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<\/a><\/p>\nWhile drafting heat safety rules to protect more than 1 million indoor workers, state officials initially projected that implementation would cost state prisons less than $1 million in the first year and less than $500,000 each year after. Then, late in the rulemaking process in 2024, the Department of Finance said it had received revised estimates from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showing it would actually cost billions of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board adopted the standards, it exempted state prisons and other correctional facilities, where nurses, guards and working incarcerated people remain unprotected. The state is now developing a weaker set of rules for correctional facilities that wouldn\u2019t take effect until indoor temperatures are five degrees hotter than in the rules for other workplaces.<\/p>\n
But the lack of any public accounting on the multibillion-dollar estimate behind the administration\u2019s controversial decision has frustrated researchers and advocates who say the public has a right to know the financial basis for the state\u2019s two-tiered approach to protecting workers from health risks from extreme heat that are growing more dangerous because of climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Capital & Main asked the Newsom administration for details about the billions in estimated costs and the decision to exempt prisons from the earlier standard. Newsom\u2019s office referred questions to CDCR, which declined Capital & Main\u2019s interview requests, as did the Department of Finance and Cal\/OSHA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In response to written questions about the cost estimate amount, what analysis was done of the estimate and why the last-minute estimates from CDCR differed from earlier numbers, the Department of Finance had the same response to multiple questions: \u201cWe have no additional information to provide at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Finance also refused to provide the cost estimate in response to a California Public Records Act request from Capital & Main. While the department had responsive documents, staff counsel Shelly Renner wrote, it would not provide them because they are subject to \u201cthe deliberative process privilege as it relates to budgetary decision-making, budgetary issues, and policy development because the public interest served by not disclosing these records clearly outweighs the public interest served by their disclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n
That exemption the department relied on to keep its estimate secret requires an agency, if challenged in court, to prove the public interest served by not disclosing the records is greater than the public interest in disclosing the records, not merely state that they believe that to be true, said David Loy, legal director at the First Amendment Coalition<\/a>.<\/p>\n Loy said he was particularly skeptical that this exception applies when asking for facts and figures such as a cost estimate, rather than the details of a deliberative \u201cdebate about how the costs and benefits should be balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n