Assembly Budget Subcommittee No 4 Climate Crisis Resources Energy And Transportation

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. I'm not gaveling down. I'm just making an announcement. We're about six minutes from starting. but Assemblymember Ransom has asked us to hold off on agenda item one until she gets here around 950. So we're going to jump to item six first at 930, and then if we get through that and she's still not here yet, we're going to go to item seven. So I wanted to let you guys know that so that you could get, if you have people waiting to come over later in the day, they need to come over earlier if they're here for six and seven. Thank you. You can go back to enjoying your morning. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. All right, you ready?

Hey, good morning, everybody. Appreciate that you were able to fight your way through the crowd to get here. It's a popular place to be this morning. Today, we're happy to have our colleagues back from the Natural Resources Agency. We have eight presentation items today. For each presentation item, I'll ask each of the witnesses in the agenda to introduce themselves before they begin their testimony. At the end of the presentation, members of this subcommittee may ask questions, make comments, or request a presentation on any of the non-presentation items. We will not be taking a vote on any of the items on the agenda today. After all the items are heard, we'll take public comment. For members of the public who wish to provide comment, please limit your testimony to the items on the agenda. Each member of the public will have one minute to speak, assuming we have enough time at the end of the agenda for one minute. And let's begin with issue number six, please.

So we're very excited about this. This is an efficiency. I know the legislature has been asking us, what are you doing to get more efficient? Here's a good example. Great. Thank you. Great. Seems like it makes a lot of common sense, but let's see what LAO had to say about it.

Department of Finance have any concerns about that request?

Great. And do you have any other comments you want to make?

Great. Well, as I said, I think it certainly makes common sense. Are there particular places in the bond that stimulated you to do this and say, hey, we think on these particular parts of the bond, we're going to need this multi-jurisdictional approval process?

And in terms of how the funding, I want to be clear on this,

but then all of the reporting on that funding will come from one department?

Okay. And the funding will be transferred over to that department,

we have a department of X, will that funding be reflected in their expenditures or will it be reflected in the department that consolidated all the expenditures?

Not in the expenditures of the other department.

But the revenue, we will have granted the revenue to the original department.

And then through the Department of Finance, it's transferred over to the lead department.

Got it. Okay, great. All righty. Staff, any other things else you want to clarify in terms of this?

All righty. Hey, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Right? Appreciate having LAO run the traps on this also for us. Right? Okay, we're going to go to item seven. And that biodiversity and nature solutions the 2026 and 2027 spending plan

Good morning, Chair Bennett. I'm Jennifer Norris, the Executive Director of the Wildlife Conservation Board, also known as WCB. WCB provides grants to tribes, governments, and nonprofits, to support conservation investments statewide. Since 2022, WCB has received nearly $1.2 billion from a mix of voter-approved bond and general fund sources to support biodiversity and nature-based solutions projects. We have provided grants to partners in every single county and every terrestrial ecosystem for habitat protection, restoration, and wildlife-oriented public access. We've supported seven ancestral land return projects and helped return 38,000 acres of culturally significant land to California Native American tribes. Additionally, since 2022, nearly 60% of WCB's investments have provided meaningful benefits to underserved communities. We are proud of our accomplishments and excited for the work ahead. The administration's 2026-2027 climate bond expenditure plan includes $111 million to WCB for biodiversity and nature-based solutions investments. investments. WCB would use these funds to support projects that are helping us meet our commitment to conserve 30% of California's lands and coastal waters by 2030, also known as 30 by 30, the state's Nature-Based Solutions Climate Targets, and Outdoors for All strategy. As you are aware, WCB was delayed in dispersing our 2025-2026 Prop 4 funding while we navigated the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. Thanks to the passage of AB 107, we are now moving forward with Prop 4 grants. In February, we awarded $30 million across several high-priority projects, including planning for wildlife crossings on Interstate 15 and State Route 62, habitat restoration for pollinators across multiple coastal counties, spring habitat for migratory birds, and meaningful access to nature for the underserved community of Watsonville. We are actively developing nearly 30 land acquisition projects throughout the state. As you know they have a fairly long lead time but those are coming to fruition And nearly as many habitat restoration projects for the conservation of rivers forests wetlands deserts and more If approved by our board, we will expend nearly all of last year's $256 million allocation by the end of the calendar year, and then we'll turn to the many high-priority projects waiting in the queue for FY2627 funds. As I'm sure you are aware, the demand for WCB funding exceeds what is available by many times. For context, we opened our application portal last April for Prop 4 projects, and by the end of June, we had received nearly $1 billion in requests, which is a good thing to have, lots of conservation to do. We have a small but incredibly efficient and effective team, and know we will be able to report on more amazing accomplishments this time next year. What's being requested this year is what we reasonably believe we can expect to get accomplished with existing staffing on our current workload. We're proud of the work we do with our partners, and we look forward to the year ahead in protecting California's natural world. Thank you.

Brian Metzger, LAO. We find the overall approach taken in this chapter of Prop 4 to be reasonable. We think it balances the demand for these solutions with the capacity of the Wildlife Conservation Board as well as the Conservancy's. One program to note is $30 million of the proposed $111 million for the protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife resources and habitats will be granted to DWR for priority habitat and public access projects at the Salton Sea. And funding those projects likely makes sense, given the tight timeline for the state to complete nearly 30,000 acres of habitat projects by 2028. We also would note that WCB is awaiting direction from the legislature about the geographic scope of the San Andreas Corridor Program, for which it proposes $20 million in 2627 of the total $80 million that's in Prop 4. And so to the extent that the legislature has specific priorities about, you know, the reach of the San Andreas Corridor program, now would be the time to specify those.

I agree. In terms of what we've done with the Wildlife Conservation Board.

I don't have any concerns about that. I think, obviously, it's up to the administration. But my understanding is there is a fairly coherent set of partners with a strategic vision for that part of the state. And the work that they do will be this year, next year, ongoing. I'm sure we can find a way to get those projects accomplished.

Good morning. Andrew Hull with Department of Finance. Obviously, we don't know any of the details on that yet, but we're happy to work together. No immediate concerns.

Brian Cash from the Natural Resources Agency. I think we can assure you because there are, you know, the state's completed already 3,896 acres of the 14,900 acres that we need to finish. And then there are 8,000 acres of projects that are already in the pipeline underway. And then 3,630 acres that are funded and where they're working with the contractor to begin construction. So things are moving very quickly there and efficiently. So I don't think this will be a problem.

Most definitely.

Good morning Chair Bennett and members of the committee My name is...

How's that, sir?

I appreciate your assistance.

I appreciate the grace.

Good morning. Chair Bennett, members of the committee, my name is Jake Sholand. I'm the Deputy Director of Fire Protection Programs for Cal Fire, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. California's fire environment has extended to a fire year. This can be seen from many fires since 2014, including the devastating January 2025 L.A. fire siege. In March 2026, we have already mitigated large fires, including the Springs Fire in Riverside County, the Crown Fire in Los Angeles County, and the Paramount Fire in Kings County. Certain aviation assets have now been staffed continuously, including day and night operations to meet fire activity demands and rapid response requirements, which also increases the need for ongoing flight crew training to maintain proficiency and readiness across all aerial firefighting disciplines. CAL FIRE's fleet has also modernized, transitioning to 16 CAL FIRE Hawk helicopters and adding seven C-130H air tankers for a total of 72 aircraft. These platforms are more advanced and capable, but also require more intensive and frequent maintenance across complex systems, including avionics, electrical, communications, and suppressant delivery systems. Maintenance staffing has scaled accordingly from 90 maintainers in 2015 to 2020 to 152 by 2024, 171 in 2026, and 191 proposed under this contract. This reflects increases aligned with a larger, more complex fleet and year-round operations. Maintenance has also shifted from a five-day-a-week model to a seven-day model, though staffing remains lean compared to our federal counterparts. Pilot staffing has grown from 108 pilots in 2024 to 163 under the proposed contract in response to year-round fire activity and increased mission demands, including support for our C-130 air tankers. Sustaining these operations require a larger, highly trained pilot workforce developed through a rigorous training pipeline and specialization. These positions align the program with FAA Part 135 requirements, expands the support pilot corps for transport of personnel and supplies, and enables dual shift operations and strengthens relief capacity to address absences and attrition. At the same time, we are competing in a tight labor market. Industry labor pressures have driven contractor negotiated salary increases of approximately 51 percent for pilots and 20 percent for mechanics to recruit and retain a qualified workforce. This contract reflects today's reality, a year round mission, a more complex fleet and the personnel required to safely and effectively meet California's wildfire demands. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you for the opportunity.

Yes Julianne Rolf Department of Finance I like to note for the record that this BCP said that the cost increase would be up to a certain amount and we like to note that the amount stated in the BCP which is million for the first year is the final amount of the contract increase

Brian Metzger, LAO. Consistent with the framework we provided to approach environmental issues in the 26-27 governor's budget, we find that this proposal addresses important health and safety concerns and merits consideration for budget year funding. Absent this funding, CAL FIRE would not be able to fully use its air tanker and command center aircraft to respond to wildfires. And without those aircraft, more communities and residents would be at risk. And therefore, we recommend approval of this proposal. Thank you.

Mechanics specifically, all the mechanics within the CAL FIRE's aviation program are provided through this contract.

Negative. They're all contract employees.

Correct.

For the fixed-wing pilots, they are also provided through the contractor. The rotor wing, the Firehawk helicopter pilots, are CAL FIRE employees.

So when, specific to your question, anybody can bid on the contract. The personnel that we're talking about would transition to the new contracts, or they're not replaced. And so there's a number of folks that have expressed interest this last cycle. There was two that put in for the bid for the contract.

In terms of the folks or the entities available to provide services, I believe one thing we can do is start earlier and allow our request, our RFP process, to be distributed for a longer period of time. I do not believe we're in any critical threat or endangerment of somebody not bidding on that contract. It's more or less them understanding what the components of the contract are. So we had three this last time that were highly interested. One did not make the timeline, and then the other two obviously did comply. I know of five that had interest at the beginning.

That's on my side, sir, being able to prepare and have that contracted written and put out early where it has enough time to answer questions for the suppliers that want to put in for it.

No, sir.

Yes, sir. I do think technology can assist with us. One is the early detection of the fires. We're seeing successes with the alert camera system, let alone the satellites that are coming out in 2028. I suspect that we're going to see a higher percentage increase than we see today on identifying those fires at time of start and then putting resources on the road, technology, and unmanned aerial systems. Also, we're looking at things in there that we can use to not only improve the initial suppression of fires, but also support them logistically to a higher capacity than what we were able to through manned systems.

not necessarily a challenge to find those peoples, and some of this contract does address the ability for us to continue with emerging technology in aviation, as well as increased modifications to the aircraft to bring them into the new technologies that are available now. So this contract already accounts for that, and I do not suspect any challenges in obtaining those people or meeting those needs.

Good morning, Chair. Members, thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Megan Hurdle. I'm the new director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Welcome.

Hopefully I'm using the microphone right.

He's going to be giving the content detail on golden mussels. and you'll see the handout in front of you. We think a picture is worth a thousand words. So there's some really helpful images in there that can help you see what this looks like in the water and how this is impacting people. And I will now pass it over to our deputy director. Morning, Chair, members. I'm Chad Dibble, deputy director for the Wildlife and Fisheries Division at the Department of Fish and Water.

Closer?

Okay.

Yeah, that's better.

I'll start over again. I'm Chad Dibble, Deputy Director for the Wildlife and Fisheries Division at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Thank you for having me this morning.

Or did you want to have a little bit of an overview of where we are with Golden Muscle?

So just a reminder, Golden Muscle was first detected at the Port of Stockton in October of 2024. This discovery was the first known occurrence in the United States or in North America, excuse me. Golden mussels are native to China and Southeast Asia, but they have invaded waters of other countries and territories and are now in the U.S. Unlike quagga and zebra mussel, the golden mussel can tolerate brackish water and low calcium levels, which basically means we have a lot more vulnerable waters in the state than we do with quagga and zebra. Golden mussel adults attach to surfaces, and their larvae is suspended in the water column, which allows them to be transported through flow or conveyance systems or what have you. So again, very fluid in the system. Golden Muscle is currently present throughout the Delta, the state and federal water projects, and the water supply systems that receive water from the Delta. To date, we have found no detections outside of any water body that does not receive water from the Delta. Golden Muscle threatens the reliability of the state's water supply, our beneficial uses, and the environment. Infrastructure that is located within infested waters requires costly retrofitting and or ongoing removal of the organisms to maintain operations of gates, screens, hydroelectric facilities, and flood control structures. To give you a little bit about where we are. So following the detection of Golden Muscle, the department pulled together what we call the Golden Muscle Task Force. This is a group of representatives from state, federal, and local agencies. It also includes several subcommittees, one of those being subcommittee for our partners, and that is where we allow cities, counties, reservoir managers, and their recreational operators or water districts to meet with us and discuss and have sort of a forum for them to discuss what's going on with Golden Muscle and work through. The Golden Muscle Task Force developed what we call the Golden Muscle Response Framework, which was to provide recommendations to all of you, many of our policymakers, our managers, and the public on how to respond to Golden Muscle detections throughout a common framework across agencies and jurisdictions. So that's really what's led our effort to date of Golden Muscle and how we're coordinating amongst state and federal agencies and our partners. Today, we continue to work within our existing capacity to delineate Golden Muscle infections or infestations across the state prevent the overland spread and to mitigate impacts So this includes working with our water managers to prepare control plans maintaining the invasive mussel toolkit that we have online that provides lots of public outreach and educational materials for folks to use and distribute presenting to groups about golden mussel We've done state presentations, national presentations, international presentations, local presentations. We're working with a lot of folks to get the word out and talk about preventative measures and what people are doing. We also continue to assist with water managers, or reservoir operators we like to call them, about mussel introductions. And this includes sort of education and training on pre-inspection of vessels and conveyance systems that might be used for equipment or other ways that mussels could spread. Digging into your questions, reminder, this proposal is for eight positions that are funded by the $20 million the department received this year through Prop 4. So your first question was how will positions requested work together? These eight positions will work with water managers of infested and non-infested waters to prepare control plans, which are required. This will help to prevent overland spread and the spread of downstream water flow from, you know, moving these invasive mussels around. These positions will also help us to provide a new capacity to really expand a statewide education and outreach campaign so that we can do more than we're doing now to educate the public on what they should be doing to prevent and contain golden mussels. And then mostly, I think the most important part is that it will support our continued efforts in the Golden Mussel Task Force. And this is primarily in three areas of monitoring, research, and our partners' efforts. In the monitoring space, this allows us to expand, greatly expand the amount of waters we're able to test now across the state. I think we'll be up to about 162 water bodies this year that we will be able to test. In the research space, it allows us to continue to coordinate with DWR, academic institutions, private sector, internally and all, to work on things like everyone's interested, which is eDNA testing, allow us to do more villager viability studies, villager morphology understand what's really happening with these vessels with these muscles it's working on research to evaluate which type of coatings or uv light systems or things that you could add or modify through your infrastructure to help ensure that you can these muscles won't attach we're also looking at exposure times for these muscles with heated water temperatures and we're looking at other ways and tools that we might be able to manage muscles throughout the So it's really allowing us to build that capacity and maintain our ability to participate with folks to really look into what we can do. In the partner space, we've created other subgroups and we're continuing to work with the subgroups we have, which includes our local water districts and agencies and others that are affected by muscle infestations. And then lastly, it allows us to coordinate with our law enforcement division. The positions proposed here do not include officers, but it does allow from the $20 million that we received, There is funding there to support overtime for our current officers. That $20 million will also be used to purchase a couple of new K-9 officers and train some of our existing officers to be able to have better scent detection dogs for Golden Muscle. Our wildlife officers are heavily involved in Golden Muscle efforts, and to date, they've made more than 4,000 contacts on educational contacts with boaters across the state. Second part of that question was, how does the department expect the boating inspection process to operate? So part of the changes to Fish and Game Code 2301 and 2302 requires us to update Title 14 for consistency. During that update, we are planning to expand on the regulations to address overland movement and fouled conveyances or vessels. And we plan to establish a process in that that would allow us to vet qualified private businesses that inspect and decontaminate conveyances So our hope is that we can create a process that allows us to authorize individual businesses third parties if you will to be able to inspect and decontaminate vessels which will help in the boating space so it's not just related to the reservoir that you want to be at. We've been working hard to establish a statewide boat inspection program, which we'll try to pilot here and work through. We're having those meetings now with water managers and agencies across the state to try and figure out how best that could be implemented. The hope is to improve the consistency amongst reservoir prevention efforts so that the boaters have a more simpler process and an understandable process about how they can access one water body or another. We are now a part of the administrative users of what we call the Watercraft Inspection Database. This is a national database used across 28 states in the Western U.S., and it tracks the last known use date and location of the water vessel or the watercraft that was of where it was. So when it comes to your water body, there's a system that you can be logged into and you can understand where that boat has been, whether it was clean, whether it was decontaminated, et cetera, et cetera, and help provide a little bit more helpful information to the person who's deciding whether that watercraft should enter their water body. We've trained our staff to be trainers. We're working with folks to work through that, and we're hosting hand-on training sessions this spring for agencies, water managers and marinas, boat shops, et cetera, to understand better how they can have preventative measures in place at their reservoirs and their water bodies. Next question you had was, how will these positions support the Delta?

It's hard to—I can't give you an exact number. what we did prior to this, when this was an emergency action and we took this in 2024, we essentially redirected our staff. We did have existing staff working on Quagga and Zebra, and there's many similarities to the efforts that are going on now, but we turned and basically redirected a lot of our staff to put them to this attention. We have not had a lot of ability to do these types of things. We're utilizing the Prop 4 funds we have now to really be able to expand into these arenas, recognizing the issues that are coming up for our boating communities, for for water supply communities, et cetera. So we haven't had a whole lot of staff. We've probably been on the order of about the same as where we are with staff that are doing Cahuaca zebra work. And that is funded through a federal grant, primarily through a federal grant with the state fish restoration act voting access funds.

I don't have the number offhand. We'd be happy to follow up with your office and give you that information.

I'm Manisha Kaposuella, Department of Finance. There are currently, as of the current year, 18 authorized positions for the Quagga and Zebra Muscle Program.

So we think all of these efforts will support the Delta community. They're going to learn from the research and the water managers that are in that space. They're going to be able to take that and utilize it to their specific operations that they need. We think that the voluntary boat inspections will help the Delta community and recreational boating happening. We think all of these things together will help keep that understanding that the Delta is a place and supporting the ongoing economic benefits there. So we're really hopeful that all of this will be beneficial to the Delta and their communities.

Again, as mentioned, these positions specifically will be working directly with water managers to develop their water control plans. That is something that is absolutely needed. it it part of the process and it it really what the staff will be dedicated to do and also again they be following up with the research that we doing and participating in that water managers are engaged now We happy to continue to engage with them Authorizing them through permits or things that they need are just the research that we able to do and the information we have that helps their research to understand how to better manage their water systems.

And I'll just tell you that there is no, the Prop 4 funds we have right now are not planned to have grants. They're not eligible for grants. Last year, the department did, on an emergency action, redirect Sport Fish Restoration Act funds, boating access funds specifically. We ran a proposal, a solicitation out. We awarded $1.3 million to support decontamination units, high-pressure water stations, and improvements to boat ramps, really in the boating space because they are boating access funds. So we were working with water managers to ensure that they could try and stay open for boating access. Thank you.

Yeah. No, but they're coming to turn it on for us. Here we go. There we go. Morning, Chair. Dan Reagan, Deputy Director of Fiscal Services Division for the Department. We can have that for you today.

Andrew Hall, no comments, but happy to answer any questions.

Sonia Pettig, LAO. No real comments. We think this proposal makes sense, and as the department noted, a lot of this work is already being done, but it's being done with redirected positions. So the request for these additional positions will allow those people to go back to what they should be doing and allow these new positions to handle this urgent workload.

As I mentioned, a lot of that is very similar work, so we're adding additional capacity to the folks that are in the field, maybe an additional sample collection for golden mussels with the quagga efforts that have been going on. But we've been studying that for quite some time, so we're able to take a little bit of a slowdown in that workload, pressing on golden mussels instead. but largely it's a combination of things and adding on to their workload of the water bodies that are already sampling.

No.

So we've stayed at about the same level of quagga infestation. We've been pretty good at containing it, which is why it's so important for us to be up in front of golden mussel and recognizing that it's in the Delta now and we want to try to contain it as much as possible.

I don't know that. We are not aware of any solutions to this issue of treatments and things that are manageable at this point. So we're still working through that. That's the research we're trying to figure out. It's an invasive species that has not been able to be handled.

I do not know that. The one thing I would add is when a species is native somewhere, it often has other native predators or controls that keep it in check. And when it comes to a new novel environment where it doesn't have those same things to keep it in check, that is when becomes invasive and becomes out of control. I am not an expert on China's situation on this, so just to clarify. But in general, where something is from, it's usually a little bit more balanced.

I wouldn't say lost. I think you're going to have some significant cost to maintain any infrastructure that might be in there, The water body, for the purposes it was created, is still reasonably there.

Our understanding right now, it will be very difficult. You are pretty much going to be in a maintenance mode.

We will look into that and get back to you on what progress has been made. But there's lots of research still going on here in the state. Not all water bodies are created the same, same with other countries. And so we'd really need to understand that. But part of the research teams that are working on this are looking into that. I don't have the answer for you today, but our teams are working together with the universities to figure that out and understand what's happening globally and how that could apply to California.

Chair, that's incredibly helpful, and I think that's a really useful question to be asking. The most effective thing we can do is prevent the spread of it, right? And so if we can keep it contained to where it's at and keep it from getting into bodies of water that are not connected to the delta, that will save us significant costs in management going forward. And so that's why you see a lot of focus right now on education, containment, cleaning of vessels. But we will follow up with you from some additional context.

So first of all, I want to thank the department for being here. Congratulations on your new position. Really awkward timing, right? This new invasive species is very concerning for the community. So my community includes the San Joaquin Delta, and it's been ground zero for the golden mussel invasion and infestation. And so we're seeing the impacts very firsthand. The Delta is a critical lifeline not only for boating and ports and recreation but also for agriculture providing nearly 30 million residents I should say and more than 6 million acres of farmland with water And so it definitely under threat as you have already talked about And so you've all seen, thank you very much, I agree with you, the picture is worth a thousand words. For those of you who have not seen, there was a packet that was sent, this is, you know, what golden mussels look like. And it's definitely not, it's nothing exciting about this when it takes over. And so we know that this is a, okay, we know that right now is a spawning season. So we're really concerned that we need to act right now with the golden mussels. And the fact that the dollars that have been allocated thus far are not getting to people on the ground is very concerning. I just want to be clear that like $20 million is barely a scratch in the surface to what is necessary. It's barely a starting point, and it's very insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge, especially knowing that this thing is very resilient in comparison to other things. And so without sustained investment in eradicating the golden mussels, California families bear the cost through higher water rates. Just want to share another thing. This is an intake pipe valve. This is infestation because it gets inside and it completely takes over. And so I know you all are very aware of this situation happening, but we are really, really needing to stave off a crisis. And so I'm really concerned. The urgency cannot be overstated when it comes to this. And so as I'm listening to what your request is, I definitely I know you have a hard job. I know you have the quagga mussels and the zebra mussels, but I really would love to know more details about all of these positions, because what we don't want is we know everyone that runs a department. We've run departments. We love budgets. We love more staffing. But how does this actually help the people on the ground? I just heard you say that there's no grants. Well, the people that are in these different water departments, these managers, need funding. to deal with the invasive species that they've never dealt with before. They need decontamination immediately. So to have all of the funding go to a department to do research, research which is necessary, at the same time, we also need to do the work to start eliminating and decontaminating. And so I want to make sure that we stand up funding that will empower the people on the ground to start scaling, pushing back on these golden mussels. So no funding and no grants to the folks on the ground is very concerning. Not having details on how a marketing specialist is going to help, an analyst is going to help. I really am concerned that there are really a list of positions but not enough detail into how these positions are so much different than quagga and zebra mussel. You know, I can understand if you said, hey, we want to add a couple of positions. And then speaking with water managers, they don't really they're not excited about canine dogs. They don't feel like the dogs do the same type of work that the humans are able to do. I'm sure we all have different opinions. Right. But I'm just sharing what I've learned from folks in the community that are very concerned. Chair, you asked about what China is doing. I can tell you that they spend billion annually on operations and maintenance to mitigate the cost And that happening throughout the different areas And so I just don want to send funding to a department which I respect, and we can't do this without you, and I know that we can't do it without you, but we have to consider the people on the ground. If you speak to the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California, they're estimating that it's going to cost $100 million up front just for treatment facilities and chemical costs, Additionally, they're estimating $15 million to $20 million per year ongoing operations. They're also a department, so I get it. But we do need to figure out how we can do the research, but not just spend all the money on. I heard research, you know, that's very big. I heard education is very big. But while we're researching and educating, the golden muscles are spawning and growing. And so we have to figure out how do we prioritize containment? How do we prioritize decontamination? And so those are kind of the things that I want to talk about. So I do have a couple of questions. I know you're like, where is this lady going with us? I do have some questions, if that's okay. Thank you, Chair. So when we are talking about the funding, when it comes to the Delta, should we be considering using the funding for decontamination? Have you considered, I should say, using some of this funding for decontamination sites? We've estimated that it's at least $1.5 million per site for the five sites that are pretty much fighting this right now in the Delta. So have you thought about or looked at ways to get something to give relief to that region? Yes, we have thought about that. Actually, part of our conversations with water managers and developing the regulation changes that we're talking about is giving us the authority to authorize people to have decontamination sites. So third-party businesses, vendors, people that could actually make a business out of this to some extent could offer those services. We've also looked into other locations of where you might be able to strategically place different decontamination sites, whether those are state-run or privately-run or some other way, county-run, is a conversation yet to be had about the expenses and the costs and how that would be initially set up. We have also been working with a company that develops what they call dip tanks, and those can be put on site and removed. I think you've seen those. Those are just a giant, I'll call it a giant hot tub for watercraft, where you back it in, it's hot water. Instead of doing the system that you have to do where you're putting hot water into the boats and checking all the things, you basically just dip the whole trailer and boat into the water. So we've had lots of conversations around that and ways to work through that. We recognize the impacts that the Delta has, and that's a big portion of what we're trying to do. And so when we talk about the staff that we have, they're focused on, first and foremost, working through what the law mandates, which is the water managers need to have these control plans, which are on that side of helping out water structures, supply, all the things that you mentioned in the pictures you've shown. We're working through that to help with those managers develop those plans to help them understand what they can do in that space. The second space we talked about is in your recreational piece that you're talking about. We've been working with those partners. Part of that is education. Creating a statewide system is part of that process to where we can help educate each of these individuals that operate these marinas, operate these reservoirs, operate these watercraft inspection stations or watercraft stations to have the education that they need to be able to safely deploy these techniques and tools that we're learning and we have to ensure that boaters have access, marinas stay open, people can safely travel their boat from one location to another. Okay so with that being said if we thinking about these things why is that not part of the funding Like why are we not enumerating We want dip stations and how much those are going to cost And why are we not immediately deploying these things to these areas if we think that that is a solution? I know that this body would move with haste if we say, you know, and I'm saying with urgency, because this started in the Delta. We talked about this, I want to say, last October. Now it's all the way down south. And so while the Delta is the epicenter, I appreciate that you're talking about dip stations, but I want to know how do we go from talking about staffing to actually setting up these, here's the dollars that we're requesting, we're going to put this many dip stations in, and we're going to send our people out to educate the people on how to use them so that we can start to deal with the actual issue. I hope I'm making sense and I hope I'm not offensive, but I just when you're saying you're thinking about this Have you how many dollars would it cost for each dip station and how long would it take you to set this up? We have done some research on that. We have the dollars We've been working with the companies to figure that out The department doesn't have the ability to determine which locations it would be and what those costs would be on on capital outlay If it's state land if it's private land leasing it how that would play out So we're having those conversations with the parties that might be interested but the department doesn't have the ability to take that on, if you will, without significant support from finance and through the other avenues of the state. Okay, and based on your budget, are you expecting that each individual water manager is going to fund, even if there's a private, authorized private contractor? So each, this is a statewide issue, right? but we're going to ask San Joaquin counties and Los Angeles County, each water manager, we're going to authorize them, but then they have to go find the dollars, even though you all aren't able to give them grants. Do they have to go find their own funding, even if you are setting up the ability for them to hire contractors to do this work, private entities to do this work? Currently, the expectation is that the water body reservoir operator manager would have to fund that, unless there's additional funds, which is why last year we redirected emergency funds to go help them in that space to create the decontamination units and the things that they could try and buy to help ease that burden on them to ensure that voting access stays open. You have a mix across the state of folks that are paying attention or able to respond to Golden Muscle. We have multiple water bodies in the state that literally have nobody, no person sitting at the entrance to it. We have other folks that have completely shut down their reservoirs and water bodies, and we have others that have found some sort of a mix to have some type of a containment process, inspection process, decontamination process. So we really have a mix out there of the ability of folks to do this. And so our job as a department has been to educate them and help them understand what the national standards are, what the processes are that are happening across the West with dealing with quagga and zebra and other species, which are very similar in this space, and ensure that those protocols can be used and folks can open their water bodies safely. But largely it is dependent on those reservoir operators who have the control to decide to be open or not at this point to figure out how to financially staff that.

That will be equally efficient, Chair.

Chair, can I do one efficient response on this?

Assemblymember, your questions are very fair, and it's always the question of do you put the on the ground in implementation, or do you invest in staff that can try to work across a broader landscape? Because this is such a small amount of money, we prioritize staff that could support more water managers on the ground versus putting a few limited things in place on the ground. It is a difficult discussion in that tradeoff. Okay, thank you for that answer. So with the staff positions, how will the funds reduce the time in getting the permitting approvals so that the efforts can move forward?

The staff will be dedicated to supporting those efforts right now, and part of the Title 14 regulations we're updating, currently when you get a water control plan approved, you are exempt from restricted species and SCP needs for the permitting that you're talking about, at least from the department's standpoint. So our efforts to update those regulations will include that same provision you have now for dracented mussels, and so therefore you will eliminate those needs for the permitting, but you do need to comply with the water control plans. Okay, and this is a three-year request, right? So after three years, what is your plan if the local prevention efforts still require intensive coordination? Andrew Hull with the Department of Finance. Yeah, this funding is sort of a three-year gap. You know, AB 149 expanded the definition, placed requirements on CDFW. this funding would allow them to get through three years, but also included with that was legislative intent to do kind of a broadening, a look at the harbors and watercraft fund administered by parks, as well as an adjustment to the invasive sticker fee. And so this is funding that they're going to get them through that period until we can do the broader effort. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate you all. I just want to say I understand that you need money in your department. I just I really implore you to figure out what we can do to help the folks on the ground as this thing is spreading. And we're in spawning season, so we don't even know what to expect. So thank you for your time.

Great. I'll be really brief, too. I draw a little bit of a parallel to some of the efforts in my district around urchin. and one of the things that they have been doing is investing in emerging economies or finding an economy that works for that species. Is there any economic potential for the mussels? Because I joke, but I'm not joking. If we create an economy of it, I have full faith in the ability for us to make it go extinct. Are there any of those efforts? I'm not aware of any efforts at this time, but it's a great question. That's something that I'd be interested in, is if there are potential there, because I know that there's a cost side to keeping the muscles clear, especially on critical infrastructure. But if there's some form of economy that can be created that incentivizes folks to help us with that effort, I think that that'd be really beneficial to the state. Part of what we are looking at is what economy and businesses and jobs can be stood up around cleaning of vessels and supporting waterways to be able to be prepared to take those vessels.

Thank you. My questions really kind of were in parallel to the assembly members. So just to reiterate, and no need to answer further at this point but why is the money not going directly to locals who are dealing with the issue on the ground Really getting more information on how the positions will interact and collaborate with local managers and our locals in general Is there funding available to assist water managers directly? If yes, what is available? So I think we got some answers to that, and it sounds like there'll be follow-up discussions. While I have you, though, I wanted to ask a non-Golden Muscle containment question, and that is I sent a letter last month about extending the liquidation date for the CDFW contract with Occidental Arts and Ecology Center for their work to develop and steward a $2 million block grant to implement a program that builds California's capacity for a successful beaver coexistence. Do you have an update about extending the liquidation date?

Manishka Pazwella, Department of Finance. Finance is aware of and tracking this issue, and any changes that are made to the budget it would appear at the time of the May revision.

I'd like to take it offline if we can.

Your summary was excellent, Chair.

Summary was excellent.

Yes.

Brian Metzger with the Legislative Analysts Office. Our office was asked to provide a brief overview of state wildfire prevention and response funding to help set a baseline for the subcommittee's consideration of other topics on today's agenda. And in preparation for this hearing, our office prepared a handout that we will use to guide our remarks today, and you should have received a copy of that ahead of the hearing. On page one of our handout, we felt it was important to acknowledge the different levels of government that are responsible for wildfire prevention and response activities in the state. In each of these responsibility areas, one or more entities lead the administration and funding of these activities. Who leads the administration and funding of these activities can be important as it informs where and how the state uses its funding for wildfire prevention and response. Most of this is self-explanatory. I'll be very quick about it. First we have the federal responsibility area the federal forest service and the newly created wildland fire service are the lead entities in that area Second the state responsibility area where Cal Fire is the lead state entity And third the local responsibility area where we have local city and county fire departments and fire protection districts that lead those efforts. It's important to say that while each one has its own responsibility within that area, they coordinate across them for things, particularly during wildfire response activities. On page two of the handout, we described the increase in state funding for wildfire resilience activities over the past several years. We focus on CAL FIRE, but acknowledge that a significant amount of money has been appropriated to state conservancies and other state departments for these activities. We have a summary figure later in the handout that provides some of that information as well. But on this page, we show that over the past 10 fiscal years or so, since 2015-16, the amount of funding for wildfire resilience activities at CAL FIRE has increased from about $100 million to about $700 million in 25-26. The amount of funding has fluctuated over time. A large amount of that new funding came through wildfire and forest resilience budget packages that were approved in 21 and 22. And since 2018-19, about $200 million in greenhouse gas reduction fund monies has been available for use on forest health and wildfire prevention, as well as fuels, crews, research, and monitoring. We'll come back to those monies later in our testimony and in the hearing as well. On page three of the handout, we felt it was important for the legislature to have the additional context for the increase in wildfire resilience funding, as it still remains a relatively small percentage of Cal Fire's overall budget, about 10 to 20 percent over time. The vast majority of Cal Fire's budget remains dedicated to base fire protection, such as firefighting personnel and equipment, and to emergency fire suppression through the E-Fund. We acknowledge that it's also difficult to pull apart Cal Fire's budget into these respective categories, so some of that base fire protection money may be used for some wildfire resilience activities as well. On page four of our handout, we provide the summary figure I mentioned that provides the kind of list of funding categorized for all state departments and conservancies. Just to be clear, this figure does not include Prop 4 funding. That will be on the next page. There are a lot of programs on this page, so I won't go into each of them, but I did want to highlight just a few. We bucket the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund monies into two categories. You'll see the Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention category at the top is about $990 million, and then there's $210 million for fuel screw research and monitoring. Later in the agenda, you'll be able to see a further breakdown in the agenda of the $200 million for GGRF across the different programs. You'll see a lot of funding for the Forest Health Program, fire prevention grants, state conservancy projects, and notably less funding for some of the community hardening projects, such as defensible space and home hardening, as will be discussed in a later panel on successful wildfire prevention. And as we noted in our framework on how to approach environmental issues in the governor's budget, it will be important for the legislature to revisit that balance and to make sure that the monies are being expended on its highest priorities. On page five, we provide a summary of Prop 4, the wildfire and forest resilience chapter. This also will be covered in subsequent items, so I won't go into it too much, but wanted to note that there are additional community hardening monies in this chapter that were not reflected or that would build on other monies in the previous page, together with the $3.6 billion in the previous figure and the $3.6 billion. Roughly $600 million through 25-26, that's about $4.2 billion in total wildfire resilience funding over that period. There are about $300 million in Prop 4 funds that are proposed in 26-27,

Yeah, thanks so much, Chair. I actually just want to piggyback on that as well and express my concern that in a couple of years when the bond funding and some of the other one-time investments are gone, the backfill is GGRF, which the work that the legislature did last year deprioritized to a Tier 3, not a Tier 1 as it had been under the Dodd bill. And I think many of us are expecting that there's going to be very little from GGRF for Tier 3 priorities. And so I would hope that we, and this is for kind of all of these presentations we're about to do, I'd hope that we can have a conversation about how better to fund those critical services. And I think especially right now when you look at draws at the local level in the LRA, which I know is not what CAL FIRE is supposed to do, but is increasingly being asked to participate in And then also in federal territory we seen the U Forest Service just pull back significantly from California And there will be an additional poll I think on Cal Fire resources to try to make up that gap or plug that gap as well So I hope in the next couple of years we can talk about what that next step is going to be as those funds start to expire, because I do think that there's going to be a need and an expectation from our community that we maintain that effort. Assemblymember Conley. Yeah, very similar, and I think both colleagues said it well. Obviously, common themes are, given the importance of this block of funding to our communities, the sense is it's very cyclical right now, and it is kind of drawing from different pots of money. I guess a couple questions just to get your thoughts. So, I mean, is there a consistent funding amount that wildfire prevention programs receive, or is it going to continue to just vary by budget cycle? And kind of related, what options could the state explore to secure ongoing, stable funding for wildfire prevention activities?

That is a very important question. I think based on our initial analysis of the ongoing state funding that is available for these activities with the new cap and invest structure being dependent, that portion that's for wildfire resilience activities being dependent on GGRF revenues, it will continue to fluctuate year to year. And the base Cal Fire operations funding is limited in what it's able to assist with when it comes to wildfire resilience activities. So in terms of, you know, to your other question about options for potentially raising, you know, ongoing sources of revenue. I mean, they're. And or stabilizing as well. So I think we're pushing back kind of on the premise effectively. But go ahead. Yes. Apologies for interrupting. There are some options that present themselves in terms of revisiting the cap and invest structure the way it's currently, you know, The tiers are structured and maybe potentially thinking about whether the Tier 3 allocation should be the way they are, thinking about potentially securing more fixed ongoing funding through the GGRF in that way. There are potentially thoughts about reinstating a state responsibility area fee or some other similar fee structure wherein beneficiaries of these fire prevention services are paying for them within the state responsibility area. We understand from, you know, a policy rationale, at least, that that would make sense. We have heard that there are some administrative difficulties with that fee as it was previously structured, but there could be something similar that could provide ongoing funding. And then, as we've mentioned with our framework for budget decisions, thinking about looking at the current CAL FIRE budget as it's constructed and the money that we're putting in and thinking about whether the activities that are being funded could be funded in a different way or be used for wildfire resilience activities in a different mix than is currently envisioned. Those are kind of three top-of-mind ideas, but again, we're certainly happy to bring this back and think about it more.

Just publicly? Okay. All right.

agree with comments that were made by the chair and the Assemblymember. One we should not be funding suppression out of GGRF. That should be in our general fund. I've totally disagreed with moving that over. One, reducing greenhouse gas and wildfire prevention activities make a whole lot of sense. And you guys have reported, I think, time and time again, that that activity, forestry management, per dollar reduces more carbon than and many other activities that we do in this state. Is that correct?

we need to get back to a general fund commitment to our men and women at Cal Fire who are doing, you know, that amazing work fighting these fires, which by the way, we're having to fight these catastrophic fires because we haven't been doing the work on prevention, right? which means that should really be the priority, you know, is making sure that we're getting that money up. But in fact, we're actually decreasing that money. Is that correct in this year's budget?

What did we spend last year total on wildfire prevention activities?

We'll go into that. I mean, look, I do know the answer. I just wanted to get it out on the record. that's decreased every year since 2021. And now, as was brought up by the Assemblymember, we've deprioritized the prevention funds and put it in the third tier. Is that correct?

So they're getting third tier. What's ahead of them?

There are a number of other, there's state operations money. There's a pot for legislative discretionary spending, $750 million of which is going towards Cal Fire's GGRF fund shift.

And this legislation, that was by SB 840, right?

Offered by Senator Lamone and McGuire last year?

Passed by this legislature. I voted no. I don't think we should have done that deprioritization of wildfire prevention. And now what we have is high-speed rail gets greater priority. a billion dollars a year approximately at a cap and trade, and we're lowering the amount of money that we're giving to Wildfire Prevention in Alahoghia. $147 million compared to a billion for a project that has serious problems. Audit after audit has found that money is being wasted, right? And we're not spending it on what should be the most important priority, stopping these catastrophic wildfires that these men and women have to fight every year, right? Because we're not doing the work that we should and funding the work that we need to do on the prevention side and destroying our communities. and we're losing our community members because we're not making that a priority. It's completely back ass words. And I'm just tired of it, quite frankly. Like we need to get back to the right priorities, not deprioritization, but prioritization of wildfire prevention. And I think that's where this committee is at. I hope we can do that work and right that wrong. that's been going on, but it certainly was made even worse by 840 last year.

All right. Thank you, Chair Bennett, members of the committee. My name is Joe Tyler. I'm the director and fire chief here at Cal Fire. Every day, CAL FIRE, along with our partner agencies and grantees, focus on fire prevention efforts. The work begins with helping homeowners maintain defensible space and offering guidance on home hardening. It extends to supporting neighborhood-level mitigations, such as fire-wise communities and large-scale fuel reduction efforts, creating fuel breaks in and around communities, conducting prescribed fire, and advancing forest health and landscape level restorations. Together, these actions help prepare communities for wildfire, reduce fire intensity, and strengthen our ecosystem. This is the work that CAL FIRE has been performing for decades. And while we were internally aware of the work we were doing and the fuels reduction projects that were an effective tool for fire prevention, we really didn't have a system in place that tracked and evaluated the effectiveness of these approaches. And so that's been important, especially for Assemblywoman Petrie Norris and this committee to really show and be able to track those efforts. So in the spring of 2024, the department launched the Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Program application. It can be found on the public spacing website of CAL FIRE to effectively evaluate the impacts that vegetation management treatments have on fire behavior and a highlight of how fuel reduction activities not only assist prevention efforts but how they protect life property and our natural resources Now every time a wildfire occurs within a quarter mile of a fuels treatment project local CAL FIRE unit personnel are notified in order to evaluate any potential impacts the project may have had on a fire such as reducing fire behavior and assisting in emergency operations This isn't just our 21 units, but also our six contract counties. In fact, between July 1st, 2024 and June 30th, 2025, there were 65 fuel reduction treatments that were documented as having a positive impact, with most treatments providing multiple positive impacts. 54 of those projects reduced damage, 53 assisted in containment, 30 assisted in ingress and egress, and 17 reduced the fire behavior. We've provided a chart to you today, and it's posted on your committee website as well, that displays the positive impacts of these 65 treatments. Thanks to the Fuels Treatment Effectiveness Program, we can now better measure the effectiveness of the vegetation treatments. As an example, a Fuels Treatment Project on Brougham Ranch Road in Ventura County was completed in 2020 and positively impacted the University fire. It began on November 14, 2024. The project slowed the rate of spread and intensity of the fire and allowed firefighters to use Brome Ranch Road as access to the fire, which they were able to contain that fire at approximately 15 acres. We also provided to you a copy of the fuels treatment effectiveness report for that specific incident, which is what we're doing regularly and posting them on the public-facing website. It's small incidents like these that demonstrate how effective fuels treatment can be, and many times the public never hears about them. The treatment helped the university fires to keep it small and allow firefighters to engage in direct mobile attack. We're also able to see how multiple projects impacted larger wildfire incidents, such as the Park Fire in 2024. More than 429,000 acres burned, starting in Chico, burning through Butte and Tahima County. The damage could have been worse without previous prescribed fire treatments, but in total there were 15 treatments that reduced both the fire behavior and reduced damage. Eight treatments on that fire assisted in emergency evacuations, and another eight assisted in containment. When the wildfire reached areas that had been targeted by a prescribed fire, the reduced fuel slowed the spread, gave firefighters a safe place to work and protect those communities. I'm proud to say that our fuels treatment effectiveness reports are publicly available, as I talked about earlier, on our website. Now more than ever, as has already been talked about in previous discussions, we need to be focused on preparing our communities and our natural real landscapes before the next wildfire. So one of the things that you ask is important to note is how can we be successful and address our wildfire crisis? Well, after the work that we have done in seeing where we are at now, we have to maintain a strong wildfire suppression response. We have to continue vegetation management that includes healthy and resilient forest lands. We must maintain community-level preparedness and parcel-level mitigations. This comprehensive all-of-the-above strategy has proven to be an effective approach to mitigate wildfire impacts and enhance community resilience, while at the same time recognizing we need to do more, especially after seeing the devastation in January 2025. five. Defensible space and fortifying homes against wildfire are important actions, but community-level and broader landscape-scale projects are also critical in protecting the built environment For example when you have an actively managed landscape where fuels have been reduced and beneficial fire can be a management tool Both the heat energy and number of embers produced from wildfire in those landscapes are reduced and fire won't spread as hot, which is less damaging and easier to contain, creates fewer embers released, meaning fewer embers that make their way into the homes and the communities. As California's climate continues to undergo transformation, it threatens the way of our life for our citizens. Consequently, we must collectively strive to create a more fire-resilient natural landscape and foster a society that is keenly aware of and responsive to the benefits and threats posed by wildfire. Achieving those goals necessitates collaboration between state, local, federal, tribal, and private partners to effectively implement our all-of-the-above strategy to be successful in California. It's important to thank the legislature for your support so far and the continued support that you have. And as a result, California has made continued major investments in mitigation efforts to be crucial in our strategy. I am happy to answer any questions you have when that time comes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Patrick Wright, director of the Governor's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. Happy to walk through, prepared a brief set of slides just to give you a little bit of a framework over what's a very, very challenging topic here.

Just to start with, for those of you who may not be familiar with the task force itself, the most recent version of the task force was launched way back in 2021. And the major purpose of the task force was to provide oversight of what, at the time, was the nation's first comprehensive plan. Or as LEO talked about before, we've got a dozen different state agencies, federal agencies, local agencies. The whole point of the original action plan in 2021 was to compile all that in one document so that you and others could get a better handle on the relative roles and responsibilities of all the agencies involved and to set a path forward that would then guide the levels of spending that we've had over the last several years. A big, big emphasis, as Chief Tyler said, is to try to align federal, state, local, private, and tribal organizations that otherwise would be working in silos. The way we're structured reflects that. We've got an executive committee that has federal, state, local, tribal representatives that's co-led by Secretary Crowfoot. Chief Tyler is also on our executive board, as are a variety of other senior folks. And then we have an interagency team that tries to pull all of that together, an advisory council and various interagency and key stakeholder workgroups. Our signature is our quarterly meetings. We rotate between Sacramento and going out into the region. These meetings have been just a tremendous opportunity for the local folks to have an upfront, candid conversation with Secretary Crawford, Chief Tyler and the federal agencies on what's working, what's not working, to showcase their projects, to basically challenge us to align better, to help them get where they need to be. We had a meeting just last month in Jamestown We had 850 people registered for a meeting that had no action items So it a real testament to the level of interest and enthusiasm there is for folks to work together and align ourselves to try to tackle this problem We have accomplished a lot. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but it's important to note that we have collectively invested billions of dollars since since 2021. We've treated collectively more than 700,000 acres annually with a huge increase, in particular in prescribed fire, largely to the leadership of Chief Tyler and Cal Fire. Really stepped up in that way. We've streamlined processes. You're familiar with the governor's last year emergency proclamation that provides now a one-stop shop for permitting that otherwise would have taken more than a year is now 30 days or less in most cases. We certainly hope to extend that. The Department of Conservation has a very large, sizable regional fire and force capacity program in which we're building capacity throughout the state to allow local and regional groups to better tackle the specific issues in their area. We have a number of interagency work groups on a lot of different topics to make sure the agencies are aligning their assistance programs in particular. And then we have a whole series of new apps and new dashboards, in particular an interagency tracking system that will show you where literally all the projects have taken place for the last several years. Federal, state, local, state parks, Cal Fire, Forest Service. You can see it all on our dashboard. So we've accomplished a lot, but we've got a long way to go. We tend to organize our work into three different buckets. One is community protection, landscape protection, and then a framework for regional action. As you can see, all of these, of course, are overlapping as every day goes by. Regional and local groups are doing a better job of integrating their work, particularly integrating landscape and community work as they move forward. On the landscape side, just to put it simply, our highest priority, our studies, our modeling, our scientists tell us we've really got to have a laser focus on high hazard landscapes. We're finding out more and more, the more we can target those landscapes, the more cost effective our investments are going to be. So that's going to be high priority. We also now know that strategically based fuel breaks work. There was some question about that several years ago. Through CAL FIRE's work and other works, we know if they're placed properly in both Northern California and Southern California, they can be a key part of both our resilience program and our firefighting program.

That's a good question. The key is in many areas, an analogy might be a seatbelt. If you've got a seatbelt on and you're in a crash that's 100 miles an hour, seatbelt's not going to help you. But for most fires, what happens when you have a fuel break is the flames literally drop from being crown fires down to surface fires. We saw this in Lake Tahoe, where the city of South Lake Tahoe was literally saved because of the fuel break system that was built by the Forest Service and Cal Fire surrounding South Lake Tahoe. Same is true in Southern California to a lesser extent. Yes, they're not going to stop fires, but they do two things. They reduce the rate of spread, and secondly, they provide a place for firefighters to stand, to make a stand. That's been a really critical distinction that hasn't been evaluated until recently. But there's no question that they were.

And then finally... Reforestation, I think, is going to be a bigger and bigger topic. A recent study by CAL FIRE showed that unless we get a better handle on reforestation, we're going to lose millions of acres. Up to half of the Sierra Nevadas' conifer forest could be turned into highly flammable shrubs. So we've got a lot of work to do with our Forest Service partners to try to make sure that those landscapes remain healthy and resilient. So that's the landscape strategy. Of course, I want to emphasize that the priorities in Northern California and Southern California are very different. In Northern California, the highest priority by far is reducing the density of our forest through thinning and prescribed fire. We'd like to do as much prescribed fire as we can. Unfortunately, given the density of our forest, most often you've got to go in there and do mechanical treatments first to make sure it's safe and then move with prescribed fire. So that's the highest priority, together with the fuel break system in Northern California, to try to get a handle on things. In Southern California, you can see it's a very different picture. In the montane forests that are high elevation, you have the same issue. Forests are too dense. They need to be thinned through mechanical thinning or prescribed fire. But the highest priority is dealing with ignition reductions along the state's roadways. So we've just partnered with a group of agencies down south. It's called the Southern California Ignition Reduction Program that is organizing themselves to an interagency process. It's got the Forest Service, Cal Fire, Caltrans stepping up in a big way to try to get a better handle on ignitions. You can see from the slide, 95 percent of ignitions are human caused, two thirds along roadways. And what's critically important is we need to get rid of the invasives along the roadways, which are much more flammable than the native chaparral. So it's a multifaceted problem, but we are organizing ourselves to try to take a holistic approach to it. It's a good example of what the task force brings to the table, a forum where agencies like Caltrans and the feds, who would never previously work together, are working very closely together to try to identify the highest priority areas in Southern California. Finally, let me just mention briefly our framework for how to better get this done, how to get it done more quickly and efficiently. What we're trying to do is assemble a statewide network of five- and ten-year plans through the Department of Conservation's Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program, where in one plan you have all the federal, state, local, private, and utility projects. So you and others can see where those projects are being made, so they can jointly invest, they can do larger projects across boundaries. That process has been up and running now for a couple years and is beginning to bear fruit, as you'll see, as these plans come along over the next couple years. We're also, of course, trying to continue streamlining. We're working hard internally to come up with a long-term version of the governor's emergency streamlining process. So we look forward to seeing that soon. And we're doing more and more to try to align funding, as you heard earlier, between all the different agencies that might be able to contribute to these projects. Just to give you a flavor of that on the next slide, this has been our current approach. Fund dozens and dozens of projects in Southern California and track each of them. This sounds good. It has enabled us to hit a lot of high-priority projects. The problem is you talking about dozens and dozens of grant applications for individual projects dozens of reporting requirements dozens of individual cases where you got to hire crews and contractors to get the work done So we trying to with Cal Fire help Department of Conservation's help, to scale up. So the next slide is the future. We've got six areas of Southern California here with six regional forest and fire capacity plans. You've got Cal Fire stepping up with block grants that funds a whole range of projects across this region. With the RCD of San Diego as the lead, they took $5 million from their forest health grants, $5 million from their wildfire prevention grants, and then that money was distributed to the 23 of the highest priority projects in Southern California. So again, instead of having 23 separate grants and projects, you've got one block grant, $10 million, that gets all that work done at one time. That's where we need to be. We need to scale up. We need to move more towards block grants, more towards bigger, larger projects. And then finally, of course, as you and others have mentioned, we need to better capture the benefits of these projects. We're getting increasingly sophisticated about doing this. This is an example, again, from Southern California, where folks have evaluated the benefits of getting this fuel break network in place using ignition reduction percentage as a key indicator. So we're rapidly moving away from acres treated into a whole series of metrics that can tell you and others what the true benefits of these projects are. How are we reducing density of forest? How well are we reducing fire risk? How well are we protecting communities, et cetera? So that's the package that's moving forward together. To sum it up, we need to be smarter by using these tools to better target our highest priority landscapes. We need to go bigger through block grants and funding multiple projects at a time. And we need to go faster by continuing our one-stop shop for permitting. And then finally, as you and others have emphasized, we need to do a better job of capturing the multiple benefits of all these projects.

Yes, I work out of the governor's office and the resources agency.

Sure, absolutely.

So it's, but your passion is important for coordinating all of this activity going forward.

Yes, I grabbed that.

Brittany Kovitch, I'm with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. I'm the Policy and Outreach Division Chief. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy, we are a state agency under California Natural Resources Agency and our work really focuses on conservation and restoration in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade region of the state of California. I'll give a little bit of background on that region for everyone. So it is 27 million acres that we serve. It roughly a quarter of the state We cover about 24 counties And so it a large portion of the state And it includes as you saw in Patrick fire risk map earlier a large percentage of the state high fire risk One point that I want to make is that about 67 percent of the landscape that we serve is federally managed. So we have close relationship with our Forest Service partners, our Bureau of Land Management partners and the National Park Service. And I make that point just to kind of iterate that all of our communities are really embedded in these forested landscapes. So we have many small communities up and down the Sierra Cascade region. They are all very deeply embedded in the forested landscape. Also, I want to make a point that we have a very small population compared to the rest of the state. However, we have tens of millions of visitors that come to the Sierra Cascade every year to visit places like Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes, et cetera. So not only are we looking at reducing wildfire risk to the people that live there, we're also looking at reducing wildfire risk to those folks that are coming to visit. And our region really is the backbone of the state's water supply. So all of the reservoirs that feed the state water project, the Central Valley Project, and many of the municipal water agencies, so San Francisco Public Utilities District, East Bay Municipal Utilities, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, those source watersheds flow from the Sierra to the remainder of the state. So it is a critical piece of our state's water supply system. We also represent about 50% of the state's forest carbon. So a good portion of the state's forest carbon is locked up in trees in the Sierra Cascade region.

That's what I was going to ask. It's not just when, but it's how the fire hits, so that we don't lose the trees, we lose the other ones, right?

I want to ask you a question about that specific thing before we sort of jump into the next. And that is, those fires that start out, are you suggesting that there's a better investment that could be done out to protect the community than doing three times as much as we had done in the community? In other words, I'm really just asking from a common sense standpoint, would a half a mile or a mile fuel break between the community and the forest have been much better? Is that not better than forest clearing someplace out there? Because the farther you get out, the more, you know, just the more range. I mean, you're suggesting there is science that says it's better to go out 75 miles, 50 miles in a broad arc than closer and tighter around the community.

I appreciate that. If there's a place out there 50 miles away that creates a great opportunity to break that fire so it doesn't race for the next 50 miles, or because you treated that fire, you're able to get there quicker and actually control it. It's just I'm trying to adding up the common sense of that. Yes, there are other ancillary benefits, watershed protection, et cetera. but we're always going to be fighting limited resources and if you have $15 million and $40 million worth of projects, I think you heard from the legislature really clearly and I think you still are hearing from the legislature really clearly. They want community structures and community lives It not that and I want to be very sensitive about that from this committee and that is the other is very important too and I have every year a greater appreciation for the other being important It's just how do we prioritize and how do we make that distinction?

Give me one second. We're going to go here. Do you have a specific about that particular issue, or do you have general comments and general questions? A quick question on that is part of it, I think, is working with our federal partners, which there's been more of that lately. I think it's been very positive. There's legislation that would, if it passes on the federal level, allow us to do more on the federal lands and streamline some of the processes. Fires have burned on federal lands for quite some time and not been put out. I'll add to that the Bear Fire that was burning near Quincy for quite some time on federal land before the wind picked up and burned down the town of Berry Creek, which, by the way, had a reduction project planned for it. But CEQA said, no, sorry, 18 months out before you can do that project. then the project was never done even though it had already been studied by the Butte Forest Fire Safe Council to do that project. And would that project have saved that town? It absolutely would have. And I guess that's the point. Even though that federal fire burned for a long period of time, that specific project, and that's where your task force is really helping to make sure we're not waiting 18 months. You finish with your presentation? All right. LAO, and then we'll go ahead. You want to follow up? I had a follow-up question to your point because I think you crystallized it. I want to bring the chief into the discussion as well because I think we're hearing correctly that it's really an all-the-above approach. And that kind of ties back into the prior discussion about funding levels and stability and avoiding kind of cyclical approaches. But that having been said, we are in the world of reality with limits. So, Chief, has the agency identified certain types of projects that are most affected at preventing future harm caused by wildfires? I appreciate your question. I'm probably going to bounce around that. Because, as we heard already, it is an all-in approach, and across the state of California, approaches are different. As we watch our communities continue to build out into the wildland urban interface area, moving out into the rural areas, we find that there is a need. It is the position of the California Fire Service as a whole to protect people, property, and the environment. We are not just a fire suppression organization, but we are a natural resource protection organization as well. And as was said by Sierra Nevada Conservancy earlier, we have broad forest lands across the northern half of the state and the central half of the state that provide valuable recreation and watershed to our communities. Now, we have built upon using technology things like fire hazard severity zones that show you very high fire hazard severity zones, high fire hazard severity zones, and the impacts of those. We also recognize that as you saw in January of 2025 and you seen in the Park Fire and other incidents that we are releasing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon of communities burning This problem is an all-in approach of everyone, all the way from the parcel owner to the local government, to the state government, to the federal government, to our private partners. We have to work together. That's what the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force is doing. To answer your question, making sure that we're taking that all-in approach. We have to begin the process of making sure that we're doing community wildfire mitigation that are critical to those areas as well. And you can't just harden or mitigate a single home. You have to mitigate the whole community or where the fire front would most rapidly advance from. So those are the areas that we're going to continue to concentrate on. I'm just going to follow up now with just that it is not a question. I don't think for the legislature and for this committee that it's a question that we don't want to do all of it. I think the question is, what are the relative priorities? And to have the priorities in the past emphasize community protection as much as the legislature thinks it should have versus the environmental protection aspects of it out there. We have a responsibility to all of it. We have a responsibility to not have 50% of the forest disappear and turn into brush land because that puts us all at more risk also. But in the era of limited resources, just where are the priorities as you allocate that? I would say if you had $15 million and $40 million, And I would have been happy to just make sure that community protection projects got the priority of that. Didn't necessarily have to have all of it. Maybe they got all of it. So that's really what we're wrestling with and trying to get better and better at each year as we have these conversations as we go forward. And we see that, as you well know, we see those approaches working as well. we've all toured the neighborhoods after a fire. Why are certain homes standing and others nearby not? Some of it might be luck. A lot of it's that home hardened itself, managed its vegetation and the like, right? So to go to that point. Let's get to LAO, and then we can dive in. And again, remember what we're talking about, what's a successful overall wildfire prevention and resilience look like? That's the topic that we have here. Go ahead. Brian Metzger, LAO.

You're actually going to be our, and I want to say this, frankly, we count on LAO to be sort of our objective eyes working with the administration, and we hope you can work collaboratively with them to try to analyze this. But that takes me to the first question that we have You have much better reporting than you used to have Really appreciate that I think it helpful and it must be informing you of a lot of things more than you could possibly convey to us in this short period of time But what are the lessons that you're learning in terms of. are some things better than others? Are controlled burns better than fire breaks? And I know there's no one straight answer, but what's changing as a result of the data you're picking up? Are you moving towards more of one and less of another? Or in these situations, more of one? So what are the lessons learned that you could give us in the next few minutes? Chair Bennett, I appreciate that. And I brought a gaggle of subject matter experts. So as you saw, our Deputy Director of Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation, which was a program that was brought forward by the legislature and supported by the administration. So I'm going to give that answer to Chief Bigelow. Great. Thanks, Chief. Yeah, thanks, Chair Bennett. Appreciate the opportunity here. And, you know, I just kind of want to set the framework here about how we're measuring the effectiveness, because I think this gets to the answer of your question is we've made a fundamental shift in how we determine this from output-based measures to outcome-based. So from output to outcome. And this is moving beyond acres treated, as you heard Patrick talk about, or just the inspection, number of inspections completed, but measuring how a community's risk has actually been lessened or reduced. And today we use more sophisticated fire behavior modeling, EMBER exposure analysis, and GIS tools to see how treatments have affected fire intensity. And this is different for every single community. So when we talk about what is the single most effective tool that we have at our disposal to reduce the risk to a community, it's really community specific. We have to determine that through using our modeling tools, using our professional experience to determine exactly what is the most effective. Because for one community, it may be a fuel break around there that makes all the impact. For others, they may have a lessened amount of vegetation around it, but because there's forested land nearby, the ember exposure now becomes the most important aspect that we have to reduce for. So that would then be defensible space immediately around a home and making sure that they're ember-resistant homes. But improvement in data collection from standardized grant reporting and detailed damage inspection information, It allowed us to compare hardened versus non-hardened home and track defensible space performance and evaluate community readiness using resilience maturity assessments. And then these tools together allow us to paint a clearer picture for you and for us of what is actually working, what is the most cost effective, and how we can strengthen wildfire resilience for California. Thanks. I want to jump to the next. I'm going to start with a comment and then get into the question, and that is, you know, a couple of years ago, I think when we all get elected, we think, well, go up there, I've got some answers, right? And I'm more humbled now than I was four years ago about how challenging it is to measure what is effective, what's not effective, and what do you do with limited resources. It's devilishly challenging, and particularly the issue that staff did a good job of writing about and you mentioned, and that is how do you measure the value of avoidance? It's one thing to say, hey, you know, this fire, you know, this happened and we did it, but to not have the fire at all or to not have the fire hit a community at all is much harder to measure, you know, what that is. So I'm not making these comments at all from the standpoint of I have the answer, but I'm humbled at the same time because it's so complicated, because there are so many different variables, so many that you have to say we have to do it by community by community. We can't do that. I just say common sense. What does my common sense tell me? And it takes me back to the fundamental question that we have, which is it's lives saved, it's structures protected. it has to be far and away the number one issue. Then it's the environment, number three. I think it just has to be that way because we can't protect the environment if our economy goes to pieces because we can't afford our home insurance, for example. And so when I think about lives protected and structures protected, I think about proximity to the structure, proximity to the community, seems to have to be a really high priority. And so I really appreciate that we've gone away from just number of acres cleared. That number is almost meaningless. Number of acres cleared 100 miles away from the community doesn't say much to the community that burns down because they didn't have a good fuel break around the community or whatever it is that science tells us should be around that community or because they didn't have the community hardened properly because we didn't invest enough energy and resources in education and incentives for people to do those things in the community. So the other side of that common sense thing is it seems like when you protect a narrow band around a community or when you harden a community, that's much more permanent protection than when you try to clear a forest that five years from now you have to go back and clear again over and over again. Now, that's just my common sense talking. It's not I don't have a scientific data how often you have to go back. But I know one is far more permanent, the hardening of homes, than the other, which is you have to go back and do it again. And both of those things lead me to to saying, I think from the legislator standpoint, maybe we're there, but we feel like there needs to be more of a shift. A year ago, I identified over a billion dollars being spent on forest protection and less than $100,000 spent on community protection. And I'm saying that does not feel like the right mix. And so we're going to be much more assertive this time about working with you to try to come up with changes in that mix that make sense to you and make sense to us. So I wanted to get that on the radar screen. The other thing I wanted to, the final thing I want to say before I turn it over to my colleagues is that the state of California, although we have this breakdown of the federal and local et cetera the state of California and Cal Fire is only responsible for the Cal Fire area but the state of California has to be the lead in keeping the state of California from burning And that the Eaton Fire and the Palisades et cetera The state of California does have that role So I really welcome, and that's what I look forward to, talking with you about how your committee can really work, the task force can really work with CAL FIRE, with all these other agencies to be able to pull that off. So I offer that, and genuinely, this is probably one of the most important things I think for California to work on. Certainly one of the most important things from my perspective for this committee to be working on. So this is all offered in the spirit of partnership and cooperation in terms of trying to get there and stuff. So I hope we can all work together to try to take the expertise and the things that you guys are learning and translate that into sort of the passion that the legislators are bringing to community protection and new changes. So thank you for your attention to that. I'll be curious about have these questions, but I'll be curious if you have any response to the proximity prioritization that I just referred to, but let's go to assembly member Rogers and then assembly member Connolly. Again, you got it done. Great. Assembly member Rogers. Great. Thank you so much. So first of all, chief,

So our commitment to cultural indigenous knowledge, cultural burning, as well as our efforts to increase the pace and scale of prescribed fire. I always go back to a story, and the story is that when I took this position in 2022 or was appointed to the position in 2022, the strategic plan for beneficial fire set our goal at 30,000 acres, but that wasn't enough, so we moved it to 50,000 acres. And my leadership within the organization said that can't be reached by 2025. Well, by 2025, they met and exceeded their 50,000-acre goal to 67,000 acres within Cal Fire specifically, and then utilizing our partners to be able to continue those efforts. We don't stop just because we've hit a goal. We continue those efforts. So I am committed to ensuring that our prescribed fire goals and the prescribed fire and good fire across the state of California continue. Excellent.

I appreciate that. Following it closely, in fact, the administration has sent letters in support during the public comment period about the consolidation and reorganization of not only the United States Forest Service, but the Department of Interior fire programs pulling into the U.S. Wildfire Service. So let me hit on the first one, which was the United States Forest Service. Initially, we were told as part of that consolidation effort that leadership was going to move from California Region 5 to Salt Lake City. Our argument was that we still needed leadership in California and to consider taking on a model similar to the Bureau of Land Management, which had a state director-level position. For California and the Pacific Islands, we got just that. So while we will not have a regional forester in California, we will have a state-level director in the United States Forest Service. That state-level director will be located in Placerville, California. They have an existing facility there. Their assistant state director will be located in Riverside. their resources across the state, their emergency response resources will continue. Where our concerns are and where we continue to monitor closely is all the research stations, including the Casper Creek watershed that are going to be affected by the federal research that is not going to be in place anymore. So working with our natural resource management program, we're evaluating how do we continue that critical research absent our federal partners in that area. I hope as we move forward towards a June adoption of the budget, as you know more and as you have more ideas, please share with the legislature. I think that there is that commitment that we do want good research to continue to happen in California.

I am aware of that concern, and I know that that concern is actively being evaluated related to the Cal Fire employee, the Cal Fire's personal property. and the actions the CAL FIRE employee may have taken on that property. As it relates to regulatory efforts, we are working closely to make sure that we're meeting everybody's objectives. Let me be clear. Whether this employee was right or wrong in their efforts based on the community that one single employee is not representative of the entire 14 employees that CAL FIRE has So I will go back I will evaluate that with Deputy Director Huffa in the room who just heard that comment as well And then we will get back to you and your staff.

So we have to balance that because we're still going to work with the land management agencies, but the U.S. Wildfire Service is going to take on all things related to catastrophic wildfire as well as prescribed fire. And that goes back to an important point that was talked about earlier in this discussion about how do you break up the difference between those who are doing prevention and those who are doing suppression. Chair Bennett engaged me last year in that discussion, and I want to reassure you still to this point that Cal Fire employees are doing both. I have four quick specific questions. And first, I'd just like to get a response from each of you, if I could, about this fundamental question of how much should we make proximity to the urban areas, proximity to structures, proximity to lives the priority? And do we have the right mix now, or should that be adjusted? and if it should, how can we adjust it? Let me take a shot at that. We actually asked our independent science advisory panel those exact questions we talked about earlier. Hey, do fuel breaks actually work? What about treatments in the WUI versus treatments in the general forest? What about prescribed fire versus thinning? They have produced that report. We can get that to you. As I said earlier, some of their conclusions were things like, yes, strategically placed fuel breaks actually do work, that we need both thinning and prescribed fire, that in Southern California, ignition reduction is really the top priority. And with respect to priorities on the landscape, the real key from their perspective is the high hazard areas. Whether you're a quarter mile from a community or 10 miles, we've got to hit the high hazard areas. If we can do that, then we'll have much less risk of these catastrophic fires because our forests won't be so dense that fires move through them much more swiftly than they otherwise would. So it's not so much community versus outside community as what is the condition of the landscape. If you're surrounding a community, but you have widely spaced trees and natural fuel breaks, that's a low priority area. But then maybe outside that community, you might have a real dense forest that needs to be thinned or vice versa. So the real key is do you have a healthy, resilient forest and vegetation, whether you're in the WUI or not? Having said that, most of our areas that are in the worst shape are near the WUI. So there's no question that in terms of prioritizing funding, you'll find that CAL FIRE funding, funding of the other agencies is disproportionately going to thinning and prescribed fire projects surrounding communities because those are the highest hazard areas. When you say WUI, what do you mean? The wild land urban interface. Got it. Okay. But again, the key is to think about the hazard of the land more than is it in the community or is it outside the community? And your response, you know, reminds me of how different Northern California versus Southern California. We just don't have that much forested land. So we don't have those situations. We have all this brush. Much of it's, you know, now just quickly flammable. It's not native any longer. So that is where. Am I correct? In Southern California, proximity to the community is probably more important because you don't have that much 10 miles away. Generally, yes, but you've also got some so-called montane forests at high elevations that are very thick and dense. So those need to be thin and burned as well. So I think the message you're hearing is that we've got to attack all facets of this problem. Yes, we need to prioritize based on the hazard that those lands present, but we've really got to hit all three areas pretty hard if we're going to be successful, meaning the house with the five-foot zone, the community with fuel breaks and dealing with high hazard areas and the general force. Thank you. I'm going to start with you and work our way across. Where are we on this idea of proximity, prioritizing it? Should we do it more? Have we done it enough lately? Anyway, just general reactions for us. I'd appreciate it. A very similar discussion to Patrick that I think we have technology and resources to us now that we haven't had in the past, whether it be, as I said earlier, fire hazard severity zone maps. We have the interagency treatment tracker. We're able to stitch together projects that are being done by various organizations and being able to coordinate and make that dollar stretch as far as possible. We recognize that proximity around communities is different across the state, that, as you said, in Southern California, we can find ourselves where we're really focusing around that community effort. And in Northern California, depending on where those communities are in comparison to the forested landscapes, it may vary. You know, one of the things that you said earlier that is important when we talk about disbursement of funds is you talk about forest resilience and we talk about fuel breaks, and you asked a question earlier, and that question was, is how often do we go back in a second or third entry into a fuel break? About every three years is what should be occurring. And as we continue to move forward with the funding available, some of our forest health and wildfire prevention grant dollars that are well oversubscribed right now are being focused on maintenance of those fuel breaks so we don't lose the benefit of the dollars we've invested in the past. One other point around our communities, as you mentioned, we have had disproportionate shares of funding across the state, sometimes following the prescriptive efforts of how those grant funds are to be applied. But an example that we use is our county coordinator program, where we have had across the state individuals who aren't well-versed in grant opportunities, And being able to put county coordinators across the state is an option, and having them across the state is an option. It brings that subject matter expertise to bring those dollars and that work into those local communities. Do you have a breakdown of what percentage of your prevention dollars go to Southern California versus Northern California? Can we get that breakdown? We will get that to you. Yeah, and all the members, yes. All right, great. I would appreciate that. And as I move over here is it realistic to think that we should assess every community in California for its fire risk sort of vulnerability and identify the top 25 this year and do what it takes and then identify the next and the next. Is that a doable? I think utilizing our wildfire preparedness mitigation program, those efforts are probably partially underway already. Yeah. Thank you for that. Again, Frank Bigelow. So those efforts are underway now, and we're using very sophisticated, very modern tools to identify those wildfire mitigations across the state for every community. And we're looking to save the most homes, the most lives, and the most critical infrastructure, but also providing for co-benefits like watershed considerations, like the critical infrastructure or the biodiversity that appears in that area, keeping those at the forefront of our mind as well. But by analyzing past projects that change fire behavior, such as defensible space and home hardening, and using community risk data, we can target future investments more strategically, more surgically, to have the highest impact. And these tools will ensure that the money the legislature appropriates to us is being used the most cost-effective way.

In Southern California, when a fire breaks out, if we don't have a Santa Ana blowing, it almost never gets out of control. Am I correct? And so our issue is really Santa Ana conditions in Southern California. And it seems like there's something ripe there that we could take advantage of. You talk about the fuel break here. I guess I'm most interested in is what is effective during Santa Ana's? Is it different than what is effective to keep that two-acre fire from going to a 10-acre fire or a 20-acre fire? If we don't have Santa Ana's, we seem to be doing well. I don't know, but that's what I'd love to start to get a measurement on is what's effective during Santa Ana's is different, certainly for us in Southern California. Two other quick questions. Reforestation, you talk about the need for reforestation. How doable is it as a goal? How doable is it for us to reforest? How much money would that take? And where does that fit, you know, in terms of that? Go ahead. I think Deputy Director Huff is coming up.

We are actually putting together an interagency reforestation strategy that looks back at the most recent fires. The real challenge is with these high-intensity fires. It used to be most forests could regenerate. But because of the intensity of these fires, they don't regenerate on their own, so it requires more active management than ever before. So, yes, it's an immense task with a very high price tag. So, once again, what we're asking our interagency team to do is to prioritize. If you have limited dollars to go towards reforestation, where should Cal Fire, the Forest Service, and other agencies put their dollars? And so we're looking at that very carefully right now. In terms, relative to the dollars that we have, we're going to be a long ways away from actually addressing the reforestation project.

And my final comment is that the federal government pullback is going to affect us I glad we still able to have reasonable relationships with Forest Service and be able to do that But I just want to get on the record that the same federal government that has challenged us for not doing enough is pulling back their efforts even though they control an enormous amount of the land.

Yes. Good morning. Julianne Rolf again for the Department of Finance. So issue four is related to the trailer bill for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And their current language, as is, states that the funding for the $200 million, if the auction proceeds are high enough to reach that $200 million, will maintain the $165 million for Forest Health and the $35 million for fuel reduction in prescribed fires, just based on a percentage. And so I know Assemblymember Rogers, you mentioned your concern that removing those percentages currently in statute will prevent the investment in prescribed fire. But our goal with removing the percentage is actually to maintain the total dollars that we currently have invested for prescribed fire as long as we possibly can, depending on auction proceeds. So we did the math before coming up here. And so right now there's about $142 million projected to go to Cal Fire from this Tier 3 pot. And if the 17.5% is maintained, Cal Fire would only get $24.9 million. And right now we spend about $30 million. So as of the language right now, we would not have the existing ability to maintain our investments with the biggest bang for our buck. And so this language really is to give CAL FIRE administration the flexibility to prioritize the highest needs without having to backfill or add more so that CAL FIRE can rely on this pot of funding for as long as GGRF auction proceeds allow. I appreciate that it gives you more flexibility. And the question is, people put these things in here because they wanted to make sure certain things did get done. So I will respect Assemblymember Rogers' sort of thoughts on that. But before we go there, we'll hear from Ellen. I'll actually add one more thing, too. And while we'll maintain flexibility, we still will be informing the legislature that the breakdown of the funding and so that the legislature will have a chance to provide their input before the final budget is approved.

Brian Metzger, LAO. Just to provide some additional context for this trailer bill language, so this is, again, related to the change in the cap and invest structure. You have these various tiers that are a part of that structure, and so you have your Tier 1, Tier 2, and then under Tier 3, you have the wildfire and forest resilience, the SB 901 monies. That's what we're talking about with regards to this specific trailer bill language. The percentages that were a part of the original kind of language, we're not raising any concerns with taking those out or potentially changing those from a technical perspective. However we do believe that it is a legislative priority matter as to how those funds are split up if at all And with the adoption of this new structure the legislature may want to re this split and kind of decide how prescriptive or not it wants to be

You'd be even more satisfied if we were certain we were going to get the $200 million. And that's, I think, the fundamental issue. We want to continue to send that message to the Department of Finance back to the administration. That is, we don't think we have the right prioritization here in terms of general fund and use of GGRF when we put this program as tier three. And I think you've heard that expressed pretty clearly here and stuff. So, all righty. Thank you very much. Anything else? All right. We're going to go to issue five.

Awesome.

Chief?

Brian Metzger, LAO. As we mentioned in our analysis of the Prop 4 spending plan, for those new programs that were just mentioned, including the prescribed fire learning hub. Also, there is $20 million that will be talked about in financial and technical assistance for defensible space mitigations, as well as the wildfire risk related to electricity, transmission, risk reduction. For all of those programs, those are new programs. And so now is the time, if the legislature has spending guidance that it would like to put towards those programs, now would be the time to consider that. from our perspective, especially on the wildfire risk related to electricity transmission. We received fairly little information about that program, and that program information was supposed to be provided sometime this spring. So to the extent the legislature would like to request more information about it, that would be warranted given the timing.

So I would imagine behind me is Deputy Director Frank Bigelow who administers those grants Great Mr Bigelow Yes

So, yes, there are very few specific limitations on the money. So we plan to provide that money in the same manner that we provide the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants for fuels reduction, for education, and for assistance in developing documents, to lie community welfare protection plans and local hazard mitigation plans. The other limitations were just ensuring that we had 40% social vulnerability and financially disadvantaged, but very other few limitations. So a continuation of what we currently do.

I believe there would have to be a change to Public Resource Code 4124 to make those eligible activities for the fire prevention grants. However, at least in the short term, Prop 4 did identify a specific bucket of $135 million for home hardening efforts. which Cal Fire in coordination or the Governor's Office of Emergency Services and Cal Fire in coordination with one another are developing a program that adds on to the Community Wildfire Mitigation Program or the CWMP that we currently have in pilot phase that we'll be using those resources for as well.

Yeah, so Fire Ignition Technology Program, we continue to expand mountaintop cameras across Alert California as the supplier to that, where we subscribe to their service. Also through UC San Diego, they use a company to really utilize artificial intelligence for early detection. We continue to work with that. We continue to work with Earth Fire Alliance and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the advancement of low-earth orbiting satellites for early detection, which will be the next phase of technology for detecting and alerting on wildfires. And likewise, through much of the legislation that has been put forward with support of the administration, the Office of Wildland Fire Technology Research and Development is built out across appointees, academia, and private partners and innovators who are really advancing and looking at technology. Now, the funding that is being requested there in fire ignition technology is in part also looking at the use of autonomous aircraft, as you talked about in Issue 8, to be able to really meet the needs and make it more efficient. Whether that is utilizing the autonomy of helicopters, the autonomy of unmanned aerial systems, or payloads to help logistically, we continue to advance that. We can get you a greater detail from that Office of Wildfire Research, Technology, Research, and Development for your review. Typically, we Americans are always looking for technology to solve our problem. And I brought up the issue about Santa Ana's. That's when we really are at risk in Southern California. When we don't have Santa Ana's, we don't feel very much at risk. Is there a possibility of doubling down tripling down on you know the technology during Santa Ana periods so that we could potentially catch things quicker even than we would normally So there may not be the funding to be able to have satellite. I'm making it up here, but, you know, have satellites 365, but we could have satellites, you know, ready for 14 days a year. The one we have Santa Ana conditions in Southern California. So I would hope that we could keep looking at that stuff because I think this fire technology, both in terms of early detection but also early unmanned, safe things that you could fly potentially in, because that's the other problem that we have with Santa Ana is you can't fly. But we might fly unmanned vehicles because there's less of a risk involved in stuff. So I'd love to continue to have the conversation about that. Yeah, certainly those discussions continue. And it's important that when we put that into perspective that it is not necessarily always the limitation of the aircraft to fly in those conditions, but rather the payload that they're releasing from the aircraft to effectively hit their target on the ground. And while we talk about Santa Ana winds and we recognize that those wind conditions cause devastation across the south half of the state, we don't have to go any further back than 2017 Tubbs Fire to recognize that those winds, those offshore winds really create that some level of devastation across the state. So we continue to evaluate all that technology. There's new advancing technology every day that allows us to really try to consider how we're going to combat that. Lastly, I will tell you that it was interesting in the Santa Ana wind conditions that we just saw here in the last week that I think that many of the departments across the state, including us and local government, proactively began to upstaff again. And I saw articles where Los Angeles City Fire Department held people on duty and upstaffed their resources. And I think the January 2025 fires was a stark reality and reminder of the conditions we're in.

There wasn't any reference to the five counties. So the pilot program is still focused on those five counties, correct? That's correct. For federally matched dollars, there's actually a sixth pilot as a part of that that uses state-only funding. So it's six total.

Thank you, Chair. I'm also looking forward to May 6th, taking a deeper dive on home hardening. You probably didn't pick up today, but that's a priority. But I really wanted to just express my support here for the proposal from both Cal OES and Cal Fire to expand the wildfire mitigation grant program. It sounds like the goal would be to broaden it beyond the initial pilot communities as well. So I think that's a great step toward getting more funding out the door for hardening projects. Again we be talking about specifics more on May 6th but really wanted to just plant that flag right now as well Thanks Assemblymember Rogers Yeah thank you Just really briefly can we get a little bit of an update on the Mass Timber Accelerator Program Intended recipients. I'm Arthia Kumar, Department of Finance. I would like to call my counterparts from the Department of Conservation, Chief Deputy Director Gabe Tiffany, to provide those responses. I'll stand. Good afternoon. Gabe Tiffany, I'm the Chief Deputy Director for the Department of Conservation. Thank you for the question on the mass timber program. So the intent of that program is to increase adoption of mass timber and residential construction by overcoming regulatory permitting and design barriers. So funding would be offered via statewide block grant initially, and the recipient could be an established statewide or regional entity with experience in economic development programs and also working across jurisdictions to get results in achieving program goals. So then subgrants would be issued to local, regional, or tribal agencies. These would be modeled after existing programs such as the Santa Monica Mass Timber Accelerator Program. Funding to subgrantees would go to technical support for a host of kind of coordinations, especially including local permitting to get these projects off the ground. Funding could also be provided to developers for all kinds of logistical, architectural design, project needs, anything to get these projects off the ground.

We're looking at establishing the program in the 26-27 fiscal year. So I don't have a really good idea of when those grants would go out, but program development in the next fiscal year.

Thank you.

That's right.

I'm just trying to get an idea, make sure that we can afford to have a – we're going to be fine. Yeah, we got to 1.30, right?

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Karen Stout here on behalf of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. We're here to continue to support the proposed investments, particularly in the wildlife connectivity projects, as well as the reestablishment of the Wildlife Coexistence Program. We would urge that the legislature work to preserve the connectivity funding and that the final budget include $18 million general fund in fiscal year 26-27 as well as $15 million in ongoing funding to support the permanent positions and associated operating costs for restoring the Wildlife Coexistence Program. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Chair Bennett. Members, Paul Mason with Pacific Forest Trust. Three quick points. One, I really appreciate all the conversation about having to do kind of everything everywhere with regards to wildfire. I will note that a lot of what was talked about, I think, are homeowner responsibilities and local responsibility area actions. And it's called state responsibility area for a reason. That's where our statutory responsibilities are. So I think that's where a lot of our resources need to be concentrated. With regards to GGRF, my overarching observation there is we really need to fix the allocation of the wildfire from Tier 3 back up to Tier 1, where it was for the last six years. We're going to be out of bond funding by 2029, and if you look at ARB's projections for GGRF, that will be functionally gone for Tier 3 activities by the early 2030s. That's going to be our only source of funding. And lastly, with regards to the trailer bill language proposal, while I appreciate the desire for more flexibility, I think it is important to maintain some call out there for supporting beneficial fire projects, specifically not just fuels crews. And there's some flexibility there, but something like what Assemblyman Connolly has been proposing makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Jennifer Fearing for the National Wildlife Federation. We're here to urge the legislature or the administration to reestablish and augment the wildlife coexistence and the wolf coexistence and compensation program at CDFW. You know, as people and wildlife increasingly share landscapes, proactive coexistence strategies aren't just a nice to have, they are a need to have. Incident reports with wildlife to the department have increased close to a third over the last five years, during which time calls, emails, and field contacts have increased by 58%. We have workable coexistence strategies. We are not investing in them. We had a successful three-year program that ran out of term limited funds in 2024, and the absence of that program is being felt acutely by suburban, urban, and rural communities across California. So there are a diverse set of legislators and organizations that strongly support ongoing funds and one-time funds to improve coexistence with wildlife across the state. We urge your support.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and members. Julianna Tetlow with San Diego Humane Society. I'd like to echo all of the comments made by my colleague and also just provide a real-world example of a situation that could potentially have been prevented by the coexistence program. San Diego Humane Society's Project Wildlife in Ramona is one of the few rehabilitation organizations that has a focus on apex predators. We are currently in possession of two bear cubs that are about three months old We received them after their mother Blondie was killed in Monrovia, and it was largely preventable. I think education would have made a huge difference in how that community interacted with Blondie the bear. It takes extraordinary resources from nonprofits to rehabilitate these bears. They will be returned back into that community, and we are really hoping that this program can be funded and get back into action before these bears, these baby bears are back in that same community. Thank you so much.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Anjali Ronandive. I'm the founder of Women for Wolves. Thank you so much for hearing our public comment. We are a nonprofit and conservation organization as well as a wolf dog sanctuary. And I'd also like to second everything that my colleagues said. We've lost over 70% of our wildlife in the past 50 years. So it's more important now than ever to prioritize wildlife coexistence. And a lot of the issues we heard here today whether it was wildfires or invasive species a lot of that could help be mitigated you know with protecting our wildlife and our wild spaces So we are here in favor of funding the Wildlife Coexistence Program and making sure that Fish and Wildlife has everything that they need to continue to do what they do and more. So thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Marina Hatchby. I'm the co-founder of Women for Wolves. Our sanctuary is based in rural El Dorado County where we coexist with mountain lions, coyotes, and other wildlife. We live in nature and predators are part of a healthy functioning landscape. And as Anjali said, severe wildfires take over California each year. And coexistence is not only possible, it is vital. And funding wildlife coexistence is essential for the future of California. And that is why we are all here today. So we do hope that you guys help fund the wildlife coexistence program. Thank you.

Wanted to echo the comments by Pacific Forest Trust earlier about the greenhouse gas reduction fund and ensuring that we're keeping the wildfire funding in Tier 1. Also want to just appreciate the discussion on beneficial fire. This is a huge priority for the Karuk tribe. We were really pleased by the governor's executive order last fall, trying to get more beneficial fire on the ground. But if we're going to do that, we really need to be sure we're investing in capacity. and so it's really critical that we're putting the money forward. So crew are supporting Assemblyman O'Connelly's bill, 1891, or as I like to call it, the Beneficial Fire Capacity Act, that will dedicate 10% of the funding that's going to Cal Fire to make sure it's going to beneficial fire capacity. That's going to be our top priority. Thank you so much. And then on the wildlife coexistence, I'm just doing a number of me-tos. The Mountain Lion Foundation, the Wild Futures and Endangered Habitat League, Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife, In Defense of Animals, California Wolf Foundation, Center for Environmental Health, Resource Renewal Institute, Environmental Protection Information Center, and Pacific Forest Trust. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Kim Delfino on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Audubon Society, California Native Plant Society, Sonoma Land Trust, Mojave Desert Land Trust, and the Power and Nature Coalition. On item seven, we strongly support the administration's Prop 4 proposal. For the Audubon Society in particular, the Salty funding is really critical. We also ask that either as AB35 or in trailer bill, we deal with the APA exemption issue to get the funding out quickly. On item eight, which was a non-presentation item, we strongly support the funding for the BCP to implement AB1319. We are already seeing the federal government come after endangered species. They just convened the God Squad for the fourth time in history to exempt all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and we expect we'll be seeing something like that here. And finally, I would like to echo the issues already raised by my numerous colleagues regarding the funding of the wildlife coexistence and also mentioning that we also need funding for wolf management. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Brooke Rose from the Wildfire Solutions Coalition. commenting on behalf of coalition members, Sierra Business Council, Association of California Water Agencies, California Farm Bureau, Rural County Representatives of California, State of the Redwoods League, Climate and Wildfire Institute, Mountain County's Water Resources Association, Virginia Forest Solutions, and Tahoe City Public Utility District. On issue number four, we urge the legislature to restore the $200 million from GGRF that was established in SB 901, and we strongly support the chairs and others' comments that the general fund is a more appropriate source for funding essential public services, such as Cal Fire operations On issue number five we request increasing this year crop poor wildfire funding to to million to meet the urgent need for greater investment in wildfire resilience Mark said record high temperatures and the April 1st snowpack was the second lowest ever recorded. Now is not the time to cut wildfire resilient spending. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair. Michael Jair with the Nature Conservancy and the Wildfire Solutions Coalition. First, I would like to thank staff for the excellent agenda document and the committee for this excellent discussion today. Really appreciate the time spent on wildfire resilience. Wildfire risk continues to grow across California, threatening lives, homes, infrastructure, critical natural resources in the state's economy. Proactive investments in wildfire risk reduction are some of the most effective tools available to protect our state and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Every dollar invested in reducing the risk of catastrophic events like wildfires saves more than $6 in damages and cleanup costs and $22 in future economic losses. The majority of Californians strongly support increased state spending for wildfire resilience. The January budget will be one of the lowest investments in wildfire resilience in this decade. We align our ass with the Wildfire Solutions Coalition to fix that, and thank you for the time.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and member. Karen Lang on behalf of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors, our assemblywoman really nailed it with the concerns that she raised to you today about the golden muscle. I know you've seen the pictures. The county is at the heart of the Delta. And even though it's most prevalent there, our water goes through there south. And so it does have a state impact. And there are certain folks at CDFW that have been wonderful to meet with and talk about solutions. but there's a patchwork of different local agencies that are responsible for managing all these different water bodies, and we need money for projects. Certainly there's not a way to eradicate them yet, but there are a lot of projects that are going to be very expensive, and what is invested by the state there is going to help everybody. So we'd encourage you to make sure there's money out the door for real projects. Thank you.

Chair and members, Alex Torres with Golden Bear Strategies here on two clients focused on wildfire mitigation and recovery. First, a non-agenda item for the Thermalito Water and Sewer District would re-up the conversation around our request for the Concow Reservoir. Following the campfire, sediment buildup has significantly reduced drinking water and storage capacity for a recognized disadvantaged community. So we're seeking an allocation of Prop 4 funds, exploring federal support, really any sort of funding we can find for this really critical project. But we reiterate the need for state partnership to restore reliable, safe drinking water access. So thank you to Assemblymember Gallagher and Senator Dali for both leading that charge. Second, on behalf of Perimeter Solutions, Perimeter is proud to partner with CAL FIRE on the fire retardant for aerial operations. The same U.S. Forest Service qualified product can also be used for ground applied mitigation along high ignition areas. This presents, Prop 4 Spending presents a strong opportunity to scale this prevention and mitigation work statewide. We look forward to working and partnering with the legislature, CAL FIRE, local governments to get this out. So thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Abby Carlson, and I'm here on behalf of California Farm Bureau, representing farmers and ranchers across the state. We're here to strongly support the $48 million budget request for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, more specifically for the wolf livestock compensation program. As wolf populations continue to expand, our members and ranchers are experiencing more frequent depredations, and this has become a big burden on the department and their staff. And so we're asking the department to do a lot, whether that come and approve the depredations administer compensation or just support the ranchers that are dealing with these direct impacts with the wolf activity So we strongly encourage the committee to support the request of the fish and game and or fish and wildlife excuse me so that they can continue to fulfill these responsibilities and keep trust in that program.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mark Fenstermaker on a couple of different items. First, item one for Sonoma County Water Agency and the California Tahoe Alliance. I just want to say that we desperately need more decontamination stations throughout the state. It's really different conditions for the two clients I just mentioned in Tahoe. We have very robust, some might say, the gold standard of decontamination process. And we really were overrun this past year with so many boats coming up to Tahoe to go through decontamination. And then in Sonoma, it's the opposite. We have no decontamination stations. The nearest is at Lake Berryessa. So if somebody shows up wanting to recreate, we can't let them launch. They've got to drive two, three hours away, and we don't even know what happens if they even go through decontamination. Next, on item five for the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, I want to recognize a number of your comments, Mr. Chair, as well as from Patrick Wright, about the challenges and the different conditions in Southern California as it relates to wildfire resilience. And we just call that a lot of the funding in Prop 4 for wildfire resilience is aimed at forest health fuels reductions. We need to work more on ignition reduction. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, Andrew Antwi, we'd show you to Antwi Schmelzer and Lang here today on behalf of the Office of Cat Taylor and for CompCat Ranch. The increasing number of human wildlife contacts presents significant on the ground challenges, including impacts on producers, resilience, ecosystem balance, and overall habitat health. We do realize this is a challenging budget year, but we do respectfully encourage meaningful funding to be directed to CDFW to address this issue. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair. Crystal DeTauvis on behalf of the East Bay Regional Parks District, we ask that the legislature maintains the $80 million Cal Fire local fire prevention grants from GGRF that we saw this past year. They have been crucial in helping us protect the East Bay from fires originating the grasslands and other open spaces we steward. And on a separate note, on behalf of the California Association of Local Conservation Corps, we wish to express support for Prop Force Demonstrated Job Projects Appropriation for California Conservation Corps this year. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Lizzie Guansona here on behalf of Humane World for Animals, echoing a lot of the comments that were made before me in support of funding for CDFW's wildlife coexistence program. It's really important that we get strategies in place before conflicts occur. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the committee tackling these issues. I'm here on behalf of Jason Bryant, on behalf of the Cattle Point and Cattlemen's Association, in support of CDFW's efforts to help ranchers address livestock interactions, and specifically supporting $18 million in one time and $15 million ongoing for the Human-Wildlife Co-existence Program, as well as here to support the Wolf Program at $30 million per Senator Blakespear's budget request, which enjoys bicameral support. Thanks very much for your time.

Well done. Yeah. It's a very good report. Oh, good. Great. What's that? Great. Great. Yeah, it really was. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you got to meet Patrick. Yeah. All right.