Ca State Board Of Equalization

The California Department of Managed Health Care helps consumers resolve problems with their health maintenance organizations and ensure a more stable managed health care system. The department's HMO Help Center assists consumers with health care issues. Since the department's inception in 2000, the Help Center has assisted approximately 700,000 Californians to resolve their HMO problems. The department's efforts for a healthier managed health care system include a variety of steps, such as ensuring HMO accountability through prevention and quality of care laws, develop and launch public education and awareness efforts, provide an annual report card on quality of care of the state's HMOs, ensure fiscal accountability for consumer premium dollars and co-payments throughout the HMO system and work to bring managed health care back to its roots of better preventive care. The California Department of Managed Health Care is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation works to protect the public from crime and victimization. It enhances the public safety through the safe and secure incarceration of offenders, effective parole supervision and rehabilitative strategies o successfully reintegrate offenders into the community. The department maintains a victim and survivor rights and services office that works to improve offender accountability and direct services, as well as increases outreach and collaboration. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation supports a variety of adult programs that provide evidence-based programming to adult offenders, as well as establish and nurture collaborative partnerships linking the department facilities and communities. It operates offices of civil rights, court compliance, legal affairs, legislation and ombudsman. With an office in Sacramento, Calif., the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains adult operations, adult parole and juvenile justice divisions.

For more than 30 years, the California Housing Finance Agency has been supporting the needs of renters and first-time homebuyers by providing financing and programs that create safe and affordable housing opportunities for individuals within specified income ranges. Founded in 1975, the agency was chartered as the California s affordable housing bank to make below market-rate loans through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. It is a self-supporting state agency whose bonds are repaid by revenues generated through mortgage loans. California Housing Finance Agency s HELP program offers two funding cycles of more than $7.5 million a piece in the fall and spring of each year. Applications of the semiannual award are evaluated on six criteria, such as affordability, cost efficiency, maximization of benefits, implementation readiness, resource impact and comprehensiveness of program design.