Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 2 on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy

Senate Budget Subcommitee number two on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy will come to order. Good morning. The Senate continues to welcome the public in person and via the teleconference service for individuals wishing to provide public comment. Today's participant number is 877-226-8163 and the access this code is 736-2834 we're holding our committee hearings in the O Street building. I ask all members of the subcommitee be present. Room 2200, so we can establish a quorum and begin our hearing. And with that, let's establish a quorum consultant.

[Roll Call]

Quorum has been established, so we're going to start with discussion items, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and we will begin with the department overview. And I believe we have Director Bonham here to present. Thank you. Go ahead when ready.

Good morning, Senator, Chair, committee members, my name is Chuck Bonham and I am the Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which I still think is the greatest job in the world. I'd like to do three things based on the committee's request, and the first is reintroduce the department to you. Statistics can reintroduce the department to you. So, our fiscal year 22-23 budget is approximately $1.26 billion. That's a combination of state, federal bond funds. We have over 3000 employees at the Department.

About 500 of those are law enforcement positions, which means we've gotten our wildlife officer core as high as it's been in the history of the Department. Thanks to your investments and Governor Newsom's leadership. We manage a lot of land. We actually have more properties than most other agencies, except perhaps for state parks, about 750 properties, which comprise about 1.1 million acres. Arguably, we run the world's largest hatchery program.

We have 21 fish hatcheries across the state, both for inland trout, non anadronous, fancy word for swims out to the ocean fish, but also salmon hatcheries up and down the state. Those are the statistics. They don't give you a full measure, in my opinion, of what the department really is. The department is one of this state's oldest entities. We trace our roots to the original board of fish commissioners, which emerged around about statehood. We still do today the things our predecessors did then.

We manage hunting and fishing in the state. Our officers bust bad actors who poach our wildlife. But we do things today, in 2023, that no one could have conceived of 150 years ago. Within our department is your the state's primary responder in any oil spill incident with vast responsibilities to train, prevent and secure a future free from the risk of oil spills. Knock on wood. Within our Department is the Wildlife Conservation Board, which was created by UN statute in 1947.

It might have been 42, so don't quote me on that. The Wildlife Conservation Board is your primary conservation real estate agent on behalf of conserving lands in California. But even that doesn't tell really what the department is. When you boil down what the department is, we have a singular focus: saving nature. We were 30 by 30 before 30 by 30 was a thing. We do that across an incredibly diverse state.

Our scientists use a fancy word called biodiversity that just means the wealth of the natural life, in California. We have more of that natural wealth than any other of the 49 states. Just pick plants as an example. We have more types of plants in California that are found nowhere else in the world than all the other continental US states combined. It makes sense when one thinks about it going back to time immemorial.

Amazing geological diversity, mountain ranges, valleys, connectivities, mammoth species movement coming up from what's now Baja, Mexico, into the southern Central Valley, over to the Monterey Range, up through the Bay Area. One of the few places in the world with a persistent mediterranean climate and pockets of species indomism, another fancy word which means rarity. Things found nowhere else in the world. Our men and women, we have probably the most environmental scientists of any department in the state.

Our officers, our critical office, experts in budgets and procurement, all are organized around saving nature for its own ecological intrinsic value, as well as use and enjoyment by Californians. Whether you still eke out a living in the ocean as a hardworking man or woman, fishing, whether you like to hunt ducks, whether you believe in an approach on animal stewardship that is around animal rights.

And for our department, often we're in the middle of a dynamic where on the same issue, an important community will allege we're too protective for the environment and another important community will allege we're not protective enough. That's the beauty of the department. That's the beast of the Department. It's an exciting job. We love it. I appreciate you giving me a few minutes for reintroducing the department to you.

Well, thank you very much. And I want to say how nice it is to have people in person in this subcommittee so grateful to you and your team for being here today. I'm just going to ask the LAO if they have any quick comments on a department overview before we move on to questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sonia Pettick from the Legislative Analyst Office and nothing to add.

Okay, great. We'll then move to questions from the committee. Anything on the general? Senator McGuire.

Thank you so much. I'm not going to be speaking specifically on the vote-only calendar. I'm going to pick a little bit from the salad bar of items that the Director had just advanced and just highlight a few issues if that's all right, Mr. Chair. So it's not going to be specific, a little more general, specifically on item 13, and that's on the Klamath removal, just how critical this is. Right. We are having absolutely horrific year for salmon on the north coast and throughout the state, and this is one of the best things that we can do when it comes to one of the last and largest ecosystems for salmon that is relatively still intact, minus those dams.

And, Mr. Director, I know this has been an issue that you've been very focused in on covering two administrations now, and if you just want to comment on that in regards to the nearly, let's see here, 2.4, 2.5 million total investment.

Thank you, Senator, for the question and chair. The other two assignments you have for me is to give you an overview on our service based budget exercise, which I will get to in a minute, and also present on our climate permitting proposal. But as to the Klamath Dam's dynamic, yes, it is true. Right now, our department is looking at low abundance forecasts, both for our Sacramento fall run Chinook and our Klamath River Fall run Chinook.

Each of those forecasts predict what could be the ability to fish in the coming calendar year. There are very few game changers on the entire west coast which are responsive to a depressed fishery. Removing the dams in the Klamath River is directly responsive to restoring those fishery runs in the Klamath. The degraded state of the Klamath fall run controls a lot of our ocean fishing opportunity through Northern California and into Southern Oregon, when we can take direct action through river restoration that can rebound populations.

That's the necessary leadership. I'm thankful for your engagement over time, others in this building who may disagree, it's the right thing to do, but have worked with the department, and especially for Governor Newsom's leadership, because that is a direct salmon action in response to the state of our fisheries through the.

Chair, if it's all right on again, just this horrific season that we're seeing, you have Norcal guides, Golden Gate Salmon Association, PCFFA have all come out and said that we should shut the season down based off of the numbers that we're seeing. Mr. Director, I know that's something that you have been very focused in on. And I want to say thank you for your diligence on this. Can you just give us an update?

Because, again, I think all of those who need to make a living from a healthy fishery are saying that we should shut this down just because of the numbers. But, Mr. Director, if you can, please comment on that.

Thank you, Senator. And you and I have gone through, sadly, other dynamics around fisheries, crab, sea urchin, and salmon as well. I'm confident if we give these fish a chance, they can rebuild because they have resiliency baked into their being. And what we see in the data is typically three years after a wetter period, we will see an uptick in the population status. That said, right now we're living the dynamic of things that happened three years ago, which was very dry. So here's what's ahead.

Right now, our staff is in Seattle. They actually are just ending that at a federal fishery forum called the Pacific Fishery Management Council. They'll be constructing a range of options for recreational, tribal, commercial fishing. The low end is going to be no option. The best case would be de minimis, very small. We'll spend the rest of March kind of getting input from key communities. As you mentioned, they will reconvene early April and make a decision, and then we'll implement that season approach for California.

If we end up with no option, and I'm cognizant that that's what our key communities are advising, then you and I will do what we've had to do before working with our administration, federal administration, navigate a disaster relief request dynamic.

Yeah. And I think that I hear you. In regards to this winter, I think the challenge that we have is the yoyo that we have been seeing. Eventually, we're going to run out of a healthy population. Right. This continued up and down, up and down. I think this is something that we could have predicted. I know this is something you have predicted, that this is going to be a dire situation, and it's going to get even worse.

And I guess my concern is we can't take many more of these valleys, especially in the Sacramento watershed, right, where they are nearly wiped out because of hot water temperatures and lack of flow.

Senator, I have been living this with you. Like many of our, I would say, friends at this point in conservation and the agricultural community, we've just spent about $84 million in the last two years to completely modernize our hatchery dynamics. We moved 19 million fish down to the San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay in the last two years. As a rethinking of our hatchery approach. In a minute, in service-based budgeting, I'd like to talk about investments you've approved that have allowed us to modernize ourselves to improve our efficiencies. They exist in this space. In the last 10 days, between the Wildlife Conservation Board and my Department, we've authorized almost $80 million of salmon and water management projects. Just this last summer, for the first time in almost 100 years, we took endangered winter run salmon to the upper watershed of the McLeod river.

If these fish remain stuck in the Central Valley floor, it is going to be so hot, cold, clean water exists in the Central Valley tributaries. Battle Creek, Bu Creek, McLeod, Yuba. So it's an all of the above strategy. Water management is one of those aspects. And I'm committed with our Department, as I know this administration is to save salmon. I know how hard it is, and you've been a leader in that space. And I thank you.

Yeah, I'm going to wrap up and just say 30 seconds and just say I think the water management piece is probably one of the most important, especially within the Sacramento and within the tribs. Right. And I know that's an ongoing issue that we're going to have to continue to discuss because I think there remains some concerns on my part on the management side, especially on the Sacramento. But we will take that up at the Joint Committee.

But again, Mr. Director, thank you so much for your work on this and really exciting news on the claim. Thank you, sir.

Well, thank you, Mr. Senator McGuire, for that important line of questioning. I want to go ahead and let's turn to the service-based budgeting overview, and then if we have some more questions after that, we will continue with questions.

So, service-based budget, what is that? Turns out it's a discipline and niche within business management. Other entities call it zero-based management. Some, I've heard, call it mission-based. Service-based budgeting for us is a track record of collaboration with you because you asked us to do it. I've been around long enough. I've seen this whole arc.

We actually have in our fish and game code a section that the legislature inserted to declare we are underfunded in many ways. From that moment, and I forget when this was, perhaps six years ago, five years ago, you asked us to do a complete review of our operations. We welcomed it. With your financial support, we hired Deloitte, one of the few national consulting firms that's done this.

In my judgment, we're now one of two state agencies, State Parks and Fish and Wildlife, that have done a top-to-bottom review. We brought together all our stakeholders, budget committee staff, LAO staff, Department of Finance staff. And when you get our stakeholders together, it's quite a site. We have the full range of views, from rural counties to urban counties, from hunting community to animal rights community. We sat down, we identified every task we do to achieve defined mission assignments.

We created a roster, a spreadsheet of over 2800 tasks, and then we convened 100 experts in the department and we analyzed to achieve the task, what's the labor? And we put it in widget form, and you do the math to achieve these tasks. And our output from the review at that time was the department was under capacity by threefold. So we're 3000 staff. Run the numbers. We're not going to turn into 9000, certainly not overnight, but it illustrates our challenge, and we did it with you.

And I think the data is transparently available. And what we've done since is on an annual cycle refresh to determine where we're decreasing the gaps or where the gaps may be increasing every five years. We're going back, and we're about to start this refreshing the mission level, cost, if you will, and labor hours for that roster of 2800 tasks that'll turn into more data, which is transparently available.

It's been a healthy tool because now you're able to say to us, "Hey, Chuck, we're interested in this part. We're curious to know what SBB says about it, and we can run those numbers and come back and have an informed conversation." Good news. That three x gap has tended to be the biggest in our environmental permitting space, which I'll get to on the third topic, as well as our species conservation space.

And one would see that data and say, well, that's a problem because those are cornerstones of what your mission is to save nature. But in the last two years, we've seen that three x gap for the whole department shrink. So, in 2021, it shrank to 2.75, and in 2022, it shrank to 2.59. That's because of your investments. So you can close the gap by bringing on more positions, which we'll talk about in a minute. But there are many other ways to close the gap.

You could review your mandates and decide. Some created in the 30s are not relevant. We're actually engaged in that process. You could decide to do one-time investments. So some of that $84 million I referenced a moment ago, we went to our hatcheries, and we automated egg sorting. The automation of egg sorting within a hatchery creates an efficiency. You can capture the efficiency. You can see it quantified in the SBB work because we're doing it year over year.

On the analytical front, we are also in the middle of 365-day-a-year fishing licenses. You can find efficiencies through one time investments you've approved with the governor's leadership the purchase of a new fixed wing aircraft. That aircraft allows us to be in the air more regularly in the beginning of the crab season to monitor the migration of majestic animals along our coast, to determine when people should or shouldn't go fishing.

You allowed us to spec build a new patrol boat for our marine work and place it in Fort Bragg. Previously, we had no such vessel between San Francisco and Eureka. So you can achieve efficiencies through a variety of ways, one of which is increase in positions when it's surgically applied using data to support the request, which will be the third item you've asked me to talk about in a moment. Let me pause there on service-based budgeting and see if you have any follow-up questions.

Senator Dahle.

First, I want to just hang on. First I want to just say to the Director, I appreciate the ability to be able to text you anytime late, early, and you respond. I want to say that your ability to be able to communicate is awesome. I want to thank you for that.

I have quite a few things I want to touch on, but one of the things was the one-time appropriations that we allocated over the past couple of budget cycles. I've been on sub two, now this will be my third year. And so can you touch on that as one of the things that, I don't know if that's in the next round of information you have for us, and I want to talk about the hatcheries.

If you could expand a little bit more on where we're at in the process of upgrading our hatcheries?

Yes.

Another question that I have is bear population increase. We've noticed it in the district and there's been a lot of talk about we're in their territory or they're expanding. I know they're expanding on our farm. I never saw a bear until I think it was like 1995. And now we see them, many bear all the time. A lot. Every every year we see lots of bears. Cannabis and wolves are the other couple of things that I wanted you to touch on as well.

I think all those would be appropriate now. Yeah.

Okay.

Let me collect my thoughts for a minute. There's some diversity in that. One, time is a sound way to improve efficiencies within our department, and the track record speaks for itself. So in no particular order in the last two to three years, new fixed wing aircraft, new vessel, turning over our fleet of hatchery delivery trucks so that they can transport fish more carefully and increase chance of survival when we replant them. Egg incubators, which I just mentioned, chillers.

One of our big struggles right now is in the 50s, we made a Faustian bargain. We built large dams, which are essential for California's future. They're going to be on the landscape for the most part. We lost 95% of the historical salmon habitat. Now, above those big dams, our predecessors put hatcheries at the base of all the dams. Those hatcheries rely on water from the upstream reservoir. Guess what? There's less of it, and it's hotter.

So we've used the one time investments to buy chillers and place them in our most strategic hatcheries. Continuing on the one-time list, we went to our lands, 1.1 million acres. And a lot of times in partnership, we've used your one time investments to convert our older diesel pumps to solar, saving energy on our own property. But with water efficiencies, we've been able to convey water more effectively and keep a modest amount of wetlands wet on our own properties.

Because of that transition of our own infrastructure, of course, your one-time investments are helping us move our fleet from gas to electric where appropriate. We still struggle for our wildlife officers technology catching up to their demands in the field for vehicles, but we're working through that. Additional one-time investments include...you've appropriated $100 million to our Department to invest in salmon emergency projects.

Just last week, we have funded a project with a Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency to finally fix Robinson's rifle at the Oroville wildlife area in the Feather River, which all the guide associations, all the anglers. Senator, you may be one who loves to fish on the feather, know that's been a long term problem. So there's a long list of return on investment for those one-time investments, and we'd be glad to follow up in writing if that would be useful.

Are they moving forward? Because we're seeing budget reductions and that's the point I wanted to get. I'm all for them. I think we need to do it. Obviously, this committee last year was in...I don't think there was any opposition to it.

Just where they were under contract and in process for full encumbrance on everything appropriate.

That's really what I was looking for, to make sure that you're not going to be cut in the process of getting it done.

And resources agency, as you may now know, has a dashboard that's tracking a lot of that for constituent departments, which is a really useful transparency tool on hatcheries. One of your investments were now under contract, was to do a top to bottom review of our hatcheries and ask the question, are they ready today for what the future will be in 10 or 20 years as the climate disruption plays out? They're not.

So we've asked one of the leading experts to do a top to bottom climate resiliency kind of design feasibility assessment of our assets. Are they ready for the task? We want to use the outcome of that kind of assessment. Of course, that would put us into a long-term conversation with our sister agency and you. But we may need to retrofit a lot of that asset to keep our salmon fishery, so that's encumbered. It's a hatchery question.

Bear populations, another example of one-time investment in the Tahoe basin, which I know may not be your question, but is an important district, maybe for another part of your family, is a challenge. It's the second highest per capita black bear population in the United States, and I want to say also the North American continent, and it's also a global tourist destination. We are helping Alpine County, as a pilot project, get all its homeowners association, all its short term rentals, underscore short term rental, is a challenge to put bear boxes on their properties, because how people manage trash is a huge challenge for bear management. Cannabis. I would like to always be available for follow-up, including Senator McGuire I know in Humboldt and Mendocino. We're crunching some data in the last couple of days about those counties continuing concern. We're a bottleneck in stream bed alteration agreements. We'd like to follow up with you. We'd love to follow up with you, Senator Dahle.

And we also have a dynamic of enforcement around illegal cultivation. It's one of the BCPs that I think not today's schedule for discussion, and then on wolves. I went to the Regional Council of Rural Counties yesterday. I'm still kind of wringing from the conversation on wolves. And look, any way you go here, it's incredibly difficult. We shot these animals out of California 100 years ago, literally. Nature is strong, and they've come back to California. We should embrace that, I think.

But along with that comes very difficult dynamics in the rural landscape. Men and women who make a living ranching, running, cattle farming. And we are struggling to work well with our local counties and communities around what is technically called depredation. Wolves becoming habituated to preying on livestock.

We've stood up, I think, the most progressive compensation program of any state, and just last week added pay for presence to it, which, again, is an ability we can do because you've invested in us, you appropriated that fund to create that compensation dynamic. But we got a lot of conversation ahead. It's really difficult, and I know you know that.

One last question, Mr. Chairman. So, you know, Senator Mcguire started out with fisheries, and something that we don't talk about a lot here and just want to get your thoughts on. It is outside the, I guess, coastal conservancy's boundaries of international fishing. What does that look like with other countries coming up to our shoreline and harvesting our salmon?

So California has jurisdiction from the shore 3 miles out, and we are pretty strident on that. Not really happening in state waters. It is a dynamic occasionally offshore out into the economic zone. Much of that's played out through the federal fishery forum I mentioned a moment ago. And ocean conditions do relate to the salmon dynamic. We're struggling with a climate disruption thing within salmon right now called thiamine deficiency. As the food source in the ocean has changed.

It appears salmon have stopped eating things like krill and are now perhaps focusing on anchovy. Anchovy has moved in their abundance and presence because of changing ocean climates. They actually have an enzyme in them that decreases the thiamine in the animal that eats it. And thiamine is a vitamin that's essential for all of life. So we noticed this two years ago when fish coming back to our hatcheries were swimming in a counterclockwise circle. And your one-time investments have helped us deal with this.

We're now injecting all the eggs with thiamine and treating water to add thiamine. But it's an emerging, unknown scientific issue, and it's happening out in the ocean, which speaks to things that we see in the river when the fish return, does have a connection to what's happening way off our shore.

But are there international fishermen that are 3.1 miles off our coast harvesting when our fishermen are talking about not fishing at all? Which, I mean, look, we can do what we have to do, but at the end of the day.

I don't think so on the salmon front. Okay, Senator, but let me go refresh my memory specifically and follow up to you. I think what's happening in those more distance waters is more in the trawling and other large scale operations space than other interests trying to fish our salmon. Okay.

Thank you, Senator McGuire.

Two quick issues, Mr. Chair. I promise I'll be brief. One, on the issue of cannabis. Clark, your office has been fantastic, as you know, on assisting both Humboldt and Mendocino County. I think there's just being honest about it. I think there's a bigger issue on cannabis in Mendocino County, where we've seen Humboldt get 63% of all of those who weren't permitted, now formally permitted, which is huge news.

But obviously, there's going to be more work to come, and your agency has been a really good partner. I think there were some rough goings about three years ago, but those meetings that we did think really smoothed it out, and very grateful for that. On the issues of illegal grows, the state has only allocated $1.5 million, and this was 24 months ago. To be able to go after egregious illegal growth sites, that's after we fought to be able to get this 1.5 million into the budget.

And that goes to cover overtime as well as per diem for neighboring agencies, sheriff's departments. It's not working. There has to be additional dollars to go into combating these large illegal growths, and it's a much larger discussion that we're having with Miss Elliott, the Director of the Cannabis Bureau. But one of the tools is funding these eradication efforts for those egregious illegal operations that are advancing environmental degradation. And I think that's something that we're going to need to continue to look at and fund.

The last piece is on service-based budgeting. You are still challenged on, I think it's your species and habitat category of attracting personnel. Can you update us? Because a lot of funding has been put into that, and it's been a challenge to be able to get folks on. So, can you update us on that? Because I know that's a really important piece, especially for protection of public resources.

Yeah. In this regard, I think it's a common experience for many of our sister agencies. Just hiring in the last couple of years has been challenging. Senator, I don't have current statistic at fingertips, but would love a chance to follow up. But you're correct.

I think it's about 30-35% take up rate for the positions, and there's still significant vacancy. It's approximately right there.

And I know yesterday we were discussing internally just what we're seeing in the applicant pool. And at the quantification level, we're seeing fewer applications compared to earlier moments, so we have less people applying, and I think that's offset by this, it's still pretty prevalent. We think, in our recruitment dynamic, that there's a strong desire to work at the department because of that mission to save nature. So we still have an ability to tap into that.

But we are struggling as the job dynamic is shifting over time.

Mr.Chair, if it's all right with you, we'd love to be able to work with you, and then obviously the director on the specifics on that. And again, I know there is a real challenge of hiring, but that's where we've really focused a lot of our investment. So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Absolutely. Well, good. The Senators covered, really, my question. So let's move on to file item 52, issue 52, around the climate permitting support. Director Bonham, would you like to go ahead and present?

Yes. This is a simple proposal with a high return on investment. So the proposal is for 40 positions, $10.2 million of general fund for fiscal year 23-24 and 9.6 million ongoing. Of those 40 positions, we would dedicate 25 to working on energy infrastructure permitting and 15 to critical water infrastructure permitting. So a moment ago we were discussing ways in which you can close your mission gap, and there's a variety of options I didn't mention at the time fees.

Of course, you could increase fees, but I will tell you, having lived through some of that with a few of you, it's hard to see the department's future entirely reliant upon fee increases. Any given sector may object, but over time, in the last several years, we've increased commercial fishing landing fees. We've resumed charging differential rates between residents and nonresidents for some consumptive activities. We've increased the barrel fee on crude oil to fund some of our oil response activities.

We annually adjust a whole range of stamps and permits, and licenses. But as Senator McGuire knows, if the department comes forward and says all activities through fee increase, it's a very painful experience for me in budget hearing. So the question becomes, how do you deal with this? One way to deal with it, in addition to those other things, is invest into persons. Here's what I think this proposal boils down to.

One needs to look at the current pace and scale of this work compared to the future pace and scale. Here's our current pace and scale. We do about 6700 environmental reviews of some sort each year. That's across the California Endangered Species Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, permits within the California Endangered Species Act, like incidental, take permits, consistency determinations on federal actions, safe harbors, scientific collection, permits approvals within marine protected areas, offshore wind, cannabis mitigation banks, land transfers, aquaculture.

Just as one metric, we're doing about 3000 lake and stream bed alterations a year. That's just the old pace. Hang on to your hats when you think about the new pace, and you think just about energy. Now, I don't endorse the numbers, but the large-scale solar association says to keep on track with our 2023 energy buildout goals, the department could expect an increase of 360 permits and 180 mitigation packages a year.

It further says, and again, I'm not adopting their numbers, but by way of reference, if you go out to the 2030 goals, you could see an increase of 2800 permits a year. And I ponder retirement, and that's just energy. And even if you took half of some of those projections, and then you go to water, and the range of activities on water are large-scale projects like Sites and Chino Hills. But how do you put more water underground for recharge? How do you do transfers?

How do you do variances? How might you invest in a water conservation project like Montague Irrigation District in Shasta, where we're lining an earth and canal to get efficiencies, which requires some form of water permit change and activity? So we pick energy and water, not to discount transportation or housing, but the essential nature of both fighting the climate change and all of life needs water. As a way to narrow our focus down to a modest request of 40 positions, we ran the math.

Looking across our data, one position can do about 13.7 reviews a year. We made a conservative assumption of, let's say, 550 projects a year. In those two priorities, 13.7, you get 40 PYs. And we kind of looked at a track record and we know this can work. So I'll give you two examples on scale, excuse me, on pace. So, some of your investments have allowed us to create a unit that we're calling cutting the green tape. Restoration is infrastructure work itself.

So what we've been able to do in 21-22 is fund, permit and assist environmental review for 146 projects that's restored 134,000 acres and 103 stream miles. And we saved the applicants, which sometimes are NGOs, but sometimes irrigation districts, one and a half $1.0 million with an averaging processing time of 70 days.

We did that by saying, "Hey, for our restoration permits, we want to target 180 days or less, but our average is 165 days," for we now hold and trust an exemption under SQA for restoration projects. First time ever, we've authorized many of them. We gave ourselves 60 days as a target or less to concur with the lead agency's request for an exemption for a restoration project; our average is 40 days. We also have another analog case study.

We've gone through a review at your instruction, about our relationship with Caltrans. It's called AB 1282. And we went together and did Lean Six Sigma, which is kind of the public sector version of McKinsey, on our operations together. And we decided one of the big challenges in delays in permitting in the transportation world was some of the applications submitted to us were deemed incomplete, and that expanded the review timeline.

With Caltrans, we decided we would go for a goal of at least 95% of completeness when they're submitted. Historically, we were at 49% completeness, and we're right at that 95% mark working with Caltrans. So, with these 40 positions, we will be better able to deal with the future scale of the work as well as I'm not quite there yet, but setting for each of our permits a target and managing the pace more quickly.

Well, thank you. Certainly very supportive of that. But let's go ahead and hear from the Department of Finance first on this issue.

Daniel Ross-Jones, Department of Finance. Nothing to add.

Okay. Lao, anything?

Sonia Pettick, LAO. We've reviewed this proposal pretty closely and do not have concerns. Thank you.

Okay, I'll just start with questions. Yeah, certainly a lot of just in general; we've talked about this hearing with the budgeting approach, the cutting green tape, finding efficiencies. As a former CEO, these are all music to my ears, and I appreciate the effort. So, if we prove these positions, what is the timing expected to fill these positions, and in what regions will these hires be placed?

We would start as soon as the budget act is inked. And notwithstanding the conversation I have with Senator McGuire about hiring, I have to get these positions filled. We are overwhelmed in a current workload. We need this additional 40 to deal with the pace and scale problem. I couldn't tell you if it's within a month, two months, but I personally. We need to fill these positions as soon as we have the approval and ability. That's our perspective on that question.

Secondly, Senator, we see the majority of these positions moving out to our regions because our engagement with applicants happens primarily through that regional field presence. I am reluctant to say where they will be assigned, but I do think there's a clear guidepost. If one thinks about energy, it's primarily moving fastest in certain parts of the state. The Mojave Desert is an example, so I think you could see more energy staff say in for us what's region six, region four, maybe region five.

Whereas on water, I think we would use a guidepost of where right now do we predict most of these essential water projects, and that may be more Central Valley. So, for us, that could mean the water could be more heavily deployed. For us in region one or region two or region three, we would use that kind of filtering, kind of a forecasting of where we see the most applicant workload emerging.

Well, thank you. Well, I do believe it's critical for these positions, and we need to help from the legislature to add a bill on transmission last year. We'll have another bill. I know Senator Dahle and Senator McGuire agree we need to get these projects permitted more quickly so we can move energy around the state and the water infrastructure projects as well. Any other questions? Senator Dahle.

Just a comment. I would just like to say thanks for working with the producers and those you mentioned, the Montague lining and these folks who have water rights are giving up some of their water rights to help with fish and the ability to able to be get done. I'm full support. Obviously, you could see I think the Director has done a great job when the LAO and nobody has any comment.

I think that's a testament to and the support of, obviously, this committee and many others that we really need to get this work done, and no matter if you put that position in Mojave, it's going to relieve somebody that may be working in another area. And so I'm in full support of that as well. Look forward to actually seeing these projects. We have an awesome winter. More water is always better.

But we saw in the last three years where those positions not being filled, were delaying or not being able to get those projects in critically dry years where we really need those projects to be completed and so we can actually help the environment better. So look forward to seeing progress along the way. One last comment on the cannabis. I know Senator McGuire, Siskiyou is, as you know, Director Bonham, that is like ground zero for crazy cannabis stuff.

Fortunately, we see a lot of other states passing cannabis laws, and I think it's driving down the market, some for illegal cannabis to be profitable. And we're seeing a little bit of relief there. But we still need a lot more enforcement, and I'll be focusing on that at the AG's office to help you out as well because the locals just don't have the resources to get it done.

The Senator, Director, Elliot and I have Siskiyou as focus. We are engaged with their board and sheriff, and there's important work in the county.

All right, well, thank you. I was included a lot of support there, but the staff recommendation for now is to hold open. So we will do that and we're going to move on to the next issue in the next department. So thank you very much for your time here today. We're going to now move over to the Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention for CAL FIRE.

Thank you. We will similarly start with department overview. Director Tyler, we appreciate presence of the team here and go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you and good morning. Good morning, Chair Becker, Senator McGuire, Senator Dahle, and staff of Senate Budget Sub Two. My name is Joe Tyler and I'm the Director and Fire Chief at CAL FIRE. When I reflect on my career, 33 fire seasons, and the 33rd fire season of my career, the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which was known as CDF at the time, has evolved. It's evolved into what has later become known as CAL FIRE today.

And it has evolved because of the changing climate, dense and overgrown forest lands leading to catastrophic and damaging wildfires across California. Now, CAL FIRE is responsible for 31 million acres in the state-responsibility area of jurisdictional land dealing in fire prevention, fire suppression, natural resource management. We recognize that 57% of the forested land across the State of California is that of our national forest partners and the other portion not included in the 31 million acres is that of our local jurisdiction partners.

In addition to that, CAL FIRE has the Office State Fire Marshal, and the Office State Fire Marshal is more global than that 31 million acres as it deals with the fire and life safety issues, pipeline engineering issues across the entire State of California. 10 years ago, CAL FIRE had an authorized position count of just over 6,900 positions and had a budget of $1.2 billion.

In the current enacted budget, CAL FIRE has grown to over 11,300 positions and has an appropriation of $3.8 billion, including about 842,000,000 that are specific to the Emergency Fund. In the current budget year alone, CAL FIRE has experienced its single largest growth of authorized positions at over 1634 positions in the Department that are inclusive of that over 11,300. CAL FIRE appreciates the commitment of the Legislature and the Administration that contributes to this growth and the expectations that come with it.

Our team of leaders recognize that we can't respond our way out of a wildland fire and we can't respond our way out of this crisis. And we must focus even harder on our critical responsibilities in fire prevention, including fuels reduction, defensible space, forest resilience, home hardening, all while continuing to respond to and mitigate large and damaging wildfires across the state with our local, state, federal, tribal and private partners before those large and damaging fires affect our watershed, our forest health, our personal property, causing extended evacuations.

And as Senator McGuire well knows as well as all the Senators, the fatigue and the mental health of the effects of CAL FIRE employees, but the fire service across California and the first responders across California together. CAL FIRE is an all-inclusive, total-force organization. It is the women and men of CAL FIRE who are our greatest assets that work in collaborative partnerships to get the job done.

We are a can-do organization. Again, comprised the resource management, fire prevention Administration support, Office of the State Fire Marshal, and Fire Protection. Our women and men work together closely on any task that they're given. Some might suggest that these programs are mutually exclusive and play independent roles to meet the mission of CAL FIRE. But I commit to you, in my 33 years with the Department, that these programs depend on each other.

It's my expectation, when personnel are not actively engaged in mitigating emergencies, that they commit to fire prevention and forest resilience activities, defensible space, and education of our public. We see this across the media every day, and as we well know, the wildfire effects of California are wearing on everyone. 4.3 million acres burned in 2020 and 2.5 million acres burned in 2021 and the Dixie Fire became the single largest fire in the State of California's history.

And then we saw the Dixie Fire and the Caldor Fire do something that fires haven't done in California before, and they crossed from the western slope of the Sierra Foothills, across the mountain range, and onto the east side. We observed communities such as Greenville and Grizzly Flats basically wiped from existence. But 2022 was different where we saw just 7,400 wildland fire ignitions in 2021, wideland fire ignitions were actually up at over 7,600 in 2022 and the acreage burned was down to 364,000 acres.

Still more than I would desire, but it has shown success of the last two years, decreasing to 364,000, much the same. damaged structures and destroyed went from over 11,000 in 2020 to over 3,800 in 2021 to just 776 in 2022. Again, more than I would ever hope to have.

But with the decrease, it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that Mother Nature played a role in 2022 in September, both in the north and the south, as Hurricane K became a tropical depression across the Fairview Fire, that some of that helped. But it's more than just the weather that dealt with that. Aside from the weather, resource availability and the cooperation of our partners played a huge role. Timing of large and damaging fires played a huge role.

But fires also stayed smaller based on fuels modifications and fuels treatment that occurred. Examples are across the board. In Placer County, the Pleasant Fire stayed at just 20 acres because it dropped into a shaded fuel break, and we never heard about this fire. We had the Electra Fire hit the Pine Acres fuel brake, which modified the fire behavior there. The Mckinney Fire hit the Craggie fuel brake.

The Fairview Fire hit fuel brakes in the Batista area, and the Oak Fire, located in Madeira Mariposa, also was altered by fuel brakes that had been put in by the women and men of multiple departments. I'm proud of the fuels work being completed by CAL FIRE and our local, state, federal, tribal, and private partners.

As part of the million-acre strategy, we're invested in seeing our federal partners meet their 500,000-acre goal by 2025 and the state working towards its 500,000-acre goal by 2025 as well. For CAL FIRE, our target is a minimum of 100,000 acres of fuels reduction of that 500,000 acres. And I am proud to say in the last three years we have met and exceeded the 100,000-acre goal. But I tell our women and men that we don't stop at 100,000 acres.

We need to hit the 500,000-acre mark. And because of the changing weather conditions, in September of 2022, we saw a shift in some of that culture. In September 2022, we saw resources doing prescribed fire in the middle of fire season, and they burned over 14,260 acres in Tahema County and in San Benito County specifically, as well as other areas across the state.

It leads me to believe that our employees are seeing this need, that they're embracing it to get fuels modification done for a healthier and more resilient forest. Finally, in this space, the collaboration between all participants on the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force is really working to achieve actionable and real results on the ground. Later in the Committee's agendas on other issues today, you're going to hear from subject matter experts on capital outlay requests.

And when you hear about that, I ask the Senators to think about this growth of the last 10 years, and specifically the last year in this Department. The growth is necessary to address the health and wellness of our employees and at the end of the day, create a more robust, motivated, and engaged workforce that will meet the critical needs for fire prevention, natural resource protection, and emergency response.

In addition, the fluctuation of our hand crew staffing across the state are critical to fuels reduction on wildland firefighting in places mechanized equipment doesn't go. Staffing and crew investments lead to initial and recurring mandated training for all of our employees, not just the new employees, in the last fiscal year. It's critical that we have the adequate resources across the Department to meet this training need.

And while we continue to add authorized positions for relief and health and wellness, we also have to hire more employees because of retirements the size of the Department. Even if you had 10% in a year of your employees retiring, that's 1,000 employees that you need to train in addition to new employees being added to the Department.

To put it into perspective, my opportunity to become the Director trickles down through promotional opportunities all the way to the ground level that create an initial training requirement for a new employee, and that happens with anybody. And as mentioned before, our fluctuating hand crew availability from various partnerships has led the Legislature and Administration to invest in alternative crew types, including paid firefighters. As a result, capital outlay needs are changing and infrastructure is necessary to support the growing hand crews.

In specific to a future discussion on Growlersburg Conservation Campus, a CDCR led with CAL FIRE conservation camp, its geographical location lends well to the operational tactical needs of our needs here at CAL FIRE and we saw that in the Mosquito Fire. The facility itself provides a rehabilitative opportunities for incarcerated firefighters through an outstanding mobile kitchen unit, a sawmill, a wastewater treatment facility, and a cabinet shop. Now, how do I know that? I was the Camp Chief in Growlersburg Conservation Camp.

So much work is being done well in that camp that it is the last one, quite honestly, that I would ever consider closing or repurposing for other purposes. So much great work is being done by all the partners in forest health and resilience, fire prevention, and suppression. I'm committed to seeing through the mission of the Department, the goals of the Administration, and the accountability to the public and to the Legislature. We recognize that we can't turn this ship overnight.

We know that wildfire knows no boundaries and so it affects so many and that we have to work together to collaborate and put action on the ground. Working together, I guarantee that we will turn this corner. I appreciate the opportunity for opening the discussion and I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you very much, Director Tyler. Let's see if the LAO has any quick comments.

Helen Kerstein with the Legislative Analyst Office, nothing to add. Thanks.

Okay. Well, I certainly have questions around treated acres, vegetation management, and the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, but turn over to my colleagues initially. Senator McGuire.

Thank you so much. So grateful, Chief. It's good to see you. And again, congratulations, and grateful for your work, sir. And no BS, grateful for the service that you and so many women and men behind you are putting in year in and year out. I got to be really honest. I love Chief Tyler. Chief Tyler is the third CAL FIRE chief who has been in front of this Committee since starting my time in the State Senate.

And while we have made improvements when it comes to improvements when it comes to hiring additional women and women and men for the ranks of CAL FIRE, I am still embarrassed to say there is a massive CAL FIRE firefighter shortage. And the reason why is politics. We're not investing because it is an incredibly expensive endeavor. We are advancing band-aids, hiring up at Cal National Guard, grateful for their service. We're advancing band-aids, hiring up at the CCC, grateful for their service.

But we're doing that because it's cheaper to hire up there than it is with CAL FIRE. Right now, if you're a CAL FIRE firefighter starting out, you can go to Eureka, In-N-Out Burger and make $21 an hour, more than a CAL FIRE firefighter starts at. $21 an hour.

So I am incredibly frustrated that we are here year in and friggin year out talking about this shortage when we are looking at literally thousands of calls that go in every year to mental health hotlines with CAL FIRE firefighters. And I am a firm believer that we need to look at prevention. I think that is we have to invest upstream, but the budget is our value statement. And I get emotional talking about this. It is a value statement.

And just a couple of months ago had the ability to go gather with CAL FIRE firefighters. And one gentleman came up to me near tears. He had just divorced, not seeing his kids, incredible depression. CAL FIRE firefighter from Southern California. He spent two summers ago, three months straight away from his family. And that was the last straw. And we go through the ranks of CAL FIRE firefighters. You'll hear story after story after story.

So what really pisses me off, if I could just be really candid, this is now my 6th year on this Budget Committee. We're still having the same damn conversation about investing in CAL FIRE and investing in the ranks to be able to keep the women and men safe. And it is expensive, absolutely. But the best investment that we can do to be able to keep Californians safe is investing in the personnel that make this organization strong.

So I'm going to say once again, I'm grateful that we have a new contract going from 72 to 66 hours. That will probably bring on Chief, I'm spitballing here, 400, maybe 450 positions, approximately. You don't need to chime in on this one, Chief. So as I am a little bit of on a soap box, but here's my bottom line.

If you're a municipal firefighter in Sacramento, in Healdsburg, in Eureka or LA, you're working a 54-hour work week, underpaid, overworked, and working harder and longer than any other firefighter in the California fire service. It's unacceptable. And we're not investing because of what the cost is going to be. We had losses upwards of $30 billion over two fire seasons of Californians just 48 months ago. Two fire seasons. Two consecutive fire seasons. When is enough enough?

So all I'm going to say is I'm going to be back, and I know so many in the Chair, and Senator Dahle is going to be back, continuing to fight to be able to get additional resources not within Cal Guard, which I'm grateful for, not within the CCC, which I'm grateful for, but with officer positions full time, as well as additional seasonal positions, because this is absolutely ridiculous. And candidly, we're putting Californians at risk the longer we wait to continue to invest.

Thank you, Senator McGuire. And staying where I stay in Sacramento, I randomly encounter folks from CAL FIRE, and I've heard similar stories about strain of families and families broken up over the long hours, and it's just not right. I agree that hat we ask of these men and women. Senator McGuire. I'm sorry, Senator Dahle.

Well, he said it so well, I don't need to add any more to it. I mean the Senator and I both co-authored legislation last year to try to address the issue. Thank God for a little bit of wet weather in the last spring and last fall to where they actually got a little bit of a break and not the mega-fires that we've had. So that issue, I think we are committed to trying to find the workforce there.

But I do have a couple of follow-up questions on your presentation. Our goal is a half a million acres of treatment, and you mentioned 100,000 acres that was treated. First question, does that include THPs that were done by private folks or that was 100,000 acres done by the Department?

To my understanding, THPs are not included in that number.

Thank God, because I think it was a year ago that there was a calculation in which THPs are going to happen. For those of you who don't know, that's a timber harvest plan by a private organization or landowner that's going to do it. So that's good news. What about federal grants and being able to work that avenue to try to get more treatment on the ground? Have you guys explored that opportunity?

So there is a lot of federal funding available. I would let the Department of Finance really dive into that further. But what I will tell you and what we are committed to is it is quite an honor here just recently to speak at a conference and recognize that working so hard to build the relationship with United States Forest Service Regional Forester Jen Everline.

In this one year that I have been in place, to have Mark Emerson stand up publicly and say that he believes that the relationship between Calfire and the United States Forest Service right now is the best that it's ever been.

I am paraphrasing, but I, in this last year, have worked so hard to build that relationship, and building that relationship and knowing that fire knows no boundaries, and the devastation to our constituents because of that is broad, is working together with our federal partners to collaborate through the wildfire enforcers and task force, and then individually with the agencies to make sure that we're putting the right treatments in the right places for the best protection.

Well, I'd like to just follow up. I know you did come by my office, and I don't ever want to blindside any. And we had this conversation. And so I will just revert back to the Dixie Fire, which I was on the ground with Tom Porter, and we had the Forest Service there, and we were in Quincy. This is while Greenville was still there. And the forest service. Look, you guys go put fires out. They manage fires is what they talk about.

And for those of us who have huge amounts of public federal lands in our district, we want you to put the fire out, which is what you do. The Forest Service manages the fires, and they also change their guard every two weeks. So the fire's coming up to Greenville, and they set a backfire and they're changing guard. And I believe that they burnt my town down because the winds were not going the right way, and they lit that fire just outside of Greenville.

And so great for Mark Emerson to say those comments, but at the end of the day, we have to have them. I don't think it's on our side. It's them. And I know we can say this as legislators, and I'm going to say it loud so that everybody hears it. Hopefully, the Administration hears it, that we need to work with the Federal Government to come up with a solution that doesn't bring somebody from Minnesota on the Forest Service to a fire that they're not familiar with or wherever it is.

We have mountains here, and we have different wind patterns, and we have a lot different kind of fires than you have in the Poconos, and those you folks live here and understand how to do it. And we have to build some sort of a process that allows us to manage fire in the west the way we need to manage fire in the west.

And so I just put that out because I'm not going to give up on that because I've seen my communities get destroyed when they change so much. You have to have somebody on the ground longer than two weeks to understand what's happening. And so that's not on you. I just want it to publicly say that. And I want the legislators to know if it was your backyard and you saw. I was on the ground and saw what happened.

And I have friends that work for CAL FIRE, many of my friends. That's where I hear the overworked. One of my son's best friends is a CAL FIRE firefighter. And again, he was not home for however many days now. He loved it.

He's a single guy and was making a lot of money. But those who have families understand. So I just want to, for the record, to show I'm on this and I'm not going to give up. I've talked to my congressman. My congressman was at Quincy when we were there, and he's now in power in DC. And I'm expecting them to do something about it as well. So I just want to put that out there that we have to coordinate.

I mean, they need to adopt our style of firefighting for the west because we're going to continue to lose a lot of acreage and we need to treat those acreages as well. Thank you.

Follow up on this. Senator McGuire.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I will echo the frustration that because the CAL FIRE, CAL FIRE came in two seasons ago in the Trinity, team from Alaska came in, brought in a team from Redding to be able to backfill because it was a lack of fire attack, to be able to save Hayfork. They've cut a line all the way around Hayfork, and it was CAL FIRE that did that. And I think there's ongoing conversations with the feds.

I think that is going to be a big ship to turn in regards to their antiquated firefighting practices with the climate reality we're facing here in the west. And I know it's not just California. Hear this from Alaska. Hear this from legislators in Idaho as well where they're seeing significant acreage burn. The difference in attack when it comes to state resources versus federal, it's maddening in that transition.

And, Chief, I know you won't talk about this, but I'll just say it is maddening for communities to be able to coordinate with. On the 490,000,000 the Biden Administration has recently put out in regards to federal funding for western forest. Can you just talk about the. I know there's several different national forests that have been targeted. Can you just talk about coordination between the federal funds that are coming in?

I know this is a one time allocation, but can you just talk to us about how you see these dollars roll out with the forests that have now been identified in the state?

Stephen Benson, Department of Finance. So I think the 490,000,000 you're referring to is there was a round one from IIAJ, so they also did a round two from the Inflation Reduction Act that had 11 more landscapes.

I just want to make sure his microphone is on.

Maybe I muted myself. I think it's supposed to be red. It's red so.

Yeah, okay.

So they did.

That's much better there.

Maybe I just need a little closer. Sorry.

So in the Inflation Reduction act, there was some additional funding. They did 11 more landscapes. So across the two, there's now 21 landscape projects that have specifically been identified. That's a total of $930,000,000. Their estimates is that will treat a total of about 557,000 acres. It's across the western states. So when you put that to what's slated for California, of the 21 projects, seven of them are in or partially in California. So approximately a third of the projects.

Do you expect typically those federal allocations are coming in at like 12%, right, of whatever the national total is, or is this going to be larger based off of need? Can you just update us on how that's going to roll out in regards to specific bucks coming in at Golden State?

Yeah. So my understanding is that's not funding that will like flow to state departments. That's going to be the Forest Service managing.

No, no, I understand that part. But what do you anticipate California's total to be out of that nearly $1.0 billion?

Yeah. Again, two of the projects are sort of split between California Oregon or California Nevada. So it's sort of hard to acres and dollars there. But if you take all of those projects, about 61% or $567,000,000 will be spent within California on those seven projects. And that's supposed to are estimated to treat around 194,000 acres, about 35% of the estimated acres to be treated. And again, there's two of them that are partially California.

So I don't know, in the Klamath project, in the Elko Sierra project, like, how many acres are within the state, but roughly.

Five to seven.

Yeah, roughly. So somewhere around a little over half of the funding.

Thank you.

Follow up, Senator Dahle?

Yeah, I wanted to follow up on a couple of the budget items that I reviewed. So there's $5 million that's not proposed to do inspections. And those of us who have rural landscapes and insurance is a big issue, obviously, for people who live in high fire severity zones. So what's the methodology, by reducing that 5 million, we could actually do some inspections?

Again, Stephen Benson with Department of Finance. So we're going to actually have an issue here in a minute. We'll talk about the General Fund reductions more holistically. But specifically to that, what we were doing is taking a look at sort of risk base in line with trying to maintain as much funding as possible and places where we were maintaining sort of majority of funding and places where perhaps there's some sort of other funding.

So in that particular instance, there's a $5 million reduction in 22-23 from defensible space inspections, but we maintain $20 million of the overall investment. So that's about 80% of the funding. And there is some base funding in California's budget for defensible space inspections as well.

So it was an area where, while we completely appreciate the importance of that, and we don't in any way want to undermine that, but it was an area where, based on other funding and sort of taking a risk approach across programs where we felt there was an ability to take a small amount to try and help balance the reduction and still maintain that program largely intact.

Well, one of the problems is there's really no lead agency to do the, I mean, if you have a local fire Department or you have volunteer, there's no something that says, hey, I did my work out there, and that's one of the things that we looked at. And actually, I think it might have been, Senator Eggman, somebody ran a Bill that actually required that.

I can't remember who ran the Bill to try to get a certificate so that you could go to your homeowner's insurance plan and say, hey, look, we've done everything we can do according to Calfire, and there's no place to really get that. And that's something that really needs to happen, because people are getting priced out of their homes with insurance in not just rural areas, but urban areas of California as well.

Good. Well, we will come back to that, and I'll have some comments on that as well. We talked about the goals here, the 500,000. As you know, there was the June 21 Cap radio report that basically said that the actual number of party projects was lower and got to the question of treating acres and what was actually included. So just want to ask you specifically, how do you define treated acres and how many acres were treated in 21 and 22?

Thank you for that question. I will start by saying that when we entered this initiative, we recognized that multiple agencies recognize that their project acres, their treatment acres, their treatment activities varied by types and kinds. So when you bring the wildfire and Forest Resilience Task force together in those specialty groups, they're really refining to make sure that all the agencies are on the same page at the same time.

You had groups that were defining treatment by calendar year, by state fiscal year, and by federal fiscal year. And that's what this group is coming together with as well. Now, when we look at treatment across the landscape and meeting a minimum of 100,000 acres of fuels treatment in Cal fires responsibility, we recognize that as a workload metric. We look at it where it is the treatment activity that we did on the ground.

So in fiscal year 20, 116,581 acres had treatment activity across those, across the acre, I'm sorry, 116,581 treatment acres. In 21-22, 109,083 acres. And so far, although it'll be reconciled moving forward, what we have as of right now is 30,950 acres in the current fiscal year. Now that will be again reconciled as we move forward. And it is more data comes in from the 21 operational units to increase that number. And in the last three years, we have exceeded the 100,000 acres.

But your question is, what do I define as treatment? There are different treatments on an acre. You could go in and masticate an acre, and then you could go in and put prescribed fire on that same acre, and that is part of the 100,000 acres. So to truly at this point, say an acre is an acre is an acre, it is the treatment activities that occurred on an acre that get us there.

We'll start with this. What do you think is the estimated annual cost of treating 500,000 acres annually?

I would honestly, Senator Becker, suggest that that would be a more accurate analysis for Department of Finance and our subject matter experts to talk about today. I honestly could not give you that answer.

Department of Finance again, but so I think it's a tricky question to answer in that, and I'll be happy to let program experts sort of expound on this because they certainly know better than I do. But I think what is probably particularly tricky about answering that question is it depends on what acre you're treating, where it is, there's different costs in terms of what type of treatment is needed and where that treatment is happening. So I don't know.

Again, I have to defer to program experts as to whether or not we have sort of developed a good average or an average sort of bi-vegetation types or things like that. But my understanding is there's a great deal of variability based on where you're treating and the type of vegetation you're treating and then what type of treatment is needed.

So I'd have to kind of defer to the program experts to see if they've got a good number sort of across those types of treatments or even within them if there's different averages.

Anyone else here today that would comment or on the line?

Perhaps Senator Becker might be an appropriate question for issue 56.

Okay. All right. We can cover when we get there, but I think this is something we'll keep coming back to, given the goals. Just one last question on this line. Question is the reports now of 36 million acres of dead and dying trees? In light of that information, do you believe this goal of 500,000 tree acres should be revisited or increased?

I think with the most recent report of 36 million trees that are now dead or dying that have been identified here more recently will have to be evaluated by the programs and inclusive within our 500,000 acre goal across state government.

Okay. Any follow up? Senator Dahle.

I just want to go back to your original presentation about the training camp is that I own, they call it, what's the name of the.

It is our CAL FIRE training facility in Amadore county in Ion, California.

So I read the LAO's response to the proposal. I beg to differ. We have CCC in Susanville, which the Governor chose to shut down, even though we had many reports of the facility having lots of upgrades. It was a training facility as well. So could you speak to the difference between those two facilities right now?

I know that the prison part of it shut down, but the ability to be able to train there still available, and maybe that's something that CAL FIRE could look at and maybe save us some resources.

Thank you for that. So currently-

I think we do have an issue on that, too, coming up. If is it okay to defer that? Okay, just a couple of the General questions, then. Let's move on to these issues. You mentioned the task force. As you know, the goals included increasing the pace and scale of forest health projects, strengthen protection of our communities, manage forests to achieve economic, environmental goals, and drive innovation and progress. So just curious, your opinion, what programs are making the most progress in reaching these goals outlined by the task force?

I think that the 99 actionable items that are being achieved by the task force and the subcommittees that are working on those, I would have to go back and give you the specific data, but I know that there are a few of those goals that have been completed.

A large majority of those are in progress, and these are subject matter experts on the ground, academia, fire scientists that are working on these issues together, and I think under the direction of the task force Director Patrick Wright, doing great strides in keeping us together, collaborating to be able to accomplish the goals. To be specific for you today, I would need to follow up.

Okay. Any thought of which programs are making the least amount of progress or change in reaching those goals?

I believe that all 99 actionable items in the task force are continuing to make progress.

Okay. We'll revisit the 99 items and make sure innovation and progress and measuring progress is one. With that, I think we can move ahead to issue 53. This is around the property acquisitions, and I believe you'll have assistant Deputy Director Duggan presenting on this. Great. Why don't you go ahead, see if.

We can turn this on. Excuse me. My name is Mike Duggan. I'm assistant Deputy Director over technical services for CAL FIRE. I'm a civil engineer and I'm ready to address any questions you have on that. Do you want me to give you a briefing? I'm sorry.

Yes. If you could just go ahead and talk about. Give a little overview.

So, due to the recent increases, as far as for fire crews, we have, under previous budget acts and our previous authority, have funding to operate and maintain fire crew locations, whether state owned or leased. And these sites were identified in highly strategic locations in rural areas with local government that very much mirror our conservation camps that we retrofitted for free people.

So primarily what we did here was these were our easiest, I would say, opportunities for success and working with local government and providing this workforce in the area that they're needed and a quick turnaround for conversion. That's why we're proposing these for acquisition.

Any questions? Yes, I have a question. Just each of these projects in their entirety are going to cost more than just the acquisition price. Are there other future costs associated with these properties that can be identified now that will require funding post acquisition?

Well, for the start off, we're partially operating out of them now. And in previous BCP's, we were given special repairs funding to address this crossover, and we were working on repairs that are needed there. These were all warm shutdown facilities. What that means is basically they are not occupied, but the property owners, the school district or the county did continue to operate them as far as mechanically to make sure that they were still operational for future need, so they were still functional.

We moved in and we have been given funding for that and even for the future operation and maintenance. So we do not have any capital requests at this time and nor do we have any in the immediate future. And if we did, especially after the acquisition. They would just be part of our portfolio and would follow the normal vetting for capital outlay and special repairs.

Okay, let's hear from the LAO on this.

So we didn't raise any specific concerns with this proposal. We would know, however, that certainly that is a good question about the out year costs. I think that's going to be a theme that we're going to hear probably a couple of times today. And I know was brought up at the last hearing that the Committee had as well, is just the General Fund condition both this year and in the out years. And so really being mindful of what commitments the state's making. So with that, we didn't have any specific concerns with the proposal.

Department finance?

Vy Nguyen and Department of Finance, we have nothing to add at this moment.

Okay. With that, the staff recommendation on that is to hold open. So let's move ahead to issue 54. This, I think, gets some of the issues that were raised around the training center capacity and new facility. And Director Tyler, do you want to go ahead and present this item?

Absolutely. Thank you. The budget request is for 12.9 million General Fund in 12 positions beginning in 23-24 and $12 million ongoing annually through the completion of a new training facility dealing with the overcapacity of the CAL FIRE training centers by providing funding for two temporary training facilities to be able to move forward. To give you a brief history about our training facilities, that goes back to Senator Dolly's earlier question is, prior to 1967, Calfire had two small training facilities.

One was located in San Diego and one was located in Jackson, California, or more readily known as Martel or Sutter Hill, what is now today Sutter Hill Fire station. In 1967, the training facility was moved to its current location in Ion, California, in 1967. You can imagine the size of the Department in 1967. Moving forward, as the Department continues to grow, that facility continues to grow as well.

Part of that facility really sits on 67 acres of property and then has, through an interagency agreement, 200 additional acres that we have facility use agreements from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sitting next to Mule Creek State Prison. By 2015, Calfire has recognized that we were beginning to outgrow and not meet the demand and capacity of the needs for hiring and training of personnel.

So in 2015, we entered agreement with the County of Riverside and the Riverside County Fire Department to move our firefighter training academies, not to move them, but to add additional firefighting training academies at the Ben Clark training facility, or what we're referring to now as training center south. In 2015, I was the one who made that move and the intent was to hold four additional firefighter academies there, while our firefighter academies and company officer academies, our driver operator training located in Ion, would continue.

Today, both of these facilities have raised their student counts per class from 32 to 48 and are holding more classes than ever intended. In fact, from 2015, going from four classes at Ben Clark, they are now doing an average to 10 to 12 classes. Seeing the more recent demands in the largest allocation in 2022, in the current budget year, we recognize that we are still busting at the seams to meet the needs not only of new initial training, but recurring training caused by attrition.

So we are embarking on endeavors to look for additional temporary training sites in the interim. One of those locations is the Shasta Community College and their firegrounds, as they have dormitory space and adequate space to be able to hold these classes as well, and then additionally to move our administrative classes off site from Ion into a location here in the Sacramento area to try to open up capacity for the ion facility for emergency response training.

I recognize with my years within the Department that reasonably seeing that our training centers are busting at the seams leads me to have this proposal brought forward for your consideration.

Thank you so much, chief. Want to see Mr. Vice Chair. Any questions or comments on-

Address the issue of the CCC in Susanville and the ability for that training facility to be used for something, since it's sitting there and it's had a lot of upgrades.

Yeah, there are a minimum of two training facilities that were in the state. One was the California Correctional Facility in Susanville. The other one, Sierra in Jamestown, that trained adult male incarcerated firefighters for our conservation camp program. In addition to that, we had a training facility for adult females that the training occurred at the California Institute for Women in Southern California for our youth, our DJJ. That training facility was occurring at the Pine Grove conservation camp there, at the camp itself.

And since then, through approval of the Legislature and the Administration, we opened a rehabilitative program for formerly incarcerated firefighters out of the conservation and institution facilities for training at Ventura Training center located in Camarillo. Now, I agree, through consolidation and varying population, that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation chose to move the firefighter training and the entirety of the California Correctional center to move those locations. The adult firefighter incarcerated population was moved where all training would be done at Sierra.

Certainly I would turn to my partners to the right to discuss and talk about whether there had been any additional discussion on the use of a CCC facility.

Thank you so much Senator Dahle, is that all right with you? Please. Let's hear from the Department of Finance, if you don't mind introducing yourself. Good morning.

Yes, good morning. Mike McGinnis with the Department of Finance. I am racking my brain for specific discussion that was on that particular facility. However, some of the facilities that we did look to that were existing did include significant costs to reconfigure facilities to Meet CAL FIRE's training center needs. I think we would have to get back to you with the specifics on that particular location, though.

Excellent. Any other questions? Well, thank you. The staff recommendation, this is also hold open. So we will move on to the next item 55 around the Grellishburg conservation camp, which you referred to earlier. But we'll ask assistant Deputy Director Duggan to maybe give a little overview on this item.

Primarily. Sorry, forgive me. This is an ongoing project. The camp is past its operational lifecycle. We have been band aiding it for a number of years. It has been in and out of the capital plan due to economic reasons. And we are just at the phase of just finishing preliminary plans, and we're requesting to move into working drawings. As Chief Tyler had mentioned, this is a very important camp, inmate conservation camp for the Department because of what it provides.

And that is why we're requesting to push it through. We have 30 inmate conservation camps left statewide. This would be the first one that we would be replacing in the state, and it is desperately needed.

Helen Christine with the Legislative Analyst Office, again, we're recommending rejecting this proposal, and a lot of that is because we're not really sure that this camp is going to be needed on an ongoing basis.

So one of the things I think that's important to recognize, and I know it's been referenced a couple of times in this hearing already, is that there's been a shift away from some of the traditional inmate crews that served as hand crews for the state and were really sort of the backbone of that program. As inmates, the inmate population has declined significantly in the state. There's been a move away from those folks and towards other types of crews.

And also, as we've seen that inmate reduction, we've seen closures of conservation camps across the state. So a couple of years ago, the state closed eight conservation camps. Even with the remaining camps, the current ones right now are operating at about 50%, so they're not near capacity. The Department of Finance is projecting further declines in the inmate population over the next few years.

So we think that there's a good chance that the state will be in the position of looking at closing additional conservation camps in the future, recognizing that we think it's important to really make sure that this particular facility is going to be needed on an ongoing basis. And we would note that this facility is right next to or very close to an existing CCC facility that's actually just being rehabbed now and is focused on forestry. So that does serve that community to some degree.

And to the extent the Legislature wants increased presence in that area, it's not clear to us whether a conservation camp is the best use or because there is this move towards other crews, whether a CCC crew, a military Department crew, or even a CAL FIRE crew would be more appropriate in the long term. We think that if this is rehabbed, it'll make it hard to make that decision in the future because the type of facility you'd want is going to depend on the type of crew.

If you have an inmate crew, they're going to be all male. They're going to need less space, for example, than a CAL FIRE crew. So really, it's important to know what kind of crew you're going to have before you invest in this kind of activity.

We'd also note that the costs of this project have increased significantly in the last few years, even going from 59 million to $100 million, and that this is really, given the condition of the General Fund, we think there's a really high bar for looking at projects, and it's not clear to us that this project meets that bar.

We would note that the Administration itself, over the years, it's a long standing project, as was mentioned, it's actually been in progress for 16 years, and a couple of times in that the Administration has paused. The project has reverted funding for the project even last year, reverting the funding for the project because of concerns about the higher costs and uncertainty about the future use of this facility. We think that since last year, population numbers have continued to decline with the inmate crews.

We've seen a decline in the condition of the General Fund. So to know all those sort of factors point to even more uncertainty about the use of this facility, not less. So that's why we're recommending rejection at this point.

Thank you. Department of finance.

Yes. Mike McGinnis, Department of Finance. So, to the LAO's points. First, as the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has previously noted, this facility is the highest priority among the conservation camps and would be the last facility that they would opt to consolidate, close, or convert in any capacity. Additionally, the prison population has been decreasing, as noted by the LAO. However, the population at Growlersburg has actually been increasing over the past few years. Department can speak more to the specifics of that if desired.

And then with regard to potentially shifting the focus of the camp, there are specific activities that are undertaken by the crews that currently operate there that other parties would not be as well suited to perform. And then with regard to the increasing costs of the project, these are consistent with what we've seen across the board for capital outlay projects. There's been significant increase in the industry over the last several years.

Additionally, it's not uncommon to see projects go through changing in costs as the design phase proceeds and more specifics are identified as to the needs of a capital project. And then lastly, with regard to having reverted and restarted the project several times in the past, the increased costs are a reason why not to continue with that practice.

If you were to look back at the original costs of this facility back in 2007 when we were first discussing it, the costs have significantly increased over time, which is consistent with capital LA projects across the board, and any further deferral or delay of this project would likely result in similar increases in future years.

Also Vy Nguyen and Department of Finance, I just wanted to add that currently Administration has no plans to further consolidate the camps as they are. So Ralzberg is an operational camp that is the utmost importance to the Department. And in addition to that, the increased costs, the majority of those costs will be lease revenue, bond funded and not General funded. And just want to make sure that that's on the record. Thank you.

Thank you for those clarifications. Do you know, you do mention that. Well, I guess you referred to not consolidating any of the remaining conservation camps. And I guess the question is why not? Should we consider consolidating the remaining camps if this project goes ahead?

We continue to communicate closely with our long partnership with Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of Finance on this issue. But as was said, at this point, there's no further discussions at this time on consolidation of camps.

Well, thank you. As you mentioned, there were eight closures recently, but the data does seem to show that they're still operating below capacity. LAO has obviously raised some serious concerns about this. We'll continue to evaluate, and the staff recommendation is hold open for now. So I think with that, move on to the next item, which is item number 56. And we'll have Department of Finance, I believe it's Stephen Benson, going to be leading off on this item 56.

Hello again. Stephen Benson, Department of Finance. Yeah, I'll provide an overview of the framework the Administration used in determining General Fund solutions for the wildfire and forest resilience policy area. I think what you'll see is the Budget Act or the proposed budget, sorry, reflects the Administration's continued commitment to the ambitious goals that we put out in the wildfire and forest resilience investments over the last couple of years.

So the 21 and 22 Budget Acts and committed $2.8 billion over four years to various programs to strengthen forest and wildfire resilience statewide. This budget maintains 2.7 billion of that, which is 97%. So very minor sort of haircut type of reductions here. And that's to reflect sort of the way that we prioritized where we look for reductions. So those investments will continue, the 2.7 will continue to work at investments to reduce catastrophic wildfire.

And there are five specific budget reductions, including one shift that's proposed in the Governor's Budget. So I'll talk about those a little bit. First, I won't reiterate all of the framework that we talked about last week in the overview budget, but just want to hit on a couple of the particularly salient points that we used in determining what to do in the wildfire package. So one of those, of course, is protecting the majority of funding for most programs. As we talked about, 97% of this area.

These programs has been maintained reflecting sort of the significance of wildfire in terms of the state's overall risks. Which was kind of a second point, is that one of our framework things was protecting funding that went to immediate climate risks. And wildfire and water are, of course, two big examples for those areas. And the budget protects 98 and 97%, respectively, of those two kind of areas. We also considered minimizing disruptions to programs and where those programs were in terms of awarding funding out through the various grant programs and other cycles.

We looked at potential available shifts of funding and potential available federal funds. And then, of course, we were also looking at sort of the multi-year nature of the funding and where funding was available and different investments in balancing this budget window. So, touching on the specific reductions in this area, there was the Climate Catalyst Fund, where there's a reduction of $41 million General Fund.

That's 10 million of what was appropriated in 2021 and 31 million of what was made available in 21-22. But that maintains approximately 8 million, or 16%, specifically for Climate Catalyst funding. For stewardship of state owned lands, there's a reduction of 25 million. That's 10 million from 22-23 and 15 million from 23-24. And it maintains approximately 280 million or 92% of the investments that were made in that resilient forest and landscapes for state owned lands.

For defensible space inspections, we touched on this a little bit earlier with a question that was raised, but there's a reduction of $5 million there in 23-24 that maintains $20 million, or 80%, of the funding that was put forward for defensible space inspections. Within monitoring and research, there's a reduction of $5 million proposed in 23-24. This maintains $33 million, or 87%, of the total for that particular program area.

And then within workforce training, there's a reduction, a proposed reduction of $15 million of the sort of base General Fund, if you will, but that's partially offset by a shift to $14 million to Prop 98 General Fund. But that will also result in sort of a change in the way that the program is run. That grant program is run for this particular allocation because with Prop 98, that funding will have to be going to community college districts.

So it'll significantly reduce the available scope of grantees that can receive the funding for this particular portion of the funding. But we'll note that there was also, it maintains $53 million, 98% of the overall workforce training funding.

So it's sort of a smaller portion of the overall workforce training funding that has this specific community college focus with this shift. And then all of these investments, or the vast majority, are included in the administration's proposed General Fund trigger. Which would result in, essentially, if revenues look better in January of 24, then it would result in an automatic restoration of the funding at the levels that had been agreed to in the packages so that program continuity can continue with those.

That's in a nutshell, the General Fund solutions proposed and the General Fund trigger for the wildfire and forrest resilience area. But happy to entertain any questions. And of course, we've got a lot of program folks here that can help out as well.

Sure, let's start with LAO, and then we'll go to Senator Dahle.

Helen Kerstein again with the Legislative Analyst Office. So overall, we think the Governor's approach of maintaining almost all of the funding in this area makes a lot of sense. Wildfire is clearly a critical issue for the state, one that has devastated communities, as we heard about earlier. And so we really think that this is an important area to continue to make these investments in. So we think that makes a lot of sense.

Recognizing that, as was mentioned by Mr. Benson, the Governor is proposing some targeted reductions in this area. We think most of them look pretty reasonable. There was one that we raised some concerns about, that was the reduction of defensible space inspectors. We did some work on that a couple of years ago and really found that those inspectors are pretty foundational to this program to get data, to help educate homeowners.

And historically, the Department has really struggled to meet its goal related to defensible space and actually doing the one inspection every three years for all the eligible properties. With the additional funding from these packages, the Department was making some progress towards increasing its number of inspections. So we think that it's important to continue that. So we did raise some concerns there. We also provided a couple of other options that the Legislature could consider if it's looking for further reductions.

As was mentioned last week to the Committee, we think there's a really good chance we might need to find some additional reductions. And some of that might be because you want to do different things than the Governor proposed, because there are lots of different options with all of these packages. And some of that might be because the budget situation may well get worse between now and when the budget is adopted. So a couple of options that we point out in our report.

One is the transportation of woody biomass. We think that's a really important activity, so don't want to minimize that. Clearly, biomass in the forest can be a hazard and is important to handle. The issue that we raise is that there are some existing CAL FIRE programs that also incorporate that activity. And so it's not clear to us how this dedicated program interfaces with that.

So we think providing the one year funding for it, see how that goes, see what results are, see how those programs work together that could be helpful, and really how that program is operating, and then the Legislature could decide whether it wants to continue that. And the other one that we highlight is potentially the Home Hardening Program. That's also one, again, very important activity, like defensible space, helps protect homes. And we think it is an important activity, but it's also a new program.

It's taken some time to get up and running. We have some questions about exactly how it's going to operate and how it's going to scale and its effectiveness. So we think it's potentially, something the Legislature could consider is just keeping that money that was provided in 2021 and looking at either the current year or the budget year funding and determining whether all of that should be maintained or whether some of that the Legislature could reconsider at a time when there's more information on that program.

Also, as was noted before, there is some federal funding in this area, which is really exciting. And so we think that's something that we're going to continue to want to think about and how that interfaces with these programs. Because not just there's the funding that was mentioned before, that's actually that the Forest Service is administering, but there are also some other programs that locals can apply for, that the state could potentially even apply for in some cases.

And so we think that's something that's going to be important. Information is still emerging, but we think that's something that's going to be important to track in the coming months before the budget is adopted. Thank you.

Thank you. Start with Senator Dahle.

So as somebody who sits on the full Budget Committee, obviously this is a subcommitee. When you talk about basically a cost shift with the Prop 98 to... The estimate is 22 billion, so the Prop 98's going to take a hit as well. What's your projection for out for that type of cost shift?

So I don't have any data available to me right now on sort of the Prop 98 for reductions that result from that. When we talked with our colleagues within the Department of Finance that oversee community colleges and whatnot, they indicated there's some already available funding that was appropriated. It's still available for allocation that could be applied to this. And so it's not dependent on whatever sort of reductions come from the future Prop 98 funding.

Okay. Thank you.

Well, thank you. I do have quite a few questions here. Let's see. We did, as you noted overall, this was a substantial funding committed about 2.8 billion across the recent budget packages for forest resilience. And we've had a few years now for this kind of increased funding. So just love to start out with kind of thoughts on the impact that this funding has had in preventing wildfires and improving forest resiliency.

I'm happy to talk about that, Senator Becker. And I'm Jessica Morse, Deputy Secretary at the Natural Resources Agency for Forest and Wildfire Resilience. I'm also joined by additional colleagues here today from CAL FIRE. We have Chief Daniel Berlant from the State Fire Marshal's Office, as well as Chief Matthew Reischman, who handles the Natural Resources Division at CAL FIRE. So 2022 was really a good model of how resiliency can work in action.

The funding that we've invested thus far, that it's going to be 2.7 billion over three years, including the 664 million we're asking for this year. That funding, which started in 2021, has resulted in over 1174 projects on the ground throughout the state. And those projects came into play in a significant way this fire season. As you heard from Chief Tyler, we saw not only more fires, but significantly less impact from the fires that started.

And while the weather was helpful, we also had some of the most extreme heat conditions we've recorded in state history. We had extreme fuel moisture levels, sort of down to that 6% level, which is where you get the Paradises and these catastrophic fires. We had several fires that were modeled to be mega fires that interacted with fuel reduction projects right out the gate and were able to stay small. So I'll give you two examples.

One was the Electra Fire in Amador County over 4th of July last year. And that fire was growing at a very rapid pace. Extreme conditions was kicking off a pyrocumulonimbus, one of those giant weather systems off the top. And it hit a fuel reduction project that we had in this oak woodlands on a ridge top on its second day.

And they were able to create containment lines off of that and create a major flank around the fire and then manage to contain it within a few days after that, which was really dramatic, given the speed that fire was moving at. Another one is a fire that didn't even hit the news in Placer County. There was Oak Fire last summer, and that one was spotting a mile ahead of the flame.

So that means the fires were starting a mile in advance of the main front of the fire. And again, that was modeled in all of the Technosylva prediction modeling that they do that say how much force you need to put on a fire, that was modeled to be a mega fire. And they were able to arrest it because the fire spotted directly into a fuel break that we had put into place with this funding along the American River, and they were able to contain the spots and then the front of the fire.

So it was a combination of, we had some breaks in the weather, but areas that would have been mega fires, given the weather and extreme conditions they were facing, we were able to get on top of them quickly with the resilience projects in place and also the additional suppression equipment. We were able to do, CAL FIRE was able to do really fast early attack with those 10 additional helitanker and others. So we were able to keep a lot of fires small.

So what we're seeing is that this investment in fire resilience is paying off. And just as a refresher, and apologies, I'm kind of going through the testimony I had prepared, so if that's helpful. And so we've invested this Wildfire Resilience Program across three fronts of actions and then also along areas that help us scale up those activities. So that's interventions and programs that go inside of communities. That's your defensible space, home hardening. Interventions around communities.

Those are the strategic fuel breaks that I was just talking about that give firefighters that capacity to take a stand and help evacuation during a fire. And then investments and programs across landscapes. So that's where you're getting across those whole watersheds, prescribed fire programs, our forest health initiatives, Forest Legacy Program, which works with private timber. And so we have programs across every land ownership type, so that we have a contiguous effort across landscapes.

And what we're seeing is that those projects are getting on the ground quickly. We were able to get those 1100 projects on the ground because of some very specific things that the Legislature gave us with those 2021 early action dollars. That included contracting relief, and that allowed us to get projects on the ground within several months rather than taking a year in a contracting process.

We have done significant regulatory reform that has sped up our environmental review process down to about two months from what was potentially a year long to two year long process for a full CEQA review. And then also investments that changed our grant timelines and protocols, especially for those early action that allowed us to get those surge of projects on the ground and in practice. So we saw different departments took different tactics with changing their grant timelines.

We saw some that took their grant timelines, did a very rapid sort of two week turnaround. CAL FIRE took a really innovative approach where they actually did the grant solicitations about four months before the appropriation was even made, so that when the appropriation was ready, they could award the dollars. So we're trying to make sure that budget cycles and government systems are keeping pace with the crisis that we're facing, and we're trying to be very adaptive to be able to make that happen.

There's other areas that we're investing in, too. In addition to those kind of core activity areas where we're putting resilience projects on the ground, we're also investing in the structure that allows us to move faster. So that includes the workforce development funding that you heard about, that is investing in community college programs, training programs, and also expanding the Conservation Core. We have programs that are developing economies of scale here to be able to consume the woody biomass material.

So this is helping us create a supply chain of woody feedstock that creates a predictability in the market. And then programs that are doing the monitoring and data that allow us to be able to actually see what's happening in real time. So, for example, these early investments allowed us to put state contributions into USGS that allowed us to team up. So we were able to gain grants from the US Geological Survey that now have covered over 30 million acres of the state in lidar.

So that means we have high scale, high resolution laser map of the new vegetation, so it covers any of the gaps we had. So it's about 30 million acres of the high fire risk or recent fire areas, so that now the state will have lidar current within the last five years once you include all of this new data that we're bringing in. So we're getting data, modeling.

In addition, on the modeling, we're getting things like vegetation change detection, which is allowing us, and a tree mortality early warning area, allowing us to understand how and where to target our program. So these are investments that are underway right now and will be sort of integrated into the toolkits as that data is processed and used going forward. So these areas that we're investing in. The last area I wanted to highlight was the Regional Coordination and Capacity Building Program.

That program is really central in terms of ensuring that that federal funding that you're talking about coming in is actually being put into programs that are seamed up nicely with programs that are on state or local or other landowner types, so that we are having a cross jurisdictional approach to regional planning and getting projects on the ground seamlessly.

That program was very helpful in being a giant green arrow to our federal partners that, say, put money here. Because we had regional plans in place, it made it very easy for our federal partners to be able to put that roughly $500 million commitment into specific California watersheds to be able to help expand what we're already doing.

So what we've done with the funding that came from the Wildfire Resilience Package is expanded those regional collaborative partnerships that put those staffing dollars and planning dollars on the ground in those sort of watershed scale regions and now have covered the entire state. So every high fire risk region in the state, including in Southern California, now has a regional coordination anchor. And then our state conservancies, which got direct funding in the Wildfire Resilience Package, they have been anchoring in their regions those regional capacity programs.

So we're seeing a lot more landscape scale coordination. We're seeing the investments start to pay off. And I think it's a really good model that resilience can work. We recognize that we're up against the planet, we're up against climate change. And so it's not going to be a linear line of straight progress. But what we're seeing is these models work. The investments, the suite of investments we're making works. And thank you to the Legislature for giving us the tools and the resources to be able to scale up and to be able to scale up at speed.

Well, thank you. One of the questions, one of the lessons learned, and I think you covered a lot of those. I'm going to follow up on two areas here and then a couple of other points. You mentioned technology, and you participated at town hall I did on wildfire technology, and we've really seen a growth in that area. You mentioned 30 million acres in lidar. You mentioned a specific company that has provided resources to the Department. How are you sort of measuring that in terms of...

And I found the Department open to new technologies and assessing them, which is terrific. Just wondering if you can comment a little further, what percent of funding is being spent on integrating new detection, prevention, and suppression technologies? And how are you thinking about that?

Yeah, absolutely. And happy to defer to other CAL FIRE colleagues to weigh in too. But let me give you kind of a broad overview. So we've invested about $25 million into the Remote Sensing Portfolio. And so that is covering everything from the lidar, the tree mortality early warning system, vegetation change detection, which I was explaining. It basically allows us to see what's working and what's not. Are we seeing forestlands convert to shrublands, are we seeing shrublands converting to grasslands? How are we staying on top of that?

Are our treatments actually effective after the fire goes through? So that change detection really helps us see, are we able to sustain the vegetation type that is native to the area while we're getting these extreme climate stressors? And then we're also investing in sort of more innovative things, such as we're putting a flux tower into the Jackson State Demonstration Forest, which will be the first time we've had monitoring in the coast redwoods that show you what type of water vapor, carbon vapor.

It basically tracks vapor and gases. And so it'll show you kind of how much water is lost to evapotranspiration, how much water is coming in to the forest, and what type of carbon cycle you're seeing going in and out. And so it's a really interesting sort of 24 hours way to really nuance and allow us to anticipate how the climate change are impacting these incredibly rare forested ecosystems. Yeah. So happy to turn to any CAL FIRE colleagues. Do you guys have any ups?

Okay, so one last thing I will highlight is that CAL FIRE had a partnership also on early... CAL FIRE has another division that does their R&D and technology. So I don't want to over speak for them, but one of the things we funded out of the remote sensing was potentially stationary balloons to allow us to have stationary. I know, but it allows us to have. But it's really important because it would function.

Yeah, exactly. We'll let everyone know where they are. But what it does, it's really hard to be able to do high resolution detection of fire when you're using satellites or things or flights that are constantly in motion. And so having weather balloons up there would allow you to actually have a stationary way of detecting those fires at high scale while they sit. So it gives us sort of more coverage. So the R&D division at CAL FIRE is being very innovative about sort of reaching out to new technologies that are on the horizon and figuring out how we can potentially integrate them into field use.

Excellent. Well, and that's very small. At that time, when we had that town hall, I was in Australia with a team on wildfires and other things, and they were there on the news, actually, in Australia, being deployed there. And so I know advanced cameras and advanced cameras that actually can capture snippets of video, as opposed to what we had in the past, are very important. Just a moment on aerial resources, you mentioned 10 helitankers, and I think those were new.

What's the full capacity of the aerial wildfire suppression resources of the Department right now? Because it feels like it should still be increased further. But maybe you could tell us or folks here what is the extent of our aerial wildfire suppression resources right now?

I think Chief Tyler is probably the best to answer, but Chief Berlant, do you know.

Yeah, unless he wants to come up. We would be happy to follow up with you on that. Today at this session, we're ready to talk about the wildfire and forest resilience. But obviously, as Chief Tyler mentioned, the aerial resources, all of the fire suppression, investments that the Legislature and the Administration has made played a major part in conjunction with our fuel reduction projects, in conjunction with our forest management. But we'd be happy to follow up with you on some specifics.

Great. I'd very much like to do that. We do have a comment.

Mr. Chair, just a couple of things I can hit on is we've recently been investing in the replacement of helicopters, and so we've replaced Vietnam era helicopters with some new, what they call Firehawks, but the sort of a Blackhawk spin off, if you will. There's 12 of those usage across the state. And then the 10 helitankers that Ms. Morse referred to, is we did some limited term funding last year that does 10 helitankers per year for three years. So that was the current year budget year, and then there's one more year after that.

That's in lieu of getting the C-130s all in line, right?

Exactly, Senator. That's what I was just going to say is the Federal Government has promised us seven C-130s. There's been several delays in getting those. And so we did the helitankers to sort of bridge that gap, and we're still working on trying to get those helitankers in. But the Department also has a number of other aerial assets, and I will defer to program folks to give you more details and that we can bring back.

Yeah, we'd love a full review of that at a future point. Two more questions here, defensible space and the home hardening. I believe, one more area after this, but I do believe both those areas are critical. Home hardening was not cut, defensible space was cut, and you mentioned portion was kept. But five months reduction for monitoring in terms of reporting and monitoring overall, and even small cuts in this area are substantial given the small nature that we're spending.

So just my personal opinion, we should be spending more in those areas. And don't think anyone has any comment on that, on the home hardening. There's a question of the status of awards getting out and going back to the home hardening pilot project from AB 38 back in 2019. So we'd love any comments on those two things.

Yeah, I'd be happy to. First, good afternoon, Chair Becker, Senator Dahle and McGuire. Daniel Berlant, acting State Fire Marshal. For the last several years with Assembly Bill 38, as you referenced, we have formed a joint powers authority with Cal OES working to build the framework. We've built the framework for a financial assistance program to help vulnerable populations that are at risk for wildfires.

To be honest with you, while we had hoped to have already had hammer swinging by this point, one of the huge benefits of the way that the legislation read was being able to tap into federal hazard mitigation dollars. And in fact, since the legislation has passed, we've actually been able to see more potential dollars be matched with our state funds. Originally, it was a 75 to 25 match, so the state Legislature and the Administration put in $25 million. We were hoping to get 75 million.

Since then, we've been able to work with FEMA to get a 90%, so more money committed to it. To be honest with you, the challenge that we continue to work on with our federal partners are very stringent and various interpretations related to federal environmental review requirements that FEMA has.

And so our partners at Cal OES have been working very closely with FEMA to try to come up with environmental protocols and safeguards to make sure that as we are doing this critical work, we are ensuring that the environment is addressed. I will mention, though, that around this program, we built the framework. We have the technology, we have the assessment app. We have the portal built for homeowners to apply. We have the tools for these communities to leverage this program. We've built community outreach.

So we've really built up the program. It is ready to go. It is ready to be scalable. The last hurdle in all of this, though, and I think, again, the most important part, is being able to access those federal dollars. Senator McGuire, you may be happy to hear our very first project to likely get federal approval this spring is Kelseyville Riviera in Lake County. They are one of our demonstration projects.

We are expecting to see the federal government approve the federal funds and start actual upgrades to homes this spring. And so we look forward, just like you do, to seeing a success of this program. But I will tell you, we are right on the cusp of being able to access those federal dollars, get this program moving. It is a pilot, but we are ready to scale up once we really overcome this last barrier.

Great. Thank you. I do believe it's critical. Department of Finance.

Yeah, just I wanted to give one lens on terms of the reductions, how we thought about that. As you noted, both of those are critical components of, when Ms. Morse talked about sort of the three layers of sort of the fire resilience, and the first one being that inner layer of community protection. And these are both important to that. Part of the way we looked at that is, as I mentioned earlier, defensible space does have a significant amount of funding retained, and it has some base funding for it.

When you look at home hardening, the only funding for that program has been these one time investments. And one of the other lenses, of course, I mentioned earlier, is being able to leverage federal funding. And so as Chief Berlant just talked about, there's tremendous opportunity to leverage additional federal funding within the Home Hardening Program. And so those were some of the key reasons why we didn't do reductions there.

The program certainly hasn't moved forward with projects on the ground as quickly as we had hoped, but we also have a fair amount of experience with FEMA. And so there's a general recognition of sort of the way their programs work, some of the stringents. And so we could anticipate some delays, but both programs incredibly important. But that's sort of the lens we looked at and sort of where we made the minor reductions is trying to balance out both of those important programs and the available funding for them.

Okay, fantastic. I do know, again, there's still relatively small part of the budget and both are critical. So look forward to following up on both of those. One more question for me, and we'll turn over to Senator McGuire. The Climate Catalyst Fund, as we discussed, had a significant cut.

Coming from the private sector, I understand that it takes a while to get these programs up and running and a tremendous amount of work had been done and due diligence and being out in the community assessing these projects and then kind of getting it ready for the next phase. So it really hurts the reputation of the state, frankly, to be able to move forward on these things in the future. If we then pull back at this point. wondering if you can comment. I know Mr. Adler is here as well, if we can kind of comment on the Climate Catalyst Program and concerns about stop and start nature of a program like that.

So I'll comment just on the sort of overall how we viewed that in the terms of the reductions that were proposed. But maybe in the meantime, Dan Adler, if he wants to come up, we can make some space for him here at the table. He'll be able to talk about the program aspect of that a lot better than I can.

But, so part of what we looked at, as I mentioned, one of the framings, was, where are we at in terms of getting the dollars out in the programs and balancing that with trying not to disrupt the program any more than necessary. So this is one of those programs that, despite the importance of it, the Administration continues to support and committed to it. Getting actual projects signed up through that program, I think, has taken a fair bit longer than maybe was originally anticipated.

And so the funding that we're maintaining is to support what sort of has moved forward at this point, recognizing that what was not yet committed was sort of our scope of things to look at reducing out. And that was sort of the frame we looked at is there was a lot more available there that was not gone forward, and that program was moving, developing a little bit slower. But I'll defer to Mr. Adler to sort of paint a better picture of the program.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Senator Becker, for the chance to speak to you about where the Catalyst Fund is. And we certainly understand the nature of the challenges that the Department of Finance is facing in bringing all this into balance and the overall climate budget and the budget picture broadly. We have been working diligently for about a year now. I joined the program in last April, talking with over 50 different project proponents, some of whom are ready for a loan.

And this is a very different instrument. And I think that's the key thing to really focus on here. It takes longer to get to a lendable project type than it does a grantable project type, and we're very cognizant of the need for private leverage. That means bringing in and aligning with other funders. And beneficially, there are more and more of those banks and private parties that are prepared to support this industry with the right amount of public leverage alongside.

So it is true that it has taken a while to get to the funding moment, which must follow term sheets in alignment with private lenders and an IBank board approval process. But I do want to stress that we have seen a lot of investable activity that unlocks market forces. And that is really the central thesis, is we know we need all available resources in this challenge. We've found good financial partners and development partners that we think we can work with.

There are some real opportunities in front of us now. It doesn't follow an award cycle the way grant programs do, and I think that is something we've perhaps not been as diligent in stressing and explaining the nature of the work. This is definitely building for a longer term capital partnership, an industry partnership. But when we get there, it scales in a way that I think grant programs have a harder time doing. So definitely appreciate the sensitivities and the balances that need to be struck. Rest assured, we are working to move these projects forward with the resources that ultimately are available to us.

Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Yeah, I personally understand the nature of these kinds of projects you're talking about and that they do take longer to develop. And I think it's an exciting area for us to be working in. And I am concerned if we start and stop, then these projects don't happen. People walk away, and we lose really the investment that we've made. So certainly concerns for myself on that. Turn it over to Senator McGuire.

Thank you so much, and really good questions, Mr. Chair. Very grateful. I'll be quick. First and foremost, I think it's want to make evident this is not an easy budget, right. That there has been significant investment, especially on wildfire mitigation over the past many years by the Legislature and led by Ms. Morse, obviously, Secretary Crowfoot and Governor Newsom. I also want to acknowledge on programmatic funding in the budget, homelessness, housing, schools, wildfire. The vast majority, if not everything, is intact.

So when it comes to wildfire, and please push back on me, Ms. Morse, but about 97% of what was proposed is remaining, and I'm grateful for that. I do want to just point out that the one area, there's a few, but on one issue specifically on fire, is that 25 million from the 305 million for stewardship of parklands. That's really been a game changer for counties like Sonoma, where we've had the Nuns Fire burn, just about 56,000 acres of coming through state parks land.

The Glass Fire, 67,000 acres in 2020 burning through state parks land. And what has greatly benefited those communities, whether it's Glen Ellen or the 6700 home development in Oakmont, has been the work that's happened in Jack London or Trione-Annadel to be able to create fire breaks, open up once grown over fire roads, and help make communities more fire safe. Again, I want to be very clear.

97% of what was proposed remains, but that has been a wonderful program and, candidly, has helped keep some of those communities on the front lines of the WUI safe. And just want to give you an opportunity to talk about that because I think that needs to be a priority for the Senate.

Absolutely. And we're really proud of all the work that State Parks and Fish and Wildlife have done with this funding. Them having direct funding to do this has resulted in, I think, over 50,000 acres on Fish and Wildlife land getting treated. A lot of that with grazing, which is really exciting. The Parks land. We've been seeing very fast action from State Parks as well. Across, I'll have to look up the number of park units, but across a vast majority, it's a large chunk of our parks that are getting that treatment, including Calaveras Big Trees.

Right. We were doing a lot of work on the giant sequoias, which I'm happy to talk about in more context later. I think it might be helpful to understand that this program that you're highlighting, where this cut is coming from, was actually a subprogram that was focused on defensible space and hardening of state structures in high fire risk areas.

So it would have gone to State Parks, Fish and Wildlife and Conservation Corps, and maybe a few CAL FIRE units, specifically to be able to get our structures into compliance with a new defensible space regulation that's coming up the horizon. A new sort of zone zero, sort of a defensible space zone that would have non-flammable, five foot ring around structures.

That regulation is not live yet, and so we didn't want to have funding to be able to get departments into compliance with a regulation that is not fully developed yet. And so we thought that funding could move to something more productive rather than have it sit. And then in the meantime, our operation and maintenance continues to do the high standard of defensible space around those structures.

Ms. Morse, I wanted to confirm, because that was not clear in the budget. So you're saying this 25 million is not for anything in regards to wildfire mitigation. It's strictly for the issues that you just addressed?

Exactly. It was designed to be able to help us get quickly into compliance with a new zero to five foot defensible space zone. Because that new regulation hasn't come out yet. We think that we can actually meet that standard with normal operation and maintenance paces.

It'd be great funding if we could follow up with the Chair on this issue, if we can get some additional specifics, because that was not laid out, at least what we have in the budget. But please.

Just one clarification I wanted to make is the steward super state owned land aspect of the investments included really three different sort of pots of allocation, if you will. There was some specific to the State Parks that was 40 million, some specific to Department of Fish and Wildlife that was 60 million. And then there was some specific to it was a CNRA allocation, and the CNRA was going to administer sort of broadly across departments where there's defensible space type improvements made.

So your comments maybe led me to think of Parks, but I just want to make clear that the reductions here are not to the Parks and Fish and Wildlife specific pots. They're to the CNRA more general pot. So Parks and Department of Fish and Wildlife allocations for this purpose remain untouched.

Got it. No, I appreciate that clarification. I do want to acknowledge Director Quintero and Deputy Director McGuirk for their work. It's been a challenge. There's a lot of work to do in State Parks and do want to recognize both of them for their quick moving action, especially in some of the more fire prone communities. So thank you so much for the clarification.

Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I would just want to touch a little bit on the climate catalyst, because as Senator Becker kind of maybe uses a springboard. But I want to talk about the forestry side of CAL FIRE. And obviously, fuel breaks and fuel reduction projects are critical to making sure that we can get the job done.

But the big challenge is, and I know that Morse has worked in some of this area, we have a little micro mill up in Plumas, but it's a micro mill. At the end of the day, we have to figure out a way to really do something with this mass amount of biomass. My office is filled every week with somebody coming in with a biofuels project or a send gas or you name. There's all kinds of people trying to figure out what we do.

We have no infrastructure. At the end of the day. Why we have to add money to the budget to transport fuels is because the facilities are very spread out and a long ways from other projects that we need to do. And there's a mass amount of biomass that has to be dealt with. And those of us who've been here for quite a while have been working on trying to keep the plants that we have that may not be perfect.

They're 97% efficient, but they're still burning biomass to make electricity in the process of steam. And there's a whole environmental justice folks that don't like those plants. We've lost a lot of those plants in the valley for AG. But this budget, as you proposed, is 97% of what we had at 100%, and that's better than what we had.

And so what is your thoughts on looking out for the mass amount of work that we have to do to find these other technologies, or to be able to find the infrastructure available to deal with the biomass issue that we're constantly faced? The added value that we need to actually make these projects. So we can go from $5,000 an acre to $1,000 an acre in treatment cost, because there's some value to the products that we're taking out of there. What do you see for that?

Where in the climate callous. I know we're trying to do R and D, and the Federal Government's put hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, Red Rock is a plant that was supposed to make Diesel, which is 40-50 miles from my home, and it's sitting there not running because it just doesn't work. So can you just touch on that a minute? I know we talk about fire and we talk about firefighters, but Cal Fire is forestry as well. And I think there needs to be the nexus and let our people know that the challenge is that we just don't have the infrastructure to take care of it. And what you think the future looks like in that area?

Absolutely. It's a great question, and it's one of the things that we're really working on. And I think you've highlighted a really key point of it, Senator Dahle, where there is the technology and the infrastructure we have now to deal with the slash piles and the volume of woody biomass that we have in the forest now, and then there is where we would like it to be and the technology and the investments we want to see in the future.

And we try not to think of those as a trade off because there's a lot of pressure to only invest in the future without sort of dealing with the current crisis of slash piles the size of strip malls in these forests and having to put whole fire engines on them during a firefight. And so there's a few investments that we've made, and we're seeing varying success. Right.

It's a lot harder to get immediate and direct success with economic injections as opposed to going out and just doing a treatment of the forest. And so there's a lot of areas we can see very marked progress in terms of our treated acres and the results we're seeing in terms of trees staying alive. And then there's how do we jumpstart an entire economy that has been languishing for a long time?

And so our approach has been to be able to put in key investments in areas that will help jumpstart the economy rather than try to own the economy. And so a couple of things that we've been doing. So you have a program like the Climate Catalyst Fund, which is designed to bring capital into this space. It's a nascent industry. You need capital plus equity.

And so we also have two programs, one through CAL FIRE, the workforce development and business development program does small business loans to be able to help people develop their business plans and to be able to get small grants to bring some of that equity to the table. We also have, through the Department of Conservation, a $50 million grant program that is doing grants for innovative carbon negative next generation technology.

So that would bring equity to the table for the next generation technology that needs to come into play. A lot of our grants, such as the micromill you mentioned in Plumas with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, those are coming through just normal forest health grants and coming in through sort of community collaborative and investments that we're making that help really grow that rural economy to be able to bring in sort of that small scale mill infrastructure, but we need it to be bigger.

That's, again, where the climate catalyst fund comes in, where it can get those Low interest loans that traditional banks aren't willing to do because rural banks have mostly evaporated. Other areas such as that funding to be able to transport the woody biomass, that's really critical in helping us solve the now problem of where are the most critical slash piles? Can we move them out? Most of our projects that we're funding now now do incorporate removal of the slash as a key component of it.

But the Forest Service had estimated a few years ago that there were 400,000 giant slash piles in the Tahoe basin alone. And anyone driving through and living in the forest sees these throughout the state. And so being able to sort of target and subsidize some of those most critical ones and just get them out is really crucial for us as well. And then one of the areas that we're working on also that's in this budget is with the Office of Planning and Research.

They've been doing community collaboratives. These establishing joint powers authority in five areas of the state that would focus specifically on aggregating woody feedstock. One of the challenges we have is that we're trying to get folks to start up large infrastructure, whether it's a mass timber facility that replaces steel and concrete in construction or something that's next generation innovative, such as let's convert this to jet fuel. Right. There's a company that does that.

And so they're hesitant to come into California because they can't get those 10, 20 year supply agreements that they need because so much of these programs are on small 50 acre plots. And that 50 acre plot isn't going to be able to give you a 10 year supply agreement or two year grants. So the legislature gave us a seven year life cycle on these dollars. When you guys expanded the appropriation timeline on the dollars, that really helped.

We went from two years to seven years, which means that when we give out these larger landscape scale grants, I think Sierra Nevada Conservancy is doing some really big innovation with this, as well as I think we did in the North Coast Partnership $10 million block grant up there. It allows us to be able to give out a supply agreement that is a seven year commitment as well as a workforce agreement for those grantees for seven years. Right. You're creating a stabilizing influence.

And so what OPR is doing is building these feedstock aggregators where they would essentially create regional feedstock brokers that go and collect the smaller feedstock commitments and then can sell and guarantee that 10 year supply agreement to the companies that Mr. Adler is promoting through the Climate Catalyst Fund.

So our goal is to be able to create stability and predictability in the market, to create more access to equity, more access to capital, and try to urgently solve the problem that we have in front of us now. And it's not a guaranteed success. That's the challenge in this space is that you're operating with a lot of unknowns and uncertainty and doing a lot of listening to get there.

Well, I spent my whole life it seems like working on biomass clearback from Quincy Library Group, which was a project to deal with fire 30 years ago. Diane Feinstein and Wally Herger, Republican, Democrat, authored legislation to work on the federal force. And I lobbied that bill in Washington. I want to just say, I know that the administration has, I think, an opportunity to work with the Federal Government because what you're explaining is what I hear every day from is a continued supply of feedstock.

So we do a fuel break in this area and we do one over here, but really to take a watershed, which is something I know the conservancies are looking at. Sierra Conservancy, try to take a watershed. Paul Mason was in my office yesterday talking about water. And we do all of us who live in the forest understand we need to take a watershed approach and say, okay, we're going to treat this watershed and that would give us a supply, a 20 year supply.

Then you can get the investor to invest because they know they have a supply of the material. We can make a lot of things out of that biomass and we can utilize it. We actually make turn of profit and do biofuels and things that will help the environment. But there has to be a long term approach to making sure that the investor is going to make a return on their investment. And that's where I think would be key.

If the administration can work with the Federal Government. I know there's many, the rural counties have an MOU with the Forest service to be able to do some of the NEPA projects, which is exciting to see those things happen. But to be able to give that security to those investors, that they're going to actually make sure they have a fuel supply that comes in so they can make the products that we all need and use. So just encourage that. I know it is hard.

If it was easy, it would be done a long time ago, but it's very difficult to get all those things lined up at the same time. But we still are focusing on those because it's hard. And once we figure that out, the landscape will really change and we will really reduce carbon and we'll do great things in the forest.

If I could just one additional point. On top of Ms. Morse's comments about what we're seeing as beneficial forces in the market right now, integrating with these grant programs and the OPR aggregation work is essential. Those are public interest challenges that the private markets won't take on their own. But as we address them, you see more and more equity coming in to support technology because they see the market taking shape.

But the critical thing is a large and reliable end market into which these biomass derived products can be sold. Frankly, it's the electricity market that is anchoring a lot of the successful projects that we're starting to see coming through. Is that the best long term approach? It's beneficial power. It's firm and baseloaded and can be carbon negative if handled appropriately.

But other demand signals that are sort of policy induced, be it in renewable natural gas, hydrogen biofuels, not just the notional existence of that market, but somebody making a commitment from a utility or some other actor to anchor that demand, then it becomes much easier to mobilize the really kind of risk averse scale capital that we need alongside our risk dollars that we can put to work.

Well, thank you. I do think that's a very important discussion and glad we got to have that here today. With that, the staff recommendation on this is a hold open, so we will do that and move on to the next issue and the next department. Thank you all. So we now move going to Department of Parks and Recreation.

Great. We'll start out with the Department overview and Director Quintera, nice to have you here. Nice to see you. Please go ahead when ready.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, chair and Senators. It's really a pleasure to be be here with all of you today. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. My name is Armando Quintero and I'm the Director of the California State Parks. The California State Park system represents extraordinary examples of the state's diverse habitats and landscapes, historical sites, cultural resources, recreation, and frankly, all of the people who we serve. It's really an incredible system. The largest state park system in the United States.

We have at peak season almost 6000 employees. And during COVID one of the things that we saw is these public lands became essential landscapes for the public. They really became a refugia for people, for their social health, for their mental health and for their physical health. So we take our job extremely seriously and look around us now to the impacts that are affecting us all and how do we as state parks professionals care for these places so that they're healthy well into the future?

The governor's proposed budget continues to implement California State park programs and policies that are reflective of the foundational elements of access, inclusivity, equity and natural and resources management. We are committed to advancing outdoors for all through enabling safe, equitable and enjoyable access to parks, open spaces, natural resources and the recreational amenities for all of Californians. Providing high quality parks and open space accessible to all California communities is essential and it improves our health, strengthens connections.

As I've mentioned, it improves our lives and outcomes in meeting our promise of a California for all. This includes establishing new outdoor spaces where there are none or too few, helping California access these, Californians, access these places and fostering a sense of belonging for all Californians. I'll pause for just a moment and as the chair knows, I used to work at UC Merced. Adjacent to UC Merced, there's a 16,000 acre complex of vernal pools, which are one of the rarest landscapes in California.

Once a year there's a camp out out there of researchers and I invited one of the fundraisers, along with the chair of one of the departments to go spend the weekend there. And the young fundraiser's name was Hannah. She was born and raised in Merced, went to UC Berkeley and then came back to Merced to raise money for that campus.

The second morning that we were there, having explored this incredible place just minutes away from campus, Hannah was walking up toward me as I was talking with the chair of the Department. And she was crying. And I said, are you okay? And she said the most stunning thing, and I think about Californians because of her comment. She said, I didn't know I lived here.

And I think that that is one of the primary services that state parks can deliver to California, is letting them know that this is their home, this is where they live. And knowing how these places work, certainly, as Senator Dahle is well aware, makes a huge difference in terms of how our citizenry respects and cares for all of California. Excuse me, I don't know why I'm just gunked up here.

So one of the things that I wanted to mention is that we are about to release a new strategic vision for California State Parks. And this strategic plan is called the Path Forward. It aligns with Governor Gavin Newsom's equity Executive order N-16-22, 30 by 30 and outdoors for all initiatives and builds upon the existing priorities established through the parks transformation process, which was completed several years ago. And we are introducing new ideas, goals and objectives for the next five years and into the future.

And I'm actually pleased to mention that when we announce this strategic plan, what you will see is we are already well underway in accomplishing the objectives of that plan. Department staff from all levels developed a plan with input from our partners rather than doing this with a top down approach. The plan creates an actionable implementation strategy that is led by a committee made up of key leaders representing all program areas, and we also have park partners and others that have participated with us in this effort.

The implementation strategy will include interdisciplinary teams to carry out and manage projects tied to the goals and the objectives of the plan. The plan is in the final review and as I mentioned, it will be released within the coming months. One of our priorities certainly is increasing access and relevance, and we are implementing a number of programs established over the last few years to increase access to state parks through various means, and I'm going to highlight just a few of them.

And I know that many of you are already familiar for some of these, but for the benefit of the audiences, I'd like to mention these. The Golden Bear Pass, which is a pass that is available to recipients of Department of Social Services support, is something that they have always been able to get for free just by applying for it. What we know is that it was a cumbersome process and along the lines of cutting the green tape, what we did is we smoothed that out.

And in working with Department of Social Services, we put an announcement in the letter that went out to all of the recipients this year. And all they had to do was go online, register and get one of these passes sent to them. To date, more than 38,000 Californians have received these golden bear passes, and that is compared to an annual average of about 1500 to 2000. So here are these families and community members in real need, and now they have access to these places.

Another pass that we put in place, which I'm extremely proud of, along with the team at state parks, is the library pass. And it's a first of a kind partnership with state parks and the state libraries. And with your support, we have distributed 28,000 free passes, which are actually a hang tag that you put on your mirror that the public can go check out at their local libraries. And these passes are available at all of the state libraries as well as tribal libraries.

And we're about to distribute 5000 more passes because this has become the most popular item checked out of state libraries. And it's sort of no surprise. I was talking to one of your fellow legislators recently, and he was telling me that his dad was the county librarian where he lived. And as I was telling him about this, he said, you know, when I was a kid, we could check out music and we could check out art. And I said, well, now you can check out parks.

And one of the things that I really love about this library pass is it takes libraries and it moves the customers to the living libraries of the state. And that actually makes me think about parks as really the places where our fellow citizens can get educated on the real critical issues that we're facing as a state. Understanding issues of wildfire and things like wildland, urban interface issues, as well as understanding critical issues around things that we are completely reliant on, like water.

And how does that work? That's a mystery for so many people. And so parks I really think of as being a place where people can come for hands on first person discovery. So one of the things about these passes is we are collecting data from the users, and 40% of the library patrons who've checked these out have reported annual incomes of $60,000 or less.

So we see that as really hitting the target audiences in the public of people who we were thinking had not gone to parks for a variety of reasons. And there were about 20% of the recipients or the respondents who did not respond to the surveys. But most of the users reported that they had previously not gone to state parks or might have gone to one or two. After taking these passes out, now they're talking about wanting to visit state parks, maybe seven times a year.

We're also providing information on the park passes, which is a QR code where you can get additional information on parks and also on the park pass programs. And it's my belief that those families that realize they can afford an annual pass are buying those annual passes. So my hope is that more users of these passes are really the people in need. But we're continuing to collect data on the users, and we're also seeing some other unexpected but not surprising impacts.

And one of them is that librarians are reporting that they're getting more kids and families coming to libraries, and librarians are actually setting up sections in their libraries where you can have materials there about the parks where you're going to go, which is really great. And in speaking with a state librarian, David is absolutely thrilled about this, as are we. To date, rather, I already mentioned that 28,000 passes have gone out, and then finally this last year started something called the Adventure Pass, which is designed for fourth graders. And fourth graders just have to go online, they can register for this, and they immediately get a pass, and it allows them to take their families to 19 selected state parks, where there are education programs and activities designed specifically for families.

And fourth grade is sort of a sweet spot. It's where our kids really want to hang out with us as parents and fourth graders are ready to tell you what to do. And so taking you to a park is actually a pretty cool opportunity to provide the fourth graders in the state. To date, we only have about two or 12,000 of those passes out, and we know there are many more students out there in fourth grade than 12,000.

So it's our expectation that through working with libraries, with schools, with school superintendents, and with legislators, we can get the word out and get more of these kids being the leaders in their family. And by the way, I have to say, I have two daughters who are now 27 and 29. And it is literally their reactions to things that I was doing that have often guided where I ended up investing my time. And I honestly believe that I'm here in part because of those two kids.

So one of the things that we're also doing as a priority is partnering with tribal governments. And I'll just say, as an aside, we are also partnering with other park partners, like Parks California, which was actually created by statute, and they are a powerful park partner. And we have park partners across state parks.

We actually have operators of parks, like the folks who operate Jack London State park and the group that operates the Santa Barbara Presidio and we are building our partnerships office and continue to find these partnerships to be an excellent way to be efficient about how we deliver programs across the state. And it's great to have partnerships like this. But with tribes, one of the things that we are doing is actually building upon years of collaborative work with these tribes.

And in the last two and a half years, as I have worked with tribes, even though I've worked with tribal members for many years in my career with public land, it's sort of shocking. And I'll just give you a little bit of a context here. For the tribes anywhere but in California, oftentimes, the places that are now parks or public lands are literally the places of the birth of their people. Their ceremonies, their traditions are all based in these places.

And by working with tribes, we are now developing MOUs, which do things like allow tribal members entry into the park without having to pay a fee. It allows them access to their ceremonial sites where they have gathered since time immemorial. And for some time, in some cases, tribes have now had to pay permit fees, pay overtime, do CEQA, and all of that. And we are removing that. We are doing it tribe by tribe, because tribes are all very different.

And one of the things that I'm very interested in is making sure that we develop an administrative record with tribal leadership, as well as an administrative record for our park leadership, so that we stay consistent going forward. And a couple of things there. One of them is that not only do we do things like allow or invite tribes to enter and not pay fees, but they also co manage the parks with us. They bring their knowledge of how to manage the landscape.

So they're out there helping us work on forest resiliency. The tribes up in the Yurok area are going to be working with the restoration involved with the taking down of the Klamath dams. And they also are invited to and allowed to cultivate traditional plant materials. And so not only cultivate, but also harvest those plant materials. And, of course, their traditional practices are really something that is wonderful. And now, depending on the tribe, available for the public to experience.

Up in the northern territories, in the redwood state park, we worked with the Yurok this last year or the last couple years to take a building that had been leased for different uses, but not visitor uses necessarily. And we worked with the Yurok tribe to have that designed as a visitor center, which they designed. They put together the exhibits. We did that with them. And now at that visitor center, we only hire Yurok people to tell the Uroc story.

It's the first time that's happened in the state. And it's one of those things that just makes so much sense and they are living cultures. And then here's another story. But I think it really anchors the rationale and the value of these sorts of partnerships. The Chief Operating Officer for the Yurok tribe was entering one of the park units where there was a fee and her seven year old daughter was sitting in the backseat. And she said, mom, can I tell him we're Yurok? And she said, of course. And she leaned behind her, know, behind the car seat and looked at the Ranger and said, we're Yurok. And he welcomed them into the park. And this seven year old said to her mother, mom, they see me. It's what we do.

And through these tribal collaborations, we have now got agreements with the Koi nation, the Kashaya Pomo, the Yurok, most recently the Washoe, all around the Tahoe basin, there's 13 state parks that they are comanaging with us now, and it's just really extraordinary. And so what we know is going to come from this is we're going to see the reintroduction of species, expanded habitat, the application of traditional ecological knowledge with our natural resources managers and our cultural resources managers.

And they are also bringing their prescription fire techniques to these parks that are all regionally different. I know you've been talking a lot about fire, and as some of you were saying, folks from another state don't know how fire behaves here, but certainly the people who have all of their ancestors, having dealt with that, can bring that now to the table in these parks. State parks manages over 1.6 million acres across 280 units, and more than 70% of that land is classified as state parks.

And the purpose of these lands, of course, is to preserve these outstanding natural, scenic and cultural values, along with native, aquatic and terrestrial flora and fauna. We also manage over 340 miles of California's coastline, which has been heavily impacted by. Actually, I have to say, it's the combination of all the climate change events that we've seen in the last three years. And I'll just very quickly say the fires of just a few years ago destroyed swaths of forests.

Many of these forests were right along these major rivers in California. And then we got hit with drought, we got hit with heat events, and that weakened additional percentages of that forest. And then when these big storms arrived with landslides and other things that happened, much of that burned material and in some cases mature giant trees got dropped into those rivers, pushed out into the ocean, and the timing of these atmospheric rivers coincided with the king tides, the highest tides of the year.

I live in Marin County, and I was looking at the wave height buoys just outside San Francisco, and when those storms were hitting California with the extraordinary energy that they brought, and now the ocean filled with all these incredible battering ramps, wave heights were between 30 and 50ft, just a few miles outside San Francisco. So that was what brought the level of damage that we saw in the central coast.

And I want to just mention that it was just a few years ago that our natural resources team developed a sea level rise adaptation strategy, which provides a framework of how to deal with sea level rise impacts. And rather than going down into detail of how we're going to do this, they put together 10 principles of how do we approach the problems here and how do we think about them, which I actually think is a really smart way to look at other aspects of the challenges that we face in state parks.

Let's really think about the overall strategy, because geographically, in California, each region is going to have unique challenges that we really have to bring the best wisdom in the room to be able to solve. The state parks, as you know, works to restore ecosystem health across the system. And actually, I'll stop here for just a second and say, as you were talking about watershed management being really the way to think about the places where we operate, I have a quote underneath my computer screen at home, and it's from Wendell Berry, and it says, treat those downstream, no, do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

And actually, Senator Mcguire knows that I live in Marin county and I was on the Marine Municipal Waterboard for a number of years and helped create something called One Tam. And One Tam is an agreement among four agencies that manage Mount Tam. And since 2014, those agencies have cooperated in their creating problem statements and priorities. And the advancements that they have made as a group of four, federal, state, water utility and a county agency have made, I think, great strides on the mountain. And I do think that we have to think about parks that way. Stop there.

Excellent. I think that is a terrific overview. Really appreciate it. We do have two issue items. We'll see if my colleagues have any general questions before we get to those items. Senator McGuire.

I'll be very quick. First and foremost, Mr. Director. I want to say thank you to your team. Your team, along with yourself, face some pretty hairy challenges. And what I am grateful for your team and do not see this throughout every Department, if I could be candid, is that you try to problem solve and you try to get to yes. And it means the world to us when there are challenges in local communities, that you approach it with an open mind and an open heart. And what I really appreciate about your leadership, and with all due respect to previous, is that this is personal for you. This is not just about the bottom line. And what has driven me crazy about state parks is that it's been bottom line driven. And parks should never be like that.

This should be the most popular Department in the State of California. And I just wanted to take a moment to recognize you along with Ms. McGurk, who is one of the most patient individuals in the world, dealing with so much crap that I could be honest.

But truly, it is so refreshing to have you here talking about how we're expanding access to some of the most vulnerable residents, along with hooking kids early to parks, because that's going to be the true test to our success, is how early we can get kids, especially from underserved communities, into parks long term. And you're making it relevant for as many Californians as possible. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

Thank you, Senator Dahle.

I just got a chance to meet you. Thanks for doing the zoom with me. Same, along the same lines. I look forward to being a partner, I should say. As somebody who is a northern, I live 70 miles from Oregon border. So these guys from Los Angeles and the Bay Area and San Diego really don't realize the vastness of California. And my goal has been to educate.

And I think that's the key here, is that when we can get to the inner city, disadvantaged communities of color out to the parks and they can realize what an awesome state we have, I think we're going to grow that knowledge. They're going to understand why does the Sierras matter to somebody in San Diego? Because it's your water source and the environment and all those things. So I want to just say thank you for that.

I look forward to sharing some of the information that you've provided out with my constituents. But I wanted to touch base because Senator McGuire and I happened to be around here just maybe a long time and was here when the days of $50 million of deferred maintenance. And it's actually higher than that. I want to touch on that a minute because I got my packet after we had our conversation.

So I don't want to blindside you with this because I would have asked you it then, but deferred maintenance has been something that we all know in the parks area has been lacking. And we addressed that in this Budget Committee in the past. We put money, one time monies, to try to take care of some of that deferred maintenance. Can you touch on that? Or the LAO, whoever wants to touch on it, because it's something that we're heading into some tough times.

And those deferred maintenance projects were deferred for the last 25 years. And here we are now and we're seeing more people use. Get out. If one thing Covid taught us was people do not like to be cooped up, I will tell you, people didn't listen to the stay at home orders. They came to my district and droves, and there was their campers and our parks were full, even when they weren't supposed to be there, they didn't care.

And they would park alongside my freeways or highways and camp because they were just getting out. So can you talk about the deferred maintenance and maybe the LAO? I went through the packet and it's showing that we're pushing that off some and talk about maybe some of the funds that were allocated before, if you could.

Sure. I think we got 180 million, 185, and it's recommended at 31 million or so be taken out. Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm right. And by the way, this is Brian Dewey, and he handles a lot of the work in terms of our issues, like deferred maintenance and helping to put together the list of priorities on potential new parks and all of that.

And I just want to say that one of the things that Brian and his shop does is they create a prioritized list that's continually shifting depending on what's going on, because a project that's down at number 20 may for some reason pop up to the top. And part of what Brian and his team do is they keep about a $200 million set of projects ready to go, understanding that funding is not always readily available. And when it does, sometimes it's a bit of a surprise.

And right now, and I'm going to go to you to fill in the cracks here, but the funding that we are retaining, we've already got it going to work and we think that the amount that has been taken out is something that we hope to get back, but we've got plenty of work to do right now. Of course, being able to get the additional funding would be great, but we also understand the budget pressures on the state. And, Brian, do you want to say anything else to that?

Afternoon, Brian Dewey, State Parks. Thank you, Armando. So to follow up, what Armando just said is there was 185 that was appropriated to state parks. The vast majority of that 154,000,000, I believe, has been retained for some very high priority projects. Following what the Department of Finance had said earlier, is they were looking at in this budget solution package is funding that had not been committed.

And we had a number of projects that have had challenges with the permitting and the process in mill to get the projects out to bid and constructed. And we just felt that there's a certain number of projects that weren't going to be able to go out to construction in time to encumber that money by the time that funding would expire. And so instead, we are taking those projects and we are going to continue the design, the permitting, and make sure they are ready to go. And then when additional funding becomes available in the future, those projects will be the first candidates for that new funding.

So just as somebody who has been elected now 26 years, and there's park bond money, there's a lot of money for acquisition because there's a lot of things we want to protect, but there's very little budgeting for maintenance. I have Bernie Falls. I drive by it on my way home all the time. But, ADA, access to the falls is pretty rugged. Right. And those are the things that never get put in the budgets mean the upgrades that need to happen. So I'm conscious of that. And we had windfall here for the past 10 years, and we prioritize those. I just want to make sure that what's in the pipeline gets done, because there's plenty of opportunity to add more parks. There's always opportunities to add more parks. Those are acquisitions that cost money as well. But maintenance is not budgeted ongoing.

There's not a bond set up to take care of the revenue that you need to manage those parks. And that's been something that I think the constituency have been critical of as well. It's like, why are we buying more or preserving more when we can't take care of what we have?

I'll say something that's not an excuse, but it's a fact, and that is that the first state parks were set aside in the 1920s, and at about 80 years, infrastructure starts to fall apart. And we are meeting that confluence right now. And I have to tell you that it is my privilege to work with the folks who work in state parks. You were right, Senator McGuire. I mean, it is a team that works with heart.

So we're facing some big challenges, and we actually do look for other funding for example, every year we get funding for water projects. We actually use some of that to hit the problems that we think are going to be a real concern. So we do look for other alternatives of funding when it comes to deferred maintenance. But if you want to say something else along those lines, that the ADA. There's funding for ADA.

Thank you, Armando. Wanted to point out that the Governor's Budget does include $23.2 million General Fund one time to complete additional ADA projects throughout the state. And so some of that money would go towards those Tucker consent Decree projects and move those along faster.

If I might. Senator, I think your points are definitely spot on. I mean, this is an issue that's very significant for parks. They've been struggling with maintaining their facilities for a number of years. I think their backlog is over $1.0 billion. So it's very significant. We thought it was very appropriate when the state had significant surpluses over the last few years to dedicate one time funds to this area for this exact reason. Right.

This is an area that's not necessarily the highest profile. There isn't always a ribbon cutting, but it's so important to making sure that our parks work well for folks and stay useful. So we do think in General, it's very important. We think the ADA issues are also important. And there is this trade off. Right. And we're going to talk about this, I think the next issue. Right. We're going to be talking about for Dos Rios and providing funding for a new park.

So there is really this trade off sometimes. And so the state really has to grapple with that. Recognizing that we didn't raise specific concerns with this just because we provided big augmentations. This is a pretty modest reduction. Obviously, this is an area where there is significant need. So to the extent that the budget condition improves, we think that this is the kind of area that would make sense potentially to look at in the future.

But it is an area that I think we have to think about not just providing this one time funding for maintenance, but I think our office has argued over the years that we really need to have a program where we're funding maintenance on an ongoing basis sufficient that we don't have $1.0 billion backlogs built up, because that's really kind of a huge number, and it does represent a lot of need at the parks.

Great. Well, thank you. Let's move forward. I do appreciate that issue was certainly on my list as well, to discuss. I'll just pile on for a moment. My thanks to you, Mr. Victor. We have known each other a long time, and I do appreciate your commitment. And this is one other example I know, being involved with Merced as we discussed the Yosemite leadership program as an example, and hearing kids similarly with tears in our eyes, talking about kids who had really never been out of the inner city that come in through the program and ended up going to a career in the parks service here in California, it's really quite extraordinary. So with that, let's move on. We do have two items, and we talked about the new park, so why don't we hit that one, I believe. Presenting. Brian, do we be presenting?

I'll present on that.

Okay, you want to present. That's right.

So the Governor's Budget proposes 5.8 million ont-time general funds and 3.3 million ongoing to establish and open Dos Rios Ranch as a new state park for day use operations and to create recreational opportunities and park access to the historically underserved communities in the Central Valley. There are some attributes about this project which I really believe are forward looking for all of us and critically important.

Not only does this park unit, proposed park unit provide park access in the Central Valley, which is a strategic part of state parks, in fact, if you look at a map of California and look at where all the parks, I have a big map in my office, and I've got pins in every park that I've been to.

There is a giant vacant oval when it comes to state parks, and it is the San Joaquin Valley, and there are big communities there, and there are big issues there, but there's also extraordinary opportunities. Dos Rios Ranch is about a 2500 acre area that for the last 20 years or 10 years, has been being managed by a nonprofit group called the River Partners. And they've actually gotten state funding to go in and do restoration of that 2500 acre property.

I think it's $20 million have gone in through various state funds to support river partners work there. And it really is a leading example of what I think is possible in the valley, because one of the things that they did is they actually restored an area which formerly was floodplain, but was taken out of floodplain operation for agriculture.

And one of the things that this park will do, and I'll just get right to the chase of it, it's 20 minutes away from the poorest neighborhoods of Modesto. There are two rivers there which offer, certainly recreational and fishing opportunities. The now restored footprint is going to be turning into a central valley forested area which will offer heat refugia and heat events for these low income communities. But perhaps most importantly, we actually, with this property, are reconnecting 1500 acres of floodplain to the aquifer.

So in these recent storm events, I went down there with Secretary Crowfoot recently, and we went there when it was flooded. There's another 1500 acres of land where there's water sinking down into the ground. And so I think that when I think about parks, I think about them as really needing to utilize them, not only for recreation, but connecting them back into the landscape as functional landscapes on which we really depend.

And the other thing is that the partners that are available at Dos Rios are pretty amazing. We're continuing our conversations with river partners to work with us in the ongoing management and treatments there. And there are already, when I was there with Secretary Crowfoot several weeks ago, there was a small group there, and it's a nonprofit group called Camp Taylor.

And it's a nonprofit that was created a number of years ago to provide recreational opportunities for children and adults with congenital heart disease because they can't go to altitude. So they have figured all these recreational activities that they can do in the valley. And when they showed up to walk the park with us, they brought with them a trailer, because one of their primary programs is kayaking.

And when I met this team, I said, you need to be in the room with us when we're doing the planning here, because your experience of what the valley needs and can offer for recreational opportunities will inform much more than their own constituents. It is an amazing place, and I will also really hope that Dos Rios can be a model for what I think we need in more areas in the Central Valley, so that we have not only these functional landscapes that offer recreation and heat refugia, but literally as places that can be classrooms for the citizens of the state to understand what our opportunities are when it comes to water.

Well, thank you. We're going to try to move forward because we're Senate calendars for a few votes we want to try to get to, but I'll give Toronto Finance and LAO a chance to comment on this.

Mike McGinnis, Department of Finance. Nothing to add at this time, but available for any questions.

So we didn't have any specific concerns. We do highlight that again, this is their trade off. Right. Maintenance and ADA and all of that versus starting a new park, but no specific concerns beyond that.

Well, thank you. I did have a question about partners. You mentioned some of the others you want to mention who will help if there's no additional funding?

Parks California, which is they were created by statute. And one of the things that they've done with us in other parks like Big Basin is they've actually hired the expertise that can help us advance the work that we're doing there. And there's a couple of things that are happening there.

The Unity Care group is for current and former foster youth from Northern California to participate in coastal outings. So you can kind of get the sense of the types of projects we select. There's a number of other grantees.

So they have a scientist, for example, that's working with us at Big Basin. As that scientist works side by side with us in developing the plans for Big Basin. What we're actually doing is training a new employee for Strait parks. And so Parks California and the California State Parks foundation are all out doing fundraising and doing programmatic support planning with us to see where the highest value can be placed.

And again, I think that as we develop this park, I think it ends up also being an opportunity to partner with, Usimmer said, with things like the Yosemite leadership program. And actually this last week ago Saturday, I spoke to 200 of Josh Friday's kids there with the College Corps, and I talked to them about the resources agency as a place to think about for their work experience. So I think that there are many more partners to bring forward with this.

And also I have met with a number of philanthropic organizations that are working with Parks California, and this is one of the places that I want to bring their attention to because it has so many returns in terms of investment. And I will mention that Parks California recently was given a very significant gift by a major donor targeted toward climate change impacts.

Yeah. Excellent. Well, it's good to know about some of those additional partners and resources and people who want to help make this happen. With that, the staff requisition is hold open on this item. So we will move to the last issue, which is on the proposed budget solutions. And I think, Mr. McGinnis, you're going to lead us off.

Yes. Mike McGinnis, Department of Finance. I'll try to keep this brief. In light of the previous comments, the proposed budget is a reflection of the administration's commitment to access.

Recent fiscal years have left us in a circumstance in which we are able to propose significant investments in access, including funding for new pilot programs such as the library partnership program referenced earlier historic investments in continuing programs such as the statewide park program, which received General Fund for the first time in the history of the program, and significant investments in the park system itself in the form of deferred maintenance and capital outlay projects.

In light of the projected 22 and a half billion deficit in the General Fund, the administration is proposing reductions to some of these programs. However, these reductions will protect over 79%, that is, more than 1.2 of the 1.5 billion proposed for these programs.

And in identifying reductions, the administration has prioritized protecting the majority of the funding set aside for these programs, as well as prioritizing investments in disadvantaged communities. For additional information on the specific programs, I'll turn it over to Gustavo.

Good afternoon, Members of the Committee. My name is Gustavo Medrano, Department of Finance. So I'll just briefly go over all the programs that will be receiving reductions in this given fiscal year. It could be found on page 49 of your agenda. So starting off with the statewide parks program, we're having a reduction of 150 million.

This maintains 230 million, which is 60% of the funding for the Indian Heritage center. We have a total reduction of 95 million for the recreational Trails Greenway program, a total of 35 million will be reduced for deferred maintenance for parks reduction of 31 million.

This maintains at least 78% of what we've invested in deferred maintenance. For the museum grant program, a reduction of 29 million, it maintains 21 million, which is 42% of the funding for that. And we also reduced for future parks cap outlay programs a reduction of 15 million, maintaining 35 million, which is 70% of what we've invested in cap outlay in the past.

I'd like to ask Chief Deputy Director Liz McGurk to come join me for this.

Okay, great. Comments

Helen Gerstein again. So in general, we think the reductions that are proposed are largely reasonable. Again, there are many programs that serve worthy purposes, but given the scope of the budget problem, likely we need to look at some of them.

There are a couple of things that we suggest that the legislature could consider as additional reductions should it need some. One is the cultural art installation program. That's something that was funded in the current year. We think that's a potential candidate.

It would fund temporary and permanent art installations in state and local parks, but most of the funding hasn't gone out yet, so that's one we think could be a potential area for reduction. We also know that there are a few programs that are slated to get funding in the budget year and out years so that the money hasn't yet gone out for those augmentations. It was sort of scheduled, but it hasn't actually gone out yet.

And we think those are other potential areas that the legislature could consider because it's generally less disruptive to take funding in those areas than programs that are already kind of in the process of administering it. So some examples of those are outdoor equity statewide parks program, and there's some funding slated for the Redondo Beach Park. So happy to answer any questions.

Okay, turn over to my colleagues. Any questions? I'll just have one on the Explore the Coast program. We heard a lot about that in our last hearing. I wonder if you can get a comment on the Explore the Coast program, the funding reduction and projects that might lose out and the funding demand for this could get.

I'm Amy Hutzel, executive officer at the State Coastal Conservancy. And great to be here. I could talk a little bit about the Explore the Coast program and what we've accomplished so far with the 14 million and then the proposed solution. So it is a grant program to provide really positive, meaningful coastal experiences for people in communities who face barriers to coastal access. And I think Director Quintero talked quite a bit about this.

So whether those are socioeconomic barriers or access for people with disabilities, cultural or language barriers, or simply distance in time. For example, people living in the Central Valley getting to the California coast. So we have, over the last 10 years with this program, funded about 300 grants to different nonprofits, tribes and community groups, and it served tens of thousands of people.

We have an advisory board, a really passionate, thoughtful group of people who help us develop the request for proposals and help us select the projects that we fund and some of the projects. So the 14 million one time funding that we received, we have encumbered all of that except for the 2.6 million proposed to be part of the budget solutions.

So with that portion of the 14 million to date, we have funded things like Project Avery, which provides children of incarcerated parents with trips to the Marin County shoreline for recreational and educational activities. Refuge Armona, which is youth from the community of Armona in the San Joaquin Valley to explore the Central California coast.

The Santa Inez Band of Chumash Indians is bringing Chumash youth to Catalina Island and the central coast, or not Catalina, the Channel Islands and the Central coast. To learn more about marine resources.

The Governor's budget does protect 825,000 for these grants that come from the Environmental License Plate Fund and the coastal access account. So over the last 10 years, that is how much we have received annually for this grant program, 825,000. And that's what we've been able to disperse annually.

The 14 million was one time in the 21-22 budget, and with the 14 million, we funded 123 projects. The grants range from 16,000 to 200,000. We had just put out a call for projects for the remaining 2.6 million. We did that in December.

Prior to the Governor's budget coming out, applications were due in February. We received 84 applications requesting $6.3 million. So, yeah, the average request in this round was 75,000 per project. So the 2.6 million could fund about 35 projects.

In addition, the 825,000 would support about 10 projects. So I think that responded to the questions that we got in advance. Thank you.

Well, thank you. Yeah, and I know in certainly my area, we're having a lot of coast that some of these projects were in those areas. And some of the fact, I think some of the callers from last time and talked about the significant impact. So I know it's a small amount of money proportional to the budget, but important project.

And thank you for telling us a little bit more about it here today, because it sounds like you had a lot of applications for that money and a lot won't get funded if this cut goes through. With that, I'll see if my colleagues have any other questions. The recommendation is hold open on this item.

And with that, that concludes our discussion item portion. Thank you, Director Quintero, and the whole team. Thank you all for joining us. And with that, we will move now to public comment.

And because we do need to get to votes today, I will have to, unfortunately, cut off public comment by about 1:35-1:40. So I just want to thank, again all the people who committed testimony. So ask people to limit their comments to 1 minute. And reminder, the participant number is 877-226-8163 access code 736-2834. I will again have to cut people off after one moment. We'll begin with witnesses here in room 2200. Go ahead.

Terry McHale from Aaron Reed and associates want to thank this committee. You've always walked the walk. Yes, we do need more firefighters. We need them because our firefighters are spending really onerous, long, terrible hours on the job. We just close with this. We're talking about prevention. If we treat 500,000 acres at a cost of about $3,000 an acre, and that's the beginning cost, that's $1.5 million. The new firefighters we hire would be working full time or part time on those tasks.

When they're not fighting fires, they would be able to streamline the job. We would save money, and we'd have a more effective fire Department. Thank you. And thank you, all of you, for standing up on the Capitol steps and speaking about the heroism of the firefighters. Very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Becker, members of the committee, Paul Mason with Pacific Forest Trust. I want to thank everyone involved for a really thoughtful hearing today. It was great. I want to speak briefly to the wildfire package. It's a small cut in the scheme of the grant. It's budget dust in the scheme of the overall budget, but it's disproportionately targeted to maximize the harm, in my opinion. By cutting monitoring, we make it harder to have accountability. By cutting defensible space, we make it harder to proactively protect homes from fire. And I'm hard pressed to think of a more pressing need than workforce development. So these are really frustrating.

And I very much appreciate Senator Becker's comments about having a catalyst Fund and then pulling it back just as people are coming forward is really problematic. So I would very much encourage us to not be nickel and diming these little things. Either Fund the entire package as it was proposed, which would help build confidence that the state is serious about continuing and expanding our investments, or else I'm frankly reduced from the grant programs where there might be a little bit less money, but we would still be able to be building workforce and be keeping track of what's going on. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Chair Becker and members Abigail Mighell, on behalf of the Sempervirens Fund, which operates in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, protecting coastal redwoods and connecting the public with the outdoors. I'm specifically here to talk about the proposed cuts to state parks deferred maintenance funding. There was 185,000,000 allocated to state parks back in 2021, and this proposed $31 million cut would be zeroing out what's left of that money.

And that small 185,000,000 was doing what it could to address a huge backlog of projects across the state at over 280 state parks. So we'd just like to emphasize the negative impacts that this cut would have on visitor experience on parks facilities, California boasts a world renowned park system, but it won't be if we let it deteriorate and let facilities not get the maintenance that they need. It seems like something that isn't always viewed as glamorous, but is extremely necessary. And we would really like to push back on that proposed cut. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Erica Romero here on behalf of Nature for All. We're an organization that works out of the LA area to ensure that folks, especially those in low income and disadvantaged communities, have equitable access to the outdoors. Here to push back a little on the LAO's comments around issue or item 58, which essentially is saying that the outdoor equity and statewide programs at parks is an appropriate place for cuts.

Just want to offer our perspective, and it's been the Legislature and the governor's priority to ensure that funding is equitable. And it's really focused on those communities. So we would, of course, ask you to reconsider that. Additionally, would like you to take a second look, if it's possible, to the state Conservancy Coastal Conservancy's explore the coast program, which the Governor suggests believe it's like a $2.6 million cut to these programs. These are critical for ensuring equitable access to the outdoors. And without this funding, there will be less opportunities for folks to be able to enjoy all of the beautiful, natural, open spaces that California houses. So we would appreciate having a second look at those. Thanks.

Thank you. We'll now turn to the phone moderator. If you please prompt individuals waiting to provide public comment, we will begin.

Thank you. If you wish to make a comment, please press one, then zero at this time. We'll first start with line 11. Please go ahead.

Sorry, we'll start with line nine. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Chair and members of the committee, this is Dallas Bloomer. On behalf of the Defenders of Wildlife and the California Native Plant Society in support of the climate permitting program at CSW. Also on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, California Native Plant Society, Mojave Desert Land Trust, Sonoma Land Trust, Audubon California, California Trout, Trout unlimited and the Nature Conservancy in support of the BCP to implement and report on the progress of the biodiversity and conservation priority actions with 30 x 30th Resources Agency. Also on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, California Plant Society, Mojave Desert Land Trust, Audubon California, California Trout, trout Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy in support of the continuation of the Cannabis Regulatory and Enforcement Program at CDFW. On behalf of California Trout in support of the Klamath Dam removal program at CDFW and appreciate Senator McGuire for raising that in the discussion earlier on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife in support of the wildlife connectivity at State highway system with CDFW, and finally on behalf of Sonoma Land Trust in support of the Sonoma open space operations at state parks. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Moderate how many calls in the queue?

Thank you. We have about four.

Okay, that's my next caller. Go ahead.

Line 13, please. Go ahead, line 13.

Yes, go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Becker and members. Jennifer Fearing on behalf of my client, the National Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy, and as a courtesy for the Wildlife Network, which helped organize a sign on letter that dozens of organizations and tribes signed onto to support issue 29, the BCP to Fund the Department of Fish and Wildlife and CalTrans to add new positions to implement last year's AB 2344. Requiring those entities to work together to establish an inventory of wildlife connectivity needs and perform assessments, identify potential wildlife connectivity barriers on our state highway system is very important.

And with the recent news of the agreement between the state and brightline to build and maintain three new wildlife crossings imminently along the new rail line and I-15, a new ambitious philanthropic effort to raise $500 million for wildlife crossings and the first bobcat using the new undercrossing on Highway 17, there is so much positive momentum behind California's efforts to improve safety for people and wildlife by protecting and enhancing wildlife connectivity across our highway system. Thank you so much for voting to approve this important proposal today.

Thank you very much.

Line 30, please. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, chair Becker and members. My name is Isabella Gonzalez Potter. I'm with the Nature Conservancy. I recognize that today we were really focusing in on CDFW and parks and CAL FIRE. But I do want to just take a quick moment to take a step back and think about the natural resources budget as a whole. The Nature Conservancy is really calling on the legislature to preserve critical funding in the budget to support climate resilience and biodiversity conservation.

The governor's January budget proposal makes significant cuts to natural resources and climate spending, cuts that are far greater than the proposed reductions to other areas of the budget. In total, the January budget proposes reducing multiyear investments in nature based climate solutions by more than $1.5 billion. Additionally, the governor's January budget proposal reduces General Fund expenditures to natural Resources Agency by 37%.

We ask that the legislature really works to protect some of these critical investments, and we recognize these will be top two in more depth incoming hearings. But we did really want to flag that, and we appreciate all of your consideration today. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Line 31, please. Go ahead.

Thank you. Elise Bondrick with Trenton Price consulting here representing climate plan. I'm sorry, the Climate Center. And on behalf of the climate center, we want to respectfully urge the Legislature to reject the deep cuts made to California's investments in natural and working lands. And this funding is an investment not only in the commitment to achieve carbon neutrality, but also its goals for adaptation, resiliency, and protecting air and water quality for its residents.

Furthermore, we know that the work we don't do now on our coastlines, agricultural lands, urban lands and other landscapes will result in far more costs than damages to our communities, environment and economy. Down the line, as pointed out by the LAO, the trigger restorations are highly unlikely to come to fruition due to all the economic projections pointed to even lower revenues. And so therefore, we're treating these as proposed cuts.

To that end, we strongly support the budget chain proposal submitted by CRNA to support the implementation of AB 1757, since this process is critical to laying out the framework of a much needed scaling up of the use of our natural and working lands as a major climate solution.

And lastly, climate plan wants to just reiterate it's looking forward to the discussions on the climate bond, as we can't really just rely on backfill for these important programs because the recent performance of environmental measures on the statewide ballot and the fact that if it's approved, we wouldn't be able to push these revenues out until 2025, which is far too late. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Line 23, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, chair and Senators. My name is Tiffany Yap from the Center for Biological Diversity. Thank you for advancing issue number 29, which is a budget proposal for critical funding that more than 90 conservation organizations support to help CDFW CalTrans implement AB 2344 the Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection act, to make roads safer for both wildlife and people. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Line 24, please go ahead.

Mr Chair and members Pat Moran with Aaron Reed and associates representing the California Association of Professional Scientists. We appreciate the committees moving forward with issues 24, the continuation of Cannabis Regulatory Enforcement Program issue 27, nutrient eradication issue 28, oil pollution response resources and issue 40, permitting compliance and Habitat management plan. And we urge the Committee's support of issue 52, the Climate Permitting support program. All of these are important programs and deserve continued funding. Thank you.

Thank you. Line 11, please. Go ahead.

Thank you. Chair Becker and members, this is Sharon Sand with the Trust for Public Land. First, green school yards through CAL FIRE. It's important to maintain the 150,000,000 of funding in the budget. As a grants program manager working in communities across California, I see how this new program is desperately needed and wanted across California as these communities are ready and eager to protect their children from 130 degree heat playgrounds and slides that can be up to 146 degrees.

Second, let's restore full funding to the statewide park program, urban forestry and urban greening. These programs successfully serve densely populated urban communities who are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat, flooding and lack of access to green space. Yes, we must pursue our long term climate goals, but we must also immediately protect the most vulnerable, who are extremely impacted, up to and including hospitalizations and premature deaths. Third, we have to maintain robust funding to the Wildlife Conservation Board to reach our 30 by 30 goals. And we must restore funding to the coastal conservancy in order to protect and restore the coast, which is currently getting battered with atmospheric rivers and severe financial loss. Thank you.

Thank you. Next caller.

Thank you. Line 26, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, chair Becker and members. My name is Rachel Norton and I am the Executive Director of the California State Parks foundation, representing over 80,000 members and thousands more California State park advocates. I want to address issues 57 and 58. To start, we're very concerned with the proposed $31 million cut to the remaining funding for deferred maintenance at State park.

Maintaining our parks is a core state responsibility, and it's crucial to ensuring state parks and serve Californians for decades to come. Deferring maintenance even further is short sighted considering the huge existing backlog that was referred to. We strongly request that you reconsider cuts to the only deferred maintenance funding remaining at the Department. It's similarly shortsighted to eliminate operating as startup funding for Dos Rios.

The state already owns it, and as noted, the park will support important increased access in a particularly park poor part of the state. Finally, I would also like to address the suggestion that future cuts could come from the outdoor equity program and the statewide parks program, both of which serve connect underserved communities to the unique natural beauty of our state. These programs have been astronomically successful and oversubscribed in recent years, and cuts would set us back in achieving equitable outdoor access. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Norton, for your work.

Thank you. Line 33, please go ahead.

Let's move along. Let's move along. Next caller.

I have no further comments. Thank you.

Okay, excellent. If the member public was not able to call in, you obviously can submit information in writing, and we will include that as part of the hearing. So we now move to the vote only calendar. I'm going to first consider issues 1, 3, 5 to 12, 14 to 21, 27, 29, 31 to 39, 41 to 45, and 48 to 51. I'd like a motion, Senator Dahle. And can we call the roll?

[Roll Call]

The motion is approved with a vote of three to zero. Those budget items are out. We will now consider the following items. Issues number 2, 4, 13, 23, 26, 46, and 47. May I have a motion on those items? Please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

The vote is two to one. Those budget items are out. Now we will consider issues number 22, 24, 25, 28, 30, and 40. Ask for a motion on those items. Please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

The vote is two to zero. Motion is approved, and those budget items are out. With that, voting is done. And we're going to thank all individuals who participated in public testimony today. This is the end of the hearing. Again, you can get your comments to us in writing. I want to thank you to all our panelists for their excellent commentary today and for the discussion. We've now concluded the agenda for today's hearing of Senate budget Subcommitee two, and we are adjourned.