BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                    AB 1514


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          Date of Hearing:  April 15, 2015


                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS


                                 Jimmy Gomez, Chair


          AB  
          1514 (Committee on Insurance) - As Amended March 26, 2015


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          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


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          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  








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            (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