In summary
Each year, legislation aimed at better wildfire mitigation fails – often due to cost or conflict with environmental regulations.
In an educational video, the state’s fire agency set two demonstration homes on fire: one built to the latest building standards and one that did not have these protections. As you would expect, the one with new features stayed standing, while the other burned within minutes.
Experts say that mitigation measures, such as clearing brush or using fire-resistant building materials, are the most effective way government can reduce the impact of wildfires. And once again, after the recent Southern California wildfires, lawmakers and experts are stressing the need for more of it.
But each year, many bills aimed at protecting homes from fire fail – some due to cost and others due to conflicts with environmental regulations.
This year, lawmakers have introduced about 90 bills related to wildfires, with about half related to mitigation. But prospects for the bills are uncertain, especially since several are being reintroduced after failing in previous years.
Last year, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills to fund more wildfire prevention work, saying they were too costly. One, Assembly Bill 3023, was estimated to cost between $1 and $4 million annually, while the other, Senate Bill 470, was estimated to be at least in the tens of millions of dollars annually.
Newsom also cited cost in his veto of a bill sponsored by the League of California Cities that sought to ease permitting regulations protecting endangered species so it would be easier to clear vegetation. The bill, which passed the Legislature without a single “no” vote, was estimated to cost about $1.6 million per year.
“It is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications that are not included in the budget, such as this measure,” Newsom wrote in his veto message last September, as the state faced a budget deficit.
The Palisades and Eaton fires prompted the League of California Cities to introduce the bill again, this time authored by Damon Connolly, a Democratic Assemblymember from San Rafael.
“Long timelines are delaying wildfire preparedness projects in the areas most at risk of catastrophic wildfires,” the group wrote in a statement, adding that the size and severity of wildfires have increased dramatically in recent years.
Assemblymember Heath Flora, a Republican from Ripon and a former volunteer firefighter, said that while the governor has cited costs concerns, he sees mitigation as requiring more political willpower this year.
Citing an initial payment by the state last month for the Southern California fires, Flora said: “Suddenly we can find $2 billion to do permitting through paperwork, but we can’t do anything on mitigation?”
The governor’s office does not typically comment on pending legislation when asked whether he’d be more supportive of bills to invest in wildfire protection. The state budget process includes funding for wildfire mitigation through the $10 billion climate bond approved by voters last November.
Other bills were killed last year due to cost concerns before reaching the governor, such as one by Assemblymember Joe Patterson, a Republican from Rocklin.
His bill would have sped up the environmental review process in limited cases for public agencies that want to clear vegetation for wildfire prevention.
The bill died last session in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, despite bipartisan support. According to the bill’s analysis, it would have cost the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection about $12 million each year to hire more staff and purchase more vehicles.
“At the end of the day, this stuff isn’t free,” said Patterson. “If public agencies are going to put their own money behind doing this stuff, and the state has a little bit of overhead, it’s better than spending billions of dollars fighting fires.”
Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story.
California Republicans put forward the lion’s share of wildfire prevention proposals this year. They introduced five measures aimed at easing California Environmental Quality Act requirements for vegetation management.
Some environmental groups have opposed some measures like those.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, opposed Senate Bill 610 last year, which sought to overhaul the state fire marshal’s mapping system from one that focuses on the likelihood of a wildfire to one focused on the potential damage a fire can do to the area under existing conditions.
J.P. Rose, a policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group opposed the bill because “it basically described fire mitigation standards that we have on the books right now as being red tape and things that we don’t need. … From our perspective, that seems completely wrong headed and extremely risky.”
The center has not yet taken positions on bills introduced this year, most of which are still awaiting committee assignments. Overall, Rose said the center supports policies that discourage development in high-risk areas, and policies that promote fire-resistant home improvements.
“We generally oppose plans to ‘suspend’ permitting requirements that are crucial to building back safer communities, such as existing state building codes or LA’s all-electric building codes,” Rose said.
Former Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat who represented the Napa district that saw wildfires in 2017, 2018, 2020, authored seven wildfire mitigation-related bills in the last two-year session, five of which failed to pass the Legislature.
Dodd said that oftentimes, when balancing environmental concerns with mitigation work, “perfect can be the enemy of the good.”
“Mitigation poses some challenges — but the benefit of mitigation is far better than the downside of not doing the mitigation, which is more and more devastating,” he said.