Correctional facilities.

Existing law, the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007, authorizes certain revenue bond construction of prison facilities. The act, among other things, authorizes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to design, construct, or renovate prison housing units, prison support buildings, and programming space in order to add new beds at existing adult correctional facilities. It also authorizes the department to construct and establish new buildings at existing facilities under the jurisdiction of the department to provide medical, dental, and mental health treatment or housing, as specified. This bill would additionally authorize the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop beds and treatment space to serve inmates requiring mental health or medical services. The bill would provide that any beds developed with a medical or mental health purpose shall be supported with rehabilitative programming, as defined, that is consistent with the medical or mental health services required by the inmates. The bill would authorize the department, in addition to designing and constructing new buildings at existing facilities for medical, dental, and mental health treatment, to renovate existing buildings at existing facilities for medical, dental, and mental health treatment as well as to design, construct, or renovate any ancillary improvements, as specified. The bill would also make changes regarding the calculation of design-build project augmentations from these funds. Because this bill would authorize different uses of continuously appropriated bond moneys, it would make an appropriation. Although existing law allows the State Public Works Board to issue revenue bonds, negotiable notes, or negotiable bond anticipation notes for the purposes above, it forbids the board to release specified funds until a 3-member panel, composed as specified, certifies that certain conditions have been met. This bill would alter one of those conditions. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.