adequate data to effectively use its resources and manage its workload, it should formally track and monitor its pending workload of applications by type and original receipt date.

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.

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.

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.

19. If Consumer Affairs determines that a new IT project is warranted in the future, it should develop a process to ensure the success of that project that includes, at a minimum, a project team that is qualified and experienced.

22. If Consumer Affairs determines that a new IT project is warranted in the future, it should develop a process to ensure the success of that project that includes, at a minimum, timely response to concerns that the IV&V consultant and the IPO specialist raise.

23. If Consumer Affairs determines that a new IT project is warranted in the future, it should develop a process to ensure the success of that project that includes, at a minimum, sufficient staffing.

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

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.

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.

1. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, the Employment Development Department (EDD) should change its practices to ensure that its staff have demonstrated that all of the necessary elements of a false statement are adequately supported before disqualifying a claimant for unemployment benefits or assessing the associated 30 percent penalty on that basis. To do this, EDD should update its training to further emphasize that false statement disqualifications, especially those resulting from wage reporting, cannot be assessed unless all of the elements are present.

2. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, EDD should revise its website and the materials that accompany the continued claim form to provide specific instructions to claimants on how to avoid common errors that claimants make when reporting wages, such as the error of applying some wages to the incorrect week.

3. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, EDD should ensure that determinations are supported by sufficient fact-finding and relevant evidence by increasing the required number of attempts to reach claimants by telephone or e-mail before making a determination.

4. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, EDD should allow additional time for its staff to process misconduct and voluntary quit cases, especially those that involve complex issues.

5. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, EDD should improve its due diligence during the pre-appeal review process by considering appellants' reasons for appealing and by contacting claimants, employers, and third parties when necessary to obtain clarifying information that could result in a redetermination, which could eliminate or reduce the need for some appeals board hearings.

6. To reduce the number of its determinations that are overturned on appeal, EDD should identify those types of appeals that could be most influenced by EDD staff attendance at the appeal hearing, and analyze the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of participating in those hearings by telephone.

5. To help ensure that state departments are prepared to address the loss of highly experienced employees, CalHR should obtain annually workforce and succession plans from all departments by June 30, starting in 2016, as well as any updates to and implementation status of the plans.

8. Continue implementing the STAR project for state departments and ensure that its framework requires departments undertake detailed business process analyses before submitting FSRs to Technology for approval.

9. Continue implementing the STAR project for state departments and ensure that its framework requires departments use detailed business process analyses to justify the type of IT solution they are proposing, such as a COTS or a fully customized system.

10. Continue implementing the STAR project for state departments and ensure that its framework requires departments use detailed business process analyses to inform the resulting RFPs and that they ensure that the RFPs contain adequate requirements.

24. To ensure that future IT project procurements do not jeopardize the State's financial interests, Technology's procurement division should document its reasons for approving any deviations from standard contract language.

5. To help ensure the independence and objectivity of IPO analysts working in the oversight and consulting division, Technology should develop a policy outlining expectations for independence and objectivity while performing oversight of IT projects.

7. To better track its oversight actions and sponsoring agencies' responses to these actions, Technology should retain the briefing documents created for the State CIO's portfolio meetings and the project status reports that sponsoring agencies submit while project oversight is ongoing.

14. By June 2015 Technology should put in place a system to track IPO analysts' training hours to ensure that all IPO analysts have completed the necessary California Project Management Methodology training curriculum.

26. To standardize California's approach to web accessibility testing, Technology should issue a policy that specifies the method by which state departments should conduct web accessibility testing. This policy should include information about a minimum combination of operating systems, browsers, and assistive technologies that should be used during testing.

5. To ensure that resources are spent wisely, General Services should seek the funding and approval needed to analyze whether keeping or selling the BOE building would be in the State's best financial interest. As part of that analysis, General Services should conduct, or contract for, appraisals to assess the value of the building with and without the repairs to determine whether making the repairs is in the best interest of the State. If continued ownership of the building appears to be prudent, General Services should evaluate potential productive uses for the building should BOE move to a new facility. General Services should report the results of its analysis to the Legislature no later than September 2015.

5. To ensure that it addresses barriers to the accessibility of its website for persons with disabilities, Franchise Tax Board should, no later than December 1, 2015, correct the accessibility violations we found during our review.

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.

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.

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.

7. To better ensure passenger carrier and public safety, the commission should create a system to determine when a carrier merits a penalty and what the magnitude of the penalty should be. In addition, to be an effective deterrent, the amount of such penalties should be more consistent with what state law permits.

8. The commission should require staff to examine and formally report on the feasibility of impounding the vehicles of passenger carriers that refuse to comply with commission orders or that refuse to pay citation penalties and also on the feasibility of making use of the Tax Board's program for intercepting income tax refunds, lottery winnings, and unclaimed property payments to collect unpaid citation penalties.

6. To ensure that policy makers, enforcement officials, and the general public have access to more complete and meaningful consumer complaints data in CIMS, the branch should, to the fullest extent possible, include the attributes of each complaint in the data it records in CIMS.

8. To further its mission to obtain the lowest possible rates for reliable and safe utility service for ratepayers through its reviews of balancing accounts, Ratepayer Advocates should document the method used for its selection of balancing accounts to review.

12. The AOC should provide additional training to its staff and the judicial entities on how to conduct procurements in compliance with the judicial contracting manual.

7. To reduce its expenses, the AOC should implement a policy that requires it to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for using temporary workers, contractors, or consultants instead of state employees before employing temporary workers, contractors, or consultants to do the work of AOC employees.

8. To reduce its expenses, the AOC should follow its policies and procedures limiting the period of time it can employ temporary workers, and develop a similar policy to limit the use of contractors to a reasonable period of time but no more than one year.

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.

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.

18. To make the AOC's budget more understandable, the Judicial Council should require the AOC to report its budget in a more understandable and transparent manner, and in a manner that readily allows stakeholders and the public to know the full amount of the AOC's spending. Further, the Judicial Council should require the AOC to prepare and make public a high-level summary of how the judicial branch's budget relates to the appropriations from the State's budget.

10. To provide independent oversight of the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel and assurance that it properly closes its case files, the audit and review unit should report to an individual or body that is separate from the chief trial counsel, such as the executive director or the board.

13. To justify any future special assessment that the State Bar wants to add to the annual membership fee, the State Bar should first present the Legislature with the planned uses for those funds and cost estimates for the project for which the State Bar intends to use the special assessment.

1. To more clearly demonstrate its case for a new facility, BOE should ensure that it has a supportable rationale for the assumptions underlying its analysis of the costs and benefits of moving to a new consolidated facility.

2. To more clearly demonstrate its case for a new facility, BOE should continue its plans to conduct a study to identify inefficiencies in its current spatial configuration and how its operations could improve with a new consolidated facility.

3. To more clearly demonstrate its case for a new facility, BOE should incorporate staffing growth into its analysis of costs and benefits, using projections based on long-term historical data.

6. To improve the accuracy of information in the leave accounting system and to ensure that agencies do not improperly credit employees with leave in the future, the state controller should, using criteria provided by CalHR, develop monthly exception reports that identify transactions in the leave accounting system that are inconsistent with the guidelines established in state law and collective bargaining agreements, such as instances in which state employees receive too many personal holidays or too much holiday credit. By June 2015 begin providing each state agency's human resources management with the transactions identified in the exception reports for review and correction as necessary.

5. To improve its payment practices and comply with the judicial contracting manual, the Alameda court should ensure that it adheres to the $1,500 single transaction limit for all Cal-Card purchases.

6. To improve its procurement practices and comply with the judicial contracting manual, the Alameda court should ensure that it either anticipates contracts expiring and competitively rebids them timely or establishes proper noncompetitive amendments to the contracts as the judicial contracting manual specifies.