Appeals board: CAMS rollout will let tax cases be heard statewide as DOL metrics near compliance

The California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board heard Feb. 18 that migration of tax cases into the California Appeals Management System (CAMS) will make it easier to assign tax hearings across field offices and improve efficiency, while Department of Labor (DOL) timeliness targets are within reach but not fully met.

Judge Koutre, who briefed the board on field workload, said: "In January, daily appeal intake, remained flat as it's been since last September. For reference, that's about 580 appeals a day." He reported that field offices "issued just under 15,000 decisions in January" and that the overall UI appeals inventory "fell slightly to 12,784 cases." On processing speed he said the field closed the month with an average case age of 28.6 days and closed "71 and a half percent of cases within 45 days," short of the DOL guideline of 80 percent but showing clear progress.

Koutre described work to move cases to the best-matched hearing capacity, saying the agency "moved 1,750 cases in January to be best matched by their ability to be heard as soon as possible." He flagged the next major milestone: releasing the office of tax petitions into CAMS, which will require training and coordination. "Once it is complete," Koutre said, "that will allow us to to help spread that tax work out to the field offices." He added the rollout will start slowly and will require coordination with the Employment Development Department.

Rebecca Bach, supervising administrative law judge for appellate operations, gave the board the appellate-level metrics the DOL reviews. "For the month of January, we closed 55.7 percent of our cases within 45 days, bringing our year end total to 48.6," she said, and reported that the board-level year-to-date result for the 75-day measure was 86.8 percent. Bach noted the average case aging in January was 41.1 days, slightly above the DOL 40-day guideline, and said she expected improvement as the March DOL evaluation date approaches.

Board members asked how CAMS would affect the distribution of complex tax cases and whether field judges specialize. Koutre said subject-matter volunteers have historically handled more complex matters but the agency's goal is "to have everybody trained up to do tax cases in some capacity this year," and that digitization in CAMS will meaningfully reduce logistical burdens such as shipping exhibits.

The chief information officer told the board the CAMS migration remains on schedule: "we remain on track to complete the rollout by the second quarter of this calendar year," and said a recent replacement of older software and hardware strengthened reliability and security.

The board did not take additional formal action on these items at the meeting; managers said they will return with further compliance comparisons and training plans as CAMS rollout and tax-case migration proceed.