In a budget change proposal (BCP) that is its only one so far in the 2023-2024 Fiscal Year state budget cycle, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) seeks 19 positions and $2.8 million from the Alcohol Beverage Control Fund in FY 2023-24 and $3.2 million in FY 2024-25 and ongoing for “administrative support” of licensing, enforcement, and education programs that are “actively evolving” per the BCP because of “planned and unplanned changes, most notably ABC’s effort to modernize its operation, and the shift to a remote work environment.” The department’s staffing level has been fairly constant since its creation in 1955. In 1954, it was authorized for 445 positions; by FY 2019-2020, it had grown just 3 percent since 1955. Subsequently, staffing rose to 520 positions. Among the takeaways:
- The proposal comes as a result of ABC’s modernization and going remote, but also to enable the continuation of these efforts as its ABC Fund recovers from a revenue shortfall brought on by the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ABC Fund, a “feeder fund to the General Fund,” is supplied by excise taxes and penalties paid in lieu of license suspension that are collected and transferred to the General Fund. The proposal also seeks to “transfer the balance of General Fund previously appropriated for license renewal fee relief to the ABC Fund,” a transfer of “$48.5 million General Fund” over three fiscal years to enable ongoing “program improvement and modernization efforts.” The department’s current “revenue and expenditure forecast” according to the BCP shows that the fund will be exhausted during either the 2023-24 or the 2024-25 fiscal years, depending upon factors including inflation, whether revenue from “daily licenses” rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, and staff compensation increases following contracts that expire at the end of FY 2022-23. Generally, fee increases done administratively “based on current forecasts for inflation” would be “not sufficient” to keep the fund solvent, maintain “current program service levels, and fund the administrative support” sought in the BCP.
- In the area of information security, the department seeks $717,000 in FY 2023-24 and $864,000 in FY 2024-25 and ongoing to pay for five permanent positions — two IT Specialist II jobs and three IT Specialist I jobs — to handle issues arising from “an increasingly more complicated technical environment, the introduction of public facing services, the need to expand automation tools due to teleworking, and the much higher consequence of incidents or downtime given the economic impact of the newly deployed (Responsible Beverage Service) RBS Portal.” The funding will let the ABC finish existing work to “address findings from previous compliance audits and security assessments,” boost its technical expertise in the organization around security technology and tools, enhance its ability to address problems at their roots and ensure technology rollouts are done “with proper knowledge and planning from an information security perspective.”
- In the area of information technology, the department seeks $1.4 million in FY 2023-24 and $11.7 million in FY 2024-25 and ongoing, to pay for 10 permanent positions. These would be one IT Manager I, two IT Specialist II, and seven IT Specialist I jobs, to “create capacity to provide IT support” in areas where ABC has yet to modernize or where needs have arisen due to changes including telework, bifurcation, modernizing public-facing services, and the department’s proposed Office of Equity. (That office would be tasked with reviewing ABC statutes, regulations and the like “through the lens of equity,” and the positions would “identify policies, procedures and regulations that are creating inequity.”) The jobs would provide “additional support of the (Alcoholic Beverage Information System) ABIS and the public website”; ongoing support for modernization of field work to implement electronic forms and data capture and create a data pool to improve workload and performance metrics; and establish and support the “technology infrastructure required in ABC’s 25 physical district offices to properly support the current operation of ABC’s program workforce.”
“With the addition of these resources the ITB will be able to reorganize its development resources into three product teams that will include dedicated developers, business analysts, and project managers,” the department said in the BCP. “For the first time, there will be resources available to support the modernization of simple internal program processes to increase efficiency of program staff and improve service levels to the public.”
