2023-2024 Legislative Session
The Legislature adjourned the 2023-2024 Legislative session on August 31st. The Governor now has until September 30th to sign or veto legislation that made it to his desk. Stay tuned for our End of Session Wrap-Up Report, which will be released in early October.
LeadingAge California’s sponsored bill to ensure that assisted living residential development benefits from Density Bonus Law, AB 2694 (Ward), unanimously passed out of the Legislature and is awaiting action by the Governor. In addition, LeadingAge California’s co-sponsored legislation to create a targeted rental assistance pilot program, SB 37 (Caballero), is also on the Governor’s desk. We expect this bill to be vetoed due to the lack of accompanying funding.
Unfortunately, our high-priority oppose bill, AB 2773 (Kalra), passed out of the Legislature and is now on the Governor’s desk. AB 2773 would lower the evidentiary standard in elder abuse, neglect, or abandonment cases against RCFEs and SNFs if spoilation of evidence is determined. We are concerned that this bill will make it easier to win higher settlements and make it more difficult and costly for long-term care providers to obtain liability insurance.
While our high-priority oppose bill, SB 1406 (Allen), passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, the Committee significantly amended the bill. SB 1406 would have regulated annual rate increases for RCFEs that operate outside of a CCRC model. As previously reported, we have been working with the author’s office to account for RCFEs facing financial hardship. The bill now only requires RCFEs to provide additional notice, 90 days instead of 60 days, prior to the rate increase and requires the notice to include the reason(s) for the increase. While this is a big win, we anticipate this issue returning next year.
Furthermore, the implementation of the healthcare minimum wage, SB 525 (Durazo), for non-hospital-based SNFs is predicated on the enactment of a SNF “patient care minimum spending requirement.” That requirement was not included in legislation this year. We were anticipating it to be amended into AB 1537 (Wood). However, that bill was not amended or moved forward before the deadline. This means the healthcare minimum wage will not take effect for non-hospital-based SNFs at this time. We expect to be working on the patient care minimum spending requirement and SB 525 implementation next year.
The 2025-2026 Legislative Session will convene on December 2nd with nearly 30 new legislators who will be elected on November 5th.
2024-2025 State Budget
The Governor and Legislature announced an agreement on the final 2024-2025 Budget Act in the last week of June. This budget agreement includes total expenditures of $297.9 billion and closes the remaining $28 billion projected budget shortfall. LeadingAge California is pleased that the final budget preserves funding for vital services and programs directly serving older adults.
Health & Access to Care: The final budget preserves funding for the MCO Tax, the Home Safe Program, the Older Californians Act senior nutrition programs, increased funding for the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program. Included in the MCO Tax proposal is an increase for Community-Based Adult Services providers effective January 1, 2025.
Workforce Development: LeadingAge California is grateful that the budget maintains $108.9 million for workforce development programs, including nurse training and other pipeline programs. This funding is vital to growing the state’s health workforce to care for older adults well into the future.
Health Care Minimum Wage: The budget also makes changes and delays to the health care worker minimum wage law until one of two conditions are met. The first is based on DHCS submitting a new federal waiver for an additional Hospital Quality Assurance Fee. The second is based on state revenue projections being more than three percent over what is projected in the budget. The implementation could be as early as October 15, 2024, but no later than January 1, 2025. Please note that the implementation date for non-hospital based SNFs has not changed and is still predicated on the enactment of a patient care spending requirement.
Housing: The budget maintains large portions of housing production funding that were previously proposed to be cut, including $500 million for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program for 2025, $315 million for the Multifamily Housing Program, and $260 million for the Regional Early Action Program 2.0. It also reinstates $1 billion for the Housing and Homelessness Assistance Program. However, the budget includes over $1 billion in collective cuts to housing programs including the Adaptive Reuse Program, Infill Infrastructure Grant Program, Veterans Housing and Homeless Program, Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program, CalHome, and others. We are pleased that this agreement includes more housing funding than the Governor’s May Revise and far more than his January budget proposal.
While we understand that tough decisions had to be made, we appreciate that the most severe cuts were not made on the backs of the state’s most vulnerable older adults.
Following the Governor’s signature on all remaining budget bills in the first week of July, the Department of Finance released the final 2024-2025 State Budget Summary. A few clean-up budget items are expected, including language around the State’s budget reserve.