Governor’s budget would fund more than 200 new DOJ positions

One year ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom made Attorney General Xavier Becerra the first chief state prosecutor in U.S. history to oversee a billion-dollar budget. This year Becerra is poised to become the first with a $1.1 billion budget. But the money in Newsom's proposed 2020-21 budget comes with new tasks, including millions for forensics, gambling control, and health care litigation.

In his first budget, Newsom gave the Department of Justice a $184 million jump over Gov. Jerry Brown's last year and nearly 150 new positions.

This year's increase would be far smaller, about $21.7 million. But Becerra's hiring spree is likely to continue with 191 new positions proposed. The Department of Justice listed about 60 open jobs around the state on its website as of Tuesday. Much of the new money, about $8.4 million, would be to comply with a trio of firearms regulations passed last year: AB 879, SB 61 and SB 376. The money would help the department track the sale of firearms and parts and to bar the sale of semiautomatic rifles to anyone under 21.

Another $9 million is slotted for health care litigation around price fixing, antitrust and defending the Affordable Care Act. These efforts would also be consolidated into a new Healthcare Rights and Access Section.

Other big ticket items include a one-time $32 million payment to the department's fingerprint fees account. This money, including $22 million from the general fund, is intended to backfill declining revenue from fines and fees recovered by the courts. The budget provides for $7.3 million in ongoing annual general fund money to maintain and replace forensic equipment.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra (New York Times News Service)

Another $5.8 million and 23 new positions would go to the tax recovery in the underground economy enforcement teams. This money responds to AB 1296, a bill Becerra's office sponsored last year to fight the growth of the state's underground economy.

A Senate Appropriations Committee analysis last year, however, found the department would need to create 46 positions and $9.5 million to satisfy the demands of the law. The bill's author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, declined to comment on the difference.

Becerra is set to receive another $2.8 million -- and more in coming years -- in relation to another Gonzalez bill. AB 1747 prohibits the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System "from using information other than criminal history information transmitted through the system for immigration enforcement purposes." The money is to enable the system to log the reasons behind information requests to the system and to allow the department to investigate violations.

Other pots of money in Becerra's budget include $5.4 million annually to conduct field inspections and criminal investigations of card rooms and other gambling locations and $3.6 million to review fingerprint records. The latter is intended "to identify persons eligible to have their arrests or criminal convictions records withheld from disclosure" under existing state laws.

But the money is hardly guaranteed. The Legislature will have its chance to weigh in during a series of budget hearings in the coming months. Last year, Becerra's office found itself defending particular budget items against criticism from influential Democratic lawmakers.

Not surprisingly, much of this fire came from the Senate and Assembly budget subcommittees on public safety, which oversee Becerra's budget. For instance, last year Senate Subcommittee Chair Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, called for withholding some funds over last year because of Becerra's refusal to comply with SB 1421, a police records transparency law.

The Assembly subcommittee chair, Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, criticized Becerra's office for failing to spend about $1 million slated for testing a backlog of rape kits. Weber has been credited with helping force a 2018 settlement in a legal dispute between the Commission on Judicial Performance and the State Auditor by threatening to withhold part of the former agency's budget.