State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) is looking to help fund drug treatment courts and make them available for residents across California under two bills as local law enforcement agencies and courts start to arrest and convict people under a new state law.

The bills come after more than two-thirds of voters across the Golden State approved Prop. 36 – a new unfunded law that aims to increase punishment on certain drug and theft crimes and is expected to increase the costs for prisons, jails and courts.  Umberg said he’s looking to ensure funding for drug courts amid the state’s budget crisis. “Drug courts are particularly important in terms of long term public safety, and I want to make sure that they basically could compete with other sources of funding,” he said in a phone interview last week. 

Umberg said using some of that money for Prop. 36 still aligns to the intent of Prop. 47. “Prop. 47 was designed to provide long term public safety tools and drug courts are long term public safety tools,” he said a day before Newsom’s press conference.  “The most effective that we have.” When asked a day before the press conference if Newsom was hampering the success of Prop. 36 by not tying in funding to the law, Umberg said he wouldn’t speculate. “We’ll have to see what the budget looks like,” he said. Umberg also said he is confident that “legislators understand that Prop. 36 passed overwhelmingly and that the mandate from the public is that we do something of a long term nature, with respect to, for example, substance use disorder.”

Meanwhile, some local city leaders are coming out in support of Umberg’s bills. Santa Ana officials are expected to vote on a resolution in support of Umberg’s bills at their 5 p.m. city council meeting tonight that can be live streamed on YouTube. “Together, SB-28 and SB-38 will ensure that every eligible Californian who chooses treatment over incarceration, will have that choice regardless of the jurisdiction where they’re being charged, while expanding opportunities for more treatment programs to qualify for grant funding,” said Councilman Phil Bacerra at the April 15 council meeting requesting the resolution.

For more, see: https://voiceofoc.org/2025/05/an-oc-senator-pushes-to-fund-drug-court-programs-across-california/