The Governor’s budget provides a total of $8 million in additional General Fund to support infrastructure needs for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Specifically, the budget includes: (1) $6.1 million for completing the design of a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning project at Ironwood State Prison, (2) $1.2 million for various minor capital outlay projects, and (3) $750,000 to perform advance planning and prepare budget packages for future capital outlay projects.

Rather than appropriate additional General Fund resources for these projects and activities, we believe it would be more advantageous to use the funds already appropriated from the General Fund in Chapter 7, Statutes of 2007 (AB 900, Solorio). Specifically, AB 900 appropriated $300 million from the General Fund for infrastructure projects and planning. As of January 2011, CDCR has spent only $123 million of that $300 million, thus leaving a balance of $177 million available to support additional capital projects. Accordingly, we recommend that the Legislature fund the above projects and activities with the AB 900 General Fund appropriation and thereby achieve $8 million in General Fund savings. We note that in adopting the 2009-10 budget and the 2010-11 budget, the Legislature took similar actions to use the existing available funding from AB 900.