BILL ANALYSIS Ó SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair 2015 - 2016 Regular Session SB 1090 (Mitchell) - Sexually transmitted diseases: outreach and screening services ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Version: April 12, 2016 |Policy Vote: HEALTH 9 - 0 | | | | |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Urgency: No |Mandate: No | | | | |--------------------------------+--------------------------------| | | | |Hearing Date: April 25, 2016 |Consultant: Brendan McCarthy | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File. Bill Summary: SB 1090 would require the Department of Public Health, upon appropriation of funding, to allocate funds to local health jurisdictions for sexually transmitted disease outreach and screening services. Fiscal Impact: Unknown costs to provide funding to local health jurisdictions (General Fund). The bill requires the Department of Public Health to make funding available, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to local health jurisdictions. The amount of funding available under the bill is unknown at this time and would depend on future budget appropriations. Staff is not aware of any significant source of funding that could be used for this new program other than the General Fund. Unknown costs to provide program administration, including developing program guidelines, reviewing applications, awarding grants, and monitoring accountability requirements on SB 1090 (Mitchell) Page 1 of ? grantees. According to the Department of Public Health, if the amount of funding made available in the future were $10 million per year, the Department would need about $1.6 million per year to administer the program. Background: Under current law, the Sexually Transmitted Disease Branch within the Department of Public Health performs disease surveillance, education, assessment of access to treatment, disease investigation, and policy development. The Sexually Transmitted Disease Branch currently contracts with some local health jurisdictions (including 27 county health departments and 1 city health department). The current year budget allocation for these contracts is $3.5 million and the Governor's budget proposal includes $3.3 million for this purpose. Proposed Law: SB 1090 would require the Department of Public Health, upon appropriation of funding, to allocate funds to local health jurisdictions for sexually transmitted disease outreach and screening services. Specific provisions of the bill would: Require the Department of Public Health, upon appropriation of funding by the Legislature, to allocate funds to local health jurisdictions for sexually transmitted disease outreach and screening services; Require funding to be targeted and prioritized based on population and disease incidence; Require funding to be balanced between the need to spread funding to many counties and the need to provide meaningful services; Require recipient counties to demonstrate compliance with specified accountability measures and to comply with Department-developed accountability measures; Authorize the Department to solicit proposals from community based organizations if a local health jurisdiction declines a grant; Require the Department to authorize specified types of outreach and screening services; Require the Department to monitor program activity to ensure accountability measures are met; The bill also makes a variety of technical changes to current law to reflect current terminology and practice with regard to SB 1090 (Mitchell) Page 2 of ? sexually transmitted diseases. Staff Comments: As noted above, the Department of Public Health's projected costs to administer the bill's requirements are about 16% of the assumed program size. This level of administrative cost is relatively high. For example, many bond funded grant programs are limited to using 5% of total funds for administration. It may be possible to reduce administrative costs by streamlining program requirements. -- END --