BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 1514 Page 1 Date of Hearing: April 15, 2015 ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Jimmy Gomez, Chair AB 1514 (Committee on Insurance) - As Amended March 26, 2015 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Policy |Insurance |Vote:|12 - 0 | |Committee: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-------------+-------------------------------+-----+-------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No SUMMARY: This bill makes a number of technical changes to streamline the Employment Development Department's (EDD's) administration of the California Training Benefits Program (CTB), which allows individuals to receive UI benefits while in training, and AB 1514 Page 2 updates EDD reporting requirements. FISCAL EFFECT: Negligible costs, and potentially minor administrative cost savings from provisions that remove some manual verification requirements. COMMENTS: 1)Purpose. The bill makes minor changes to the CTB program in order to streamline approval of UI benefits for individuals in certain types of training programs that are currently approved through a more onerous process, and other remove administrative requirements for ongoing verification that appear to have little practical value. It also updates references to federal law. 2)Background. To collect UI benefits, an individual generally must be actively seeking work and ready to work. The CTB program provides financial support to individuals while they are participating in a qualified job training program, instead of providing partial wage replacement while the individual looks for work. This bill makes several changes that simplify the CTB approval process. 3)Streamlining approval. This bill would, for example, allow eligible individuals to receive benefits faster by removing the requirement that EDD verify the legitimacy of, for example, state-approved apprenticeship programs. Under current law and practice, there could be a delay in receipt of benefits while EDD reviews the training program, but an individual would ultimately receive retroactive unemployment AB 1514 Page 3 (UI) benefit payments for the same number of weeks. Thus, these provisions are not expected to increase benefit payments, but should simplify the process for specified categories. The bill's other provisions have similar fiscal effect-negligible increased cost and minor workload savings from simplification. Analysis Prepared by:Lisa Murawski / APPR. / (916) 319-2081