MHSOAC committee reviews midyear budget, notes $5M contract termination and translation agreements

Chair Al Rowlett convened the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission's Budget and Fiscal Advisory Committee and introduced a midyear budget update for fiscal year 2025'26.

Acting deputy director Lauren Quintero presented the state-operations and local-assistance figures, explaining that personnel moved from $9,507,000 at the start of the year to a midyear budget of $9,735,000 and that total state operations rose from $12,934,000 to a midyear amount of $13,162,000. Quintero reported a projected overall positive variance of $460,962, but she cautioned the committee that agencies typically reserve $175,000'225,000 for late-arriving control-agency charges and other retroactive bills, and that some salary savings have already been redirected to timely contracts and translation work.

Quintero described a 7.95% reduction under Section 4.05 (government efficiencies) that reduced several operations subcategories, including Administration and Performance Management (from $2,454,845 to $1,761,542) and Research, Evaluation and Programs (from $1,160,500 to $832,749). She also noted $500,000 in budget-directed items (including $400,000 for Full Service Partnership evaluations and $100,000 for Proposition 1 implementation) that remain unchanged at midyear.

On local assistance, Quintero said the Mental Health Wellness Act allocation for the year is $20,000,000 (with designated encumbrances and an anticipated full spend), and the Behavioral Health Student Services Act had a $7,606,000 budget with encumbrances noted. She told commissioners that some county awards have longer encumbrance and spending windows, which can make progress appear slow even when contracts are on schedule.

Chair Rowlett also announced termination of agreement MHSOAC022 with the University of the Pacific, originally valued at $5,000,000; remaining funds from that agreement will revert to the Behavioral Health Services Fund. Earlier in the meeting the committee also approved six small translation agreements to translate the BHSA stakeholder planning toolkit into multiple languages (examples cited in materials: $4,539 to American Language Services for Korean; $8,240 to Equity Languages and Employment Services for Cantonese, Mandarin and Tagalog; $4,200 to Both People SOS for Vietnamese).

Commissioners asked for a deeper, program-level follow-up at a future BFA meeting to review slower-than-expected spending on specific local assistance grants (several counties and projects were noted as below 50% progress, with program staff reporting differing award timelines or returns of funds where programs encountered problems). Quintero and staff agreed to provide a more detailed report at the next BFA session.

A procedural motion to approve the BFA minutes from Dec. 16, 2025 was seconded by Commissioner Wilkes and passed by voice vote.

The committee did not take any action to allocate new funds in today's presentation; Quintero reminded commissioners that contracts will either be listed in announcement slides or returned for formal authorization to the committee and full commission.

The committee adjourned after agreeing to reconvene in early spring and to circulate follow-up materials and a deeper spending report.