State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) is looking to help fund drug treatment courts and make them available for residents across California under two bills as local law enforcement agencies and courts start to arrest and convict people under a new state law.
The bills come after more than two-thirds of voters across the Golden State approved Prop. 36 – a new unfunded law that aims to increase punishment on certain drug and theft crimes and is expected to increase the costs for prisons, jails and courts.
[Read: What Does California’s New Street Crime Law Mean for OC in the New Year?]
Umberg said he’s looking to ensure funding for drug courts amid the state’s budget crisis.
“Drug courts are particularly important in terms of long term public safety, and I want to make sure that they basically could compete with other sources of funding,” he said in a phone interview last week.
The bills come as Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed a budget proposal last week that did not allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for implementation of the new law as requested by some state legislators.
The voter-approved law overturned Prop. 47 – which had made petty theft and some drug possession crimes a misdemeanor – and creates a new court process where people charged with a drug possession crime in certain circumstances will be forced to go to rehab or serve jail time.
Umberg’s two bills aim to set up standards and help fund that new court process – funding that critics of the street crime law like Newsom said last year the initiative failed to take into account.
SB-28, one of the bills, would require treatment court programs to be available to all eligible defendants charged under the new street crime law and would require a drug addict expert to conduct a mental health and substance abuse evaluation of the defendant.
The other bill, SB-38, would allow drug courts and treatment programs to be eligible for a state corrections grant for mental health and substance use treatment that is funded by money saved annually by Prop. 47 due to fewer arrests, convictions and sentencing.
The state senator said having effective drug courts and offering effective substance abuse treatment will make a significant difference across California.
“It means a reduction in crime. It means a reduction in family violence. It means an increase in the number of productive citizens who are good members of the community – good tax paying members of the community,” Umberg said.
Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic legislators, including Umberg, have called for $250-$400 million in funding for the new street crime law to be included in Newsom’s budget proposal.
But Newsom said local elected officials should fund the Prop. 36 programs.
“The state is not just the only spigot and counties have to do their job and there are a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it – so this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it. There are city mayors that supported it. It’s their opportunity to step up. Fund it. Provide your city with all the resources you need,” he said at a Wednesday news conference.
“Saying there needed to be a state pill to solve all their problems was not what the voters required. It’s quite the contrary.”
Newsom also said money to support the new law would come from money saved by Prop. 47 – the former state law Prop. 36 supporters have criticized.
“Prop. 36 as you know is an unfunded mandate,” he said. “We project a $91.5 million savings pursuant to Proposition 47 of which in ‘27-28, the multi-year, that number will reduce down to $27.1 million dollars in order for the proponents of Proposition 36 to receive those dollars.”
He added use of the Prop. 47 dollars will impact the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and other department budgets.
“That will be borne in CDCR’s budget so we are funding that. Probation is feeling the stress. Judicial Council are feeling a little stressed,” Newsom said.
“They’ll have the benefit of the $68 million over the next few years by taking money away from similar programs under Prop. 47,” he said about proponents of the new street crime law.
Umberg said using some of that money for Prop. 36 still aligns to the intent of Prop. 47.
“Prop. 47 was designed to provide long term public safety tools and drug courts are long term public safety tools,” he said a day before Newsom’s press conference. “The most effective that we have.”
When asked a day before the press conference if Newsom was hampering the success of Prop. 36 by not tying in funding to the law, Umberg said he wouldn’t speculate.
“We’ll have to see what the budget looks like,” he said.
Umberg also said he is confident that “legislators understand that Prop. 36 passed overwhelmingly and that the mandate from the public is that we do something of a long term nature, with respect to, for example, substance use disorder.”
Meanwhile, some local city leaders are coming out in support of Umberg’s bills.
Santa Ana officials are expected to vote on a resolution in support of Umberg’s bills at their 5 p.m. city council meeting tonight that can be live streamed on YouTube.
“Together, SB-28 and SB-38 will ensure that every eligible Californian who chooses treatment over incarceration, will have that choice regardless of the jurisdiction where they’re being charged, while expanding opportunities for more treatment programs to qualify for grant funding,” said Councilman Phil Bacerra at the April 15 council meeting requesting the resolution.
It comes after Santa Ana officials narrowly voted in favor of a resolution in support of Prop. 36 just months before the November election.
Councilman Ben Vazquez, who voted against supporting Prop. 36, said that he will support both bills to keep people from a cycle of going to jail, adding that Santa Ana – home to the county jail – has been affected as cities have been enforcing the new street crime law.
“We need to make sure we support people and keep them out of jail and keep them out of the street,” said Vazquez at the April 15 meeting. “We need to make sure we have the tools necessary to support this population.”
According to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state’s new street crime law will likely increase California’s criminal justice costs by potentially up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year because it will increase the state prison population and the state’s court workload.
They also estimate the street crime law will increase local criminal justice costs by tens of millions of dollars for similar reasons.
According to the May revised budget proposal, the prison population will slightly go up in California under Prop. 36 before dropping again.
Prop. 36 in Orange County
In Orange County, the county Health Care Agency’s behavioral health services division has been conducting evaluations under Prop. 36 since Dec. 27.
In a Thursday email, OC Health Care Agency Director Veronica Kelley said the agency has been using “Opioid Abatement Settlement Funds to support staff time for evaluating prospective participants, preparing court reports, and coordinating services.”
“To date, approximately $157,000 has been spent on these activities over time,” she wrote.
“Treatment costs are funded through a combination of Drug Medi-Cal, Realignment funds, and Opioid Abatement Settlement dollars. Exact treatment costs are not yet available, but a clearer picture is expected to emerge over time as the program progresses.”
According to the Health Care Agency, most of the people opting for treatment instead of jail time are being initially referred to residential substance use disorder treatment facilities – different from sober living homes city officials across the county are looking to crack down on.
Kelley said the Health Care Agency pays for room and board at these facilities and does urine tests on participants. People enrolled in these facilities have to work, volunteer or go to school.
She also said that as of May 13 the health care agency has received 371 Prop. 36 referrals.
“Of those, 227 individuals agreed to and completed evaluations. To date, 82 individuals have entered the program by pleading into Prop 36 and accepting treatment,” she wrote.
According to the health care agency, 34 out of the 82 people are getting treatment.
Most of the rest are in custody for new charges, have had a bench warrant issued or are going to be removed for not complying with the rules.
So far, four out of the 82 people were “exited for non-compliance” for either failing to attend mandatory treatment sessions, violating legal terms of their plea agreement or “being too symptomatic from active substance use to safely or effectively engage in treatment.”
There are 14 people waiting to be placed for treatment due to either limited bed capacity or a waitlist at the treatment facility.
OC Health Care Agency officials estimate it could cost more than $20,000 for a person to go through the Prop. 36 program – factoring in costs like evaluations, court reportings and treatment.
“This does not include additional impacts to the Court, Public Defender’s Office, District Attorney’s Office, and local law enforcement agencies,” reads the email from the agency.
Most of the people being evaluated and enrolled into a treatment program are homeless and covered by Medi-Cal, according to the Health Care Agency.
The Potential Impacts of Umberg’s Bills
The state’s judicial council said the financial impact of SB-28 depends on whether legislators’ requests for $250-$400 million to fund Prop. 36 is fulfilled, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s April analysis of SB-28.
If the budget request for Prop. 36 was fulfilled, according to the analysis, the judicial council estimates a one-time cost of $340,000 to set up 10 new treatment courts across the state and a $5.6 million increase in ongoing costs to run the drug courts.
Without the budget funding, the judicial council estimates the cost will go up to $17.5 million.
Umberg said the bill only requires that drug courts are made available across the state – even if that means counties have to partner up to have access to one.
SB-38 would allow Prop. 36 treatment court programs to be eligible for grants administered by the Board of State and Community Corrections for things like mental health and substance use treatment.
The grant fund comes from money saved by Prop. 47 due to fewer arrests, convictions and sentencing that is set aside every year to be used for mental health and substance use treatment, trauma recovery for victims and crime prevention programs in schools.
The Association of California Cities – Orange County wrote a letter in support of the bill to Umberg in March, arguing money was needed to implement Prop. 36.
“As we work to implement Proposition 36 as approved by the voters, it is important to make sure that sufficient funding is available to implement its provisions,” wrote Kris Murray, the association chapter’s executive director and former Anaheim City Council woman.
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s April analysis of SB-38, Prop. 47 generated $1 billion since it was implemented in 2014 and if Umberg’s proposal is approved, those savings would likely decrease “in the low tens of millions of dollars annually.”
“This bill proposes to raid Proposition 47’s piggybank—which has already been reduced by Proposition 36. This bill proposes to further stretch what is left of Proposition 47 savings in order to bankroll the very proposition that undercut it,” reads the analysis.
Committee staff also lambasted supporters of the new street crime law in the analysis.
“The critics of Proposition 47 that spent the last decade undermining and blaming it for spikes in retail theft and homelessness, despite data showing a decline in crime, are now circling back to dip into its success.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.