BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 438
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Date of Hearing: April 22, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
438 (Chiu) - As Amended April 6, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill:
1)Expands the obligation of the Department of Industrial
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Relations (DIR) and the Division of Workers' Compensation
(DWC) to provide certain notices in more languages than
English and Spanish by its requiring compliance with the
Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act (Act).
2)Deletes an express exception for the State Compensation
Insurance Fund (SCIF) from the Act.
FISCAL EFFECT:
1)Negligible state fiscal effect to DIR. DIR, including DWC, is
subject to the Act and its language requirements.
2)Negligible state fiscal effect for SCIF. SCIF is a
quasi-state entity, but the only state funds it receives are
for administering and paying for workers' compensation
benefits for state employees, which are not expected to
increase significantly since most state workers are
English-speaking. Additionally, it is unclear whether the
removing the express exemption of SCIF from the
Dymally-Allatore Act would compel SCIF to comply with language
access requirements, because it is unclear whether SCIF meets
the other criteria (such as direct services to the public)
that would require it to comply.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. The author notes non-English speaking injured workers
face challenges when seeking workers' compensation benefits
and asserts the DWC is currently not even fully compliant with
existing law mandating both English and Spanish language forms
and notices. Furthermore, he points out, two languages is not
sufficient in light of the ethnic diversity in California.
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Thus, the bill intends to expand access to DWC's information
by expanding the number of languages DWC would be required to
use, and to close the "loophole" that exempts SCIF from the
Act.
2)The Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act directs state
agencies "directly involved in the furnishing of information
or rendering of services to the public" to have a sufficient
number of qualified bilingual persons in public contact
positions. It also requires biennial language surveys in each
its statewide and local office of every department, in order
to assess language needs. The Act requires departments to
provide the same information, and the same service level, that
is available in English in the non-English languages of the
public they serve, when the language survey indicates
non-English-speaking persons comprise 5 percent or more of the
contacts.
3)DIR already subject to the Act. Despite an express requirement
in Labor Code Section 124 for DIR to provide notices and forms
in English and Spanish, the Act, which requires all
departments furnishing information or rendering of services to
the public to comply with specified language requirements,
already applies to DIR. Thus, this bill appears to simply
clarify current law by removing the requirement that DWC's
forms and notices be available in English and Spanish, and
explicitly stating DIR must comply with the Act.
4)DIR deficient in compliance with the Act. CalHR assesses
compliance with the Act's requirements and has authority to
exempt departments that are very small or have limited public
contact. Unless specifically exempted by CalHR, each
department must complete and submit an implementation plan to
CalHR no later than October 1 of odd-numbered years. In the
most recent 2012-13 Language Survey and Implementation Plan
Report, CalHR identifies DIR as being deficient in compliance.
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Specifically, the report states DIR had staffing deficiencies
of 25 public contact positions for bilingual staff, 19 of
which are not yet corrected, and two deficiencies related to
written materials translation. However, it does not specify
whether these are in the workers' compensation division, and
it is unclear whether these deficiencies have been corrected
since the report was published. The next implementation plans
will be submitted to CalHR by departments this October. CalHR
states it is working on a system for the 2016-17 review cycle
to correlate documents with agency divisions and units, so
deficiencies can be more accurately identified.
5)SCIF administers workers' compensation benefits for state
employees. State employees are covered for workers'
compensation benefits through a Master Agreement between the
California Department of Human Resources (CalHR) and SCIF.
SCIF is the adjusting agent who provides adjusting and legal
services for the state's workers' compensation claims and
provides benefits to injured state employees. SCIF bills the
state directly for actual claims costs, while SCIF's
administrative costs are covered through a negotiated contract
amount. Required activities that substantially increase
SCIF's administrative costs generally put cost pressure on the
state's contract with SCIF. However, even if SCIF's non-state
administrative workload increases, it is expected most state
workers would be able to speak English; thus, this bill is not
expected to result in cost pressure to the state.
6)Staff Comments. Applying language standards to SCIF without
requiring SCIF's private competitors and self-insured
employers to comply with the same standard could put SCIF, a
quasi-state entity, at a market disadvantage by increasing its
administrative costs.
Analysis Prepared by:Lisa Murawski / APPR. / (916)
319-2081
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