The $122.2 billion budget deal the Brown administration and legislative leaders have agreed to puts funding toward several technology systems while seemingly putting other potential IT projects on hold.
The framework of a deal hammered out in the Budget Conference Committee and closed-door negotiations was revealed on Thursday evening, well ahead of a state constitutional deadline to pass a budget. Here are some points of note, according to committee documents:
The compromise puts $10 million in the General Fund toward the Brown administration's Precision Medicine initiative, and stipulates the program must maximize matching funds and non-state funds.
The deal also shot down trailer bill language that would require the creation of a "medical marijuana public health surveillance system." The state is required by legislation to stand up by 2018 a track-and-trace system in support of regulating the medical marijuana industry. The Budget Conference Committee agreed to make "substantial and technical changes" to trailer bill language proposed by the Brown administration.
The pact does not approve a proposed appropriation for the Department of Social Services' Case Management Information and Payrolling System (CMIPS) II, and instead adopts reporting language to provide a cost estimate for project scope changes to the Legislature in early 2017.
The conference committee also found common ground on legislative and budget proposals related to modernization of the Secretary of State's online campaign and lobbying database known as CAL-Access, ongoing work on the Board of Equalization's Centralized Revenue Opportunity System, two years of funding for project assessment and approval activities so that the State Controller's Office can restart work on a modernized statewide payroll payroll system, and implementation activities for a "prepaid mobile telephony surcharge."
Read more about the budget deal here.
