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Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board: CAMS rollout, timeliness metrics and judge cross‑training discussed
Summary
The board received updates that the California Appeals Management System (CAMS) is easing workload disparities across field offices, heard mixed timeliness results against Department of Labor guidelines, and learned tax‑case migration to CAMS is on schedule for completion by end of June 2026.
The California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board on May 18, 2026 received updates on the rollout of the California Appeals Management System (CAMS), recent workload metrics and judge cross‑training, and adopted the minutes of its April meeting.
Chief Executive Director and Chief Judge Michael Koutre told the board that April’s appeals intake rose slightly but remains part of a longer trend of low incoming appeals. "That inventory is now at 13,841 cases," Koutre said, and he reported the field offices closed about 16,800 decisions in April, a month‑over‑month decrease of 1,911.
Koutre and other board members framed those raw counts in the context of Department of Labor timeliness targets. Koutre said the field closed 36.8% of cases within 30 days — below the 60% target he cited — and that the field exceeded a 45‑day benchmark with 89% closed within that window. "One of the measures we consider the most important is the average case age," Koutre added, noting the field’s average case age met the comparative target.
Vice chair Laura Kent Monning and other members credited CAMS with evening out processing times across offices. "CAMS has really evened out those numbers so that all of the offices across the state are really able to process cases at a similar time," Monning said, thanking judges participating in cross‑training for helping appellate operations.
Rebecca Bach, supervising administrative law judge for appellate operations, presented Department of Labor‑year metrics for the new DOL year (April 1–March 31): she reported closing 64.7% of appellate cases within 45 days and 96.2% within 75 days, and an average case age of 25.2 days.
Board members pressed on particular disparities. Bob Wojcowski asked why paid family leave (PFL) appeals can take more than 200 days at the field level while typical disability claims take about 60 days; Koutre attributed that gap to an expansion of PFL by statute, resource and staffing lags at EDD, and the department’s practice of redetermining and attempting to "perfect" claims before sending them to appeal.
John Capoe, the agency’s chief information officer, told the board the tax transition to CAMS remains on schedule to complete by the end of June 2026 and that IT is preparing staff training materials and infrastructure upgrades to support stability and security as the migration concludes.
The board also heard that one security incident in a Los Angeles‑area office involved a threat to staff that the California Highway Patrol responded to and that there have been no follow‑up reports. The board recorded no public comments during the meeting and approved the April 15, 2026 minutes (the chair said he would abstain because he was not at that meeting). The board adjourned with no closed‑session items.
What happens next: the board and staff will continue CAMS onboarding and training for tax cases and will monitor timeliness metrics across both field and appellate operations.
