Assembly Committee on Budget (First Extraordinary Session)

Good morning, everybody. I am pleased to call this hearing to order, and I want to welcome everybody to today's informational hearing for our special session Budget Committee. Today we will be discussing two bills, AB4X1 and AB5X1, that will authorize 2.5 billion in emergency disaster relief for communities impacted by the devastating wildfires in Southern California.

Today's hearing is informational only. We will not have any votes, but we expect to vote on wildfire funding bills tomorrow during our floor session. We plan to consider other special session bills as soon as next week. For today's testimony, we will hear... For today's hearing, we will hear testimony from Stephen Benson from the Department of Finance. Christian Griffith and staff from the Assembly Budget Committee are also available to answer any questions.

And let me extend my thanks to Christian, to Jason Sisney in the Speaker's Office, and to the other staff who worked through the weekend to ensure that we could move with extraordinary urgency to hear and pass these important bills. After our presentation from the Department of Finance, we will turn to Member questions and comments, and then we will take public comment. But let me share a few thoughts before we begin.

As those who've served on the Budget Committee know, I am not a fan of lengthy opening statements, but I hope my colleagues will indulge me today as this is an issue that hits close to home for me, literally. As many of you know, my family and I were under mandatory evacuation for six days, and I'm convinced that it is only thanks to the incredible professionalism and dedication of our firefighters and first responders that my house is still standing and that my community in Encino is still standing.

So I wanted to begin today by extending my personal thanks to the incredible women and men from CAL FIRE, the CHP, the LAFD, the LAPD, the LA County Fire, LA County Sheriffs, California National Guard, and all of the other agencies who protected our communities.

I also want to extend my sincere thanks to colleagues from both sides of the aisle who reached out. I want to thank the speaker who visited Los Angeles, to Leader Gallagher who came down to Los Angeles, to our vice chair who reached out and visited Los Angeles, and to many other Members who did the same.

And I also want to encourage all Members of this committee, as I have been doing with all Members that I spoke to, I want to encourage everybody to visit LA. I think that it's really important to personally see and personally witness and personally experience the devastation that these communities have have gone through.

And I want to underscore that given the scale of the devastation. It will be a massive undertaking to rebuild these communities. So today we are acting with urgency to deliver emergency aid, but this is the only the first of many actions that will be required. I also want to acknowledge that there are many issues beyond emergency relief.

There are many impacted communities. And I want to thank Assembly Members, many of whom are sitting on this dais, who have been very involved in those conversations. Certainly Assembly Members Harabedian and Irwin, whose communities were most directly impacted, who have been doing incredible work responding to the needs of their constituents.

But others from the broader LA area, including Assembly Members Caloza, Assembly Member Rodriguez, González, others who have raised up issues for communities in the broader region that are impacted by this, those who lost jobs, those who lost sources of income. So we have many, many issues to discuss. But today is the beginning of a much longer conversation. And I expect, as I shared with Assembly Member Harabedian, that we will be discussing wildfire issues after midnight on the last night of session.

This is going to be an ongoing conversation, but I know from talking with many Members on this dais and from folks in Los Angeles that we are committed to standing with folks in these impacted communities every step of the way. Let me offer one final thought on how I hope we approach this work.

As some of you know, on Wednesday morning, Assembly Member Harabedian and I were unable to get flights back to LA, and so we rented a car and we drove down Highway 5. And as we were driving down Highway 5, we kept passing engines from fire crews from communities across the State of California, including communities I, frankly, had never heard of. And what we saw is first responders from across the State of California linking arms to help fellow Californians in need.

And I believe that should be our model to work collaboratively across political parties across the branches of state government, across different levels of government to serve the people of California. And as we have learned over the last couple years, no community is immune from these fires.

Many in the Legislature here bring personal experience dealing with these fires, and we need to harness our collective wisdom and experience as we help these impacted communities rebuild and as we work to better protect Californians across the state from this destructive threat. So again, I want to thank my colleagues for their approach to all of this. I want to thank them for the conversations that are to come. We know we have a lot of work to do, but I know we are all in this together. And with that, let me invite our vice chair to make his opening remarks.

Thank you, chair, and thank you for everybody for showing up on this incredible morning. This is an issue that a lot of us have been talking about for many, many years. And it's really, really sad what's happened to our colleagues in the LA area. And I think we have a very unique time in history right now to make some massive changes on how we deal with these types of incidents. So I'm encouraged by the conversations. I'm encouraged by, you know, the bipartisanship. I'm encouraged by calling this extraordinary session on this issue. And I completely agree with the chair.

This is the beginning. We have a long ways to go from here. And I am excited about that because right now, more than ever, we have an elected body that understands what we're talking about and what we need to deal with as a state, and I look forward to being a very small part of that. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Chair. Before we begin our presentation from the department, I want to ask that we that we take roll and establish a quorum. So Madam Secretary, could you please call roll?

[Roll Call] Quorum is present.

Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. And with that, we will turn it over to Stephen Benson from the Department of Finance.

Good morning, Chair Gabriel, Vice Chair Flora, Members of the Committee. I am Stephen Benson with the Department of Finance. I'm joined by several of my colleagues here today to present on the two bills related to wildfire from the special session. In response to the devastating fires in Los Angeles on January 13, the governor expanded the special session convened in November.

The expanded special session now includes a significant new funding for LA firestorm response and recovery, further boosting initial response and recovery efforts for that area. The total funding for the fire related package includes 2.5 billion dollars one time General Fund to expedite support for items that are typically funded through the Disaster Response-Emergency Operations Account.

That's part of the language of the bills. Those things are typically emergency protective measures, evacuations, sheltering of survivors, removal of household hazardous materials, post-fire hazard assessments, traffic control, a number of other activities that are necessary for emergency response.

The package also includes 4 million dollars of one time General Fund for the Department of Housing Community Development to allocate to impacted local governments in the LA area, provide additional planning, review, and building inspection resources for purposes of expediting building approvals during the recovery period after the fires.

Finally, the proposal includes 1 million dollar one time General Fund to provide technical assistance impacted local educational agencies to recover and rebuild from fire damaged school facilities. These funds are on top of $2.5 billion that have already been allocated in one time investments for wildfire resilience over the last several years.

Prior to that period of time, the ongoing funding for that policy area was about $200 million that came out of SB 901, and that was addressing some of the state's needs in that area. The severity of the fires we have seen in the LA area warrant, obviously, swift and significant funding response, which is what this package does.

Now I'll speak a little bit to each of the bills. So ABX14 includes $1.5 billion of General Fund for use by state departments and entities. The uses can include the items I listed above, emergency protective measures, evacuations, all of those types of things, as well as actions to protect, more broadly to protect health and safety of persons and property and to help expedite recovery.

The bill also provides for legislative reporting and notification to ensure transparency in how the funds are being spent to assist in response and recovery from the LA fires. Specifically, the report will include funding provided for the full 2.5 billion that's in ABX14 as well as ABX15 as well as other any other state funding that's used specifically for the response and recovery efforts.

The expenditure report is going to be posted on or about February 7, the first version, and then it'll be updated on or before February 28, March 31, and April 30 of 25. ABX15 includes an additional 1.5 billion to go towards state departments and entities for the same purposes that were included in ABX14. The bill also provides the same legislative reporting that's in ABX14 to ensure transparency in how the funds are being spent.

This bill also includes the $250,000 for the Division of State Architect and $750,000 for the Office of Public School Construction to provide assistance to LA Unified School District, Pasadena Unified School District, and other impacted charter schools located in those school districts to rebuild and recover school facility is damaged as a result of the fires that that led to the State of Emergency declared by the governor in January of 25.

And finally, the bill includes 4 million dollars one time General Fund for the Department of Housing and Community Development to allocate impact, to allocate to impacted local governments in the LA area to provide additional planning, review, building inspection, and resources for the purpose of expediting building approvals during the recovery period after the wildfires. So that's a summary of the two bills. Of course, we are here and happy to try and respond to questions as best we can.

Thank you very much, Mr. Benson. At this point, we are going to go directly to Members of the Committee for questions or comments. Mr. Zbur.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here. Really appreciate the work of the the governor's office, Department of Finance, and and our own Assembly Budget Committee and pulling all this together so quickly. It really is heroic work and just want to thank you.

I had a question about the funding that's related to the school districts, and I know this isn't intended to do this, but wanted to raise something for your, to make sure that it's on your radar. I've spoken to the Budget chair and to the Budget chair on the Senate side as well, and that is that the governor's order, one of the executive orders, allows kids from the affected areas to go to other schools and school districts.

One of the things that's happening in my area is that literally hundreds of kids from the Palisades Fire era are moving into the Santa Monica School District without funding to care for them. And it's not a handful of kids, it's literally, literally hundreds. So I'm wondering if that's on your radar and how you're thinking about sort of addressing the needs of these school districts that are actually, in addition to rebuilding the schools that are there, we need to focus on the schools in which the kids are going to to make sure that they've got the resources to make sure that their education is being met, education needs are being met.

So I can respond at a very high level, and then I think there's others that can chime in to provide some additional input. But I know that as part of the team that's coordinating the overall response, Cal OES and many, many other state departments coordinating with the locals and the federal government. Excuse me.

That is a topic that is absolutely on their radar and is being discussed frequently, and they're coordinating on it to do what they can to best help those students both prior to the rebuild and then to get rebuilt. But I will turn it over to others if there's additional comments to add to that.

Good morning, Member. Amber Alexander with the Department of Finance. That is something that is very much on our radar. I know there have been conversations both on impacts in the current year as well as impacts extending beyond current year and into budget year and out years.

In terms of the current year impacts, there have been a lot of conversations with districts and impacted schools, making sure that they are aware of the current J-13A process. And the Department of Education has been providing extensive assistance and outreach to those schools that are impacted, so that in the current year there is not an immediate fiscal impact for those impacted areas.

Going forward, we do anticipate, through the spring budget process and beyond, conversations on additional flexibilities. As you noted, there may be conversations around extension of the average daily attendance hold harmless, which is something that has been done for prior wildfires and that we would anticipate being part of the conversations going forward to protect to the extent practicable.

Thank you. I mean, would you... I'm hoping that someone from the Department of Finance could actually reach out specifically to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District superintendent. I mean, their needs are significant. I mean, what they told me this weekend was that there are literally multiple hundreds of kids that have come into the school district, you know, because that's where they're the closest school district to the Palisades area where so many, so many of these kids have been displaced.

I can certainly take that back. I will say there has been a multi-pronged cross agency effort, both with our State Board of Education partners, Department of Finance, Department of Education, and others to make sure that contact is being made with each of the school sites and districts that are impacted. So to the extent that that has not occurred, I can make sure to raise that district in particular.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

All right. Thank you very much. And appreciate the Assembly Member. I know we've spoken about that issue and, and working hard to serve his community. Now going to go to Assembly Member Flora, and then we'll do Assembly Member Irwin, Assembly Member Harabedian.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, colleagues. I appreciate everybody being here. I know it's been a long, long weekend for a lot of you. But recently a fire chief told me when he was looking over legislation and just different things, it's always good to look at what's in a bill. It's also interesting to look at what's not in a bill. And I think this is one of those things that we really need to take... Let me very clear, I'm supportive of this today. I think it's a good start, and I think these things need to be done. I am curious, though, outside of the $5 billion for school funding, what in this particular bill can the governor already do under his own jurisdiction, the powers he has already?

So appropriating the $2.5 billion through the control sections, as opposed to using the additional authority, would normally go through the Disaster Response-Emergency Operations Account funding mechanism. This provides us a degree of additional flexibility. Generally speaking, this is going to allow us to more broadly...

So when you use the DREOA mechanism, it's related to the exact scope essentially of the State of Emergency declaration, in this particular case it refers to LA County and Ventura County, whereas since that time it also referred to some windstorms and things like that. But we know that there's been issues going on in San Diego recently. And so there's a degree of additional flexibility that's provided here in terms of the area and scope of which we can use it for. And so that's really the additional help here.

And then I think there's an element of transparency that we are hitting with the reporting that's a part of these control sections that isn't part of the DREOA mechanism. So you get both additional transparency and a degree of additional flexibility in terms of the way the funding can be used to respond quickly.

Awesome. Do we have any, like, idea of the project that he's looking to fund with these dollars? Is there anything like immediately that he sees we need to focus on right away? When we talk about like accountability and transparency, is there anything that he's focused on right now that he's going to activate on?

Yeah. So Cal OES has a unit that does cost collecting and reporting and whatnot for each of these disasters. And so they've of course been collecting costs as you go along. Some of the very first things that are going to come in for us to spend this on is going to be things we were talking about, emergency protective measures, emergency sheltering costs, the costs for staff that have been mobilized down there, you know, includes travel and things.

But we've got debris, phase one of hazardous household waste material cleanup that's going on, so that'll be some of the initial costs. So a lot of those activities that have been going on right now, department sort of floated for the beginning. And so it will immediately start covering those costs, and then there'll be, you know, continuation a lot of those things. And as further decisions are made on next steps for different activities, then those will be...

No, I appreciate that. And I just want to say that there's a lot in this is all about recovery in these two bills. Nothing really is on the prevention side of what we need to talk about. Right. And I do just want to just address that ever so... And I appreciate the chair.

This is the first of many conversations that we're going to be having. But I do want to get some things on the record that I think we, as a body, need to start looking at. So colleagues, if you just indulge for a hot second. We've had two of our colleagues' bills over the last few years. Currently, Senator Tim Grayson had AB 2538 that dealt with CAL FIRE keeping on seasonal firefighters pass their time as long as it's under the direction of the Director of CAL FIRE. That bill was vetoed.

That bill was vetoed to really address the very issues that we had where we laid off seasonal firefighters the Monday before a known wind event was coming because they had been timed out. We need to fix that. Tim Grayson had a bill to deal with that and it was vetoed. We need to look at that again.

Assembly Member Holden had a bill, AB 2330, that relates to the urban wild land areas and permitting, expediting permits to deal with some vegetation issues. We need to look at that. If we all believe in climate change and the climate changes seasonally. I mean CAL FIRE responds to wildfires, Snowmageddon, floods in Tulare, earthquakes. It is time.

CAL FIRE is a year round agency. It's crazy that our state department, our state fire department is not year round. It's something that we absolutely need to look into. In 2004, the Blue Ribbon Commission, 2004, put out a report addressing all of these things. And we have done, as a state, very, very little of it. And I can send that report to all of my colleagues if you would like that, certainly have it on hand. So I'm just encourage all, all of us today... Like, this is very supportable, and I'm excited to support it.

But like our chair said, we have so much further to go, and these are not issues that came up just in the last 10 days. We've known these issues literally since 2004. Since this commission report came out 20 years ago, we've been talking about this. It's time, it's time that we do some things. And I think right now we have the motivation and the ability to do so. So I appreciate the indulgence. And colleagues, I look forward to working with you on all of those issues. But I think there is a, there's a pathway that we can get some of these things done that we have not been able to get done in a long time. So appreciate you.

Thank you very much to our vice chair. We will now go to Assembly Member Irwin.

Thank you very much, Mr. Gabriel. And I want to thank our chair. I want to thank the speaker, the governor, and the pro tem, who have all been down to both of our areas. For those of you that have not been there, it is absolutely devastation. It looks... The Palisades looks like a war zone.

And it is truly tragic to... Truly tragic to see. So we've been working in the shelters and in the recovery centers and talking to the residents there. And I think that the top priorities for them is obviously, short term, finding housing. And that's something I don't think the state can do much about.

But the toxic waste removal. I am heartened to see how quickly that that's all moving. And I think that that's part of the 1 billion and the debris removal so that homeowners can really get started. So I was very pleased. You know, this was a request from both of us to put 4 million in to at least start the streamlining process, getting permits, making sure we have the inspectors there, because we don't want this effort to last over the next 10 years.

If you look at what happened with the Tubbs Fire, they were very organized, and they were able to rebuild quite quickly. But it's not just about rebuilding. It's really about making sure that we have the most advanced science when we rebuild. We need to make sure that these communities are hardened and resilient.

And this is really an opportunity to do that. And then I will also say to Assembly Member Flora, the bill has been reintroduced to have CAL FIRE be year round. We definitely heard it loud and clear from our firefighters that it was very problematic that everybody had been let off.

It took a little while to get over that manpower issue. But I think that we do need to look at a lot of these bills that have been vetoed. And this is the new... This is really a new norm in Southern California. In my district, in the last, I think, six weeks, we've had five fires.

And none of them, of course, have been as devastating as Palisades. But we were also dealing with Woolsey and the Thomas Fire in Ventura County. So it is really important as we rebuild that we rebuild the right way. And it's hardening, and it's looking beyond that to make sure that we're prepared.

So again, thank you very much for including the 4 million in there. I know that our local electeds are very excited that the state is right away listening to their needs. But I guess my question is, the money is going through HCD, how quickly will it be available to our local governments?

A time frame yet. As you know, this is all happening very quickly, but HCD is of course going to be working with the state and local entities to allocate this to. The highest need and for the highest purposes possible. So it's all happening very quickly, but no timeframe quite yet. The provisional language does have language in.

There that does say promptly allocate. So there is language envisioned in the provisional language itself.

And I would say there is definitely an urgency to set the right framework.

Obviously, people aren't going to be starting to build within the next few months, but we really do need to make sure that we help local governments set up a streamlined process and so we can't have them wait for months and months to to be able to avail themselves of this funding. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember Irwin. Assemblymember Harbini.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Assemblymember Irwin, for your leadership. I mean, I'm just blown away every day over these last two weeks watching you do what you are doing and your community is very lucky to have you. And Mr. Chair, let me just say personally how how touched I am at your leadership.

What you have done personally to really answer the call. And on Wednesday morning, as you alluded to, you know, we were just fathers. We were just fathers trying to get home to our kids and to our wives and to our communities. And we didn't know what we were going to find.

And as Assemblymember Irwin said, we found devastation. And I'm very thankful that your family is safe. I'm very thankful that my family is safe. But many families did not fare as well as ours did. And these communities are in a State of shock and despair.

And I think the speaker and the Governor and the pro tem acting as quickly as they did with our budget Chair means the world.

And I just want to thank every Member here who has reached out and personally helped in the community, both in the Palisades in Malibu, but Altadena and Pasadena and Sierra Madre, and it has not gone unnoticed. So I think that there's a lot of work to be done this rebuild.

And this process is going to be a long process. And as the Chair said, not only at the end of this session are we going to be talking about fire mitigation and rebuilding. I think we're going to be talking about this at the end of many budget sessions coming forward.

And I want to echo Assemblymember Erwin to say thank you for the $4 million for the local agencies to get this rebuild process effectively done. I think that's very key. I think that obviously cutting the red tape and doing this efficiently is going to be very, very important for these families to get back on their feet.

I think the $1.0 million for the schools is a great start. I'm going to echo some of Zabur's concern. Many of my local school districts are now seeing a huge influx of students that need help and they, frankly aren't resourced effectively to do it. And that's school districts in La Canada, San Marino and the surrounding areas.

So I will call on staff and everyone to really heed what Mr. Zabur said. I think that there's going to be quick action needed to be taken to make sure these schools get back in. These schools have all the resources that they have to get kids back into school.

And we need to do everything we can to do that. To take a slightly different angle than Senator Irwin, I'm worried about a lot of things, but mudslides and debris flow are a huge risk in our communities now because of what has happened to the soil and to the land.

I know that part of the 2.5 billion will go towards erosion mitigation and mudflow mitigation.

But can you give us a sense here as to what programs we need to be funding with urgency and how much money we're looking to actually put into erosion mitigation so that these communities are not devastated again by mud flows from heavy rains that will come very soon.

So the way that the response is set up for most incidences, but this in particular as well, is they have task forces that deal with different things.

And so I think it's a little bit less about specific programs in a situation like this is that the Watershed Task Force is already, you know, looking at all of that and coordinating with multiple agencies.

DWR, as I understand it, leads that task force, but they'll coordinate with other agencies as necessary to determine where the greatest risks are and what sort of erosion controls need to be done and things like that.

And so as those assessments are completed and funding needs are identified, those are things that will rise to the request for allocation quickly. And we'll devote portions of this $2.5 billion towards meeting those needs.

As that sort of progresses, we'll probably have a better idea of what sort of the long term or ongoing type of needs will be. And it's very possible that, as has been noted here several times, this is really initial funding to get towards this. And there's going to be a lot of ongoing conversations.

And so part of those ongoing conversations is going to be some of the more ongoing needs because obviously these burn scars and things like that don't revegetate, you know, right away. There's, there's work and things that needs to get done to take care of that.

And so that's going to be, have to be part of the ongoing conversation of sort of the longer term recovery portion of it as well.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Same questions then on air and water testing.

So a lot of these local governments and agencies are quickly trying to figure out how they're going to pay and do a lot of things that they'll need to do on an ongoing basis to make sure the water and the air is safe for the residents that are impacted.

Same question as to how are we, how are we funding it generally speaking and how quickly can we get the funds to the local agencies.

So I think it's, it's largely the same. We've got a very robust group of state entities led by Cal OEs that are on the ground down there coordinating in all these different aspects.

And as those needs arise in terms of exactly what they need to do and who needs to do it and how much and that type of stuff, those are the things that will percolate up to us and we'll review it and allocate it within this $2.5 billion.

And then again there'll be ongoing conversations in terms of what's needed beyond this. This gets us started and allows us to respond to all of the immediate stuff now and then as we see what the sort of ongoing needs are, you know, we'll be able to be better prepared to address those in future conversations.

Thank you. And then last question is just going to be about the $1.0 million for the schools. Do we, do we have a sense of how it's delineated between the Office of Public Construction, the State Architect and then coordination with the actual local schools?

I mean there's in Assemblymember Irwin's district and mine, I mean numerous schools are no longer there and need to be rebuilt very, very quickly. $1.0 million is obviously going to be a very small amount that is going to be needed.

I just want to make sure that that money is being utilized as efficiently and as effectively as possible with the local school districts that need it. So if you can just walk us through a bit, obviously this is a very high level how that will be allocated.

So just at the highest level there's $250,000 that's for the Division of State Architect and $750,000. That's for the Office of Public School Construction. But I'll defer to my colleague Michelle to talk a bit more about the details of what they'll do with that.

Michelle Nguyen, Department of Finance like my colleague said, $250,1 time General Fund to the division of The State Architect 750,000 One Time General Fund for the Office of Public School Construction.

And in the provisional language, it states that working with Los Angeles Unified School District, Pasadena Unified School District, impacted charter schools to the extent that there are other schools that are, you know, impacted that go beyond this list.

There's, there's the authority, you know, to add additional impacted districts and schools or other leas to that list in terms of, you know, how these funds will be used to provide this assistance. You know, understood that this is initial assistance for the kind of response efforts that are happening in the short term.

The language gives pretty broad flexibility for both DSA and OPSC to provide appropriate and, you know, timely response to efforts on the ground. I can give a couple of examples of ways in which these funds could be used.

One would be facilitating the ability of these two entities to travel and conduct in person site visits to the impacted schools once it's safe to do so, allowing opsc, for example, to provide targeted technical assistance and hold recurring meetings with the impacted schools on an individual basis and kind of helping them navigate through the, you know, the there's a lot of different short term, medium term, longer term resources, so helping them be connected to departments, agencies that are providing those resources and then helping to kind of like be kind of like a Sherpa through that process.

Another example on the DSA side would be making sure that there's a prompt deployment of DSA professional engineers and architects through the Safety Assessment program. This would assist local governments in safety evaluations, site inspections of their built environment. So those are just a couple of different examples.

I think there are like I mentioned, there's a lot of flexibility in the ways that the funds would be used, but those are just some kind of like top of mind examples.

Erin Gabel, Assembly Budget Committee so just to reiterate some of what my colleague is saying from the Department of Finance, this is funding to make sure that those two agencies can promptly respond on the ground to make sure those school districts and charter schools have access to a very wide range of existing resources.

So this is a small package in the context of our larger disaster response that's already in law. So access to making sure they understand how to rebuild, access their insurance, be able to access portables very quickly for displaced students, students at other campuses.

There's a wide range of supports that are going to be provided through these two agencies and the Department of Education that's already in. In progress.

Appreciate that. Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. We are now going to go to Assemblymember Quirk-Silva, followed by Assemblymember Coloza and then Assemblymember Elwahari. Assemblymember Bennett.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, appreciation to all those who have been involved in fighting these fires. I wanted to make a point to talk about the word fires. We're talking about these catastrophes, and yet we know wind played a major role in this.

And I think it might be incumbent upon us to start to use that term, wind fires.

I too traveled to Altadena to see the impact in one of the fire chiefs that was there that was touring us, talked to us about at the time that those winds were coming down through the canyons, that it was almost like fighting fires in a hurricane because the winds were so fast and were spreading horizontally.

I think it's really a very different type of fire than we've seen in other places.

But to my colleagues here, some who have just taken the helm within the last two or three weeks, I will say that the Republican leader, Gallagher, invited a group of us last year up to paradise and to Chico, where there had just been fast moving fires. We went up in June, there were other tours.

And again, the fire authorities up there told us that the ground was so hot because of the heat that we've been extreme, that none of their mapping or modeling showed or could have predicted how fast the Chico fires would have spread. But we indeed did see on one side of a street, many structures were done.

And then because of some of the intentional fire mitigation, other structures that were up and we saw that in Altadena, some house homes that were passed over. I would not say that it was all because of the type of stucco or roof. Some of those were down as well, and others with Wood were up, still standing.

So some of the firefighters that we asked about this said some of it was luck. So as we see the impacts from Palisades to Northern California and fires up and down the state, we made our way to Paradise.

And after five years, I believe it was five years from their fires, you do see some rebuilding and some regrowth and some opportunities for hope. And yet the rebuild is much slower. The people that were displaced haven't necessarily come back.

A hospital was Burned in paradise, they chose not to rebuild it, which means that many seniors have not returned and yet others have come back. So I think, as was mentioned, we won't just be talking about these fires at the end of session.

We will be talking about them, quite frankly, for some people, for a decade or more.

And I do send out sincere condolences to those people who have lost their homes and livelihoods and all of the individuals that are impacted, because it isn't just the homeowners, it's the people that were working in those neighborhoods, from housekeepers to gardeners to all the business is impacted.

And we know that many of our most vulnerable are going to have a very hard time getting back on their feet, which leads to the intersection of housing and homelessness.

We know that our shelters are going to be filled, and for some who maybe never even expected themselves to one day have a substantial livelihood to the next month, possibly thinking about how are they going to. We know the Airbnb's that's going to term out or timeout and people won't be able to.

So there's a lot to talk about. But I will just end with my comments, because I'm making comments. More than a question here is there were substantial pieces of legislation that have been put forward as, as my colleague just mentioned, I too had a mapping Bill, a modeling Bill that was held in appropriations last year.

We will look at trying to bring that back, but we also have to look at, as a macro of the State of California, what are other things that can be done. I know it was said it's because we didn't protect the forest, these fires were actually in urban areas. But we do have to look at the forests.

There have been grazing bills that have been out there that haven't always made their way. So whether it's permitting, streamlining, permitting, whether it's looking at bills from the past that haven't moved forward, looking at retaining a fire force throughout the year, we have a lot of work to do.

And sitting here on the budget from two weeks ago to now, the budget has been turned upside down, meaning if we want to do what we say we want to do, it's going to cost a lot of money.

And as we do that, we're going to have to keep in mind that the safety net for some of our most vulnerable is also going to be reduced and we may see more homelessness, we may see people displaced not returning for a very long time, and we have a limited budget. So I'm sounding very dismal. Right now.

But I want to set the stage for what we have seen over quite a long time. This is my last term, so for a decade we've been talking about some of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember. We will now go to Assemblymember Colozza.

Thank you, Chair Gabriel, and thank you to my colleagues for all of your comments and sentiments and feedback on the budget items before us today. Thank you to the Department of Finance, the Speaker's Office, our budget team, and of course, our chair and Vice Chair. Some of the additional questions that I had.

And thank you all for your tremendous work in putting this package together. You know, I think just a few things that are top of mind to me to add to what my colleagues have already mentioned is as we sit in this hearing room today, we are far from over on this catastrophe and this disaster.

There's still fires burning and Assemblymember Erwin and her Obedience district. And so still far from this disaster and seeing what the impacts are going to be. And so some of the questions that I had were around some of the reporting requirements that were mentioned. Would you be able to elaborate on what those are?

That would be helpful for me as somebody who is a new Legislator to this body, as well as many of us who were just sworn in a few weeks ago being thrown into this catastrophe, but would love to hear from the team, what are some of the things the public, the body can expect around the reporting requirements for this $2.5 billion?

Sure. So the requirements of the bills will have Department of Finance putting together essentially a list that shows all of the allocations from the $2.5 billion when they happened, who they were to what it was for how much. And it'll be sort of a running tab. You think of it like a checkbook ledger almost.

You start with 2.5 billion and it'll sort of work its way down, you know, as we're allocating funding. And that'll get posted on our website. The first one has to be up on or about February 7th. And then I don't remember off the top of my head all the dates I cited earlier.

I will find them again, though, February 28, March 31 and April. So basically the end of each month through April. And then they allow for the first $1.0 billion to be allocated and transferred to departments upon notice to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

And then after that, the remaining $1.5 billion, we will provide a notice to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. And we'll have to there'll be like a three day review period before we can make the transfers. So those are the primary two pieces of the reporting requirements.

And then of course, you know, as always, the Administration will be, you know, remain available to answer questions and to participate, you know, as things come up, questions come up from the Legislature.

Okay. Thank you for restating those dates. I'll certainly be following up with you.

That would be helpful so we can make sure to work with you and with our other colleagues as we look at the bills that we'll be introducing for the remainder of the year to respond to the ongoing needs of what these wildfires have caused and will be causing. So thank you.

Christian Griffith with Assembly Budget I also want to remark that in AB5, in the extraordinary session, there's language about intent, language regarding revisiting, especially the bond funding in April.

And so a lot of the deadlines and the reporting are really overlaid upon the budget process in General so that we have information, so that we have budget hearings, we have information about what the expenditures have been so we can build towards potentially an early action package in April and then also build beyond that towards the regular budget in June.

So we're trying to figure out how to match up these reports around when we have deliberations so we have the right information so you can make the right decisions.

Thank you. And thank you to our chair.

Thank you very much. We'll now go to Assembly Member Elhawari.

Thank you so much, Chair Gabriel, and to all of our colleagues, especially those who are currently representing districts that are are incredibly impacted by this devastation. Thank you to everyone who is here who really is ensuring that our communities have the supports needed, especially financially.

My question and, and just to kind of contextualize, I know Assemblymember Gabriel, Chair Gabriel talked about his experience having been evacuated. I have family who lives in Altadena. I attended high school in Altadena. Our family home is there. My sister lost her home in the fire, the Eaton fire.

And just really I think recognizing the incredibly tight knit community that was Altadena that is so deeply impacted by the community loss and the trauma beyond individual lives that were lost, beyond individual homes that were lost, the community that truly was just so close that no longer exists and that we have to rebuild and work to rebuild and recover, especially given the that Aladena in particular was home to historically marginalized communities that had often, especially had not had the opportunity to own homes elsewhere.

And so my question is really to speak to how, as we really rebuild and recover together, recognizing the devastation all over Los Angeles County, how do we Ensure that communities with the highest need are being prioritized in this process.

So there's, I've mentioned a couple of times, but I think it just is important context for most of this is that we have a very robust group of agencies. It really is touching on, off the top of my head, can't think of a Department almost that isn't involved, to be honest, with the coordination of Cal OEs.

And that focus is about going in, working together, coordinating with the locals, coordinating with federal partners and discussing those needs as they come up and what are the highest needs and how do we address those needs and prioritize those needs and then rise those up so those can come forward for the discussions on what funding may be needed or if it's.

Sometimes it's not funding that's needed, it's something else needed. And talk about how do we wrap around.

But I think that's really the process for trying to make sure we identify the highest need is that there's just a very robust group of state departments that are on the ground mobilizing down in the area to be aware and to discuss it.

Thank you. I think something just to kind of paint the picture, especially in communities like Altadena and actually Pasadena, parts of Pasadena were impacted is there are many families who are displaced currently.

And especially as we think about what's going on in the new federal Administration and just the impacts of the fear that so many folks are feeling. We have families who are immigrant families or mixed status families who are going back into their homes and almost hiding because they don't know what else to do.

They don't know, you know, even with the, the some of the supports and assistance that is available, they're afraid to really reach out and get the extra supports necessary.

And so is it possible to codify, you know, I know you're, you're mentioning the ways in which we, you all are working together to really invest in those communities that have the highest need.

But is it possible to codify some of that language to ensure that we are really investing and ensuring that we're keeping that in mind and at the forefront of our.

A lot of the structure that's used is actually part of the Emergency Services Act. So it's already. And the organization for response that has pre existed to the extent that there is needs beyond what is already there. I think those are conversations we can have as part of the ongoing many conversations that will result after this.

We have to look at what specific language we're talking about and where and sort of impacts and things like that. But I think those are conversations we can and should have.

And then last thing is there was an LA Times report that mentioned that in Altadena east, excuse me, west of a particular street, Lake Avenue, where mostly black and Latino families live, they didn't receive evacuation warnings until it was too late, until the fires had already reached their homes.

And as we're thinking about really centering communities with the highest need, I know this is talking about allowable uses for what we're really looking to do.

And I know Assemblymember Flora talked about just the importance of some of the bills that have come up in the past that we haven't passed before, but really thinking about the impact and the necessity to really be thoughtful around how we even build out those programs so that everyone, no matter what, where they're from, no matter what background, no matter what, you know, income level, that they have those evacuation warnings early enough.

I know that's partially related to bills that we need to look at. But even thinking about in the budget process, as we think about the disaster response, you know, that we're still in the midst of active wildfires, windstorms, you know, and firestorms. And so just ensuring that that's a piece of it as well. Thank you.

Yeah, I would just, if I could just I know that when the evacuations are being given, obviously the intent is for that to get to everybody equally as quickly.

And so I think what there'll probably be a lot of after action sort of report and follow up and if there's issues like that that folks identify, then those should be discussed as a part of that and see if there was system errors or communication failures or exactly what happened.

So yeah, I mean there's absolutely the intent that it get out there equally quickly.

Thank you very much, Assemblymemberman. I just want to thank you for raising those issues and just to share thinking about and centering the experiences of our most vulnerable and historically underserved communities has been a very important priority for the Assembly Budget Committee, really led very ably by a lot of our sub chairs who have taken that focus.

And so I'm confident with the membership of this Committee as we move forward and what's going to be a long process that that will be a pro that will be a priority for the Assembly Budget Committee. And I know that our partners in the Administration and the Senate understand that as well.

So I want to thank you for lifting that up. Now going to go to Assemblymember Patterson.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it's strange being the only Patterson here. So I wasn't expecting that. Well, I just want to say obviously you know, to all the victims and my colleagues, you know, that not only evacuated but you know, represent a lot of the victims, you know, you know, really feel bad obviously for them.

My condolences to everybody and appreciate the leadership by my colleagues just with the work they're doing in their districts to help people recover. And I think that's the, obviously the important thing that this is what the state should be doing in terms of.

I think, you know, I mean, I think there are things we can talk about in terms of how it's done, but one of the primary responsibilities of the government, I believe is, you know, public safety and helping people recover from disasters. It seems to be a primary, primary objective of government.

Sometimes we stray far beyond those objectives, but I think we're on the right track here. A couple things I just wanted to mention and I think in General I'm supportive of the idea of spending money to help people in, especially the people in La, recover from these fires.

You know, as I'm sure many of you know, that my district and areas outside my district where I. My district gets very close to Assemblymember Hadwick's district, you know, has been the location of maybe annual fires, large fires, you know, six digit acre burn areas, you know, thousands of structures almost on an annual basis.

And you can see it when you drive up to South Lake Tahoe, for example, there's still recovery going on from fires that happened years ago. And also appreciated the comments by Assemblymember Quirk Silva. I was on that. We went to paradise and I thought that was very informative by the way.

I mean that city has really figured out how to help people and I think that that's really important.

And that's kind of where I just want to say some of my comments to go here is that I don't really know how this is going to factor into the language over time, but especially as time goes on, local government will put up a lot of red tape even in small nimble counties and things like that.

So mentioned the portables earlier. You know, it something I don't personally appreciate, but when I went up to one of the communities that burned down and right outside my district, people still living in trailers. Right. Right now, by the way, portables and it's very cold, very cold up there right now.

They the county was actually giving the residents a bad time over complying with various zoning laws and things like that for their portables and you know, it's kind of something that I think you won't happen immediately after the fire, but I think as time goes on and people are trying to recover, I think local governments need to be nimble.

And the reason why I say that is because I do think the language, as we're spending state tax dollars to help people recover, I think the language should reflect the fact that local governments, despite their having been a former City Council Member myself, despite their best efforts, will add red tape to the process of recovery.

And I think we obviously want to partner with local governments, but to the extent that we can ensure that the language includes some flexibility to make sure that our dollars are spent efficiently, I think that's a good thing. Just something to consider.

One other thing I wanted to mention is what I've witnessed from these fires is a lot, and it was referenced earlier, a lot of water runoff, you know, can have all sorts of damage and things like that.

But one of the things, especially in Northern California, are waterways that get, you know, just all the stuff from the fire, the ashes, all that stuff, fills up the waterways and also the reservoirs. And unless they're dredged, I mean, you in perpetuity lose capacity of those holding areas.

And I think that the way our water system works in California, we ought to consider some ongoing funding, actually, to help dredge some of those water reservoirs that are filled with stuff, everything that's burned in these fires. So just something to consider as we move forward.

But really appreciate, you know, looking forward to these evolving, these bills evolving some more. But if I can be of any assistance to my colleagues. I haven't been down there yet. I apologize for that. I like to get down there. I don't really want to be a distraction at the moment, but I'll get there in due time.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. And I'll go to Assembly Member Bennett.

First. I'd like to compliment Assembly Members Irwin and Harabedian for the extraordinary grace with which they're handling this high pressure event and the grace with which you're handling your constituents, etc. It is remarkable to watch your work. I think it's appropriate, as we're coming to, near the end of our first of many hearings about this, to point out that there are two growing significant risk about fires, wildfires that we ought to be really paying attention to.

And one of those is simply the fact that physically, more and more homes in California are going to be at risk from wildfires. As climate change intensifies, as these wind events intensify, as they expand further around California, all Californians face more physical risk from wildfire than they have 10 years before, 20 years ago.

And we need to be aware of that. And the corollary with that is that it means we're all in it together, because these wildfires, particularly in Southern California, et cetera, are mostly ember showers that are spotting a mile and two miles ahead. That means that everybody has to approach this with some herd mentality.

When my house catches on fire, it can spot fires in my whole neighborhood because of these wind events. And so we're all in it together. We all should march along this path of recognizing that, if we do the things to harden our homes and decrease our wildfire risk, it benefits not just ourselves, but everybody else.

And the second half of that. And when I say there's two major risks, one, we're all more at physical risk, but two, also, we're all at tremendous financial risk because, as these wildfire losses go up, invariably you have to raise homeowners' fire insurance, and we risk having homeowners' fire insurance literally become unaffordable in California. And if that happens, two things happen. The cost of living goes up, but also, our economy will suffer in many ways if we get to that situation.

And so while we're ending this very first hearing, it's important for us to recognize that not for just one year, but for the next five years, our goal as a Legislature should be to find all the things, all the policies, I'm not talking about financing this all budget wise, all the policies that we can adopt to incentivize everybody to harden their homes, to decrease our fire losses.

And that's the way to keep our homeowners' insurance affordable. And that means finding ways, not so much the hammer, but finding ways to incentivize people. If you come up with the right package of hardening that you'll get these kinds of discounts. If you come up with the right package of hardening, you get these kinds of incentives.

But we need to create an enormous amount of incentives for everybody in the State of California to join arms in trying to decrease our homeowners fire losses and recognize that wildfire risk is now a risk for urban areas a long ways away from the, from the urban wildfire interface, wildland interface, that that risk is now expanded to lots of other inland areas, inland from that wildland interface. So I hope we can all pull together. I hope that's going to be a real common goal, and I hope that from our budget chair to our policy chair leadership, we can really focus on decreasing wildfire risk. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. Are there any other Members of the committee that have any questions or comments? Assembly Member Essayli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to delve into this. I think we are all in bipartisan support of the recovery effort. I mean, these wildfires have been devastating to communities, and so we all fully support doing what we can to help the victims and the communities rebuild.

I just want to clarify, I know the chair mentioned that this is the beginning, not the end of a conversation, and that we will hopefully be having more hearings on wildfire prevention because the immediate need is to react to address the recovery effort. But we do have to invest and change policies so we can better mitigate in the future the risk of these wildfires, which I don't believe the state has been doing very well. But just to clarify, none of this money will be used for prevention. It's strictly for recovery?

Well, I'll say response and recovery to get into bridging. But yes, it's not going to be going into prevention or sort of wildfire resilience type activities.

Okay. Do you anticipate submitting some additional funding requests for this special session dealing with wildfire prevention?

I don't know for the special session. I don't think there'll be additional stuff, but I think that there is absolutely going to be some additional conversations in this budget process about the wildfire enforcement resilience. Certainly, there's conversations about Prop 4 that are going to take the climate bond that just passed that will be taking place. The Governor's Budget, proposed funding from that climate bond that goes a big part of it goes towards wildfire and forest resilience. And then I'm sure there'll be additional Conversations along those lines.

So from the governor's perspective, this is the only bill that he wants to see passed in the special session?

I'm not going to say that. My understanding is, for the initial wildfire response, these are the bills that we've negotiated with the Legislature and we're moving forward. I'm not going to comment on whether or not there's anything else to take place.

Okay. I will just say that I do think we need to be investing a lot more. We're only investing a couple hundred million dollars a year currently in wildfire prevention. I think, frankly, it should be in the billions. We have immediate need to reduce the fuel load and some of the highest risk areas.

My understanding from CAL FIRE is it's about 5 million acres that we need to immediately reduce the fuel loads in to mitigate the risk. We're doing about 100,000 acres a year. It's just not even close to cutting it. So whatever we need to get that done, whether it's money or loosening the red tape, I encourage the governor's office to work with us and to expedite that. I don't think we can wait. I just had a fire break out in my county last night in Jurupa. So, I mean, these fires are still happening.

The damage from this fire alone is estimated to be 100 to 150 billion dollars. That's a lot of money. And, you know, a billion here, a billion there is a drop in the bucket. But money could be better put to use in prevention. I think, you know, if we spend the money in prevention, it will save us a lot of money in the back end. I do want to echo some of the comments of my colleague.

On this recovery effort, I really hope that we're prioritizing communities based on need, and maybe that's something to think about that we put in here. I do think the money should be prioritized based on zip code and income. Malibu is going to be fine. Malibu is going to rebuild. People will come in and they'll pay to rebuild there.

But I'm more concerned about the lower economic communities where there isn't as much of an incentive to come in and invest and rebuild. So I think that's something to talk about, look at, and make sure that we can invest based on need and not just which, you know, based on whatever other metric.

So I hope that's something we can look into. All right. Well, I think for purposes of today, I mean, this is just more of an informational hearing, so we'll be looking at the bills and considering any amendments and that sort of thing. I know I'm really focused on prevention as well as recovery. So with that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. Assembly Member Addis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to also thank the speaker, the governor, and the pro tem for acting so quickly, and just tell my colleagues and all who have gone through these disasters how much my heart is with you. We have definitely lived through disasters on the Central Coast and the kind of leadership it takes, but also the heart that it takes to get through these.

I just want to commend all of you that are here and all of you that have experienced this and thank our emergency services from across the state, including from the Central Coast. I had immediately reached out, people started sending me photos of various emergency personnel from the Central Coast that were sent down to LA.

And so as I was texting our emergency services on the Central Coast to say thank you so much for going to Southern California and supporting our communities there. Of course, then the largest battery energy storage facility in the world erupted into 250 foot flames. And thank God nobody was hurt or injured there.

And I don't mention it to take away from what has happened in Southern California, but to echo many of the calls that I've heard. And just number one, a huge plea to the departments to please move this money quickly, to do it with accountability, but to do it quickly. Because we do still have folks that haven't been able to rebuild from the CZU Fires, that haven't gotten over the atmospheric rivers of 2023.

You've heard our colleagues on the dais talk about the difficulty, and we need our departments to move as quickly as possible to get people what they need. I also want to echo calls for environmental and health considerations for water quality and soil quality testing. It's something that we have experienced as a challenge on the Central Coast.

And I think, as people go back to rebuild, it's going to be incredibly important that they feel safe. Not just that they're rebuilding in a safe way, but that they have a safe, healthy environment to rebuild in. I am highly supportive of making CAL FIRE year round.

I understand that's a Bains bill, and I want to thank our vice chair for bringing that up, but also just to say that prevention truly is our best medicine. The cost of making CAL FIRE year round is minimal compared to the cost of continual response to these kinds of disasters.

I think our communities are saying enough is enough. We have to do something different in our state. And as we lead into the future and as we help our colleagues and our communities in Southern California get back on our feet. And then finally, I want to just thank my colleague Elhawary for bringing up underserved communities.

We've really struggled when it comes to disasters, and our underserved communities are often those that are unhoused the quickest, that struggle to get back into temporary housing and that struggle to get into long term housing. I'll just give one small example. In the northern part of our district in the 2023 floods, families that were unhoused from mobile home parks that had no help and when they went to rent something new, it was all of a sudden $4,000 a month. It's just unconscionable.

And we need to do a much better job of making sure that all of our communities are cared for in these disasters. So I want to thank staff. I know budget staff and the departments are working incredibly hard to get this right, to make sure that we have the funding and the accountability that we need. But I do just want to reiterate, please act swiftly as you are trying to help constituents across the State of California.

Thank you very much. We're going to go to Assembly Member Hadwick.

Hi. I just want to say how sorry we are. I am from District 1, so we are plagued with fires every year. So I know your trauma, and we are thinking of you and praying and would like to help in any way. I spent the last seven years of my career in emergency management at the county level evacuating people, knocking on doors, and then through the recovery process. I'm very encouraged to hear all the conversation about recovery.

I think that's something that needs to be looked at because not only are these communities healing from the trauma of the ordeal, but economically and financially it takes so long. I have communities... We had the Dixie Fire burned over a million, almost a million acres in our district in 2021.

And there are still communities that are living off of generators in my district. The school closed last year in Greenville. They are not recuperating in the a fast enough pace, and we have to support that. I would love to take you all there to show you because once you see what fire, the destruction of fire, you can't unsee that, you can't unfeel it. So I'm very encouraged that the conversations are happening because we've been talking about it, especially in our district for years.

I really don't want the message of this special session to be felt in the north, especially that some homes and some communities are more valued than others just because of where they are in our state. So I really want you to be thoughtful about solutions. We are plagued with fires every year.

So your solutions may be possible in an urban setting, but they're not in Northern California. And the thing that we can control in this is the fuel. So prevention money will be... We will get, we will get it. We will get our able stretch our dollar. We won't be spending billions of dollars in recovery and response and protect our residents, which is why we're all here. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. We're now gonna go to Assembly Member Bonta.

Thank you, chair. And I just wanna thank you for bringing us all together so quickly and ably and helping to not only streamline our thought process and our hearing process around this, but really being very deliberate about sharing that we're in this for a very long time.

And this is the first of many allocations essentially that we'll need to be able to make. I want to also just echo my colleagues' sentiments and just love on our representatives Harabedian and Irwin for their incredible stalwart leadership during this time. And I know that they need a lot of help. I just...

And I'm thankful that we are in a position because of the governor and our leadership that we've been able to take such swift action. I quickly moved into the thinking about what impacts there would be related to our public health issues related to air quality and water quality and sat down and did some communication with the Budget Committee about what that might look like.

We're exclusively focused, it seems like, right now, on response and recovery that relates to property issues, environmental abatement, and that makes a lot of sense. I just want to urge us and recognize that, as we look into the second phase of this work, we are going to have to fully address the health impacts that come with the poor air quality, the rise in levels of respiratory illness and carcinogenic toxins that people are intaking, while they are also some of the most vulnerable populations that we have in the State of California and know that we will need to do work around that.

And I just also want to note that we also suffered, in addition to schools being lost, suffered frontline clinics that were burned to the ground. So the places that people need to go and will need to go in order to be able to receive the care that they need are no longer there or are compromised. And that should also be a part of the longer term look that we have around these response and recovery efforts. So thankful to be able to work with my Chair Addis in this on the Budget Subcommittee as it relates to that.

But again, just wanted to, having been in Oakland and knowing that, in 1991, we had devastating fires in the Oakland Hills, just also recognize the preventative work that we need to do and fully support our Vice Chair Flora's comments around needing to make sure that we have emergency services and fire service that are year round to address all of the preventative measures that we need to be able to take place throughout the State of California.

Excellent points. Thank you, Assembly Member. We are now going to go to Assembly Member Hart.

I thank everybody for their comments. They're very well timed, and I'm very encouraged that we have this funding that's coming forward that will help alleviate some of the immediate needs in the affected communities. I wanted to just remind folks that seven years ago and 12 days ago in my district we were recovering from the Thomas Fire and there was an intense rainstorm that caused a massive debris flow in Montecito that 23 people lost their lives in. And I can't help but think about Assembly Member Harabedian's district.

The San Gabriel Mountains are right there. They are very young geologically. The Los Angeles flood control system is one of the most sophisticated in the world because of disasters that have occurred from flooding from those mountains. And we really need to be doing everything we can to not just respond to the immediate needs that are happening with this fire, but to be prepared for a potential disastrous rainstorm that would follow in that burn scar area.

As Assembly Member Bennett talked about, you know, the new normal in California with climate change is drought and extreme rain events. And these things, when they come together, are particularly dangerous. So I hope that we're doing everything we can and using the funding that we have available from this emergency to prepare for the next emergency.

I know that many of the complexities of FEMA funding make that difficult, but some of the lessons that we've learned in Santa Barbara County, we'd be happy to share. Nets were installed in canyons to help prepare the downstream neighborhoods from massive boulders that come through communities. And there are many techniques that I know around the world. The Getty Center has installed those nets to protect their downstream neighbors. There's a lot we can do and need to do urgently to protect those communities.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. Assembly Member Macedo. Apologies, please.

No, If I could, I just, I wanted to comment on Assembly Member Hart's. Just to assure you that, yeah, the operations on the ground are monitoring weather events very closely, and they have task force that are working very hard on making sure that they have systems and activities in place to guard against those types of activities, the mud flows and things like that.

So just want to assure you that that is something that's front of mind and is being worked on regularly, quickly. And in terms of the FEMA process, that funding, of course, always comes back as reimbursements. So the purpose of, of course, the funding in these bills is to make sure we have what we need to do all that upfront activity and then we'll kind of worry about the reimbursement piece on the back end.

Thank you, sir. Assembly Member.

Thank you so much. I want to begin with saying, before I say what I want to say, my heart and soul is with Assembly Member Irwin, Harabedian, and Gabriel as well, that this session is to focus on the current crisis at hand. But as a representative from the Central Valley, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that, Assembly Member Irwin said something that really stood out to me, that this is the new norm for them in her area of California. This is not a new norm for us in Central California. We have very high temperatures.

We have a very dry part of California, so we brace for fire season every year. Being in the Valley, we pay the price for the fires in Northern and Southern California because, geographically, we are a low part of the state surrounded by mountains. So yes, we have things like air quality issues.

And when we talk about underserved areas, my district comes from a very poor part of the state that is 65% Hispanic and Latino. And because of those fires in those mountains, when the snow came, we did not have adequate waterways and water infrastructure that when that snow came and that snow melted, it was devastating and it flooded the Central Valley.

While we are here to talk about fires, we also need to talk about the statewide issue of water infrastructure issues that, statewide, in order to fight these fires and in order to prevent dry areas like mine from catching fire when we have extremely high heats or winds or things like that from happening. I urge my colleagues on this dais.

When you're thinking about your policy, think about the urban and the rural areas, think about Northern, Central and Southern California, of how we have to come together, that fires are not a single faceted issue. This is a multifaceted issue that we as a Legislature can correct.

We as a Legislature cannot stop natural disasters from happening, but we can mitigate the damage that happens as a result of that. So I am very excited that we are getting this funding to the source and trying to address the crisis at hand. My question is, there's a rather expansive list for this very finite pot of money.

Is there going to be a budget to make sure that we are allocating money to each of these agendas rather than we're addressing one, and maybe we spend a billion dollars. Well, then we get to number two and we spend a billion dollars. But by the time we get to four or five or six, there's no money left in this pot to help with those remediation measures.

There's no scheduling as to how much has to go towards each activity, limitations in that regard. All of the activities are happening at the same time. So it's sort of virtually guaranteed that there'll be a mix of the money going to the different activities.

And the reporting that's done will indicate how much has been allocated for each activity as it's being allocated. I would also just note that these bills provide an additional initial $2.5 billion. There is other mechanisms so that if additional funding is needed to address all of the needs as they come up, they'll be addressed as well.

And, you know, in my opinion, money is simply not enough. I mean, we can make this 200 billion dollars, and it doesn't make everybody whole and the devastation. So I'm so grateful that we're trying to find ways to get this started. I'm hoping that my fellow legislators recognize this, that the people didn't just lose their homes, they lost their livelihoods, they lost their memories, they lost the places that their children took their first steps. These are things that we need to remember.

And when we're talking about underserved communities, we need to make sure that their voices are heard throughout the State of California. And so I'm excited to start this conversation. I appreciate the governor bringing us as a Legislature in on that, and I hope that he continues to foster that conversation. Because we have very different backgrounds from each of our districts that their voices should all be heard. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member, any other questions or comments from folks on the dais? Okay, let's go Assembly Member Bennett.

I think it's very appropriate to point out that we don't have unlimited resources. We have limited resources. We have to constantly be trying to prioritize as we move forward. And so I think it'd be helpful if staff would just remind us and give the statistics, if they could, in terms of what has happened the last few years, in terms of our commitment to CAL FIRE, wildfire preparation, et cetera.

So could you, could somebody from staff elaborate on the cost of going to the 66 hour work week, elaborate on how many more fire engines we've acquired over the last couple of years? How many more air bases, and what have we done with peak staffing? How much of the year are we involved in peak staffing? Also, there has been a substantial increase in this effort, but I think it would be important for us to be reminded of just what that substantial increase increase has been. Thank you.

Yeah. Hi. Christine Miyashiro with Assembly Budget Committee. Thanks for the question. 66 hour work week, in addition to addressing firefighter mental health and reducing the work week for individual firefighters had a cascading effect on department staffing overall. We increased the peak staffing for fire season from five months to nine months.

And that means that, ordinarily during the base fire season staffing when we would only have, I think 65 fire engines staffed, we have over 300 fire engines staffed in addition to our aerial resources where we have 10 Helitack bases and 12 air bases that are also able to be deployed at any given time.

By 2028, we will have an additional over 2000 permanent firefighters a part of CAL FIRE. And that is in addition to the firefighters that we have from the military Department, from the California Conservation Corps and CDCR. And I'll turn it over to Department of Finance in case they'd like to add anything else.

That was a great summary. I think it's that we also have added several hundred firefighters through the relief staffing package that was approved a couple years ago. And then as Christine mentioned, over the last several years we've done a number of different hand crew related proposals that have added permanent firefighters capacity.

So we have grown the fire protection budget significantly over the last several years. You know, it's something we continue to look at, but I think as noted here, we're also trying to balance that with making sure we invest in fire prevention and wildfire resilience activities as well.

I might point out that, last year, in Budget Sub 4, while we cut almost everything, the only thing that grew in Budget Sub 4 was wildfire and fire prevention efforts. So there has been a significant long term commitment the last few years. Thank you.

We will thank you for that foresight, Mr. Sub Chair. Now go to Assembly Member Schultz.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief. I want to begin by saying that my heart goes out to everyone impacted by the fires, and I want to express my profound admiration for all of you here who are leading your communities in this really difficult time, it's been something to see.

There are two very quick observations I want to make, and it does lead to a question regarding the $4 million of one time General Funds that's suggested to be appropriated to HCD. But before I get to that, the observations I want to make are as follows. We already have an affordable housing crisis in California.

I've mentioned this before. It was already hard enough to make it in LA. We're already down millions of units that we needed to have constructed in the decades prior. And now, as a result of these fires that have broken out in Southern California, we have more than 100,000 people that have been displaced from their homes.

We have more than 12,000 structures that have been destroyed. And that's still counting. And the question that I have is really this. I don't think that there's anyone up here that doesn't believe in getting resources to that region or to any region of California that's impacted by a natural disaster.

But the question in my mind is always, how effective is the appropriation? Now most of the $2.5 billion package is really dealing with state agencies. And so I have a greater degree of confidence, if you will, that we can get the data that we need about how that money is being used and hopefully helping people.

But the $4 million, which I do support, by the way, the question is, it creates a grant program for local governments and local jurisdictions to expedite the building approval process to help folks rebuild and put their lives back together. The question is, what sort of reporting up requirements are there from local agencies to ensure that this money is actually allowing homeowners to rebuild as quickly as possible?

Teresa Calvert, Department of Finance. Per the provisional language, there will be discussions with the local agencies, and there are parameters in the language that has a description of the use and also the restrictions. So they have a restriction to expediting planning, review, and building inspections for rebuilding.

They also note that the funds that are going to be provided must supplement and not supplant previously existing resources for planning, review, and building inspections. But those discussions between HCD and those local agencies, which is also part of the provisional language, are yet to happen. Right. So once, if this funding is to go into effect, there will be further discussions with state agencies and local agencies that HCD will be leading that will lead to these allocations.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any further questions or comments? All right, then I just want to add a few of my own thoughts and first I just want to thank all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for a very thoughtful, informative conversation. As you see, there's a lot of folks that bring expertise to this conversation from different regions of the states, from different lived experience, from having encountered natural disasters before. And I'm encouraged by what I heard here because I think it provides us with a strong springboard for, as we do additional conversations moving through the year.

These are very important and weighty and complicated issues and I have no doubt, as was mentioned, we're not going to just be talking about them through this session, but really for many, many years to come. I also just want to double down on the compliments to those who've been impacted, the Members, and in particular to Assembly Members Harabedian and Irwin.

It has just been extraordinary to watch the way the two of you have responded to this, have stood up for your communities, continuing to fight for the people that you represent, shaping, helping to shape this initial legislative response at the same time you are juggling helping folks on the ground with a lot of the day to day challenges that they're having. So thank you to that. And also a huge thank you to our new Members.

As you know, as folks watching may know, we have a number of Members of this committee, particularly from Southern California, that are literally days into their legislative service, have not fully hired staff, have not really gotten their offices open and running. And I mean this with the utmost sincerity.

To watch the way that all of you have responded, have dived, have rolled up your sleeves and dived into this conversation and been there for your communities is really something special. And so I want to extend compliments to our new Members for the way that they have responded to this.

Something I think is really important that I know our colleagues in the Department of Finance heard today is the Legislature's desire to be involved in this conversation. And certainly we will, as a co-equal branch of government, look forward to being partners in this work to bring the expertise, the ideas, and the energy that you heard from Members of this committee as we move forward here.

And so I just want to thank you in advance for recognizing that the Legislature is going to be an intimate part of these conversations as we move forward. And I, you know, appreciated what you said about ongoing conversations, because that's how I look at this.

This will be an ongoing conversation and really an ongoing partnership between the different branches of government as we move forward here. I also wanted to just point out for folks, you know, there who were, who were talking about resilience and being prepared, not just recovery, but the prevention and the resilience.

You know, if you look at the bills, and there are two of them. AB 5 actually expressly contemplates that we would come back prior to April 30th to invest bond dollars and have conversations about other resources to be put into prevention. That is a critically important conversation.

I think we heard that from Members on both sides of the aisle from all parts of the state. And while we are focused and really, in my experience, moving with unusual speed here and a really unusual sense of urgency to get these resources out the door, already teeing up those important conversations.

And I want to thank a lot of folks who have come forward with both budget and policy ideas. And to, you know, to Mr. Patterson's point about cutting red tape and local government, there's a lot of folks on the Democratic side that have been engaging in that conversation, talking about how we might have policy bills in addition to our budget funding to address some of those issues. So I'm just encouraged to hear common themes from Members on both sides.

And I think that, you know, we're going to have a lot of work ahead of us as we revisit this in April and then, as Christian mentioned, in June and then later in the session, this will be. I expect that we will do multiple tranches of relief and have multiple conversations about all of this.

So let me, let me thank all of you. And then I finally just wanted to thank the district staff from many of these Members from impacted communities. I know that we had district staffers working through the night to help set up evacuation centers and really just going all in to serve these communities.

And so I wanted to make sure that we recognize this. I heard somebody say that natural disasters can bring out the best and the worst of people. And it was one of the things that has been comforting to me during a difficult time for Los Angeles, just to see, to see it bring out the best of so many people and the best of so many people in public service. So I just want to give a hat tip to the staff who have worked overtime.

With that, We will look forward to voting on this bill, these wildfire funding bills, tomorrow on the floor, hopefully to move with the urgency that this requires to get resources out the door as we continue to try to meet the needs of these communities. And with that, I want to turn it over and open it up to public comment.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Kyra Ross on behalf of the City of Pasadena. Just want to express our thanks for the work that's been done and very specifically our support of the $4 million for the local governments in order for us to get the rebuilding process expedited. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Thank you very much for holding this hearing today. Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the country's largest regional education agency and the state's largest, of course. We serve 80 school districts throughout the county. 24 of the school districts closed schools during the wildfires.

Many have reopened, but some are still requiring services. Of course, we support the bills presented today that are supporting schools and facilities, but we also urge you to consider additional flexibilities for school employees who may be facing issues regarding the loss of their own homes.

Some of our own colleagues at LACOE, my agency, have lost homes, but have really represented, just as your district staff has, in supporting many of the school districts, going out to the school districts and helping them with whatever issues they need addressed. So that is what the County Offices of Education do.

We are helping them with instructional services, independent study. We're providing services in that regard as well. Just as we did during the COVID 19 crisis. Many schools, many students and families needed technology services, instructional materials, and so we're trying to assist in that way.

I also want to provide you, and I'll send an email to each of you, with the list of resources that LACOE has provided to many of the districts and communities. Some of you have already received from us. We'll make sure the rest of the committee receives that very long laundry list.

I just want to thank my superintendent, Dr. Debra Duardo, who is a social worker who is really leaning in to provide the social and emotional supports, not only to students and workers, but also to our superintendents throughout the county who've also come in to serve each other during this crisis. So thank you very much for what you've done today. To the Members who are impacted, thank you for everything you're doing. Mr. Chair, we look forward to continuing our work together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Mark Isidro on behalf of the County of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, here to share our humble support and deep appreciation for all funding and statutory changes to assist the County as we embark in our response and recovery efforts, and look forward to the continued partnership between the county and the state. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Karim Drissi with the California Building Industry Association. We wish to sincerely thank the chair, the vice chair, and all of the committee Members for their leadership on the measures before you today. Additionally, if it is permissible within the confines of the proclamation, we would respectfully urge the committee to consider incorporating into the special session AB 226 by Assembly Member Calderon and Assembly Member Alvarez, which seeks to aid wildfire victims by bolstering the solvency of the FAIR Plan. Thank you so much for your consideration, and we look forward to continuing to be a resource to the committee. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good morning. Yasmin Peled with Justice in Aging. We appreciate the swift action that the Legislature and the governor are taking to provide urgent relief to those communities in LA affected by these wildfires and that these are going to be ongoing conversations.

Tragically, isolated older adults and people with disabilities have been the majority of the deaths from these fires, and many more remain displaced. This underscores that older adults and people with disabilities have really unique needs in this rebuilding and recovery effort, as well as the ongoing conversations around prevention.

Even before these wildfires, older adults have been the fastest growing population of people experiencing homelessness in the state, and these LA fires are likely to result in increased housing insecurity, which could exacerbate the older adult homelessness issue that we're experiencing if we're not really focusing on targeted action here.

It's also critical that displaced low income older adults and people with disabilities who rely on in home care, like IHSS, still are able to get these services in the communities while the rebuilding effort is underway, rather than being placed into institutional settings.

We look forward to working with all of you. Yesterday, we sent a letter with 125 other organizations representing aging and disability that we are here to work with the Legislature and the administration to ensure that these unique needs of older adults and people with disabilities are included in the recovery process. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Gabriel. You're actually in our district. I am Dr. LaWanda Wesley with Child Care Resource Center, and we are located in Northern Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. Child care providers continue to be essential business and workers and our community and our anchors and our dedicated members in our community. We wanted to make sure that they are a part of the emergency response, as they are still those who are recovering from COVID. Most of our business owners and providers, child care providers, are women and women of color, and this is the only sector that supports all other workforce sectors.

So just to give you a little bit of context, what has happened in Southern California in terms of numbers. 323 child care facilities have been impacted, and that means 262 centers and 61 family childcare homes. And then if it's your home and you're impacted, it means also you, your home itself has been impacted.

Of those numbers, 41 have been destroyed, 22 centers and 19 family child care homes. So and then, as I go on, 289 are non-operational, and that is respective of 240 centers and 42 family childcare homes. So just as I close, childcare providers provide a safe haven for our children and families to thrive day to day, and even more so during this time where families are trying to look for job, employment, housing, and so on.

And we want to make sure those programs are standing and available while families try to get themselves back together. But they need these childcare homes also to be standing, and they're trying to recover themselves with cleaning and so on. So we want to make sure that we are being cognizant of any dedicated funding source to support that emergency response. So just want to conclude with that and say thank you for your support.

Thank you for those excellent points and for the work you do in the community. We appreciate it.

Good morning, chair and Committee Members. I'm Jess Guerra. I'm with the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles, and I will keep it short. We align ourselves with the comments made by our colleague Dr. Wesley, and just really urge you again to please keep child care providers in mind. They are pillars in the communities who are still recovering. It's really sad. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Honorable chair and Members, Amy Hines-Shaikh representing the California Community Land Trust Network. We deeply appreciate everything that you are all offering here today and will be doing in the future. We have eight points to consider when moving forward. First, we need to defend and protect Measure ULA.

We need to establish a tourism emergency preservation fund modeled after the one that was established in Lahaina, Maui. We need to monitor speculative activity flagging trends that indicate price manipulation. We need to extend executive orders that ban unsolicited property purchase offers.

We need to monitor and regulate rental markets post-disaster and thereby avoiding the FEMA fever that led to significant rent increases, with median rents rising 44% from the Lahaina, Maui fires. We need to have a disaster recovery with additional funding for the LA County Land Bank. That's essential. We need to make investments to restore mobile home parks.

There are two communities that had 420 homes that were the only affordable housing in the area around the Pacific Palisades. And we need to enforce the Mello Act. And finally, we need to enhance emergency communication networks by making sure that all future emergency alerts are translated into various languages, including at the minimum, Spanish, Korean, Tagalog, and Mandarin. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Tiffany Whiten with SEIU California. Thank you all so much for being here today and for considering the funding. We strongly support the funding and just wanted to uplift a couple of things. The workers and the counties, just want to ensure that the workers are being supported. Counties are being supported.

As you guys know our county offices are going to be inundated with families and those impacted by the fires to get services and supports. Our provide, our workers stand committed and willing to do the work. And so we just want to uplift those workers and ensure that there's no contracting out. We've seen it in the past that when, when things are devastated, we kind of look for the easiest fix, the quicker fix, and we start to contract out some of those services.

So just want to uplift the protection of our county workers. And then just want to underscore and highlight the work of the care providers, healthcare providers, child care providers, in home supportive providers, and just uplift everybody that is out there doing God's work, taking care of our children, our aging, and our individuals with disabilities and ensuring that they receive the services and supports, especially those that have been displaced and ensuring that our folks are being taken care of. So thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Good morning. Carlos Marquez, County Welfare Directors Association. Want to align my comments with SEIU California, as well as just thank the administration for granting desperately needed funding flexibility that's allowing the LA Department of Children and Family Services to support several resource families who have foster children in their care and who were displaced including with four months of support for rent and hotel stays. We're also grateful for the administration's around the clock support of LA County's Department of Public Social Services in their provision of mass care and shelter, which has helped staff and shelter about 800 individuals.

We also want to thank the administration for seeking necessary waivers in the final days of the administration, the Biden administration, including flexibility for CalFresh recipients to purchase hot foods, replace food lost in the fires, and to extend emergency food benefits for the broader public impacted by the fires. We did want to just close by reminding Members, especially new Members, about the responsibility that falls on county human services agencies to act as the main operations that stand up mass care and shelter in the midst of a natural disaster.

These human services staff and the resources associated with human services departments are diverted during natural disasters and often not reimbursed, including feeding, providing short term emergency shelter, housing, basic first aid, among many other activities. So we do have an ongoing funding proposal that we look forward to putting forth that will better fund mass care and shelter activities. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, chair and staff and Members. My name is Richard White. I'm a Senior Assembly Member with the California Senior Legislature. And as you know, about half of every homeless person in the state is over the age of 50. So I'm here on behalf of many organizations representing older adults, the 7 million older adults in the state, and we echo the support that the Justice in Aging has commented on, and we strongly support these bills. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, chair and Members. Alejandro Solis on behalf of CHIRLA. California is home to the largest population of immigrants in the United States, with approximately 10.6 million immigrants who contribute vastly to our state. Undocumented immigrants alone contribute nearly $8.5 billion in state and local taxes. We know that current federal action will unjustly target and negatively affect all immigrants in the United States, and, as such, it is our responsibility to do everything within our means to protect those that call California home.

We are appreciative of the Legislature's proposed augmentations to the budget for legal services and immigration support, given all immigrants in all sectors, from education to the workforce, will feel the impact of federal actions. We hope to continue to work closely with the Legislature to mitigate the detrimental impacts on California.

We're also supportive of the inclusion of fire relief and implore the Legislature to ensure all Californians have access to emergency relief in times of need. Immigrants have been impacted by also having lost their homes and their income if their places of employment were destroyed by the fires. For California to effectively recover from the fires, we need to ensure all Californians have access to emergency relief. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Chris Micheli on behalf of two clients, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. We support both of these measures. Additionally, our boards are working on some short, medium, and long term proposals for your consideration. Thank you.

A man who needs no introduction. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of the members of the public who have provided feedback for us. Obviously, a lot to think about, a lot to work on, and we look forward to their work. With that, this hearing is adjourned.