2017-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 1

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.