Financial aid to local governments and districts is structured as reimbursement for expenditures directly related to compliance with Commission standards and participation in training courses. PC 13523 authorizes the Commission to allocate aid to cities, counties and districts that have applied and qualify for aid pursuant to Commission Regulations, specifying that aid be granted with respect to "an amount determined by the commission pursuant to standards set forth in its regulations."

To address the mandates of legislation, the Commission established Regulation 1015 (Attachment A) and Procedure E (Attachment B) to describe the means of providing aid to eligible local agencies. 

Pursuant to Regulation 1015 (a) "Reimbursement is based upon fund availability as approved by the Commission", and per Regulation 1015 (b) (3), “Reimbursement shall, subject to available funds, be provided only for satisfactorily completed training acquired by full-time employees in an on-duty status.”

The current reimbursement plans are:

• Plan I:    per diem, travel, tuition, and backfill 
• Plan II:   per diem, travel, and backfill 
• Plan III:  per diem, travel and tuition
• Plan IV:  per diem and travel
• Plan V:   per diem, travel, and tuition (though presenter)
• Plan NA:  No reimbursement

Per Regulation 1015(c)(2,) “Each plan is subject to the provisions established by the Commission.”  And, per Regulation 1015(d)(3), “The Commission may annually, or more frequently as requested, and pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, establish the reimbursement rates for the categories of expenses approved for the reimbursement plans.”

Consequently, the existing Reimbursement Plans, while providing a modicum of reimbursement levels for various courses, do not provide the Executive Director or his/her designee the ability to adjust reimbursement level commensurate with the needs of the field.  Further, the existing Reimbursement Plans lack the ability to allow for lower cost, regional training. 

As mentioned in Commission Agenda Item C.12 from the October 26, 2017 meeting, the revenue received by POST has decreased over the last few years, thus negatively impacting POST's ability to reimburse for law enforcement training. Although the current five reimbursement plans address a multitude of training needs, regulation does not provide any middle ground option. 

Consequently, under the current model the Regulation does not afford the Executive Director or his/her designee the latitude to incentivize lower cost, local training. As such, staff can only fully reimburse a presenter or agency within the constraints of a specific Plan, or eliminate the entire reimbursement altogether with a Plan NA, which provides no funding from POST and is often too expensive for agencies with limited staffing and budget restrictions to utilize.

POST staff have taken measures to address critical revenue shortages via email communication to the field, followed up with a series of face-to-face meetings, phone calls and web conferences for POST Staff to hear stakeholder concerns, and to discuss creative alternatives to address funding challenges, while also supporting the field to the greatest extent possible.  During these conversations stakeholders expressed frustration at the lack of flexibility POST Staff had with respect to reimbursement.

A common theme expressed by agencies and presenters is the inability of POST to support regional training, which would assist agencies with limited training budgets to send officers to training, without the tremendous expense of cross-state travel due to suspended reimbursement of courses in other conventional Reimbursement Plans. Further, Commissioners have discussed the fact that it may be significantly more cost effective to pay to bring a small cadre of instructors to a local training location, rather than paying for a large group of students to travel to a training site across the state.

This proposed Reimbursement Plan will incentivize cost effective training, dis-incentivize cost prohibitive cross-state travel when comparable training can be obtained locally or regionally at a far more efficient cost.