Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 4 on Climate Crisis, Resources, Energy, and Transportation

Good morning. Good morning, assemblymember. Welcome everybody to budget Subcommitee for hearing. Today we'll be hearing from three departments under the Natural Resources Agency, the Department of Conservation, California Conservation Corps, and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. We'll also hear from the Office of Planning and Research and the Natural Resources Agency secretary's office. We have five items planned for presentation. For each presentation item, we'll ask each witness in the agenda to introduce themselves before they begin their testimony.

At the end of the presentations, Members of the Subcommitee may ask questions, make comments, or request a presentation on any of the 12 non presentation items. We will not be taking a vote on any items on the agenda. After all the items are heard, we'll take public comment. For Members of the public who wish to provide public comment, please limit your testimony to items on the agenda.

If you have comments on specific budget solutions not related to the departments before us, please refer to the Daily file for which Subcommitee hearing the Pertinent Department will be before the Committee. Each Member of the public will have 1 minute to speak. There will be no remote testimony. Let's take roll.

[Roll Call]

All right, if we could have the CNRA departments come on up and you guys can figure out what order you're going to speak in. We have a huge panel.

Good morning. I'm Bryan Cash. I'm assistant secretary at the Natural Resources Agency. The secretary provided a high level overview of the progress that we've made on the climate investments. And this morning we're going to go a little bit deeper, deeper dive with the three departments that I have up here with me. We have the Department of Conservation, the Ocean Protection Council, and CAL FIRE. So we'll start with the Department of Conservation.

Good morning, Mister chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Keali’I Bright. I'm the division Director at the Department of Conservation. I wanted to start, I wanted to talk about two programs today, the regional forest and fire capacity program and the Multi Benefit Land Repurposing program, which both received climate funds in the last few years of the budget for both programs, it's important to think about these public investments as essential services that all parts of our state needs.

All of our regions of the state are facing catastrophic wildfire and impacts from water sustainability. And what our programs really are intended to do is provide a base layer, kind of approaching it much like an infrastructure program, to create the capacity across the state so that partners can participate in the many programs that were also funded that we're working in partnership with, like for instance, CAL FIRE's Forest Health and wildfire prevention, and DWR's groundwater recharge and habitat programs, et cetera.

The Regional Forest and Fire Capacity program is a fairly new program, but it has. It was started in 2019. We started the program with a mandate to cover the whole state with regional leads for wildfire capacity building.

Since 2019, we have put in place organizations with strong fiscal and other capacities to lead regional efforts to build both to identify priorities, develop projects, build implementation capacity, and create a pipeline of shovel ready projects that can then feed into our bigger statewide system of implementation that multiple agencies and federal agencies are managing. We have seen some of, you know, when we started, we saw a lot of Low hanging fruit entities with really great projects here and there scattered across the landscape.

One of the trends we're seeing is that we're seeing our partners start to really consolidate and focus on larger watershed based, landscape based implementation strategies that capture whole watersheds and the communities that are within them. One of them to bring up, for example, is down in the Inland Empire, in Riverside, in San Bernardino. county. Those partners are working with water agencies to develop fuel streaming strategies across the Santa Ana watershed. They hope to kind of expand that watershed wide all the way to the coast.

But now they're looking at the upper watershed with really high capacity, strong partners in both water agencies, the Forest Service, CAL FIRE, and others. Moving on, because I know I only have three minutes. Moving on to the multi benefit land repurposing program that is a newer program. We have only funded two rounds of grants for that program.

It's also a block grant program, meaning that we put a block of funding into a region with the intention that the region really be the one that leads the, the kind of priority setting and implementation strategies, kind of pulling back as a state and letting regions lead has been an overriding theme with the multi benefit land repurposing programs. That's targeted at the kind of, the bigger question of what do we do as we push towards groundwater sustainability?

What do we do with the reality that we're going to lose a lot of land, we're going to take a lot of land out of agriculture, and how do we transition those lands to other beneficial uses rather than just seeing piecemeal fallowing across the state? Upwards of 500,000 to a million acres of land is projected by PPIC that program received. We put four block grants out for each round. We had 24 applicants in each round. So we had.

We were extremely oversubscribed, but we're really proud that through those eight block grants. We've put down a footprint of regional leadership led by GSAs and in partnership with all of their local habitat, community and other resource partners. We have a footprint that covers the majority of the southern San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas valleys, which are critical to the state's agricultural economy, but also to community impacts and groundwater risks.

That program, I think the one thing that we're really proud about is that we're very intentional through the program to bind community impacts and community participation in the planning with the overarching goal of water sustainability and kind of productive land reuse. And we've seen in action community groups getting kind of better and bigger, more being able to participate in a more meaningful way in shaping the use of the land going forward.

And then we're also seeing our partners stand up many projects, kind of like the regional forest fire capacity program, to be able to then apply for bigger funds that are coming from Department of Water Resources, Federal Government, etcetera. So both really exciting.

We think we're setting the table for a long, you know, for the next decade of projects and efforts that really are equitable, inclusive, but also meet our natural resources goals and support our sister state agencies, which has been a really key part of our mission because we kind of play this conduit role to.

Our other state agencies in this era of cut, cut. It's a pleasure to hear some positive news about what some of the spending that we have engaged in is taking place. So appreciate that.

Thank you. Good morning, chair Bennett, Members of the Committee, my name's Jenn Eckerle. I'm the Executive Director of the Ocean Protection Council. I also serve as the deputy secretary for oceans and coastal policy for the California Natural Resources Agency. I hope to share a little more of that good news with you here today. I have two separate pots of funding that I'm going to speak to.

One is funding that was provided to the Ocean Protection Council for broad ecosystem resilience on the coast and ocean, and then funding that was specific to implementation of Senate Bill one. So the Ocean Protection Council received $100 million over two years, 50 million in 22-23 and another 50 million in 23-24 for resilience projects that conserve, protect and restore marine wildlife and healthy and ocean, ocean and coastal ecosystems. The governor's proposed budget reduces this funding by 35 million, with 65 million remaining.

To date, the Ocean Protection Council has advanced close to $35 million from the 22-23 General Fund appropriation to advance Administration priorities related to building ocean and coastal resilience, advancing equity and conserving biodiversity investments in coastal adaptation and wetland restoration projects include the Big Canyon Coastal Wetland Restoration and Adaptation project, which is in upper Newport Bay in Orange County sea level rise adaptation planning and planning research, including characterization of contaminated sites that are vulnerable to sea level rise and the development of a statewide beach resiliency plan and research to evaluate the vulnerability of sandy beaches, dunes, and intertidal ecosystems.

Investments in marine ecosystem resilience and pollution prevention include kelp research, monitoring and restoration monitoring to support California's marine protected area network and fisheries management research on the impacts of ocean acidification and hypoxia on ecosystem health and implementation of the nation's first statewide microplastic strategy, including microplastics monitoring and research and implementation on plastic source reduction strategies.

At the local level, investments to strengthen tribal and community partnerships include investments in the Tribal Marine Stewardship Network Stewards Network, which is an alliance of five tribal nations working to protect coastal and marine ecosystems and advancing resilience and biodiversity protection actions of mutual priority for both state and tribes an environmental justice small grants program that advances more inclusive and accessible funding pathways and increases opportunities for community engagement on ocean and coastal projects, policies, and research an ocean core pilot program, which is a partnership with the California Conservation Corps, piloted in Fortuna, Long Beach, and San Diego to support ocean and coastal priorities and build the next generation of ocean stewards and implementation of OPC's equity plan, which includes increased community engagement and partnerships to include that OPC's work benefits all Californians.

The remaining General funds are essential to support significant investments this year that advance Administration and OPC priorities to build resilience to climate change advance equity with tribes and underserved communities, and conserve biodiversity.

The remaining $30 million will be fully committed within the next five months for research and monitoring to advance Administration and the Legislature's goals to achieve 30 by 30 in coastal waters research, environmental monitoring, and community engagement to minimize the impacts of offshore wind on marine and cultural resources and coastal communities, including fishermen, excuse me, tribal priorities, including restoration and land return that advance resilience and biodiversity goals and elevate tribal experience and expertise and stewardship continued marine protected area management, including monitoring and enforcement coastal habitat conservation and restoration, including kelp forests and eelgrass data modernization and improvement for management of climate resilient fisheries and an ongoing sea level rise adaptation to protect habitat communities and access.

The maintained General Fund is critical to advance these near term priorities, which were identified in close coordination across multiple agencies.

Solutions will delay or eliminate the ability to advance these priorities, then shifting quickly to the appropriation for Senate Bill one Ocean Protection Council also received close to $102 million of GGRF and General Fund over multiple years to implement Senate Bill one, which directs the state to help local governments plan for sea level rise in recognition of the potential loss or damage to public infrastructure, health and safety, and natural habitats from this climate driven impact. This is significant and urgent.

The governor's proposed budget includes a $25 million reduction to these funds and a shift from General Fund to GGRF maintaining $77 million. OPC has developed and launched an SB 1 grant program to provide critical funding to local, regional, and tribal governments to develop sea level rise adaptation plans and projects. Significant public outreach for this program is underway, and many stakeholders and local jurisdictions have expressed interest and need for this funding.

The grants program was launched and includes a technical assistance program to provide direct application services to under resourced communities. We launched it last December with a quarterly rolling awards. The deadline for our first round of applications was on March 22. We received nine applications totaling $7 million within that four month period alone.

Applications that meet the grant program criteria will be brought to the council for consent at their June 4 meeting, with subsequent awards at each of our quarterly meetings going forward, the result of the SB 1 General Fund solution will result in fewer grants funded for local governments to develop sea level rise adaptation plans and projects, leaving local governments without resources to adequately plan and inform investments in adaptation. Thank you. That concludes my remarks.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Bennett, Members of the Committee, Matthew Reischman, I'm the CAL FIRE Deputy Director for resource management. That's the forestry programs in our Department. Thank you for having me. This morning. I'm going to give you a very brief, high level overview of the programs, our resource management programs that we've been using to address administer these funds over the last few years.

I'd then like to turn it over to my counterpart, Chief Frank Bigelow, to speak a little more specifically about our fire prevention efforts and some of those programs involved in the General Fund solutions. I'll start with our forest health program. This is a landscape level program where we engage in forest management activities at scale. These are large projects, several thousand acres. Over the last few years, we've administered over $500 million to 119 projects across the state.

Again, multiple landowners involved with these projects engaged in multiple land management activities, prescribed fire fuel reduction, thinning, just a biomass, a whole slew of different activities there and been very successful post fire reforestation. These are funds that came to us last year for the first time. We had $50 million there. We administered excuse me, I'm going to.

Just ask you to pull the microphone as you turn to look at us. I think it gets harder for them to hear. So maybe pull the mic over. So, yeah, as you. Yeah, that's better.

Gotcha. Okay, thank you. The post fire reforestation grants. These are grants that we go in after fires and treat the brush, put trees in the ground. And so again, we've been very successful there. We've had 10 projects so far administering those 50 million or those 50 million that we have. Tribal engagement. We've had $40 million up to date. We've administered 20 million.

This is a new program for us as well that reaches out to tribes across the state, supports them in fire prevention activities, fuel reduction, helping them develop objectives that they are interested in, bringing some of that traditional ecological knowledge back. And it's been a great opportunity to work with them on these projects because we've got a lot to learn and we're very excited to have the opportunity to do so. So, again, we've had 12 projects.

They're administering $20 million thus far, and we have another $10 million that we're going to be moving forward with. We have our business and workforce development grants. We recognize that there is a deficit in the workspace for individuals that do forest management work in California.

And so we're reaching out to various, through various grants to support young men and women going into forest management and learning how to run a bulldozer, run a chainsaw, some of those skill sets that you don't often get exposed to growing up and whatnot. So that's a program that we're very happy to have administered. I think we have 30 grants now. We've administered approximately $40 million thus far. Small forest landowners. This is a program where we reach out to those non industrial landowners.

We provide them support in their meeting, their land management objectives. We've had the opportunity to administer 196 grants to those landowners, covering just almost 9000 acres. And that's a program where we will continue to administer on a rolling basis and so been very successful there. We also have developed what we call a block grant program. This is where we go in post fire. We provide landowners that have suffered loss to their forests opportunities to start thinking about reforestation, planting.

Sometimes that's not always on the radar when you've suffered loss after a fire, but providing them support and assistance and getting them to start thinking about reforesting their properties early and providing them with the resources to do so. So we've been very happy to be able to stand that program up. Forest legacy. This is a program that we purchase development rights through conservation easements. And we've had a lot of success in that program.

Over the last few years, we've administered just over $30 million to 12 different grants, conserving just over 40,000 acres. The program from its beginning has conserved close to 200,000 acres so far in California. So a program that we're very happy to have had the funding for, hoping to be able to continue those efforts moving forward, wanted to mention our monitoring and research. These are grants that we have in support of the various needs and deficits and data in regard to climate science and forest management.

And so we are funding projects that bring information to us that allow us to drive policy decisions and ultimately drive regulations in protecting our forests. And so we're looking at a variety of different research opportunities, most of which are geared towards climate change and climate science. We also have our forest inventory analysis that we support out of that. That's a core cooperative effort that we have with the Forest Service. There are several plots across California that we are monitoring.

We stepped it up from a 10 year monitoring cycle to a five year cycle to give us more up to date information so that we could more effectively use that information and modeling and really figuring out what forest management, what the fires that we've had, what the effects that is having on the stands and forest that we have across California.

And then lastly, I will say that program has been very supportive of prescribed fire, prescribed fire monitoring, both before we put fire on the ground and after. So we'll go in and measure the fuels, the fuel loading, the size of the fuels, the configuration before we burn, and then we'll go back and we'll figure out, you know, that gives us information on how effective our management practices have been. So I will stop there. I would like to turn it over to Chief Bigelow to speak a little bit briefly about our fire prevention activities if thats okay.

Before you leave.

Yes, sir.

I have some overall questions that I'd just like to ask you very briefly.

And one is, I'd like to ask you to schedule some time in my office so I can go into more depth on some of these questions, but just from a General overview, as the Administration is trying to put, put the budget together, these cuts that we do have in some of these programs, forest legacy, et cetera, do they get generated from CAL FIRE to the Administration, or does the Department of Finance come to you with, we're thinking of this, that which order does, where does the germination for the cut come from?

That's a great question. I would say it's maybe a little back and forth, but I think I should probably defer. Department of Finance? Yes.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance. The General Fund solution framework is generally. A collaborative approach between the Administration and agencies.

Thank you. A couple other quick questions. And that is that in terms, if I, while you're up, I want to say that one of the significant things that I think has evolved is that the, the membership of the Assembly is much more aware of and supportive of wildfire management efforts to try to decrease these wildfires. So there's much more curiosity about the effectiveness of those efforts, etcetera.

And one of the questions I'd like to discuss in more detail, but get an overview from you, is that do we, my impression is that we have Cal, fire personnel that fight fires, and then when they have extra time, they do wildfire prevention. Do we have any kind of division where some people are focused, a significant portion of people are focused 100% on wildfire prevention. And, you know, that's, you know, that's the mission that they have. That's their focus.

Rather than when you have some extra time, if you're able to do extra. We want to get this wildfire prevention effort moving and stuff. Can you help me just with an.

Overview of that real quickly? Sure. And that's a great question. Within our Department, we all have primary duties and responsibilities, whether it's fire prevention, whether it's forestry, whether it's fire suppression. But we very much cross over when there's a need. And when we have, for instance, a fire, it's all hands on deck based on the threat and complexity and what we need to get accomplished. The same goes for fire prevention and fuels management.

When we have engines that aren't actively engaged in fire suppression, they're out doing defensible space inspections, they're engaged in fuel reduction. They're working with homeowners on, you know, providing them recommendations on how to do clearing around their homes. They're out doing the work in the fire prevention in the forestry world. And we have a unique opportunity within our Department to move those personnel around.

So we look at it as the more diversity we can create within our employees, the better we're going to be at addressing our mission. And so there is a huge crossover to say that somebody only does fire prevention or only does fire suppression would not be accurate. Their primary job might be fire suppression, but as they are available and as they can, you know, we're going to utilize the resources to the best of our abilities, how and where we can. So there's a crossover.

Certainly. I would appreciate that from a fire suppression standpoint, it's all hands on deck when we're in real crisis. But I'd be curious what percentage where their primary mission is fire wildfire prevention versus people whose primary mission is suppression. That'd be helpful for me to.

No, I appreciate that.

Okay, great.

And we could certainly get you the number of folks that we have that are in fire suppression positions versus resource management or fire prevention.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Oh, one more question before you go.

Hi. Thank you so much for being here today. I think we all agree that making investments in wildfire preparation resilience, is hugely important. As you may be aware, I have some concerns, and I've asked some questions over the years about the transparency and accountability of that spending. I think over the last, since 2021, I think we've invested like 2.8 billion for programs to support the state's wildfire and force resilience goals and objectives.

Like I said, that money is so, so important, and I've been a huge supporter. But when I've asked questions about where that money is going or try to get data about what local agencies have gotten the money or what they've done with it, it's been very difficult. So I guess two questions. Where can we get information about where the money is going, what projects it's being spent on? And then second, what criteria are we using to evaluate the efficacy of these programs and these dollars?

So, great question. And the first part, where can you go to find this information in regard to CAL FIRE, specifically our projects? We are posting all of that information on our grants and the effort that we have online, so it's available there. If you had a specific program you're interested in, we could certainly get you that information. We are also in the process of developing what we're calling the data hub, and this is an effort through the wildfire and Forest Resilience task force.

It's bringing all the different agencies to the table, our federal cooperators, our local government cooperators, and essentially bringing that data into one common platform so that we can more effectively report out or comprehensively report out on the totality of activities that are going on, on the landscape. As you could imagine, different agencies may track things differently. And so one of the challenges there is just to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. And so QA and QC on that data is a huge part of it.

But we've been working with these funds to start developing that data hub so that that information is available. There is a tracking system that we have in place. There is a forward facing dashboard now that's available so that we're moving in that direction. And I definitely hear the question within our Department, we have a program called Calmapper that we use that is very similar, but it's geared more specifically to CAL FIRE projects. So that information is being developed and is there available. But certainly happy to follow up with you.

Well, thank you. And I appreciate that. And it's really encouraging to hear, as you said, that we're moving to that more transparency and accountability. So I appreciate that. And then one other question. So I'm actually very pleased to see under our science based management investments, that we're retaining the vast majority of those. I think it's a relatively small amount of money, which, when invested well, saves us an enormous amount of money. One of the.

The things that I worked on in my first year in the Legislature was the firest program, which we piloted in Orange County with the Orange County Fire Authority. And then based on the success of that program, we're able to roll that out statewide. Because of my interest in this area, I've been briefed several times about the alert California program at UCSD. Does that ring a bell?

I'm a little bit familiar with. I'm probably not the best one to speak on it, but this might be a great time for me to transition.

Okay. Okay.

Good morning.

Hi. Good morning.

My name is Frank Bigelow with CAL FIRE, and I'm the Deputy Director for our community wildfire preparedness and mitigation division out of the Office of the State Fire marshal.

Before you start, why don't you answer the Assemblymember's question and then we'll let you do your presentation.

And as well, I'd like to follow up on your previous question as well.

So alert California. And I guess, do you know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about alert California? So it's this combination of cameras, LIDAR multispectral data collection to aid in the prediction, detection, expression of wildfires. Time actually highlighted it as one of the best inventions of 2023. My understanding is that we've kind of invested in doing half of the mapping work across the state and that there's another like $20 million to actually complete that work and that program.

Is that money included in this science based management and other bucket? Are we planning to Fund the completion of that project? Just because I think there's tremendous opportunity for us to protect property and save lives as well as save a lot of money for the state.

So we certainly appreciate the question. And I thought you were going down a road of awareness of the program and what the program offered in value, then took a hard right turn for a financial question that I'm not specifically familiar with. On if the 20 million from the monitoring is going to go to Fund that. So that's something we're going to have.

To follow up with you on. But I guess then maybe answer the first question. Do you think it's valuable and worthwhile?

Absolutely. It has been a fundamental game changer in the detection and awareness of wildfires. This has been able to alert us much more quickly of the, of a wildfire. Starting in the initial phases of the program, there was a lot of bugs to work through. Dust clouds would come up and we'd get false alerts. But the artificial intelligence has vastly improved and has been able to filter out some of those false positives and make those notifications much more quickly.

And the adding of the moltride spectral cameras, being able to see through the smoke. So at night now we're able to use the technology to be able to really see where the fire is at night and the activity that it's producing. So it's been a game changer for all of us. And the ability for our communication systems to be able to navigate some of those cameras, to orient them toward the fire, has been a huge help as well.

Okay, wonderful. And I guess I'll just say, point of follow up, anything that I think my office will follow up to figure out. What do we need to do to make sure that given the potential of this program, as you said, it's potentially a game changer for the state, what do we do to make sure that we're actually implementing it, even in the midst of a challenging budget environment?

And I think there's other opportunities for funding outside of government through, as an example, utility companies who've also added to the system, who've brought in cameras of their own that can be added to that. So just as a thought.

Okay. Thank you.

So I'd like to follow up on your question as well and where you asked about the staff dedicated to fire prevention work. So Assembly Bill nine of 2021 created the community wildfire preparedness and mitigation division within the Office of the State Fire marshal. That Bill created my position as a Deputy Director, an assistant Deputy Director, and two FFPAs, or force and fire protection administrators, or what we call staff chiefs.

Those staffs were actually written into legislation that they were to be the last people called for in the event of fire activity, solely to focus on preparedness and mitigation as well.

Over the last few years, since 2020, we've been fortunate to grow that division from what it was at 13 people to 63 that are full time staff dedicated on everything from defensible space to home hardening, working with the investor owned utilities, working with local jurisdictions on everything from safety elements and their General plans, local hazard mitigation plans, administering our wildfire prevention grants programs, a whole host of others that I plan to go through when we get to the agenda to talk about those efforts.

But we have, in addition, in our CAL FIRE units, of which we have 21 across the state and then six contract counties, which get funding as well to do dedicated prevention and preparedness work in the form of defensible space inspections, of which we have 94 defensible space inspectors that are seasonal, 20 or 31 full time forestry technicians that do defensible space work, as well as public education around preparedness and mitigation.

We have begun to shine the light using the money, the investments that have been made, about the 2 million or 2 billion, excuse me, that were mentioned earlier, among others that I'll talk about shortly, but I did want you to know that there are full time, dedicated staff under my supervision that do that work.

What I was getting at is, was the number 63, or was it 13, or was it, and so to hear that you. You've built it up to 63 is helpful information for me to have. Thank you.

Go ahead with your presentation now.

Great.

Okay. Well, good morning. And the first part of my presentation here, I'm really just going to focus on the solutions that have been, that have been offered. And they really only touch two of the programs that are under my purview, which are the unit fire prevention projects, which shifts $26 million of General Fund to GGRF. So 6 million from last fiscal year and then 20 million of this fiscal year. And our fire prevention grants program, shifting $82 million from General Fund to GGRF.

And as a part of that. So our wildfire prevention grant program this fiscal year has $117 million to give out. We're currently in our solicitation right now, so we put out in November a call for grants. We received 225 grant applications for just over $250 million. We have 117. So extremely oversubscribed. It's that way every year. There's a significant interest in this program.

If you're not familiar with the Wildfire Prevention Grant program, we do everything from fire prevention work through education, fuels reduction work, and we help develop CWPPs or community wildfire protection plans, local hazard mitigation plans, create CEQA documents. So a very robust program. We're currently grading those applications or ranking those applications to our local CAL FIRE units, and we anticipate the awards, those immediately following the budget appropriation. So whatever that looks like, we're hoping for June.

If it turns out to be July, it turns out to be July. But that program is well on its way. So appreciate the continued funding. The unit fire prevention projects. This money goes directly to our units, our CAL FIRE units, to do fuels work. And that has been, as a person that came through a local CAL FIRE unit years ago, we were struggling to get the funding to complete the work. We wanted to do the work.

We had the projects identified, but we couldn't get the funding. Well, now we do have the funding, and that work is being directed either directly by the units, meaning those folks that do dual work, fire prevention and fire suppression, are going out and conducting the fuels work, or we are contracting with vendors to come do the logging or do the mastication, or do the other work that actually gets done on the ground.

So that money is being spent and being used to treat and help CAL FIRE meet our target of 100,000 acres and our 500 projects annually. And just as a note where we stand with that, as of March, we've CAL FIRE has worked on 570 projects, which is 141% of our goal, we've completed 44,946 acres of fuels work, and of that, 29,983 of it are unit projects.

What percent of your goal did you say?

We. Of the 500, we are at 570 projects. So we're a little over 40% of our goal. Our goal is 100,000 acres of treated acres. So we're at 44% of our goals. We're at 44,000 or just under 45,000 acres. Our grants program has contributed 20,000 of those acres. So a significant amount we, we were able to last year, and we have to give Mother Nature a little credit for helping us out last year.

But I think that the work that we did as well needs to be accounted for. But our CAL FIRE units were able to burn using beneficial fire in some units more than they had in wildland, uncontrolled wildland fires last year for the first time that we can remember. So that's a significant accomplishment. It shows. While we still had almost the same number of uncontrolled wildfires as we did in 2020, last year, just over 7400 fires.

We were able to keep those fires very small using the resources that we had available, but also they weren't huge damage in destructing fires because of all of the investments and the work that we've done ahead of time through fuels management, fuels reduction and education. That's my opening for the solutions and where we stand with those two groups that are getting those solutions.

Thank you very much. We have quite a few questions, I think, throughout the whole hearing this morning. So I'm going to ask that your responses try to be direct and right to the point and just the overall. So perhaps for you, Mister Keshe, what's the criteria that the Administration uses to determine what programs qualify for a shift to GGRF from General Fund?

Hi, Erin Carson, Department of Finance. Happy to go over the administration's criteria. I have a script also laid out to go over that as well.

Sorry, let's go to Department of Finance finance before we start this question. Thank you.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance. I'm just going to provide some brief overview of the administration's criteria for the General Fund solutions and then an overview of natural resources agencies and OPC's solutions. And then I'll pass it off to my colleagues to go over Department of Conservation and CAL FIRE solutions. So, to fill the 37.9 billion budget shortfall, the Administration proposes solutions with the following considerations in mind. Protect funding for the most immediate climate risks.

Minimize disruptions for programs underway potential availability to shift to other funds and potential availability of federal funds. Prioritizing investments in priority populations which face disproportionate harm from the climate crisis provide equitable reductions across climate categories. Consider the current availability of program funding by fiscal year. The 2021 and 2022 budget acts committed approximately 3.3 billion over five years in the climate package to the Secretary of Natural Resources Agency, Department of Conservation and CAL FIRE.

For these three departments, the Governor's 24-25 budget proposes approximately 134 million in budget solutions from the climate package, which include reductions, Fund shifts and delays. These solutions fall across various categories of the climate packages such as wildfire and forest resilience, nature based solutions, extreme heat, coastal resilience and climate jobs. The Natural Resources Agency and Ocean Protection Council have four General Fund solutions. The first one is wetlands restoration at Redondo Beach.

The Governor's Budget includes a reversion of 10 million General Fund for the Redondo Beach Wetlands Restoration project, which eliminates funding for this purpose. The solution will remove CNRA from this project, which has been in litigation for many years. The next one is ocean protection under the Ocean Protection Council. The 21 and 22 climate budgets allocated 100 million over two years for ocean protection projects. At the Ocean Production Council.

The Governor's Budget reverts 35 million General Fund for this program, which maintains 65 million or 65% of funding. While this solution will reduce OPC's funding for monitoring, research and habitat protection projects, the majority of this funding for this program is maintained and is expected to be awarded at the June council meeting. The next one ocean protection SB 1 implementation under OPC the 21 and 22 climate budgets allocated 102 million over three SB years to OPC for implementation of 1.

The Governor's Budget reverts 25 million General Fund for this program and shifts 36.8 million to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in 202425 which maintains 77 million or 75% of funding for this program. This solution reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source with minimal programmatic impact and is consistent with the program being supported from the GGRF in 2021 to 22. The last one here under CNRA is urban greening.

At the 2021 and 2022 climate budgets allocated 250 million to the urban greeting program. The Governor's Budget shifts 23.8 million General Fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in 2024 to 25, which maintains 75 million or 30% of funding for this program. The solution also reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source, although the shift may delay CNRA in awarding grants by several months, and with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Zach Learley.

Good Morning chair Members Zach Lierly, Department of Finance the Department of Conservation has three General Fund solutions. The first solution is biomass to hydrogen biofuels pilot program. The 2021 and 2022 climate budgets allocated 50 million to the biomass to this program. Excuse me, Governor's Budget reverts 43.5 million a General Fund for this program which maintains 6.5 million or 13% of funding.

While this solution will reduce the conservation's funding for recreating hydrogen and or liquid fuel resulting from forest vegetation management, given the amount of available funding that has not been committed, the Administration had to make difficult decisions to balance the budget. Second program, the oil and gas well and capping program under the Department of Conservation. The 2021 and 2022 climate budgets allocated $100 million for this program. The Governor's Budget shifts 50 million General Fund to the greenhouse gas reduction, which maintains 100% of the original funding.

Funding being shifted for the program is delayed to 202425 and consistent with this proposed shift, the Governor's Budget proposes trailer Bill Language to amend Section 3258 of the Public Resources Code. This solution reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source with minimal programmatic impact and is consistent with the program being used for GGRF in 21-22.

Lastly, regional fire and forest capacity program, the 2021 and 2022 climate budgets allocated 150 million for this program and the Governor's Budget proposes to shift 20 million General Fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which maintains 100% of the funding. Funding being shifted for the program is delayed to 24-25.

The solution again also reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source with minimal programmatic impact and is consistent with the program being supported from the GGRF 21-22 and then I'm going to turn it over to my colleague for the CAL FIRE issues.

We do have a cast of thousands.

Today, a lot of pieces. Good morning, Jamie Gonsalves Department of Finance I'll be going over the seven General Fund solutions regarding CAL FIRE. First is CAL FIRE's unit fire prevention projects. The 21 and 22 climate budgets allocated 90 million for CAL FIRE unit fire protection projects. The Governor's Budget shifts 26 General Fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which maintains 100% of funding. Funding being shifted for the programs is delayed to 24 and 25, although the shift may delay some projects by several months.

This solution reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source and prioritizes maintaining funding that directly translates into acres treated for fuel reductions and vegetation management. Next we have fire prevention grants. The 2021 and 22 climate budgets allocated 475 million for the fire prevention grants program. The Governor's Budget shifts 82 million General Fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which maintains 100% of funding. This shift keeps the funding within 23-24.

Although the shift may delay the issuance of some grants by a few months, this solution reflects an opportunity to shift funding to another Fund source with minimal programmatic impact. This solution prioritizes maintaining funding that directly translates into acres treated for fuels reduction and vegetation management. Next, we have prescribed fire and hand crews. The 2021 and 2022 climate budget allocated 134 million for prescribed fire and hand crews. The Governor's Budget reverts 5.3 million General Fund from this program, which maintains 128.7 million or 96% of the funding.

This reduction represents the remaining balance of one time General Fund provided for this purpose in 2021 and 22 and will have a minimal impact on the fuels reduction and vegetation management work completed by these crews because 35 million of the 200 million of GGRF allocated to CAL FIRE annually does go towards supporting these crews. Next we have forest legacy program. The 20212022 climates budget allocated 49 million for the forest legacy program.

The Governor's Budget reverts 3.6 million General Fund for this program, which maintains 45.4 million or 93% of the funding. Given the magnitude of the budget problem and difficult decisions that have had to be made to balance the budget for wildfire and forest resilience investments, the Administration prioritized maintaining funding that directly translates into acres treated for fields reduction and vegetation management. This solution represents a reduction that minimizes programmatic disruptions. Next we have interagency forest data hub.

The 2021 and 22 climate budgets allocated $10 million to establish the interagency Forest Data Hub. The Governor's Budget reverts 2.9 million General Fund for this program, which maintains 7.1 million or 71% of the funding. This solution also represents a reduction that minimizes programmatic disruptions and the prioritization of maintaining funding for programs that most directly protect against immediate fire risks. Next, we have monitoring and research. The 2021 to 22 climate budgets allocated 38 million for monitoring and research.

The Governor's Budget reverts 5.7 million General Fund for this program, which maintains 32.3 million or 85% of the funding. This solution also represents a reduction that minimizes programmatic disruptions and the prioritization of maintaining funding for programs that most directly translate into into acres treated for fields reduction and vegetation management. Last, we have home hardening. The 2122 climate budgets allocated 50 million to the home hardening program. The Governor's Budget reverts 12 million General Fund for this program, which maintains 38 million or 76% of the funding.

This funding is used as a match for federal funding through FEMA's Hazard mitigation grant program. Given the lengthy process to apply for and secure this federal funding, the 38 million maintain is in various stages of implementation, but no work has begun related to this remaining balance.

Thank you. Before we go to LAO, I just have a quick question for you on the Forest Legacy program, do those lands that are covered under the Forest Legacy program count towards the governor's 3030 goals?

So regarding the forest legacy meeting, the governor's 30-30 goals, I don't believe that this, I'll have to follow up and confirm that, but I don't believe they do.

Okay, thank you. I think we're ready for LAO, finally.

Thank you, chair and Members Helen Kerstein with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'll try to keep this short because I know we have a lot on the agenda today. And really, our overarching comments are the same as the ones that I know my colleagues have presented to you over the past few weeks. So the Administration presents one set of possible solutions. Given the significance of the budget problem that you're facing.

We think in General, it's a reasonable set of solutions, but it's just one set, and it reflects the administration's priorities. So I think one of the messages we've been trying to make for the past few weeks is you have other options. Your agenda does a really nice job of laying out some of the specific ones that we've identified, a couple of key sort of overarching points on those.

One, so some of those options are ones that, for example, the Administration went over a number of areas where they're switching Fund sources from General Fund to GGRF. You could consider whether you wanted to make some of those reductions, for example, instead of Fund shifts. If you did that, that would free up GGRF that you could use for other priorities. So that's one kind of possible set of different choices.

Another is there are some areas where there's additional uncommitted funds that the administration's not proposing for solutions. So we've identified some of those areas or tried to identify all of those areas for you. You can look at those different options and decide, you know, kind of weighing your priorities, which ones fit best.

So you may want to replace some of the ones that the Governor proposes or depending on, you know, if the, if the budget situation gets more severe, you could potentially even add to the governor's list. So if you have questions, I'd be happy to take them, but otherwise I'm not going to go over the full list. In the interest of time.

We really appreciate LAO overall and in particular here. To actually identify specific programs that we can consider that are not on the administration's list is really helpful for us. So thank you. So I'm going to, I asked that first question, and so Department of Finance, whoever wants to answer that, what is the criteria for which programs qualify for shifting over to GGRF?

So the Administration looked, sorry. The Administration looked at what General funded programs still have funding available that most aligned with the administration's priorities, including those that support equity, meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, and have previously been funded out of GGRF. The mix of programs that are proposed to be shifted to GTRF meet those considerations. And it's our understanding that the greenhouse gas reduction Fund will also be discussing more of these details at their future hearing.

All right, I have quite a few questions, but I think I want to let my Members ask their questions first and I'll see where we go from there. Mister Connolly.

Yeah. Appreciate it, and thank you for the testimony. Thank you for the hard work keeping our communities safe. So I have kind of a General comment, but then wanted to ask a specific question on the home hardening program. So I don't know if we want to biggle it back, but sorry to.

So I guess the General comment is that as we discuss a lot of the proposed cuts again and again, we've seen through this Committee that programs committed through bills we've passed that have been signed by the Governor are essentially remaining in limbo years later around implementation.

So, for example, even though the home hardening grant program was set up by a semic Member woods Bill in 2019, the LAO says it has, quote, faced various implementation challenges, and as such, roughly $25 million of General Fund monies have not yet been committed, end quote. Home hardening, obviously extremely important in my communities and statewide, enabling folks to keep their homes safe.

It's very concerning to me that we see the slow implementation of programs by departments, and frankly, as such, the reasoning behind these proposed budget cuts. In its analysis, the Lao suggests that cutting home hardening because of implementation issues and the fact that uncommitted funds remain so. My question to Cal, fire to Oes is why? Why has this program lagged even though it was created in 2019? And why do you feel it's justified to have $12 million cut from, from it when it hasn't even been properly implemented yet?

Thank you for asking that question, because I'm excited to tell you all the reasons. So I think we can all agree that home hardening is the way that we need to go into the future. There are exponentially more homes that need retrofitting. Then there are new homes that have been built to the current Chapter seven, a building standard.

So there are millions of homes that families are living in today that are unprotected from wildfire, that don't meet current standards that would take billions and billions of dollars to retrofit. This is a fantastic first step in getting awareness around the needle, but also implementation of this. So when CAL FIRE and Cal OEs entered a joint powers authority, of which I sit on the board for the Joint Powers Authority, we had to build a program from the ground up.

We were basically given over the course of two fiscal years, $50 million and said, build a program that's never been built before with standards that haven't been developed, with criteria that's never been built, with an application portal that isn't developed, with an assessment application that we don't have without reach material we don't have. So go ahead.

So we did, we started and we came together in January of 2020 and once the staff was hired and once the money was there and we started to implement the program, and that is everything I just mentioned, we had to build the salesforce application, the portal by which people would apply. We had to develop using scientific community, using the research community, using the public to help us determine.

And when I mentioned the research industry, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, or the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or underwriters laboratory fire Safety Research Institute, we leveraged some of the smartest minds across the country to develop what's called the hazard mitigation methodology.

And this methodology is a comprehensive methodology that looks at every aspect of a home and prioritizes it and then adds different components so you can have a standard upgrade, a plus upgrade, and an optimal upgrade to build people up to that standard, nobody had ever done that before for retrofitting. And it took a while to develop that methodology. And then simultaneously, while we're working with that community to develop that, the folks at Cal OES are developing the salesforce portal simultaneously.

The CAL FIRE staff, as the subject matter experts, were developing the assessment application that we leverage ESRI, the Environmental Scientific Research Institute, to develop a survey 123 which they said was one of the most complex that they had seen. Over 1000 questions that we asked to assess every single aspect of a parcel, and not just the parcel, but the home.

So everything from the roof the siding, the windows, the eaves, the windows, and then looking at the surrounding vegetation and being able to then produce a report that shows exactly what needs to be done around that house. And so all of that, the outreach material, the website, all of that stuff had to be developed. And then we're leveraging state dollars against hazard mitigation grant dollars with FEMA.

And this is where the slowdown happens, is when you start adding different entities into a program and navigating their process and working with them, which they've been great to work with. I'm not bashing FEMA, just saying it added a little bit of complexity to the program when dealing with the environmental concerns, the Historical Preservation act, the Migratory Bird act, and all the other things that we have to do that are very important that we have to follow. It added time to the process.

I am happy to announce, though, that the first home in Kelseyville, Riviera, is being retrofitted now. So progress has been made. We are retrofitting a house. Our goal is to get 2440 homes retrofitted with the money that we've been allocated. And those communities are in San Diego, County, Shasta County, Lake County, El Dorado, and Tuolumne. All five are in various stages of the process, but Kelseyville and Lake is through the hazard mitigation process. San Diego is shortly behind.

We'll be, as we call, swinging hammers in San Diego in April, Shasta County in April as well. Tuolumne, El Dorado came on a little bit later, so it'll be a few more months before they will.

We're also leveraging the balance of the State Dollars that we had that wasn't offered as a solution to do a defensible space only grant in Siskiyou county so that we can prep for, if there is additional funding, that those homes will be done, because that's a requirement for the hazard mitigation grant dollars, that defensible space be done prior to the home hardening being completed. So we're going to kind of already forward thinking of what we're going to do next if there is another appropriation of dollars.

So although it may seem and look like there hasn't been a lot that's happened, I can tell you that this is at the forefront of both Cal OEs and Cal fires mine, and that we are moving forward as quickly as we can.

Could you enlighten us on why those counties? How is it that those counties emerged as the five counties?

Yeah, absolutely. So in AB 38 of 2019 that created the program it identified some criteria that we should use to choose the counties financially disadvantaged, and there's a multitude of them. It won't bore you with the details. We did an analysis and we added things like fire history ignitions, fire hazard severity zones, and other criteria to it, and based on that analysis, ranked or prioritized the counties in order of need. It was also how many homes you know, and what age they were whole host.

We then went to those CAL FIRE units in those counties and said, hey, these. Your county was identified as one of the top three. Which communities in your county do you feel need this work the most? So that's where we had to start somewhere. And this is a pilot, right? Just piloting us. So we also looked at other criteria.

Once we got to that community level, we wanted to find community groups, whether that's a resource conservation district, a fire safe council, or in Lake County's North Coast opportunities, which is a nonprofit group that helps for post fire restoration mostly, but now is getting into the pre fire world. We also, in San Diego County, partnered with the county government, and the reason we wanted to do these kind of more diverse groups is because the intent is beyond the pilot stage.

We don't want to be in the selection of picking which groups. We want them to be able to come to us, but then we want to be able to provide them all the outreach material and the education from each of the different entities that conducted the work so that they can best fit or align with the one that they are and give them the most information to be successful as they move forward.

Thank you. Anything else?

Yeah, maybe a slightly different topic, but related issue, and thank you for that context. That's helpful. So apropos of my first question, the Administration and the LAO are justifying a 49% cut to coastal resilience on the basis that a significant amount of the State Coastal Commission's funding has not yet been spent. To my understanding that the Legislature has approximately $1.3 billion for coastal resilience over multiple years for projects, yet this funding remained unencumbered.

So the state Coastal Commission is not here today to answer questions, but I like the Leo or another panelist to expand on this situation. Why are we allowing money to sit without being allocated to projects?

Thank you for that question. I do not represent the state coastal conservancy, but I think I can address that question more broadly. This funding came to Ocean Protection Council and the conservancy relatively quickly. And like you heard the testimony from my CAL FIRE colleague, we have been working very quickly to stand up programs and to move that funding as fast as possible.

I think for the coastal conservancy, the wetland restoration and watershed restoration projects that they invest often take some time to stand up, and they have a pipeline of projects that they are prepared to move forward. And some of that has, I think, been paused given where we are right now with the budget. Similarly for the Ocean Protection Council, we've been moving as quickly as we can to move those funds. As I mentioned in my testimony, we've moved $35 million in the last year or so.

So again, we're trying to balance, we have a very small staff. There's about 15 of us that balance funding the highest priority, highest value projects as quickly as we can while making sure we're advancing policy recommendations that are then going to inform the investments after that. So we've got some pacing that we're also managing.

Hele Kerstein, if I could just add, I think one more point. My understanding on this topic is that there was some discussion last year about potentially pulling some of this money. And so that also, I think, slowed some of the implementation. So, yeah, you know, I think there are various things that go on. Sometimes there isn't money to implement, you know, priorities. Sometimes, you know, things get kind of stalled because there's discussion about potentially rescinding money.

And this was an area I know of high legislative priority that our office has identified in the past as being an area where the Legislature really has wanted to focus but has sustained kind of deeper proposed cuts than many other areas. So we weren't necessarily recommending these cuts. We were just flagging that this is an area that the Administration has proposed kind of a higher level of cuts than other areas. And some of the reason for that.

If I can just cover the coastal conservancy. I'm Brian Cash. I serve, I'm at the Natural Resources Agency. I serve on the board for the secretary. And I would say that they have moved forward at a very quick pace. These are historic investments that have come to the conservancy, and they've been able to roll, to grow their programs and roll out projects at a rate that I've never seen before in the 17 years that I've been sitting on the board. So they have been moving forward.

Just the size of the appropriations that were given were such that it takes some time to get all the projects out the door, but they have been moving quickly.

Thank you, Mister chair. Actually, picking up on that thread, I think I share Assemblymember Connolly's concerns about just the depth of these cuts. And I think that when we're talking about building coastal resilience, we're talking about investments to mitigate the catastrophic impact of sea level rise on our coast. It's investments we haven't been making. Right. Because we keep putting it off to next year, to next year, to next year. And it's like sea level rises, this kind of slow moving tsunami.

My concern is if we do not act in the near term, it really is going to be too late for many of our coastal communities. And I guess it's sort of a broader concern that I have in this hearing and in our previous hearings, it feels like the criteria for program cuts largely are almost exclusively, exclusively based on what stuff are we already doing and therefore going to keep doing what stuff haven't we started and therefore are not going to do.

And I guess I would love to understand what is our, what are we using to evaluate the efficacy of current programs in order to determine whether or not they deserve to move forward? Or perhaps they should be on the chopping block such that we have resources to invest in new, urgent and important priorities.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance. I'll just say with regards to a lot of the coastal resilience funding, a lot of the General Fund solutions in this area were determined based on dollars that had not yet been committed yet. So not speaking to anything regarding the potential efficacy of where those dollars could have been, it was just a matter of, you know, looking at a wide variety of priorities in the resources area and beyond across state agencies.

It was a situation where, you know, there was a lot of dollars that were not yet committed when we were developing the Governor's Budget last fall. So that was a significant factor with regards to those dollars.

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to the efficacy piece and also the importance of sea level rise planning and adaptation and on the ground projects, we think that's critical. We think it is. This particular source of funding for Senate Bill one, it's unique. Right. We know there's lots of other state and federal dollars available for those on the ground projects, but the planning, those dollars are less, less available.

We have funded research that shows that about 63% of our coast doesn't have adequate sea level rise plans in place. And so we know there's a significant and urgent need. As far as the efficacy, I can provide one example of funding that the Ocean Protection Council has provided to support kelp restoration and recovery across the state. And the way that we've been doing that is through a series of pilot investments. Right.

So how do we know what research and that ultimately restoration techniques and approaches are going to be most effective? And instead of going out and spending a lot of money doing a whole bunch of different things, let's pilot, see what works best and then increase those investments as we go forward.

So if I may just add, I think it's such a good question and such an important question, and I think one that our office has felt there is a lack of sort of consistent or comprehensive good quality information that we're going to be able to use to evaluate that one, not just in terms of these cuts.

Many of them are not driven by, or probably most of them are not driven by any evaluation of this is the most effective program partly because we just don't have that data. Right. We do have information on kind of the GHG emission reductions. There's sort of data that's collected annually on that. You know, our office has raised some, some, you know, some issues with some of the technicalities, but there is, we are tracking that and there are some, you know, in certain programs, there's some tracking.

A lot of times the outcomes are more like, you know, there's sort of like numbers of acres treated, not do you have a healthy forest? Because do you have a healthy forest? Is a much harder thing to evaluate and figure out. Even number of acres is hard. And I think we've had previous discussions about this, about how do you even have consistent and good tracking of that, but the real outcome that you care about is even harder.

And so it's a hard thing for the Administration to do. I mean, we certainly acknowledge that, but it's something that I think we could be doing a better job of. And especially with these packages, we had so much money in many cases for new pilot programs, and the money's gonna go away and we're gonna have to hopefully in 10 years or I don't know how long.

Hopefully at some point, hopefully before 10 years, but at some point the budget will be in a position to make additional investments. And when that happens, the Legislature, we think, is gonna wanna be positioned to make those decisions. Which areas were most effective at helping us have resilient forests or whatever your goal is ultimately, and we know the Administration is working hard.

The Forest Wildfire Resilience Task Force, they're working on this very hard in that area and in other areas the Administration is making, certainly making progress, but it's really hard. There's work to be done and I think we need to kind of keep asking those questions and potentially think about putting even in this budget time thinking about are there areas where a little bit of money here and there to have really robust evaluation? So it's not just, you know, how many people used this program?

Because that's nice to know, but it really doesn't tell us what we got from it fundamentally, if it met whatever the Legislature's goals are. So I think a really good question, and I think, yeah, one that we'll probably continue to have to discuss in these hearings.

Agreed. Yes. And I know I've appreciated our chair's focus on that accountability. I think it's just going to get more and more important. I think we all recognize this is what we're talking about for early action. We're going to be making even harder decisions as the months go on. And so I think we need to work together to ensure that we're taking those tough decisions off real data and the most robust analysis possible.

If I could just follow up on that while we have it. In the short three years that I've been here, there is no greater request of the Assembly than how do we evaluate the effectiveness of the spending that we are authorizing. And so this is not an accusation, this is an invitation, as I think is eloquently pointed out by Lao. It's not easy. I mean, if it was easy, we would be there. But I think you can really trace the last couple of decades.

That question gets asked constantly. And when you start to dive into it, you start to see why it is so difficult. Number one, it costs money to do more evaluation. You know, if you have independent third parties or if the departments have to, you know, do reports. But then the second thing is, well, what evaluation is really, really going to get to, you know, is it how many people use the program? Well, that doesn't prove anything by itself, et cetera.

So if we could all just recognize that, if we could make progress on this in a collaborative way, because I know you folks that are, you know, I could hear it in your voice when you were talking about how to do the home hardening program. You were going, we want to do the home hardening program, right? We don't want to just, here's $50 million and it goes out and, you know, but to do it right is hard.

So I know you would like to have the best information and certainly on things like wildfire, you know, what works and what doesn't work is a really important question. Right. So don't have an easy answer. But if we could have a real sense of partnership that we want to work on, that for the next couple of years, because it would be a years long process, we'd all be better off.

And maybe we start with a few departments like you folks, who I think there's some particular benefits, you know, that we could get out of that a little bit easier to do, you know, did this. You know, the statistics in health. We can go how many people didn't catch COVID how many people didn't die in the hospital, how many people came to the emergency room and didn't have to come back. A little bit easier, harder.

With the categories here in climate and sea level rise, what, what's, what's effective, what's not effective, all of that kind of stuff. So that's just an overall thought. But there is a real passion in the Assembly for that information. And I know you guys share it also. And let's see if we can create a concerted effort to try to pull that off. I'm going to go on to my questions, you guys. Okay.

So I want to go quick because of what we have, but can you give us a quick update on the legal disputes around surrounding the Redondo Beach wetlands restoration site?

Bryan Cash with the natural resources agency, the parties involved in the acquisition of the site. There are two lawsuits going on right now and a bankruptcy. So that really complicated the readiness of the project. I'll leave it at that.

All right. And why is the timing for the use of these funds uncertain just because of that?

Yeah, because

I assumed. Okay. CAL FIRE resource code 4137 requires CAL FIRE to develop standardized protocol for monitoring, implementation and evaluating the impacts of vegetation management projects. And this fits the very topic we were just starting on. But what's the status of implementing the standardized protocol, monitoring and evaluation and the impact. I'm going to read all four questions so that you can just answer them all at once. What's the status of the program? Are there any obstacles to you in terms of completing the statutory requirement?

Does the reduction in funding and monitoring impact your ability to fulfill this requirement? And have you completed this year's report? All four questions? Yes. Okay, thank you.

I think I got those. To answer your question, we posted the monitoring protocols last March. We essentially took protocols that we had existing within the Department and built off of those. These are protocols that our forest health program had been using for probably a year prior to that. So the protocols are now posted as far as steps needed to perform or to complete. Complete those? No, they're done. We've completed them. It's actually a combination of two different protocols that we've lumped into one.

One of them is more specific to prescribed fire, and we did that because there are some nuances involved in monitoring prescribed fires that are a little different than going out and looking at a thinning project or some of the other activities that we're monitoring. But they have been posted per 4130. Let's see, it's 4137 g. There is a requirement that we then roll those, those protocols out to other agencies so that we can all comprehensively be able to monitor, basically get on the same page.

That requirement goes into effect this December 2024. We are on task to meet that deadline. And so what we've essentially done is taken a relatively comprehensive, complex monitoring protocol that we currently have in place to meet the statute, and we're making it more feasible, field based, so that it's a little more efficient, maybe a little less complex, and will allow folks to go out with their existing resources in order to complete that monitoring.

One of the concerns is that we didn't have any funding or resources allocated with the statute, and so we wanted to make it a little bit more simple and efficient, if you will.

Thank you. So the impression that it's not done is not accurate. It is done.

It is completed, yes.

Besides the size and destruction of fires, what metrics can be used to verify the effectiveness of wildfire prevention and vegetation management activities? And we know you've got the very simple 10 word answer because this is a really easy answer.

Yeah, we already talked about, we're done. We solved it. So those two metrics of size and destruction are obviously very important and they help us at a quick glance, kind of take a look back. But there are so many other aspects that we look at to help evaluate and determine the metrics. So I'm going to run through a few of them. I'll try to be as quick as I can, but I think they're important to touch on and highlight a lot of these programs.

So we'll start out with defensible space inspection. The last couple years, we've been able to exceed our 200 internal CAL FIRE 250,000 inspection annually goal. So there are roughly 850 to 900,000 residential structures in the state responsibility area, and it's our goal to hit every one of them every three years. So with our current staff, we're on track to be able to do that for the first time ever with the staff that we've had from our increases over the last few years.

But one of the metrics that we use to determine the effectiveness is compliance, and we're seeing, on average, 84% compliance on a first inspection. So that tells us that people are learning, they're listening, they're absorbing, they're doing the work to become compliant with defensible space. A program that was just recently implemented through legislation was called Qualified Entities program.

It allows for us to train fire safe councils or resource conservation districts or other groups that were identified in that legislation to be defensible space assessors so they can go out and conduct defensible space assessments on our behalf. So basically, force multiplying the people that are going out and providing education and conducting those assessments. So that program, we've seen 20 entities already since our launch in January of this year that have requested that training to help us force multiply our model.

Defensible space program came to us through legislation as well. Eight local jurisdictions have signed up to receive this training from us because they may not have a comprehensive defensible space program within their local jurisdiction. So they looked to us and we created draft ordinances and a comprehensive training for them to teach them how to do defensible space. Everything from the amount of staff they need, a rebuttal program, I mean, a comprehensive program. We've already seen seven.

I think I said eight jurisdictions have signed up for that already this year. We talked about the home hardening program. The way we test whether the home hardening program works is a way we don't want to is fire comes through after we've done it and we find out if the home's burned down or not. And so we don't actually want to test whether or not it works. We just want it to work.

So we will have to wait and see after we harden a community to see if a wildfire goes through to be able to determine that. But following up on that, our damage inspection program. So post emergency assessment, everything from floods, wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes, we go out and conduct post emergency assessments to determine what happened. Why did the home burn down? What were the aspects of that that contributed to it?

And that helps us determine better codes and regulations moving forward so we can determine those things that really were effective and or those things that weren't effective. And we can say through our damage inspection program that those homes that had defensible space on them were 56% more likely to survive a wildfire than had they not had any defensible space at all. So we're able to measure success that way.

Our wildfire prevention grant program, which I talked about earlier, the oversubscribed amount of work, tremendous amount of interest in that because people want to get the work done on the ground. Our fuels reduction program through prescribed fire, the use of beneficial fire, cultural burning, our fuels reduction work that we're doing out on landscape to protect communities, and we're exceeding that 100,000 acre goal the last three years. So the folks out on the ground doing a tremendous job.

Chief Reichman mentioned Cal Mapper, the ability for us to visualize the data. Now you can go on our website and look where all those projects are done in your local community. You can find out what activities were done, the treatment areas that are around you, and one that you just touched on about effectiveness of fuels treatment. So we're rolling out this year in May 1 what we call our fuels treatment effectiveness reporting.

So adding on to the standardized protocols that Chief Reichmann talked about, we've implemented a new program where as soon as there's a fire detected anywhere on the landscape, it gets automatically sent out to our local CAL FIRE units if it's within a quarter mile of a fuels treatment that has happened on the landscape and that alerts our CAL FIRE folks that they have something they need to go evaluate.

Did that fire contribute to or did the fuels treatment contribute to the forwards stopping of the forward spread of the fire? Did it slow down the fire? Did it aid in ingress and egress to fire crews or for evacuation? Did it or did it have no effect? But we want to be open and transparent about all of those things. How was it effective? And that translates to the investments that we've made through the Legislature into that to determine, you know, was it worth it?

And if it wasn't, how can we do better next time? What do we need to do to improve? But we're really excited about rolling out this program to be transparent about where we put those and how, if and when they were effective. Also through our land use planning efforts.

I touched a little bit about this earlier, about really working with local jurisdictions on the safety elements of their General plan, making sure that they're putting homes or not necessarily where they put the homes, but if they are putting homes in a certain place, looking at it from a subject matter expert standpoint, are the road widths the way they should be? Is the water storage capacity what it should be? Are the widths of the turnarounds wide enough, all of those aspects that our people help with.

I talked about our local hazard mitigation plan creation, firewise communities, partnering with NFPA, the National Fire Protection Agency, about the implementation of firewise communities. We will be celebrating the 800th community that is in good standing with firewise over the next few weeks. Really exciting. Just in 2020, we celebrated the 500th so exponential rise in the last three years years.

But we also work with industries and other industries and Department, the building industry, CBIA or the California Department of Insurance, our other local partners like CSAC, RCRC, the League of Cities and Public Feedback. We a tremendous amount of investment go into all of those folks to solicit feedback to make sure we're on the right track.

We have our wildfire mitigation Advisory Committee that we hold every month that brings all the stakeholders together to talk about all things related to wildfire again, so that there's not redundancy and overlap. And if there is, that we find ways to work together and that we make sure that we're all singing from the same sheet of music, that we're all saying the same thing so that the public gets the same message no matter which Department or agency they're hearing it from.

But all these things combined in more of the metrics we used to verify for on the right track and if what we're implementing translates to being effective and if we look back over the last couple of years, I think we can point to a lot of successes.

Well, it's reassuring to hear all those efforts being made because it's hard for us to know about all of those efforts and we certainly respect that. It is difficult to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And if you have to wait until a fire comes through, it certainly slows the evaluation process. Hopefully there are people at the national level and some people at the state level that can be doing scientific research on what works and what doesn't work.

So we don't have to have the fire be the only opportunity for us to check out the effectiveness. But as we move forward, thank you all very much. We really hope that we helped you get your steps in today and we're ready to move on to issue two. Thank you.

Office of Planning and Research. The General Fund Solutions climate package only. Is there something wrong with your Department? You only have half as many people here.

They're all back in the office working. Well, good morning Chair Bennett and Assemblymember Connolly. My name is Russell Fong. I'm the undersecretary for the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. And first off, we want to thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about our climate programs and give a quick update. And with that, I want to start off by introducing two very important folks that are here today. On my left I have Abby Edwards, the Deputy Director for Climate and Planning Programs.

These are our climate experts. And on my right I have Ina Lupian, Community Assistance for Climate Equity Program Manager. And so if you can bear with me, I'd like to give a little update on how our programs are doing. These are climate programs that we're very excited and very proud of. So with that, this year has been a year of implementation and progress for the organization.

Through investments made by the Legislature in our programs, OPR has empowered communities throughout the state and plan for and implement climate adaptation resiliency measures. At its core, OPR is an organization that is focused on building a more equitable and climate resistant California through strategic investment and land use. OPR's programs provide capacity building, planning, analytical implementation assistance, as well as pre-development resources to communities throughout the state, including grant application assistance, training, partnership development, community engagement, planning and implementation support, and communication assistance.

This work has helped assist some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities throughout California to apply for and receive funding from federal state philanthropic resources. Utilizing our existing resources, we assist historically underserved areas of the state in leveraging regional and local investments from the Federal Government, helping bring down additional federal dollars to the state. The proposed budget solutions to OPR's climate programs will preserve the progress the state has been making while contributing to the fiscal for a better fiscal standing.

I want to speak briefly about each of these programs and the important work that we do. First off, the regional climate collaborative program at SGC, the Strategic Growth Council funds coalitions of community partners and under resourced communities to establish priorities, develop a pipeline of projects, and align projects with additional funding opportunities.

The program serves as a first step in the process or seed funding to help underinvested communities prepare to access a variety of public funding opportunities, including planning and implementation grants available at OPR and the Strategic Growth Council, as well as other state, federal and philanthropic funding opportunities. Next, the Regional Climate Collaboratives program received $20 million in the 2021 budget to fund two rounds of programs.

In round one, the Strategic Growth Council received 45 applications requesting a total of $67 million, exceeding the allotted amount of funding by eight times. Round one funded six collaboratives across the state in 2022. Next, the Integrated Climate Adaptation Resilience program at OPR administers three grant programs funding through the climate budget. Number one is the Adaptation Planning Grant program, which focuses on local adaptation planning efforts.

The second is our Regional Climate Resilience program, which builds regional scale climate resilience and our third, the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience program that centers around building community resilience to extreme heat. Let's focus first on the Adaptation Planning Grant program, which experienced overwhelming demand in its inaugural year. We had 141 applications request a total of $63 million, far more than the 8 million awarded for 14 projects.

The program's second round application closes this May, and to date we already received 58 pre-applications requesting nearly $27 million, compared to the $10 million available. Next, our Regional Climate Resilience program received a total of 83 applications requesting $111 million. In the end, the program awarded 19 planning and implementation projects totaling over $21 million. 86% of round one funding is going to regional partners involving California Native American tribes and/or partnerships serving predominantly disadvantaged communities.

Finally, our Extreme Heat and Community Resistance program's first round of applications closes this month. The program has experienced overwhelming demand, with 166 pre-applications submitted requesting nearly $180 million, which is more than nine times the available funding. This is in large part due to extensive community engagement listening at workshops over the past year. In summary, California communities are actively preparing for the growing climate threats they face, such as flooding, sea level rise, wildfires, and extreme heat with the help of grant programs like these.

These programs provide resources for local, regional, and tribal climate adaptation and resilience efforts, engaging diverse stakeholders and fostering multisector collaborations. Together, these grant programs fill gaps in adaptation and resilience funding to support the full lifecycle of projects from planning to implementation, ensuring that more California communities and tribes are better prepared to address the impacts extreme weather events happening today.

I want to emphasize that the governor's proposed budget solutions will not stop or hinder the progress that OPR is making, and in that effort, we will continue providing lasting benefits to communities throughout California. We look forward to continuing that work and partnership with the Legislature. This concludes our presentation and be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Start with Assembly Member Connolly. Do you have any questions? Oh, I'm sorry. Department of Finance and LAO. Department of Finance?

Henry Ing, Department of Finance. Nothing to add LAO.

Thank you. Luke Koushmaro with the Legislative Analyst Office. I want to first echo comments that my colleagues have made in both this hearing and other ones that given the budget condition, the state will need to make some cuts to pass a balanced budget. And reducing one time funding is less disruptive than cutting into ongoing programs. Similar to the previous panel, we find that the solutions proposed by the Governor are reasonable, but note that the Legislature does have additional options available.

Specifically, the Legislature could potentially make alternative solutions for the extreme heat and community resiliency program, including further reductions as well as a reduction rather than a shift to GGRF. This could provide for up to another $95 million in solutions. In addition, for the climate adaptation and resilience planning grants, there's a remaining $10 million of uncommitted funds that will likely be committed in the next few months but currently remain available, that could be reduced to provide additional General Fund solutions. Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member Connolly, any questions before I start down my list?

Yeah, maybe a couple relating to the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience program, which we know is extremely important for our communities. So my understanding in LAO highlights it that OPR is planning to award about $20 million in the first round of grants. Our staff note that applications for this program are due this month, which means organizations like nonprofits have already spent resources to complete the documents to do the application process. Will the first round of grants still be allocated?

If not, how does the Administration or OPR plan on remedying this with our public and nonprofit partners? I guess, more broadly, what are the departments doing to address extreme heat if we're proposing to essentially eliminate the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience program?

Thanks for your question. My name is Abby Edwards. I'm the Deputy Director of Climate and Planning Programs at OPR. So, as you're correct that the applications closed this month, and as Undersecretary Fong noted, we have received overwhelming interest in this program. We have nearly 200 pre-application surveys submitted so far, with folks indicating interest in the program. Projects range from small planning grants to help support small scale efforts at the community level to large infrastructure projects as well.

And so could you just clarify for me the questions that you're asking: if this program is further cut, sort of what efforts are we going to make at our level to engage with the community further?

And also, are those grants going to be awarded this cycle as well?

So with the governor's current budget, it maintains the 25 million for this first round of funding. And so if that remains the solution, then we will be able to allocate those awards for this cycle.

And then more broadly, is the program on the chopping block, essentially, and if so, what are some alternatives?

The proposed solutions, and maybe Department of Finance wants to address this, but proposes the future rounds to be allocated to GGRF. I don't know if you want to speak to that.

Henry Ing, Department of Finance. That is correct. This government budget includes a net reduction of 40.1 million and a shift of 70 million to the GGRF.

So I'm going to start at the end because I'm most curious about this. And that is, you've had all these applications come in, you know, in terms of Extreme Heat and Community Resilience, what kind of projects are coming in? What are you learning? What? I mean, this is a whole brand new area of addressing extreme heat. So what do people think are the solutions in their communities?

Thank you for this question. It's been so much fun and really exciting for us to see the projects that are coming through. I have a few examples that I can give. So one example is a tribe partnering with a community based organization to provide shade and reliable cooling during extreme heat events within their tribal lands. Another is a county that's partnering with a community based organization to develop a collaborative heat action plan with heat vulnerable community members.

Another is a council of government and community based organization proposing a mobile cooling unit and multilingual educational campaign. This unit would really target people experiencing homelessness, people experiencing poverty, immigrants, seniors and young people. I have a long list of exciting projects, but one thing that sort of touches on what the conversation at this last one was all about around the evaluation, something that the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience program has is a built in evaluation.

So report to the Legislature and then also an external third party evaluation to really evaluate how is this working? How is this working at the community level and really be able to assess the impacts of these metrics and these projects at the community level to see what impact they're making. So we have that built into the program, and I think that that will really be able to add to this understanding of how we address extreme heat.

You know, we're really seeing it's a 58 county issue across the state.

Thank you. How are you coordinating? Because we have extreme heat being dealt with by multiple departments, multiple agencies. What kind of coordination is going on between agencies with regards to extreme heat?

Another great question. Thank you. I feel like with extreme heat, with adaptation, with resilience, I think California really prides itself on having a whole of government approach. We really do a lot of work with our interagency partners to ensure that we're aligning on best practices, aligning with best available science, and doing a lot of work on that front. So a few things that I'll note.

There's the AB 1643, which is the OSHA heat study, and our team sits on the workgroup and advisory board for that. There's also AB 2238 which is the statewide heat ranking system that OEHHA is leading. OPR also sits on that workgroup to make sure that we're coordinated, and we're also listed in that Bill as well. There's also all of our work around the state's extreme heat action plan, which really goes a long way.

It works with a bunch of different agencies to identify heat actions and to coordinate our efforts on that. And we now will be updating that action plan regularly and also working with the Natural Resources Agency to integrate into the state adaptation strategy. So there's a lot of coordinating that needs to happen and is happening on extreme heat, as well as adaptation and resilience.

Are the applications due this April? I heard May. So is it this April, or is it?

So two different programs. There's the Adaptation Planning Grant program, which is second round of funding. Applications are due in May, and then the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience program. Applications are due this month.

Are due in April. And what are the challenges you found in terms of implementing the program?

That's a great question. So I think the biggest challenge is really creating a program that meets the diverse needs of the state. As I mentioned, it's a 58 county approach, extreme heat impacts, and will impact every county, every jurisdiction. And so crafting a program that's really able to meet all of those needs has been really challenging and exciting and a great opportunity for us. So I'll say through a lot of engagement, through a lot of listening, we've been able to create a program that's really responsive.

So, as I mentioned, we have small grants that are available for people that are just, like, getting started, maybe have lower capacity, and are able to really think about the first steps of how to address extreme heat and then others that are ready for a large scale implementation project.

And so we've been able to craft the program to be responsive to this, but it's taken a lot of listening and it's taken a lot of engagement to both build a base of folks that are interested, but also make sure that the program is really responsive.

Thank you very much. I think we're finished with this unless, Assemblymember, you have any questions. Right. All right, thank you. I appreciate your time. And we're now on to issue three in CAL FIRE and the 66 hour workweek.

I come to you today in my 34th year with the Department. I'm proud of this organization and where we have been and where we have come to.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Bennett and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about the 66-hour workweek. My name is Joe Tyler. I am the Director at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CAL FIRE.

And that was my number one priority is becoming the Director as, among other things, the health and wellness of our employees.

I recognize in these 34 years the complexity in the catastrophic wildfires that continue to advance and the need to meet our mission, both in fire suppression, fire prevention, and other administrative support. To accomplish that is really to find ourselves in a situation where we have to ensure that we have a healthy and resilient workforce to be able to meet the mission.

This comes to us as a result of a ratified memorandum of understanding by the Bargaining Unit Eight members that was also approved by the Administration and the Legislature in 2022.

So with that, today we come to you with a Governor's Budget request of $199 million, with 197 of that being from the General Fund that includes 338 positions in Fiscal Year 24-25 to implement a shift from a 72 hours workweek to a 66 hours workweek for our firefighters within the Department.

This proposal is a stair-stepped approach over multiple years that finalizes at nearly $770 million, 2, 458 positions by Fiscal Year 28-29. With that, I recognize that this is a significantly complex issue. In fact, it takes up the next 20 pages of your agenda. So with that, we realized the complexity of the issue, and I needed a dedicated individual to really dive into that for us on behalf of management.

So sitting beside me is the Northern Region Chief, George Morris III, and I'm gonna turn it over to him to discuss the complexities of this proposal.

Good morning, Chair Bennett, Members of the Committee, my name is George Morris III, and I have the honor of serving as CAL FIRE's Northern Region Chief. Now, the presentation will provide you with a high-level overview of the plan to implement the reduction in CAL FIRE's work week.

The plan is designed to be phased in over five years, reducing the duty week from 72 hours and 66 in compliance with the 2022 Bargain Unit Eight MOU between the state and CAL FIRE firefighters Local 2881.

This proposal includes administrative support and relief positions utilizing methodology used in the previous relief and direct mission support BCPs.

The objectives of this plan are to increase recruitment and retention, provide vacancy relief for personnel, maximize co-benefits of the plan elements, and move fire protection personnel to a transitional workweek in near alignment with industry standards.

The plan eliminates the legacy tiered transition periods to staff up and down from peak staffing and replaces it with a model in which CAL FIRE is at peak staffing for nine months per year, maintaining utilization of a seasonal workforce, significantly expanding CAL FIRE's staff for fire protection resources year-round, and to complete critical fire prevention prescribed fire and emergency response activities with its permanent workforce.

For background, the plan was initiated from the result of collective bargaining in 2022 and developed in preparation for implementation to begin on November 1 of 2024, as ratified in the MOU. The MOU further required CAL FIRE to develop the plan in consultation with labor to preserve the interests of the state and labor in the development process where possible.

The Department accounted for systemic considerations and challenges which, unaddressed or exacerbated, would compromise a successful implementation of the plan.

These systemic considerations included the imbalance ratio between the fire apparatus engineer and fire captain classifications, relief personnel shortage, training capacity, and the challenge of developing the plan within the reality of a fire year.

The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection began the use of the 72-hour workweek in 1977 after transitioning fire protection employees from a 96-hour workweek.

All fire protection proposals submitted by CAL FIRE since 1977 were developed within the paradigm of a 72-hour workweek, so developing a plan to implement the 66-hour workweek requires adjustments to previous initiatives to account for the change in workweek and its associated impacts.

In the process of developing this plan, the co-benefits of the work week emerged primarily through the mechanism to correct the fire captain to fire apparatus engineer ratio imbalance.

So the systemic considerations that the Department considered were, one, improved ratio between the fire captain and fire apparatus engineer. The captain engineer imbalance is an insurmountable obstacle to effectively implementing the 66-hour workweek without significant change.

Engineers are the feeder rank for the fire captain position, so the ratio between captain and engineer at this moment is three captains. For every two engineers, an engineer must successfully complete a 36 months apprenticeship as a prerequisite for becoming a fire captain.

While these resources were essential to aiding the department's ability to effectively staff, they were designed within the construct of a 72-hour workweek. This perpetuated the imbalance as there was no feasible way to correct the imbalance within the legacy staffing paradigm.

The Department is constantly challenged to keep pace with demand for captain positions as there are 556 more captain positions than engineers at present, and in recent years, the Department has grown through the 2022 Relief BCP and other initiatives.

The second consideration was the current staffing paradigm is incompatible with the 66-hour workweek. Traditional staffing is a term that's used to describe fire engine staffing as one captain, one engineer, and one or more firefighters per engine.

So, by incorporating a new staffing paradigm, the Department will be able to correct the imbalance by substantially increasing the number of engineers while only increasing necessary captains. This will invert the ratio to 0.9 captains for every 1.1 fire apparatus engineer.

This model places the burden of driving and fire engine pump operations on the company officer, often removing them from fire line supervision and leadership of the firefighters in their charge.

Municipal fire departments across California and the entire nation use this staffing model based on National Fire Protection Association Standard 1710. The Department has utilized the legacy model of one company officer, that's a captain or engineer, and two firefighters to staff its 356 fire engines.

The risk associated with firefighters advancing fire lines without the leadership of an experienced company officer creates a critical firefighter safety liability, which this plan addresses as a co-benefit. Consideration three was to maintain vacancy, training, leave, and disability backfill capability.

In terms of providing for supervision and safety of firefighters, the company officer may initially take command of an incident while conducting pump operations as firefighters advance fire control lines unsupervised.

Relief personnel allow the Department to manage leave liability without routine forced hires. Relief in the context of this plan is the essential component of fixing the captain-to-engineer ratio.

The plan continues the department's priority of providing relief personnel to ensure continuity of operations behind vacancy, injury, leave liability, and training. The Department recognizes the need to ensure consistent staffing without mandatory overtime, commonly referred to as forced hires.

This plan incorporates additional administrative support personnel consistent with an established methodology for calculating support staff workload and demand.

This plan places the engineer classification in a 4.0 staffing factor and the captain and firefighter classifications at a 3.11 staffing factor. Consideration four was to provide for administrative support staff for programmatic support of additional firefighting personnel.

The additional administrative support positions are essential to address the impact of increased workload and functions such as accounting, budgets, human resources, equal employment opportunity, employee support services, technical services, health and wellness, telecommunications, labor relations, business services, professional standards, program, information technology, legal, the regions, and the CAL FIRE units.

Consistent with the state Administrative Manual, which details the state's policy on central services functions that provide support to one or more programs, these positions are cost-shared amongst all of the funds within CAL FIRE's three main program areas under a distributed Administration. And consideration five provides sufficient training capacity to implement the plan and keep pace with normal attrition. The success of this plan depends on the ability of the Department to hire and train sufficient personnel annually to ensure full implementation by year five.

The plan accounts for an additional temporary training site at the former Castle Air Force Base. The recent establishment of the training center north in Shasta College was developed to implement the 2022 relief BCP and ongoing needs resulting from that specific expansion, irrespective of this request. So this plan, by developing Castle Training Center, includes personnel to increase the number of company officer and firefighter academies, all initial training required for company officers.

The addition to this facility is critical to maintain the constant output of trained personnel to account for normal attrition, including retirements, separations, and long-term injuries. And by increasing fire protection personnel by approximately 30%, demand on the training centers will increase proportionately and must be accounted for. For every fire protection personnel vacancy, there is a corresponding cycle of hiring testing promoting that occurs across the state system.

In addition to the academy training required in this plan, this will also increase the number of apprentices under the Joint Apprenticeship Apprenticeship Committee. This three-year program requires training at the local level and the direct support of unit training officers. The plan accounts for training officer support at the unit level. An engineer must complete 36 months of apprenticeship achieving journey status before they are eligible to promote or compete for promotion to fire captain.

The initial lift of implementing this plan includes hiring the bulk of the engineers in the first few years of the plan to ensure that there is a sufficient applicant pool to fire captain in the last two years of the plan. So, for the plan elements, the plan is phased in over five years. It is built from a foundation of existing initiatives such as the relief BCP, the direct mission support, and the cruise BCPs. The plan integrates with their multi-year implementation plans.

It includes nine personnel months per firefighter, one, to reduce dependence on annual one-time staffing enhancement requests consistent with the May 2023 LAO report. It includes a proportionate increase in contract county funding, an increase in administrative staff required for programmatic support of additional firefighting personnel, a multi-year training plan, and development of an additional training center. It includes technical services, staff and special repairs funding, emergency vehicles, utility vehicles and fleet support, and unit-level training capacity to facilitate the increase in apprentices.

Co-benefits of the plan that were identified in its development are to decrease reliance on the annual one-time staffing enhancement requests. It builds surge capacity for large incident support and also overhead capacity and supervision for large incident support. It builds unit-level training capacity. Additional permanent staff will increase base-level staffing from 65 engines to 153 engines in the base period. It creates base and peak staffing levels, removes the transition period, and extends aviation contracts to align with staffing levels.

Fuel reduction output increase is likely promotions to engineer in traditional staffing may be more appealing to candidates as they work under the guided leadership of an experienced company officer or captain. Closer alignment to industry standard workweek will give us closer to schedule and workweek parity, which will make us a more attractive employer to the broader fire service.

Improvements in firefighter health and wellness and this all may also attract former previously trained employees who left employment with CAL FIRE for other departments with more attractive work weeks and compensation. Challenges with implementing this plan center around training capacity, hiring, and infrastructure. On the training side, it needs a multi-year training plan, the development, and staffing of the fourth training site.

It needs procurement of additional fire apparatus to support company officer training, increasing training output while accounting for normal attrition, and increasing training capacity at the unit level to support the apprentices. For hiring, engineers have to complete that 36 months of apprenticeship achieving journey status before they're eligible to promote to fire captain. Recruitment of fire service professionals from the broader fire service via open examinations will also be critical to the success.

Retention of CAL FIRE personnel to prevent loss from voluntary separation during this time period is also essential. For infrastructure, staffing for longer durations routinely will stress existing infrastructure and will require preventative maintenance and special repairs to remain operational.

For outcomes and accountability of this plan, this request will provide for an operationally feasible transition to a 66-hour workweek by accounting for administrative support, vehicle special repair, and a multi-year training plan essential to the success of the correct of the request and upon appropriation. CAL FIRE will implement the 66-hour workweek in accordance with the collectively bargained start date ratified in the 2022 Bargaining Unit Eight MOU.

In summary, the 66-hour workweek is a step towards the industry standard workweek for fire protection personnel and this transition maximizes the capability of fire protection personnel and creates significant co-benefits beyond the benefit of a reduced workweek. I thank you for your time and attention and welcome any questions you have.

Thanks for the thorough report. Before we go to the Department of Finance, I just have two quick questions that specifically relate you referred to the 3.1 staffing ratio, 4.0 and 3.1 staffing ratio, but could you elaborate on that a little bit more?

So what that's referring to is the staffing factor, and so that's the amount of people that it requires to fill out a week, taking into account their leave liability. So a 3.1 staffing factor. The first part of your question was developed looking at the average leave liability that an employer employee has.

It's 12 weeks a year, essentially that they're in training, they've got MOU, vacation, sick leave, all the various things that they could take leave for it budgets that in, so that you have sufficient people to cover seven days a week.

Okay. Same thing for the 4.0. And the other thing is, could the two of you, where are we in terms of the challenges? What's recruiting? I mean, it used to be people would talk about 2000 people showing up for 10 fire positions at the municipal level, but at the CAL FIRE level now, how challenging is it to find quality personnel and what's happening from our recruitment and standpoint?

So, in terms of recruitment, in the last few years in particular, we've put a higher emphasis on working through platforms like LinkedIn and having bigger relations where we reach people where they are. I mean, the following on that alone is about a billion people. So reaching people with the right skill sets, I think when we become a more attractive employer in terms of work week and schedule parity, that will be a natural benefit where people want to come.

We've expanded with the use of our recruitment program. We're out in events, we're going to events in communities that we don't provide service to to reach the full breadth of the population in California. So, yeah, recruitment is a concern in this, but I think workweek parity will help bring fire service professionals to CAL FIRE.

But we've been challenged to get enough applicants at this point in time. Is that correct?

So, chair Bennett, several classifications that we have across the Department for our seasonal firefighter. One classification is generally a deep pool. There are a lot of applicants who are interested in our seasonal firefighter one position. What we have found is we have continued to grow, is many times people who have come out of accredited fire academies with all the training already. We are hiring all of those individuals.

And we are back to a point in which we are hiring individuals who have little to no training at all, putting them through our academies. Then they have an opportunity to either come in at an entry level or promote to a firefighter two classification. The firefighter two classification seems to be a stable classification, except for paramedics used in our cooperative fire protection agreements. That is a California fire service problem, not specifically, just the CAL FIRE problem from a firefighter, too.

They will take an opportunity to promote into a fire apparatus engineer position. And generally speaking, we're able to fill our fire apparatus engineer positions. It is the point that was said earlier where we have an imbalance and a ratio imbalance of engineers to fire captains. And so therefore, because we don't have enough journey leveled engineers currently to fill all of our fire captain vacancies, we're also relying on open list fire captains or lateral fire captains from municipal or federal agencies to come across into CAL FIRE.

That is not a robust workforce to lateral across, largely because when it comes from a municipal setting, the wages, compensation and workweek are much better in a municipal fire setting.

So at the entry level, you have plenty of applicants, it sounds like, at a seasonal level. At the seasonal level. And then what's the next level after.

Seasonal level, there are three entry points, actually four, but three primary entry points into the Department. It is firefighter one, firefighter two, and fire apparatus engineer.

And firefighter one needs training, and they go through the academy.

So we are hiring so many individuals at the firefighter one level that we are beginning to train them in depth. They're not coming to us with training.

Because they don't have skills. Right.

Great.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And I think you've done an excellent job in the presentation about the structural problem that exist in terms of engineer to captain ratio. Department of Finance.

Stephen Benson, Department of Finance given how excellent the overview was, I don't have anything to add from an overview perspective, but available to help answer with questions and funding.

Thank you. LAO.

Helen Kirsten again with the Legislative Analyst's office. So we think prioritizing the health and welfare of firefighters certainly makes sense. We've had a number of difficult fire seasons, as I know the Committee is well aware. So we think it makes. It was totally understandable that the Legislature would have wanted to implement this change in workweek when it adopted the MOU with unit eight back in September 2022.

I think the point we wanna make, or one of the key points we wanna make, is that the landscape has changed a lot in the intervening 18 months. And there are a couple key ways I wanna highlight for you that the landscape has changed since the Legislature passed that MOU.

One is the condition of the General Fund, and I know our office has talked about this in quite a bit of depth with all of you in the past, but the condition of the General Fund has declined significantly in the last 18 months, and that makes it much more likely that the state will have to adopt significant budget reductions or potentially revenue increases, such as tax increases.

The second thing I want to highlight for you is that the magnitude of the costs of this proposal and the implications of this proposal are much clearer now than they were when the Legislature considered this MOU in September 2022. So in September 2022, the MOU just had a provision about implementing the work week change. It didn't have any specificity about how that would happen. I mean, it established this Committee to come up with the details, but it didn't define really what that would look like.

And there was no cost estimate. And the reason there was no cost estimate included as part of the MOU is that this was really a very unusual provision. So most of the time when there are provisions of MOUs, the MOU provision takes effect during the term of the MOU, and then the Administration provides a cost estimate. So they say, okay, this is going to change some aspect of the employment condition. It's going to cost $10 million.

In this case, this 66 hours work week provision wouldn't take effect until November of this year. But the MOU expires in June. So there was no cost estimate provided to the Legislature when it considered this provision or the MOU more broadly. We now know that this provision of the MOU will be very costly. We had estimated, our office had said maybe in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is kind of at the top end of the range when fully implemented of that, of that range that we expected when fully implemented. This proposal is very significant, $750 million ongoing General Fund, $770 million of all funds. So it's very significant. It would increase the staffing and the budget for the Department really markedly. And I know there's some questions you have on this, but the Department has grown dramatically over the last several years, and this would be another substantial increase.

And it would have a variety of both. You heard the direct impacts on the Department. So a number of things related to the mix of the personnel on cruise, how many personnel are budgeted for each position on an engine would change how many engines are in operation, which months? You know, for which months? So a lot of operational changes for the Department and then a number of potential indirect impacts, and a lot of those we don't fold fully, understand yet.

I'm going to just mention one that might be of interest to folks. So, Cal, fire has a number of contracts with local agencies where it provides basically fire service, in some cases also paramedic service on behalf of those local agencies. Well, we expect that this implementing the 66 hours workweek will change, will increase the cost of a fire crew. And so ultimately, when those contracts are renegotiated with local agencies.

Those costs may have to be worked into those contracts with local agencies, and that could be additional costs for them. And some of them may decide, hey, it's not worth contracting with CAL FIRE anymore, because they used to be a relatively cheap alternative compared to local agencies. Now they're not as much. So that's just one potential impact. There are likely others given the scale and scope of this proposal, which is very large.

So given this altered context, we think the Legislature faces a really key decision about whether the Legislature feels like the General Fund can sustain this proposal at this time. Recognizing that doing so could mean that you might have to make cuts other places or raise taxes or some other things. That might be difficult choices. If there's 1.0 I want to leave you with, I guess it's this. We recommend you don't treat this as a decision that's already been made.

The Legislature has the choice, do you want to do this? And do you want to do this now? MOU provisions are always subject to appropriation, but this particular provision had a specific language in it that said that it was subject to appropriation, which seemed to envision the Legislature really making that decision about, is the General Fund available to support this?

So we think if you're not sure if the legislate, if the budget can sustain this now, that you don't move forward with it this year, you can, you could always, you can do it next year or future year when that becomes clear, but that you don't do it this year. Cause if you appropriate the funding this year, we think it's gonna be very difficult to change course in the future and pull back.

If, for example, the General Fund condition continues to deteriorate, this would give you just more flexibility to potentially make other choices, and you could make other kinds of investments to address issues with the health and wellness of firefighters to both in the near and longer term. We do provide some suggestions for some things that you could consider in that area. I'm happy to go over those if that's helpful.

We do think if you feel that you want to continue to prioritize General Fund for implementing this change in 2425 we have just a recommendation related to adding some reporting language. This gets at some of the questions. I think the chair asked about how much, what work are different people are response personnel doing versus resilience personnel.

So one of the key points here is you're going to be, if you implement this proposal, it's a big increase in the number of year round permanent staff right now, CAL FIRE relies pretty heavily on seasonal firefighters to do a lot of work. They have a lot of permanent folks, too, but seasonal folks are doing a lot of work, and this would really shift that balance. There would be a lot more permanent year round firefighters.

So those folks really should be available to do some of this resilience work as a co benefit. It's not the cheapest way to get that work done, but they should really have some capacity to do that kind of work. And so we think having some reporting language to really get at, how much do we actually get, you know, how much work is being conducted, get a sense that that would be helpful if the Legislature decides to move forward.

So happy to take questions, but that's kind of at a high level. We did provide. Hopefully you all got it. We did a little brief that tries to lay out the issues in more detail. So definitely if you have any questions on that, let me know, but also happy to take them today. Thanks.

This is, you know, the first public hearing we're having on this. So I want to make sure we get everything out on the table so that somebody that wasn't here can look at this hearing, make sure they get all of these information. So that's the intention that we have from up here in terms of the questions. So I have a number of questions to make sure we do thoroughly get all of the information out on the table.

I do want to compliment LAO in that they do the hard job of asking the politically hard questions and pointing things out. And that's exactly what the Assembly asked for when they created the Laos office. And certainly a big budget request like this is something that we would expect them to be very thorough and scrutinized carefully. So, as always, the LAO's offices, we appreciate your candor as you move forward.

So I have a whole series of questions, but I want to turn to my colleagues in case you have anything first before I get into the more pro forma. Make sure we get things out on the table, Assemblymember and then Assembly.

Thank you, and thank you all for being here. And I guess I'll just start by saying that I do think this is a really important proposal. Recognizing your point that the MOU was subject to appropriation, it does still feel to me like this is us making good on a commitment that's important to ensure the safety of Californians as well as the health and welfare of our CAL FIRE employees.

I think to me, the sort of starkest statistic is the fact that if you're working in a municipal Department, you're working 56 hours workweek. It seems like there would be no way for us to maintain adequate staffing and have any kind of consistency at a 72 hours weekend. Kind of shocked that we don't see more folks, you know, leaving.

And so I think it's really an important step to ensure that we, that CAL FIRE is competitive relative to these municipal jobs, because I think we know that like recruiting and training, constant churn has its own really significant costs. So I do think it's an important thing, recognizing that it's a big number.

Going back to the earlier panel, I think it's important for us to take a look at some of the other things we're doing in other programs that we're doing right now that perhaps aren't cost effective. But I do think this is an important one for us to find funding to support. But I do have a couple questions based on some of the analysis in the document.

So I think it was the Lao had looked at, suggested some potentially other ways that we might implement the 66 hours workweek you offered. I think three examples. Can you just speak to the analysis? Did you analyze and evaluate those approaches and why did you choose the approach that you're putting forward here?

So we did analyze these. There were three alternatives and Helen, if I missed this, please. Boom. In one was reduce the relief staffing component, which was to suggest to keep personnel at a 2.33 staffing factor to implement the workweek and distributing the relief staffing capacity that we've already invested in, in the relief staffing BCP out to accomplish that with everybody at 2.33. Mathematically, that doesn't pan out the relief BCP.

It would negate all of the benefit of the relief BCP and the purpose behind it for the reason about leave liability and making sure that post covered positions are covered. So the way that we would have to cover that would be through mandatory forced hires. And so the reduction in the work week would be in name only but not in purpose. We could never actually field it. It would have to be covered by mandatory overtime.

The second alternative was to increase scheduled overtime, which would be necessary if alternative one was implemented. Paying overtime to cover. We would have to pay overtime to cover approximately 25,000 days of overtime in the span of a year. Given the size and scope of our operation, if you run out the schedule and fill those gaps on a 2.33. So doing that doesn't address the fundamental reasons for shifting to the 66 hours workweek itself.

It maintains the fire captain to fire wrapper ratio imbalance, which perpetuates that problem and holds personnel on duty days as a management practice and not as a good function of government. The proposed alternative would also have detrimental effects on the well being of CAL FIRE employees, in our estimation, given that you would have to lock them on for longer periods of time to effectuate that change. Alternative three was addressing the captain shortage through other approaches, and those approaches were to adjust existing classification requirements.

And we did look at the feasibility of another classification between fire captain and fire apparatus engineer, which we were conceptualizing as a lieutenant. The lieutenant and the captain's duties would be so substantially similar that carving out a distance between what they do would be very, very difficult and probably not pass as a fresh classification, frankly. So when we, we did discuss that about the feasibility of it, but because they would be substantially similar, the juice maybe wasn't worth the squeeze.

So using existing classifications that we had to implement something that we have to implement within a five year period, or what we were looking at, we felt that sticking with the classifications that we have was going to be the best alternative. The other thing about that is if a I mentioned the 36 months of apprenticeship, so that would still be the flag for someone to become a lieutenant in this. In this idea.

So once they finished their became journeyed, they would be eligible perhaps for a differential or something that would make them a lieutenant. Maybe there's still an FAE with differential. There's ways that we do that. Assistant chief is a good example. Deputy chief is a differential. But doing so, we were looking at the practicality of automatically making someone a lieutenant. But they have to compete, compete for it. All of these things have to be merit based.

And if somebody decided they didn't want to be a lieutenant, we couldn't make them one. So that could be a problem too. So those were some of the practical reasons that we didn't think lieutenant was going to be a viable option. The other option that was in there was recruiting fire captains from other agencies or increasing fire captain pay. So recruiting captains from other agencies, I think is an interesting idea.

I think if we don't achieve work week and schedule parity for the same reasons we mentioned before about compensations and work week, we're very unlikely to be an attractive employer for that. Increasing a fire captain's salary is intriguing, but it would cause if you didn't do it contemporaneously with the other ranks above fire captain, you would have an immediate compaction issue that would affect promotions to leadership levels in the Department.

Understood. All right. One other question. When the LAO talked about the fact that this is a significant increase in your full time workforce and that there would potentially be some co benefits and folks that could help do some of the climate resilience work that we know is so critical and important, you all are both nodding. So does that mean that you do envision some of these folks in the off season being able to be deployed in doing that type of work?

I would say that right now, the 65 engines that we do staff year round are doing that work in the base period. So increasing that would proportionally increase that output.

Okay, so you do see there being co benefit of that expanded full time workforce?

Okay. All right.

Absolutely.

If I could expand upon that, one of the things that I was tasked with is changing a culture within, or a perceived culture within the Department. Especially after 2007 when we changed our moniker to CAL FIRE, it made us appear that we were more of a fire Department than an all inclusive natural resource protection, fire suppression prevention fire marshal organization.

And I can respect the need for us to provide transparency to the Assembly on the discussions that Chair Bennett had earlier about what positions are dedicated to fire protection versus what positions are dedicated to fire prevention. But the culture I have to change is I have to change that stigma, that stigma that you either do one or the other. So it is important to us, as we continue to expand the Department and our responsibilities to meet our mission, that I expect our employees to do both.

Assemblymember, thank you.

So I support this proposal, and I think the best case for it is moving CAL FIRE toward best practices and the industry standards. It's not simply municipal forces, but also other states that typically have lower work weeks as well. So wanted to delve down a little bit and allow you to explain, perhaps with more detail, how the 66 hours workweek is going to address issues like mental health, fatigue, retention of firefighters.

Appreciate that question. You know, when you look at what a firefighter does, they work 24 hours a day and cannot go home until they are relieved. And so if we have a deficient structure to where we can't relieve them effectively, they can't go. Imagine how destabilizing that is for a person when you're missing all of the, the key elements of life because you cannot live it. You have to stay in your work location. I think this proposal won't do anything about the trauma of firefighting.

Emergency response is a traumatic job, and the Lao does a good job of explaining that in her report because it's true. That is not going to change that, but giving time and distance from that trauma is part of healing from it.

And if we can't let people rotate out of the thing that was creating the trauma, then we're doing them a disservice, I think, in that way, in giving a more consistent schedule rules of the road that they can build a life around, I think that will help their health and wellness probably more than any initiative we've done thus far.

Is that it? Thank you. All right, let me get these other questions out that we've given you guys in advance, so hopefully you can promptly answer them. How much has the Department budget grown over the last five years? And dollars and percentages?

Department of Finance Stephen Benson. I'll take that. I want to give a little bit of context to the numbers before I give you the numbers so you understand sort of how we develop them. So given this is talking about growth, we wanted to control for what factors in their budget are included. So we excluded things like one time costs. We don't consider that to be growth. We also excluded the emergency Fund appropriation that's done annually. That's not really base budget growth.

We're trying to really isolate on base budget growth. The other thing that I want to make sure I point out is we looked at proposals that had been approved in the last five years. As you're probably aware, relief staffing and several other crew proposals and things like that have an implementation schedule that goes out like five years. So I'm looking at what the full implementation cost is when I give you this number. Those funding won't actually be in their budget until 202728.

But the commitment has been made to provide it. So just going to give that context. So with proposals approved over the last five years, the department's budget will have grown by $987.4 million, and it will have grown by 3840 positions, which is about 47% in terms of dollars and about 50% in terms of positions. So very close to 50% increase in both dollars and positions over five year decision window. So 10 year implementation window. And then I think maybe just jump ahead to your next question.

You had in here, how 66 hours workweek impacts that. So when you look at just the 2425 budget year number, that's $198.9 million and 338 positions, that would be a 6.4% increase in 2425 in terms of dollars and a 2.9% increase just in that year for positions, full implementation is the 770.4 and 2457 positions.

So at full implementation, this proposal adds about 25% additional to the budget in terms of dollars and it adds about 21% in terms of increase in positions on top of the sort of base numbers of decisions already made to date.

Great. My next question, how many new personnel has the Legislature approved over the last five years of numbers and percentage you can sort of extract?

So sort already talked about that. The number of positions was the 3840 show the 50, roughly 50%.

All right. And then.

The, how did the department determine the number of fire engines that will be staffed year round under this proposal?

So we looked at the leave liability for the permanent personnel, and we looked at how many battalions that we have across the state. We have 111 battalions. So that would assign one engine per battalion, which is what our first transition always looked like, one per battalion plus two additional per 21 CAL FIRE units, for a total of 153.

And that would give, depending on the size of the unit, at least a strike team worth of engines available at any given time. That's five engines and a leader.

No, just to clarify, a strike team. My own view is I think there's clearly strong support amongst all of us in the legislature in terms of honoring the MOU that has been signed and in terms of going forward. I think that the question that, and the challenge for you, chief, in particular, is trying to embed this into this new culture that you have.

But I hope that you can send the message that the legislature that is willing to support a substantial funding increase at a very difficult time when millions of constituents are going to be unhappy with the cuts that we're going to be making, and there are going to be some really hard ones that if the legislature is doing that, it's partially because they have a newfound appreciation for CAL FIRE overall, but for fire prevention, because I think everybody knows it's just not sustainable to keep having these big, huge fires.

And so CAL FIRE has to be, it may not be whatever it takes, whatever the cultural challenges are, may be difficult, but CAL FIRE has to take that responsibility seriously, and it has to be a measure of a professional firefighter, has to be his or her commitment to fire suppression as much as fire prevention, and particularly at the large wildfire, you know, go out.

I think what the perception is that there is a resistance to going out and doing the forest clearing the, you know, those kinds of things that have to happen. So I just, on behalf of the Assembly, I can't tell you how many conversations people have with me about fire wildfire prevention and the need to do that.

And so I hope you can use this as a, as another motivator and a tool for you as you go forward, because I think in spite of advocacy of the LAO, I think it's very clear that the legislature is going to be supportive of moving forward.

So thank you for letting us get all of this information out so that everybody has the details and we can be doing this with full transparency because there's no other way to do a big increase like this while we're doing all these other cuts without full transparency, and hopefully we can add to it that cultural change and give you an extra motivation in terms of making that happen. So thank you very much. And I see the other members are gone. We'll move on to issue four.

Good luck. Thank you. All right, issue four, capital outlay and facility related proposals when you're ready.

Thank you, chair Bennett. Issue number four, the various CAL FIRE, capital outlay and facility related proposals. We have quite the group here again today that are hopefully going to walk us through every one of your questions. Thank you for the opportunity.

The proposal that's before you today encompasses 10 capital outlay projects for a total of $36.2 million in General Fund and $87.83 million in public building construction fund for fiscal year 24-25. Now, we have a significant number of structures across the state and facilities across the state as a decentralized organization. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Michelle Valenzuela, our assistant Deputy Director of capital, finance and sustainability, to walk us through it.

Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Valenzuela.

Could you pull the microphone a little closer, please?

Yes. All right. My name is Michelle Valenzuela. I'm assistant Deputy Director of well capital finance and sustainability at CAL FIRE. So CAL FIRE has worked closely with the Administration to build a plan for CAL FIRE facilities. While emphasizing operational need, facility age, and structure condition, CAL FIRE capital outlay plan addresses critical facility infrastructure and fire and life safety projects. The plan addresses CAL FIRE's urgent need to continue its capital improvement program to reduce the department's large and growing backlog of of critically necessary capital improvements.

CAL FIRE maintains a diverse facilities portfolio of more than 3000 structures and over 635 facilities statewide in support of fire protection and resource management efforts for more than 31 million acres of both state and privately owned wild lands throughout California. Facilities have been designed to have a maximum operational life of 50 years. However, CAL FIRE facilities in many instances have exceeded the expected lifespan. As an example, 63% of our facilities were constructed prior to 1960 and 80% constructed prior to 1970.

As a result of increased usage throughout extended fire season and additional staffing, CAL FIRE is experiencing a higher rate of facility deterioration to our already aging infrastructure, including fire stations, unit and administrative headquarters, conservation camps, fire centers, state forests, nurseries, training centers, communication sites, air attack bases, and hell attack bases. CAL FIRE continues to work to identify deferred maintenance projects and annually has had a need for ongoing special repair funding to maintain the current infrastructure.

It's important to note that fluctuations in the economic conditions have often led to halting of projects, but due to their inherent importance, they are often resurrected once the financial conditions improve. The past instances have served as a valuable reminder that upon resurrection, total project costs significantly increase. This escalation of costs can be attributed to several factors, including, but not limited to updating project plans due to missed code cycles, inflation, labor costs and general industry increases.

CAL FIRE will continue to have an increased need for capital outlay funding to address the declining State of the current infrastructure and to ensure the department's mission may mandates and health and safety requirements are met. The proposal outlined in the 24-25 Governor's Budget will tackle critical areas essential for enhancing CAL FIRE's infrastructure, leading to increased safety, efficiency and operational preparedness.

By investing strategically in critical infrastructure, training facilities and health and safety measures, we aim to strengthen CAL FIRE's capabilities and better serve our communities by working diligently to protect the lives, property and natural resources of California. With that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Great, Department of Finance.

Jamie Gonsalves, Department of Finance no additional comments, but here to answer any questions regarding Ramona Air Attack Base.

Thank you LAO.

So I have two parts to my comments. I'll try to go quickly in the interest of time. The first part is sort of some high level comments on all the proposals, and then I have some specific comments on the training center proposal. So at a high level, we know that the governor is proposing quite a range of different projects that potentially have impacts on the General Fund. And there are a couple of different ways that these projects do impact the General Fund.

Some of them have direct General Fund cap outlay, so there's just basically cash from the General Fund. In other cases, these projects are leased revenue bond funded, but in the case of CAL FIRE, they would be repaid by the General Fund over a period of probably about 25 years.

We know that while many of these projects may have significant merit, given the severity of the budget situation the legislature is facing, we think that it's worth the legislature pondering whether all of them need to happen right now or whether some of them could be deferred, both because again, the condition of the General Fund and these would especially collectively add significant cost. The second set of comments I wanted to make was on the training center.

With this one specifically, we're recommending that the Legislature defer action on it. You may recall that last year the legislature provided funding for a study. We know that the department has been working hard on that study, as well as a previous study, both related to the training center and the study from last year specifically was to evaluate the ongoing training needs for CAL FIRE and really what the options are for meeting those needs.

So we think that's going to be really important for you to have before you make a decision about whether you want to acquire property and move forward with a project. So we expect that that will come soon and probably before your final budget actions. So those were really my comments. I'm happy to take any questions.

Great. Thank you very much. I'm going to move promptly into these questions. We are fighting time here. Now, how many capital outlay projects is the department currently working on?

CAL FIRE currently has 43 active capital outlay projects that are in various phases of the project life cycle.

And how many has the Legislature approved for funding in the past five years.

The Legislator has approved 57 capital outlay projects to assist in facility replacement to our aging infrastructure. Some of these are relocations, and there are some new facilities as well.

Great. How many facilities overall does the department maintain?

We have over 3000 structures and over 635 facilities, of which, as you previously heard, 63% were constructed prior to 1960 and 80% constructed prior to 1960.

And this is a harder question. Can you provide a ranking of which of the new and in progress capital outlay projects are the most mission critical?

So sorry. That is quite a complicated request. All of our projects identified in the 24-25 Governor's Budget have been deemed essential for CAL FIRE to successfully execute our mission. We have submitted them after careful consideration based on priority needs. Given the budget conditions, each project is unique, and they're strategically located throughout the State of California, so it's a little bit difficult to weigh them against one another.

So even if we asked by facility type, for example, we said, is this fire station relocation more important than this one? You still would not be able to do that. You just say they're all mission critical.

We can certainly try to identify a priority order for you. But again, I do want to just say once more that all of these are mission critical.

To the extent that you can and are willing to do that, we would appreciate it. I'll leave you with that. When's the study expected to be completed for the new CAL FIRE training facility?

So we have received the study for the training facility, and it's currently under review.

So you don't have a time.

There are two studies. One study is on the capital outlay. One study is on the feasibility of the existing training center in Ione. The study of the existing training center in Ione is not complete. The initial draft study of a future training center was just received. I haven't even digested it yet to be able to talk to our capital outlay folks at the Department of Finance.

Thank you. For the Hayfork Fire Station relocation, the lease expires in 2030. Could the project be delayed and still be completed within the required time frame, and if so, by how much?

It's highly unlikely. So right now, the project is scheduled to be completed June of 2030. However, our lease actually expires May 2030. So throughout the project lifecycle, there's potential for delays as well, which would push us further past that.

Thank you. And could you provide more detail about why it wasn't possible to obtain insurance coverage? The insurance coverage necessary to sell the bonds to finance the Ishii conservation camp kitchen replacement project.

Victor Lopez, Department of Finance. So the insurance companies were not interested in selling insurance policies due to the high wildfire risk within the area. And the other alternative options, such as the California Fair Plan, doesn't provide sufficient coverage to meet the requirements to sell those bonds.

So that could be a great headlines that CAL FIRE couldn't get fire insurance from the insurance companies. Somebody could do something good with that. That'll be interesting. Is the Department of Finance concerned that they may run into similar bond financing issues with other capital outlay projects?

Victor Lopez, Department of Finance this is not the first time that this has happened. This is actually quite infrequent. We closely monitor these types of issues with Department of General Services as well as CAL FIRE just to understand and try to identify if this issue were to come again just before it put into plan.

And the final question, how will the timing of this project compare to the timing of the state's receipt of the C130s and Ramona air attack base?

CAL FIRE received title and transfer from the Federal Government of seven C 130s in December of 2023 upon a signature of the National Defense Authorization act. Those seven C 130s are currently being retrofitted at McClellan Air Base here in Sacramento, with the first one currently being retrofitted and its anticipation that it will be in service within the first three months of fiscal year 2024. Now, I recognize that that first air tanker will go to McClellan, where it can be monitored while the second, 3rd, fourth, and fifth air tankers get retrofitted at the same time. Ramona air attack base sits at the southernmost part of the state.

It can currently has a runway length that is capable of receiving large air tankers aside from CAL FIRE c 130s. With that said, there are some structural issues at the Ramona air attack base, not only for our own aircraft, but for large air tankers that are flying into Ramona, should they go into those pits due to concrete and pit configuration. If Ramona was not available, the next closest air attack base that can take a large air tanker is in San Bernardino. Thank you.

And with that, I think we're finished. We have no other questions. We appreciate all the time. I do want to emphasize going back to the last program. LAO has recommendation that if we do approve it, that there be some kind of reporting requirements. Those will be questions that we'll be asking about in terms of potential reporting requirements, et cetera. I wanted to get that on the record with you, too. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it, chief. Take care. All right. Conservation Corps new residential center in Aubrey. Whenever you're ready, gentlemen.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Bennett. Good to be with you. My name is JP Patton. I'm the Director of the California Conservation Corps. To my right, I have Larry Notheis, who serves as our Senior Deputy Director. Thank you for consideration of this budget request of $5,951,000 in Public Buildings Construction Funds for the appropriation of working drawings for the to build a new facility at the Auburn Auberry Elementary School, a new residential center in the City of Auberry in Fresno County to meet program needs, including essential services to support Type 1 fire crews for the CCC.

Like our 10 other residential centers, which have a waitlist of about six months for entry for Corps member recruits, the focus of the CCC's Auberry Residential Center is for Corps members to gain work experience, advance their education through high school diploma programs, and develop a career path while helping to enhance California's natural resources and its communities. A residential center is critical in this area to recruit and retain Corps members. The most recent recession has significantly hit the surrounding area, including Tulare, Kern, and Madera Counties.

Economically, Corps members have limited resources, particularly the ability to afford a vehicle to reach the Fresno Center, currently located in a rural area, as public transportation has limited availability. Due to high positive attrition at our non-res center, Fresno does not have enough Corps members to address the abundant conservation and emergency projects available in the greater Fresno area.

Building a new facility will enable the CCC to continue to address the needs of our program by providing a safe and healthy environment for all Corps members and staff. The CCC desires to remain in this area due to its proximity to project work and the cultivation and expansion of ongoing sponsor base that we have fostered since the 1980s. In addition, this area is ideal for Corps member development because the area surrounding Fresno provides ample opportunity for Corps members to work on various conservation projects. And I welcome any questions you have about this project.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Victor Lopez, Department of Finance. We have nothing to add, and we'll be happy to answer any questions.

LAO.

So the high level comments I provided previously also apply to this project, since this would be funded, would put some pressure on the General Fund. We'd also note that, in addition to the bond repayments that will likely have to come from the General Fund, actually staffing this new facility will also cost some General Fund dollars, likely, I believe the BCP mentioned about $7 million ongoing annual General Fund. So that's something just to keep in mind, as well, as the Legislature is weighing its priorities.

Thank you very much. Could you provide more detail about why the total project cost went from $60 million to $123 million dollars?

Yeah, absolutely. So there are three drivers for the cost increase. About 20 million of that 60 million is dedicated to the infrastructure and plans required to stand up the fire crews capacity there. As it was originally conceived, fire was not part of the program, and we've decided to add that in, which I think is going to be a great investment. The remaining $40 million all relates to inflation and supply chain issues, specifically to construction, trade, labor services costs that have increased.

Thank you. Will the determination of whether the Department renovates a school or builds a new facility have an impact on the total cost of construction?

Yes, it would. The ability to renovate the site is no longer feasible, and so we're going with a new build altogether. We have determined that is going to be the most cost effective route.

When is construction expected to begin if the funding is approved on schedule?

Working drawings would complete in 2025, and once upon bid, we would start construction 25-26.

Great. And when would debt service payments begin on the project if funding was approved? Department of Finance.

Good morning. Michael McGinness, Department of Finance. Debt service payments typically begin shortly after the facility is made available for occupancy by the Department. Typically, this would be three years after appropriation of the construction phase of the project.

Thank you very much. We're going to move on to public comment. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

LAO, thank you very much, again. And the race for the microphone.

Good afternoon.

Hold on 1 second. We want to get our timing set up here. All right, we're close enough. Go ahead.

Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Isabella Gonzalez Potter, associate director with the Nature Conservancy, speaking on issue one, which was a great panel, by the way. Despite record breaking state budgets, California's investment in natural resources and nature based climate climate solutions has not matched the pace and scale of the need. Historically, less than 5% of the state budget has been dedicated to natural resources.

The governor's 2024-25 budget proposal would reduce state spending for natural resources to less than 3% of the state's budget due to the proposed cuts to natural resources and climate investments. Particularly concerning to us is the nearly 50% cut to the coastal resilience package, which was discussed at length today, which proposes in the January budget to significantly reduce funding to the state coastal conservancy and the Ocean Protection Council to address sea level rise and increase coastal protection and ocean resilience.

This is a major concern to us. So TNC would like the Assembly to support the Senate's early action budget plans with a specific reference to their approach in preserving and restoring the coastal resilience package and maintaining critical investments that are needed to protect our coastal reserves. Thank you.

Erika Romero on behalf of the California Association of Local Conservation Corps, just here to express our deep gratitude to the legislature and the administration for your ongoing commitment to maintain climate investments that support young people's workforce development as well as our climate priorities.

Particularly just want to flag our support for maintaining the investments at the CCC for the Forestry Corps program, as well as I think Director Eckerle mentioned the investments in the Ocean Protection Council that have also recently supported uplifting an ocean core pilot program that corps are involved in. So thank you so much.

Good afternoon. Chair and staff Nicholas Mazzotti, on behalf of East Bay Regional Parks District, Mid Peninsula Regional Open Space District, Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, Save the Redwoods League and the California Start State Parks foundation, all expressing strong concern around the proposed cuts to the coastal resilience funding.

In light of the discussion of the SCC funding earlier today, we wanted to point out that these dollars were also on the chopping block last year, limiting the total number of projects that could be funded through the conservancy. There's no shortage of coastal resilience projects that these dollars could support. As mentioned earlier, the these are historic investments, but we have to allow the funding to be stable in order to flow. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairman Bennett. Paul Mason with Pacific Forest Trust. Thanks for whopper of a hearing today. First in the climate section of the agenda today, I just want to flag that the indications of the amount of funding remaining for a lot of those programs is pretty misleading because that money is really already spent or otherwise could. There's not really $45 million left in forest legacy for example.

I think all that really points to the need for a robust climate bond to cover the fact that otherwise there's no money for this stuff. Second, I just want to speak to the home hardening program and that discussion and really highlight that I don't think that the past performance of that program is a good indication of its future potential. In part because there's been some really key leadership changes there that really free things up going forward.

On the conversation about sort of monitoring the outcomes of our wildland restoration resilience projects for fire, there's been progress on doing some monitoring. We're still not at the point where we're assessing all of the projects for their outcomes. Are we actually making a difference? So let's not get lost in the details. But we still need to get to the point we're actually looking and seeing are we making an actual difference with the money? Not just where's it going.

Mister Chair Brian Rice from the California Professional Firefighters and I want to just speak on the 66 hours workweek. First and foremost I want to thank Governor Newsom for including it in the budget and partnering with us. I believe that that speaks volumes to his priorities in this budget and his tenure as our governor certainly reflects that in wildfire mitigation and prevention. And now is the time to modernize the workforce.

Assemblymember as a chair I want to thank you and the entire legislature for understanding why we're here and what we're talking about. And that modernizing CAL FIRE's workweek from 72 to the 66 of and ultimately the 56 is a long time coming. We've been at this work schedule since 1977. All of our municipal partners work 56 hours. And the one thing that I know that you know, this CAL FIRE is an all risk fire department. They do everything.

And we know that this isn't going to be an easy lift. And I want to thank you. And I want to thank our Senate and I want to thank especially Chief Tyler and Morris for really understanding this and carrying the point. Thank you.

Mister Chair and members Aaron Reed representing CAL FIRE Local 2881. I identify with every single word mentioned by Brian Rice, President of CPF. And thank you Mister Chairman for your comments here this morning. I appreciate it very much. And thank the governor for understanding how stressful the CAL FIRE firefighters have been. Particularly this last decade has been unbelievable in terms of loss of lives, loss of property. It's been very tragic and very hard on me, on the firefighters. I've been doing their legislative work for 45 years. 45 years we've had this 72 hours workweek and not been able to move it at all. Not that we haven't tried. We have.

But finally, we have a governor that has lived, listened, and has agreed, and we appreciate it again, very much. I also want to say that we're not against doing fire prevention work. I want to make sure that's on the record that we do, that we've lost 400 positions in the last two years, 400 seasoned firefighters that were trained at large expense. Let me just say one last thing. The LAO report does not mention the 56 hours work week. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair and staff, Rico Mastrodonato with the Trust For Public Land. And I'm here to express concern over the cuts to the extreme heat programs. That's urban greening, urban forestry, and the green schoolyard program. We are not keeping up with the planet when it comes to extreme heat, and there are consequences to shifting funds to other years or cutting programs altogether. Urban greening is cut by 70%. The green schoolyard program, which was wildly oversubscribed, is out of money completely.

And there are consequences to not funding these things that are going to happen contemporaneously. This year, people are going to be harmed by extreme heat and going to die, and we're not prepared for that. And lastly, if there is any issue that demonstrates the inequitable distribution of protection to climate, it's urban greening and urban forestry. If you live in a high income, high household income neighborhood, you have less to worry about than places that are low income, and that is not fair.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Good afternoon. Kim Delfino, representing Defenders of Wildlife, Audubon, California, California Native Plant Society, Sierra Fund, Sierra Institute, Sierra Forest Legacy, Sonoma Land Trust, and Mojave Desert Land Trust. I just want to align our comments with those made by both the Nature Conservancy and Pacific Florida Forest Trust. To answer your question, about 30 by 30 and forest legacy, yes, those do count for 30 by 30. Don't cut beneficial fire, don't cut the 5.7 million for the monitoring as already described.

And finally, on issue four, we have a very sered, Sonoma Land Trust is a very specific issue with respect to the Sonoma fire project. We would like to see criteria put in to maintain the wildlife corridor that is right smack along where they're proposing to put their project. We can follow more up with your office and with Christine, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Chair Bennett. Nico Molina on behalf of the California Forestry Association, Cal Forest supports consideration continuing with funding for post fire recovery, which is not reflected in the current Governor's Budget proposal. The funding is necessary given the magnitude of impacts that have occurred to forested landscapes across the state from extreme wildfires.

Cal forest understands there are challenging decisions that have to be made as it relates to budget constraints, but investments in establishing thriving forests is a critical need of the state for water, wildfire habitat, air quality, and economic vitality. Cal Forest is also in strong support of funding the CAL FIRE 66 hour workweek initiative. Wildland firefighters are dedicated and courageous people that have dedicated their careers and lives to safeguarding communities and natural resources. Funding this initiative will not only assist our firefighters physical and mental health needs, but also maintain the aggressive firefighting capacity that CAL FIRE is known and respected for. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Morgan Snider and I am a volunteer for the Surfrider foundation. I'm here today to express the importance of our coastlines and call upon you to restore the coastal resilience budget. Our coasts have been slammed by climate related storms for two years in a row now, resulting in flooding for communities and roads. And furthermore, our beaches, bluffs and sensitive habitats are in jeopardy from the intense weather patterns, and then sea level rise is another enriching threat.

So our coasts are facing a number of challenges. And amidst all of this, the coastal resilience budget is getting the largest cut, way more than any other climate package in the Governor's Budget. We acknowledge that budget cuts are part of the governance, but we can't comprehend this logic.

Surfrider implores legislature to bring back some of this funding specifically for classes of projects, projects that are eligible for federal matching funds, projects that have started but are not yet complete, projects that center on equity and justice priorities and nature based multi benefit projects. We understand the dire budget situation, but these are opportunities for the state to save money and support our beaches, which are free public spaces for everyone and which are foundational to California's economy. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Tasha Newman on behalf of the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts and on behalf of the California Council of Land Trusts, we'd like to echo the comments made by TNC and others about the coastal resilience funding. We would like to see that funding maintained at the coastal conservancy. We would also like to provide support for the regional forest and fire capacity program, the proposed shift from general fund to GGRF. We would like to see that happen. We believe that this is a very important program for the state and that it should be fully funded. Thank you.

Michael Jarred, good afternoon, on behalf of Climate Resolve. I'm speaking on OPR's extreme heat and community resilience program. Extreme heat is the most deadly climate impact. It overwhelmingly affects disadvantaged communities. We're very happy to see that the program is going to finally start making awards and that it's very oversubscribed.

We hope that you will reject the $40 million General Fund coverage cut to that program and allow it to continue making awards because there's a lot of interest in holistic community cooling solutions that could really lower the temperatures in our community and help disadvantaged communities. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon. I am Morokot Uy with the Greenlining Institute, here to speak on issue two and restoring funding on two critical climate equity programs, the regional climate collateral and transformative climate communities. The RCC program is critical for communities and people are highly invested. In Stockton, we identified capacity building and partnerships are needed to be prepared for state and federal climate funding.

Over 400 individuals engaged in its guidelines development and the program is oversubscribed by eight to 10 times. Over 270 organizations already spent time and energy applying to the 10 million that was cut in the January budget. Those awards would have been announced in February. Moreover, SB 1072 states that the RCC program must establish collaboratives a minimum of two times. The January cut was for the second round of funding. We urge you to fully restore the 10 million that communities were counting on and meet the requirements in statute for the RCC program.

We also urge you to restore as much as possible from the 200 million that was cut from the TCC program. We urge funding for TCC to come from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, its original funding source. TCC planning and implementation grants in Stockton funded community projects and catalyzed additional projects through AB 617.

Thank you very much.

My name is Cade Cannedy. I'm the director of programs with Climate Resilient Communities. We are a community based organization working in the redline communities of East Palo Alto, Belhaven and North Fair Oaks. I'm speaking today to encourage funding and restoring funding for the Regional Climate Collaboratives Program under OPR. We will not reach our state climate goals without centering frontline communities, communities of color, and low income communities.

The state has acknowledged this and asked that CBOs like ours participate in state funded programs because we have the community trust that is hard won and easily lost. The RCC program was developed to help CBOs get to the table and elevate the voices of frontline community members and allow us to pursue federal sources of funds to create the transformative change for our residents who are already feeling the direct consequences of climate change like extreme heat and air quality. For our communities, it's a matter of health, and each day of delay is a denial of justice. Please restore the funding. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon chair. My name is Ricardo Mendoza and I'm with Coalition for Responsible Community Development, otherwise known as CRCD. We're a community development nonprofit organization based in South Los Angeles and I'm here to speak on behalf of the 100 plus organizations that the regional climate communities grant would have supported in further building capacity, allowing them to further pursue federal, state and local and philanthropic dollars.

The proposed cuts by the governor in the January budget to RCC and other climate programs sets back the momentum that has been slowly gained by underserved and underinvested communities such as ours and the many that you'll hear about today. The Strategic Growth Council was getting prepared to announce the proposed grant awardees this month as the January budget cut this critically needed funding. Capacity building is a relatively inexpensive for the state to invest in and therefore is a strong climate equity investment to make during deficit years because of its low cost and investing in capacity building now helps to set communities taxes future funding.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Kenta Estrada-Darley, also with the Coalition for Responsible Community Development CRCD in South LA. CRCD has served the South Los Angeles community since 2005 and historically under resourced areas that are most in need of the climate resiliency investments the Regional Climate Collaboratives Initiative is designed to support.

We are the lead applicant on a RCC application which would support capacity building, resident engagement and coalition building efforts with over 100 community based organizations and thousands of residents and allow us to collectively compete for and secure essential climate and infrastructure related investments for communities that have been historically overlooked. The proposed budget cuts have of 10 million for the RCC program setback momentum and over 270 organizations spend valuable time and energy on RCC applications. We urge you to restore the full 10 million so these organizations can move forward with this important work. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Amy Wong, program director with Active San Gabriel Valley and we urge you to restore $10 million back into the RCC program and as much of the $200 million that was cut from the TCC program. As a local nonprofit in LA County, we applied to both RCC and TCC grants last year in hopes of meaningfully engaging our communities of color to prioritize projects to advance climate resilience in our region.

We dedicated substantial time and energy into these applications only to find out what we were not awarded for TCC, and RCC awards are pending. Without this funding, our most vulnerable communities of color will be left behind in the fight against the climate crisis. Our communities deserve clean air and water, affordable housing, quality jobs, access to parks and open spaces, and safer streets. Please restore funding for RCC and TCC because our communities deserve it. Thank you.

Good afternoon chair Bennett. My name is Dale Zapata with Active SGV commenting on issue two, I am urging the committee to restore funding to TCC and RCC, particularly considering the extensive application process for CBOs and the disruption the cuts cost to vital work necessary to mitigate effects of extreme weather in Los Angeles County. The cuts stall momentum delaying benefits the these programs can bring to increasingly vulnerable communities. In some cases, projects may become more expensive or less feasible to start.

The reduction also sends a disheartening message to community members who are ready to participate and whose investment of time and trust in the planning is invaluable. Setbacks like funding cuts can undermine their faith in the possibility of positive change. Thank you.

Hello chair Bennett and staff. My name is Esther Tam and I'm a program coordinator at Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement in LA County. I'm here to speak about issue two, the RCC program. We are very disappointed to see $10 million cut from the RCC program. In the January budget, APIFM applied to RCC to Fund our school greening work at Fremont elementary in Alhambra. This school is right next to the I 10 freeway and a major street. It's also primarily asphalt with minimal greening.

This results in awful air quality for growing children, plus heat stroke during the summer. However, due to the budget cut, we were not selected for this grant, which has significantly impacted our capacity to plan and implement this project, as our resources were spread too thin. We then had to invest more resources into piecemealing a bunch of small grants just to cover some work instead of actually doing the work itself.

Had we had more funding in the first place, we could have achieved more sooner so that we could be helping the community now. Once again, we are greatly disappointed by the impact the budget cut has caused us, and we hope you'll take our opinions into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon Mister chair. My name is Clancy Taylor. I am with the California Coalition for Rural Housing and I am a technical assistance programs manager. I was a technical assistance provider for the regional climate collaboratives program. Issue two. Really quick.

I'm going to interrupt you for 1 second. I just want to thank all the people from the organization that came to speak about what's going on in Los Angeles. Sorry.

Yep. So with this program, it takes years of work to build trust in these communities because these are California's disadvantaged communities. I primarily work with rural tribal and farmworker communities throughout the state. And honestly, this RCC program was with had programs in every sub community's districts as well. So my point here is it is a worst practice to remove funding in the middle of a funding cycle. What we did here is we had applications submitted and then we removed funding away.

So now these disadvantaged communities, they were already behind the line in competing for these infrastructure programs. And now we are even further behind the line, potentially decades. So in these methodologies of cuts, I implore you to really look at if we have nofes out, let's consider the methodology behind these cuts. Cause I understand we will have to do cuts, but let's consider methodology. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Last but not least.

Good afternoon, my name is Farah Zamani. I'm from Half Moon Bay, California, and I'm also a volunteer with Surfrider Foundation. And just to keep it very sweet and simple, living in Half Moon Bay, you see the effects of our sea level rising and just climate change in general. You see the effects all along the coast firsthand. And I'm here to implore you and to urge you, it is so important to put our money in protecting our coast resiliency programs. Not only does it affect the local communities along the coast, but for all California to enjoy the beauty that is California and just to keep our sea beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And with that, our meeting is adjourned. Thank you everybody.