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

That's right. Good morning. Welcome to Assembly Budget Sub 4. Today we will review the administration's spending plan for Wildfire and Forest Resilience Chapter 4 - and Chapter 4 of Prop 4. Can you guys hear me okay in the back? Great, thank you. We'll also hear from the California Conservation Corps, the Governor's office. Huh? There we go.

I thought you said speed up. I'm going, "Wow. We're just getting the meeting started." Getting told to speed up here. Right. And the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and CAL FIRE. We have eight items that are planned for presentation.

For each presentation item, I'll ask each of the witnesses in the agenda to introduce themselves before they begin their testimony. At the end of the presentation items, members of this subcommittee may ask questions, make comments or request a presentation on any of the six non presentation items.

We will not be taking a vote on any items on the agenda. After all the items are heard, we'll take public comment. For members of the public who wish to provide public comment, please limit your testimony to the items on the agenda.

If you have comments on specific budget augmentations not related to the departments before us, please refer to the daily file for which subcommittee hearing; the pertinent department will be before the committee. Each member of the public will have one minute to speak and like to start by taking roll.

[Roll Call].

And I have some comments I would like to make at the start of this hearing so that departments, and it's on the public record, but mostly because I want departments to know one of the major focuses that I have and I think many of us in the assembly have going forward so that we can potentially explore those things here and also continue to explore these things throughout the spring with our other hearings.

And the first and the biggest issue is this we have now seen, in 2017, the Thomas Fire was the largest fire in California history. Here we have, six years later, the Thomas Fire is the eighth largest fire in California's history.

There has been a sea change in terms of what's happening as a result of climate change, as a result of the droughts, etc. The home insurance crisis was serious, but it's now going to be unmanageable for California if we don't find a way to decrease our losses when these wildfires sweep it near or into communities.

And I think we have to have a complete, everybody on board, creative thinking about what are we doing, how can we best spend the dollars that we have to try to decrease losses in the future; there's got to be a greater awareness on the public's part that we're all in this together.

The greatest risk to anybody's home burning down is if their neighbor's home catches on fire. This recognition in Southern California of the devastation of ember showers and how far in advance they can spot forward. But we don't have unlimited resources. The need that we have is enormous.

If we don't prioritize our wildfire prevention dollars, if we just sort of scattershot them around, I'm afraid we won't make any dent in terms of the home losses that we have in the future.

And as a result, we will have home insurance rates become more and more of a detriment to California's quality of life, but also the economic health of the state. So, this budget, I believe, is the beginning of this effort.

It was something I was focused on before, but with the LA fires, I hope it is now more apparent to everybody that we need this sort of sea change as we go forward.

So, my initial thoughts are to, as each of these items comes forward to try to prioritize as much as possible, how much bang for the buck do we get from this program versus this program versus this program?

To some extent, to be direct, I think we have given a little bit here and a little bit here and a little bit here for lots of reasons, but partially, to keep various stakeholders happy in various situations.

Today, I think our challenge is serious enough that we have to carefully look at that and make sure we're prioritizing our expenditures as they move forward. What's the right mix of the investment packages that we have? How can we encourage investments in new technologies that could reduce the losses?

And I would like us to challenge ourselves to be really creative there. What are the new technologies that we could seed, that we could help develop?

Because the cost of trying to harden homes, the cost of trying to do all of the brush clearance that we need to do in the forest, the cost of this stuff is going to be beyond the state if we don't come up with some new technologies that will make this work.

Are there new technologies that make it less expensive to harden homes? The new homes that are out there will be one issue. But all of the homes that have already been built, are there technologies that can work there?

I note the Los Angeles Times, a week ago, had a new technology about the big water drops, the huge tanks that could be positioned up above cities and could help with tanks being refilled, but could help with fire suppression and make sure that hydrants didn't run out.

Those are the kinds of technologies; that's the kind of creative thinking that we have to bring to the table if we're going to address the big challenge that we have in front of us.

So how can we leverage the money we're going to spend to try to bring in more private investment, more public support for the efforts that we're going to need to go forward? So today I anticipate this being a fairly long hearing because there are so many questions we have about these topics. We have many items.

And so, I'm going to ask all of us to be as direct as possible with our comments and with our questions and also to the respondents with the answers to our questions so that we can make sure we cover everything thoroughly.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over and ask if either of my colleagues up here have questions or overall comments to start us off. Any overall comments to start us off? Great. Thank you very much. So, let's move to our first item, the overview of Prop 4 Wildfire resilience spending.

We have a cast of thousands and so everybody cannot fit up here, but hopefully you folks have worked out who's coming up first and who's who's on first. And with that we will begin this presentation. Whoever would like to begin.

Sorry, a little slow in getting sat down. Stephen Benson with the Department of Finance.

I'll do a brief overview of the Prop 4, wildfire force resilience portion, and then kick it over to CNRA and CAL FIRE representatives to talk a little bit more about what's been accomplished with funding so far and how it continues with - the efforts will continue with the Prop 4 investments.

Building on the $2.5 billion invested in wildfire and forest resilience from the climate budget over the last several years, the climate bond allocates $1.5 billion towards wildfire and forest resilience to help continue that momentum in those efforts. We proposed as part of the governor's budget, a multi-year rollout for that 1.5 billion, as well as the rest of the bond. In 25-26, the proposal is $325 million.

The significant invest - or some of the significant investments that are in that 325 million include 82.2 for CAL FIRE's forest health program, that for projects, that significantly reduce fuel, reintroduce beneficial fire, restore degraded areas and conserve threatened forests.

It also includes 79.5 million for grants that, well, block grants that will support landscape scale multi-benefit projects developed by forest collaboratives in high-risk regions. That's going to be allocated 60 million to be administered by CAL FIRE and 19.5 million to be the ministry by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

It includes 59.1 million for a Tikal fire for the Wildfire Prevention Grant Program that supports local projects in and near fire threatened communities. This funding is used for fuel reduction, wildfire prevention, planning, as well as wildfire prevention education with an emphasis on public health and safety. It includes 33.4 million to various conservancies. Oh, sorry, wrong one.

33.4 million to the Department of Parks and Recreation to help with health and resilience on state owned land. This will be for wildfire prevention. It can use the use of healthy fire, basically sort of defensible space and forest management on state owned land the departments manage.

It includes 22.4 million for various conservancies that will be used for watershed improvement, forest health, biomass utilization, chaparral, and forest restoration, as well as workforce development.

And then it includes 9.1 million to the Department of the - Office of Emergency Services for the wildfire mitigation program which is jointly administered by the Office of Emergency Services and CAL FIRE and is focused on home hardening on a community level, community scale. There's also, you know, 39.3 million for other activities.

But those are some of the most significant program investments. That's really -

Excuse me, could you put your microphone a little bit closer to you and there you go.

Sorry, Is that better? Okay; so that really concludes the overview of what is in Prop 4 in 25-26. There's of course rollout where there's additional investments in 26-27 in the out years. There is a handful of allocations that we have in a pending allocations pot.

Those represent allocations where we believe there needs to be further discussion and thinking in terms of kind of getting to your point. We have a limited number of resources. We want to make sure we use them the most effectively. We had a short timeline to prepare the multi-year because the climate bond passed in November.

We were in the middle of governor's budget development at that point anyway. So, it was sort of a condensed effort to put it together. There are certain things where we think there needs to be more discussion, including with the legislature and others in terms of the most effective ways to utilize some of those.

And you know, and there's in some cases there's also work products, reports and things that are being done that will help inform how that gets used. So, there is some of that as well. But I with that I will conclude my overview and turn to CAL FIRE and CNRA for their comments.

Before we move to CAL FIRE, just we appreciate the fact that the governor moved fast to give us a breakdown of what your thoughts are on Prop 4 so that we can have healthier conversations now. Appreciate it. CAL FIRE.

I think I'm actually starting. Good morning. I'm Lisa Lien-Mager with the Natural Resources Agency and I serve as our Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildfire Resilience.

So, appreciate the opportunity to be here and I'm happy to share kind of at a high level, our approach to the investments so far to date and our thinking kind of going forward as we move ahead.

And I think we really share your interest that but for my Department of Finance colleague to really think through and be prioritizing how we spend our limited resources. I feel like as we have gotten momentum under us and a lot of projects on the ground, we are learning a lot, and we are really empowering our local partners.

And I think that's going to be really key going forward so that we're hitting that right mix of projects that you mentioned. So, at a really high level, I believe, as you all know, since 2020, we've really surged a lot of investments into this space.

2.5 billion to date so far this has resulted in something like 2,200 projects on the ground completed or underway. And this is a mix of things you think like shaded fuel breaks, fuels reduction, vegetation management, brush clearing, home hardening pieces, really integrated set of projects that we're really pleased to see getting on the ground.

These projects span 40 different programs run by 20 some state agencies. So, a lot of coordination. And as I've said, I think the real paradigm shift in recent years has been truly empowering these local collaboratives that have emerged.

And a lot of this work has taken place through our Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, which has proven just a great convener and really catalyzing that partnership with locals. So, I really think at the end of the day that's helping us get that priority at the local level, the mix of programs and projects that will help.

So, I'm also pleased to say that we've made quite a bit of progress in developing tools to help the public sort of track where this work is being done. We have an interagency treatment tracker now online. It's in kind of version 2.0, if you will.

We continue to refine it but today folks can go on and really see where investments have been made geographically, by land ownership type, by the type of work.

And I think that's really going to help, you know, tell that story, and help folks track where work has been done and perhaps plan future work to see where it can complement work that's already been done. So, we're getting that bang for the buck.

Also, I know my CAL FIRE colleague can talk more about this, but on CAL FIRE's website, we now are showing kind of the effectiveness of fuels treatment in real time. As we've encountered fires starting in 2024, they were actually able to show where it encountered a previous project that was done.

And we can kind of see in real time. Oh, you know, this really helped with evacuations, or this helped slow the fire. So, a lot of progress today. Obviously much more work to be done. But I'm grateful for the conversation and I think I'll pass to my colleague here for some more details from CAL FIRE.

All right. Well, good morning, Chair Bennett, members of the committee: on behalf of Director and Fire Chief Joe Tyler. I'm Daniel Berlant, California's State Fire Marshal. Here we are in February. And this year's fire activity has already been historic.

But even before the LA fires, the fire severity, the destruction of wildfires, nearly every corner and in many, if not all of your districts, has dramatically increased.

So now more than ever, we have to continue to stay focused on the strategy that we have had in place through the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force and the action plan preparing our communities, preparing our national natural landscape before the next fire.

Now, the governor's climate bond proposal that's in front of you continues this critical work both in forest health, but also in community preparedness and in efforts, Chair that you mentioned in specifically, hardening homes and preparing communities.

But it also allows us to not just continue those existing programs, it allows us the opportunity to focus on some additional wildfire resiliencies. I'll give some examples here in a moment. But I just have to stress that despite the monumental destruction that we have experienced, not just this year, but in the past years, our strategy is working.

As my colleague Deputy Secretary Lien-Megar mentioned, we have been tracking the effectiveness of these projects. So, I have some proof points for you on why this work is so critical.

Just last year, we had 45 of our projects that were impacted by wildfires that had a positive impact on our ability to contain the fire or to evacuate residents from the fire. An example of that, the park fire had several treatments that again had a positive impact.

If you remember, the park fire burned over 400,000 acres, starting in Chico, burning all the way through Butte County, all the way to Tehama County, almost to the border of Shasta. Damage could have been a lot worse.

We could have seen a lot more destruction, if it had not been for previous and recent prescribed fires and fuel treatments. There were 15 treatments that reduced both the fire behavior and fire damage. In addition, there were eight treatments that assisted law enforcement and our firefighters in the evacuation routes getting people out of those communities.

An additional eight on that fire assisted with the actual containment holding the fire at those projects. So, when the wildfires reached these treated areas, getting treated by prescribed fire or fuel reduction, the reduced fuel slowed the spread of the fire, allowing our firefighters to actually stop and hold the fire or again safely get people evacuated.

In addition, this gave our firefighters a safe place to take a stand to protect those nearby communities. I want to give a quick highlight, in addition to what Mr. Benson overview, gave on specifically some of the CAL FIRE programs that will receive essential funding in year one through this request. As was mentioned, $82 million for forest health.

These are grants to our nonprofits, tribes, and other partners for local projects aimed at making more resilient and sustained forester projects like fields management, prescribed fire. 59 million in year one for local fire prevention grants, local communities, fire safe councils, other nonprofits to prepare their local communities for wildfires and even reduce the severity of wildfires in and around neighborhoods.

$60 million as was mentioned, for regional projects, allowing regionally scaled efforts related to wildfire risk reduction, forest resilience; an additional 10 million in a bucket that the climate bond assigned to fuel reduction, structure hardening, defensible space and restoration. And while there's a lot of important efforts within that. I want to -

I'm really excited to mention and focus on one of the new programs that will receive money and that is a program that will provide financial assistance to vulnerable Californians to help them in their efforts of creating defensible space, specifically in implementing this new ember resistance zone, or zone zero, that first five feet around the home.

So, you talked about how do we prioritize? We can't help everybody. We can educate everybody but those that are most vulnerable who can't physically do this work, who can't financially afford to do this work. This program will provide funding to assist them.

$3 million in year one for prescribed fire, a new learning hub and as well as training center. The funding will create a new prescribed fire learning hub allowing dedicated training, coordination, outreach, education, capacity building to really help our local and even our tribal partners in prescribed fire burners.

Getting more trained up at the local level to do this work. Funds will additionally help some essential urgent upgrades needed at our own Ione training center which supports the operational readiness of our own firefighters but also trains them to perform these critical prescribed fire efforts.

So, I recognize that was a very quick and high-level overview of the CAL FIRE components of the overall wildfire resiliency efforts in the climate bond, where absolutely you can see, as you mentioned, have a whole cast of characters.

All of our chief officers were happy to talk about any of the programs, answer any of your questions, but I just want to conclude by thanking each of you in the investment in understanding this important work. We have been obviously on a really important path, but we have to continue this work.

This proposal in front of you allows us to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Good morning. Rachel Ehlers with the Legislative Analyst's Office. So, I'm going to build on the comments we made in our committee hearing last week on the overall structure of Prop 4.

And you'll recall that one of the main points we made to you is that there are certain areas of the bond that are pretty straightforward and are just kind of allocating more funding to existing programs and keeping them on track.

And then there are others that are either brand new programs or categories of the bond where the funds could be used for a number of different activities. And there are choices over how to allocate those funds.

So, for this particular chapter of the bond, the Wildfire and Forest Resilience, we think there are way more decisions available to you as compared to some of the others that are a little bit more straightforward.

So, I'll highlight for you on page three of your agenda where you have the chart of the programs and the funding for the allocations within this bond. Just a few to illustrate these points.

So, if you look at the CAL FIRE category, you can see one section that has a whole lot of words on it, and that's because there are a number of different activities this category could be used for: fuel reduction, structure hardening, defensible space, reforestation, and targeted and or targeted acquisitions.

So clearly in drafting the bond, the legislature wanted some flexibility around how to decide how to use these funds. So, the administration is proposing to use half of this money for defensible space program, a brand-new program, and half for reforestation and none for the other activities.

Now there are reasons for that, partly because there are funds for some of these other activities in other categories. But again, that's a pretty significant policy choice that you may agree with, or you may have some other ideas about how you wanted to allocate these funds.

Similarly, for the training center, the row right above that, the bond is pretty open in the language of how that funding would be as the administration's proposing to use most of it for the Ion Training Center and then a small amount for a new prescribed Fire Hub website.

That may be how you want to use the funding, or you may have had different ideas in mind. And then in terms of some of the other categories we would highlight for you where there are significant policy choices because they are new programs.

I think one of the big ones we would start with is the top row, the Wildfire Mitigation Grant Program. As is noted, that's being envisioned to be used for home hardening. So, the proposal is to kind of start slow with a pilot project.

You can see 9 million in the first year and then have a multi-year plan that wouldn't come back before you for decisions under the administration's proposal. But there are a number of policy issues around that program.

Do you want the funding to go deep and have fewer structures that are protected but have more of them covered, or do you want it wide, where you're giving smaller grants that won't protect the whole structure, but maybe more properties get access to it? What regions of the state do you want to focus on?

What are the requirements for the private contributions from the homeowner since this is public money and often going to private homeowners? How will this be matched with federal funds? How do you want to pair it with a different defensible space program since home hardening and defensible space go well together?

So, these are the administration has a lot of experts, they have a lot of ideas about how they want to structure this. But you as the policymakers may also have some ideas.

So, this is your opportunity to either weigh in and start helping form that program or be careful about how much you're approving and allocating for out years of this program before you have made those decisions. Similarly with the regional projects pots of funding you can see here for both CAL FIRE and Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

Those are pretty new ideas and new programs. Do you want to weigh in on some of the policy choices there? The California Conservation Corps program down at the bottom; similarly, there's a piece for nonprofits that would be brand new.

So, this is just highlighting for you that again, the administration is being very thoughtful, has a lot of experts. But the request before you in most of these cases is to approve a multi-year funding plan where the administration will go forth and design the program and move forward.

And there may be some places where you want to have a larger say. And again, this is, this is your chance to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. I will kick it off before I turn to my colleagues real quickly with 4 over oversight kind of comments. And one is you say we may be interested, and I would offer to you we will be interested in doing that. The fundamental question I have for all of us is how do we prioritize?

How do you prioritize? Try to get your hand around, should we do fuel breaks, you know, brush clearance, hardening of homes? There's so much that we can do out there. So, I have this thought and I just want to get my thoughts out there.

And that is first we just have to use common sense. Right? And ask ourselves, you know, what makes common sense? We have to get the relevant data. And I really appreciate that. Last year we asked CAL FIRE to start to get more data on the effectiveness of these programs.

So, I'm really happy that you have 45 treatments that you feel good about. We need the experts to give us the analysis of that data. But this is the part that I think is the great challenge for all of us. We have to create a comprehensive plan, not a piecemeal plan.

It can't be a little bit here and a little bit here and a little bit here and hope that we get. We need a comprehensive plan to say these are the resources we have; this is how we could maximize, by linking these things together, this is how we could maximize our effectiveness.

Remember, the goal needs to be decrease our losses to keep our home insurance rates affordable here in California. So that takes me to the second thing, which is from a commonsense standpoint, I'm throwing this out here, asking the experts to evaluate this, not just today, but we'll have another one of these hearings in April.

We'll dive into more detail on this. But it seems to me from a commonsense standpoint that if what we want to do is decrease our losses, we have to start with proximity to the structures that we're trying to protect.

So, we have to harden homes and then we have to have a zone zero and then we have to have less vegetation close. And the further out we go, in general, the lower the priority, but I don't mean nothing out there, but that if we're going to do brush clearance, I would think it makes more sense to do it within 1,000ft of the perimeter of the community than 10 miles away from you community.

And that if you want to do something 15 miles away from the community, you need to have some really good justification for how that will really impact the community.

Because if we can come up with truly hardened communities, and we see the LA Times have a front page story about a community where the fire burned right up to the wall, but everything was designed down there to be hardened and it stopped right there at the wall, that's what we need to have happen in not our new communities but even in our existing communities.

So, I'd love to hear feedback about that. The third thing that I'd like to hear is which treatments. I'd like to hear more specificity, and we won't be able to do all of that in this hearing. But I'd like you to write up for us what are, you know, what did you learn from these treatments? Which ones?

How? Give us as much in the way of specifics as you can. Which treatments did what. And we appreciate that you gathered the data and told us you'd come back with this at this point in time. And the final thing I would leave you with is my initial impression is we're going to be -you're going to have to convince us to do multi-year allocations because when in doubt, I think we go, there's too much that we want to keep analyzing because we may want to modify as we get more information.

And I really applaud the LAOs office for pointing that out to us so consistently and with great examples in terms of what we could do. So, with that, I want to turn it over to my colleagues for questions, questions that you have and go from there. We'll start with Assemblymember Rogers.

Thank you so much. So, my first question is kind of just a fundamental one. The 40% requirement for bond monies to go towards disadvantaged communities. Is the administration looking that as 40% of the total dollars raised from the total bond or 40% within each of the different program community capacities?

Stephen Benson with Finance: so, the requirement is applicable to the whole bond. I think when you get into implementation, we generally try and look at it within each chapter. There may be some activities within different chapters that are more conducive to it than others.

So, let's say, for example, if we do in wildfire, forced resilience, a lot of work in disadvantaged communities, maybe you end up just because of the way things get prioritized. You hit 50 or 60%.

Well, then from a overall bond perspective, that gives you some flexibility in other programs where it's a little less conducive because of what the program is. So, it's really an overall bond thing. But we do look at it within each chapter as well.

How are you going to track it?

So, we have a state -

How are we going to track it?

Right, so we have a statewide bond unit that has ways that they score for each of the allocation, how much is going towards these types of things. And so, we track it. We can provide it. I think we provided it out in reports before in terms of where we're at and all that kind of stuff.

I may not know there's any sort of like automated set process, you know, for that, but it's, you know, part of the thing. We have several reports that are due to the legislature on a regular basis. Include it in those reports. We can share it when people ask questions.

I mean, but it's, it's information that's pretty readily available. Available.

Great. No, I appreciate that. For the wildfire mitigation grant program, it looks like there's currently a program in six counties for the dollars that are being offered here, the 9 million.

Do you envision it in year one to just be enhancing that pilot program with those six counties, or are you looking to take that statewide and have that 9 million available for folks in other counties who want to participate?

I'll jump in. Daniel Berlant again, California State Fire Marshal: we have several other communities that are in the queue. That additional money will help us be able to both expand to a few additional pilot communities but also increase the number of homes that could be hardened within the existing.

Which communities are in the queue?

Riverside County is one of those counties. And I'm going to have to defer to my colleagues behind me to help me with - call a friend, one or the other. Yeah, Siskiyou County, and if I can, some member just mentioned, when we started the program originally, we actually did a risk-based analysis.

We took vulnerable population characteristics, we took wildfire risk and other climate data, and we ranked all 58 of the counties and then, within there, narrowed down to specific communities that again, best met all of those components. And so that's what got us to the communities that we are piloting now.

One of the things Chair Bennett mentioned at the beginning that is important to note in these pilots is these aren't just homes here and there, these are neighborhoods.

Because we are really piloting the importance that we believe and that research has shown, which is that at the neighborhood scale you have an increased chance of homes surviving if they are all mitigated. And so, these pilots are again very specific to being neighborhood pilots.

Yeah. Have you partnered at all on this program with Firewise Councils?

Absolutely. In each of the pilots there's actually a local organization leading the effort. San Diego County is a county organization. In Shasta County, it's a Fire Safe Council and a Resource Conservation District. In the Lake County Project, it's a nonprofit group, North Coast Opportunities.

And so, part of the pilot is we have county government, we have Fire Safe Council, we have nonprofit to kind of help us see where are the barriers or the challenges with different type of organizations administering at the local level.

Right. And then, I mean 9 million is not much. Even the 26 million next year is not going to get it across the finish line. Have you considered at all making this a revolving fund that folks pay off over 10 years the amount that they're getting in terms of, of the grant?

Maybe I can ask my Cal OES partner to come up and talk about some of the out years. But what I'll tell you again, in the joint powers authority that we have with CAL OES, it's a pilot program. You, at the legislature, just extended that for another five years.

And again, we're learning a lot about how to administer a program like this. But again, in the out years I'll defer to the Office of Emergency Services to kind of extend to that.

Good morning. Robyn Fennig. I'm the Assistant Director for Hazard Mitigation at Cal OES. So yes, we have, we're in the process of exploring all options. I think part of the hope is that most of this money will be used as matching funds. We have a huge influx of post disaster grant funding.

And so, thinking strategically about that force multiplier between the FEMA funds and the state funding as match. So, it looks on paper it's only, you know, a $9 million allocation for year one, but that's being matched at a much larger percentage with FEMA grant funding.

So, between those two counties we are actually pulling in just under $60 million in FEMA funds to go with their state set aside. So, it doesn't, the state funding doesn't tell the whole story.

Hopefully we keep getting the FEMA funds, is what I just heard. No, that's really helpful. Thank you. For the fire training center, I have down the 20 million for the loan training center and then 5 million-ish, 3 million I heard today for the online resource; there are also other. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Karuk tribe up in our area is looking at doing their own fire training center as well and utilizing what we've enabled them to do in the last year with legislation.

Are there other partnerships available that perhaps investing in new training centers as opposed to retrofitting or refurbishing an existing one might have a more solid impact?

Yeah, appreciate that question. Again, I want to differentiate the money that's in this package here in year one again is doing two things. One, creating this learning hub to build up capacity for organizations. Just like you mentioned, the dollars for the actual infrastructure is just for our Ione training center.

But I would be remiss not to mention that in a number of our various grant programs, our forest health grant program, our local fire prevention wildfire prevention grant program, we are also granting projects and programs to help specific local prescribed fire opportunities.

And so, a little bit of what I think your question is, there are other opportunities outside of just this pot of money that are already funding the expansion, the capacity building, the infrastructure, the tools for prescribed fire that are not necessarily in just this bucket.

And then one of the things that strategically you didn't move forward with was the wildfire ignition technology allocation, the 25 million, presumably that's working with the IOU.

Okay. So as I mentioned in my overview, there are a number of pots where we have like pending allocations. And it's because there are some deliverables that are in the works of being prepared that will inform some of those decisions.

And because there's multiple opportunities in the best way to use it and in the short time frame we've had since the bond passed, in discussing what is the best way with the limited resources we haven't landed on, this is what we really think is the best way. So that's what it is.

It's not really that we're trying to slow walk any one particular allocation pot. It's been so of getting back to the overall framework of the discussion. We want to make sure that we're using it in the most effective way we can.

And for instances where, you know, between November and frankly, the Governor's Budget is getting buttoned up in December, you know, for January release, in that short window we didn't land on, this is what we think is the most effective use of that. And so there'll be some ongoing discussions.

We think conversations with the Legislature will help inform that. We think conversations within the Administration will continue to inform that. Probably other members of the public and stakeholders as well. But anyway, that's in a nutshell why some of those are still pending.

I appreciate that. And then my last question. How much did discussions about policy interventions that go with funding come up? For example, we talked about state lands. There are policy questions around how to make it more effective for farmers, for instance, to help graze on state lands.

When he talked about prescribed burns, we have significant issues in our area where you have prescribed burns that spend money, get people all ready to go, and then get canceled within the last 24 hours before they can actually do it.

Was there a discussion about not just throwing more money into these pots for areas that are well intentioned, but also coupling it with policy recommendations to make those programs more effective? I'm looking at you because I know you see these issues.

I would say, Lisa, with Natural Resources Agency, you're right. There are a lot of policy discussions happening about how we can get more work done in that space, in beneficial fire and prescribed fire. Yes, you've identified an issue that clearly is happening.

While we've been able to make progress and get more beneficial fire on the ground, there are still some barriers. And so we do have efforts underway.

You know, really convene through the task force to kind of get at what are some of those policy initiatives that we could pursue to try to snow, snowplow through some of those barriers and get work done faster. So I think it's all kind of moving together in parallel.

Yeah, I'd be interested in hearing more of that discussion. I know obviously we introduced legislation to try to fix some of those when we see them. But also I know the administration's a little bit hands off until bills make it further in the process often and certainly after most of the budget's been done.

So I'd be interested in hearing some of those recommendations even as we try to make the existing programs more effective that we're going to fund.

Yeah, appreciate that. And also under SB310 from last year, we are moving ahead, you know, to really get at enabling more cultural burning. So we're excited to be pursuing that and we'll be sharing more about that in coming.

There's a good announcement coming soon.

You are right.

And Assembly more if I can just add. While today I highlighted the success and the effectiveness of the projects related to wildfire and evacuations, we are tracking other direct benefits, whether it be ecological, whether it be restoration, grazing and other farming benefits. So there's a lot more to us in how we select which projects we do.

We have a whole team of fire scientists and environmental foresters that help us. Again, primarily we're focused at wildfire risk reduction, but there are so many other ecological and forestry focuses that our team ensures that these various projects and programs are all incorporating when we are granting out money.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I missed the website. If you could share it with me one more time.

Yeah, we'll get you the direct link but it is on our homepage fire.ca.gov we have all of our fuels reduction information right there. Again you can see in your community where work is done and then this new effectiveness dashboard to actually see where have we had impact. So we are actually automatically very excited to talk about this.

Automatically tracking if a fire gets within a certain perimeter distance from one of our projects, it notifies our staff and they will go out there and start looking at what happened and start tracking and documenting. Listen in some of the severities of these fires. Not all of the impact areas have a positive output.

But looking back to the Park Fire, how destructive and how large that fire was last year to have 45 positive projects to us was showing us that this work is important. But more importantly making sure that that's accessible to you and the public has been our work over this past year.

And so we'll get all of you the specific link, but it is on our homepage, fire.ca.gov, all of our fuels reduction efforts and then links to our interagency work with our other partners, federally, the other state agencies and our private partners and local partners that are doing work as well, all comprehensively in one place.

Great. Thank you.

If I just may add, just putting a flag in this task force work. My colleagues are much more familiar with it than I am, but the briefings that we've received seem pretty exciting about the work they're doing and the updated action plan that we think will come out this year.

Quite a bit of academic research and modeling to look at different scenarios and be able to kind of toggle, well, if we did this treatment in this area, what might happen if we wanted to prioritize structure, risk mitigation as compared to watershed as compared to, you know, other cobenefits are primary goals.

So at least based on the briefing we've got, it seems like it will be very helpful information, very helpful tools for the Administration certainly in making their decisions.

But again, this is an area we would encourage the Legislature to engage as well and understand the tools so that you could potentially express what some of your priorities are in making the decisions over how to spend money now, but also moving forward in the future.

Before I go to our next question, I just want to piggyback on that and that is that as I mentioned at the last hearing, sometimes there's tension between the Administration side of the equation and the Legislative side of the equation in this particular arena. At this point in time, I don't feel that tension.

I really feel great cooperation between CAL FIRE in terms of trying to get us this information. And I really welcome that. That's going to be a healthy partnership for everybody. California will win if we can keep this in a healthy frame of mind. Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank you for inviting me to participate today. So I want to follow up on a couple of questions that my colleague asked. First one was starting with the disadvantaged communities. I understand that's a bond wide requirement, as you mentioned, you can balance that, right?

So some sections you can spend more in disadvantaged communities, others less. Yet you Recommend the full 40% here in this section is my understanding, which is an interesting call given that I think, you know, air quality, for example, we know is worse in disadvantaged communities. Yet we saw in LA that fire doesn't discriminate across communities.

So just wanted to get some input on that.

Yeah, my comment wasn't really meant to mean that I recommend 40% in this particular chapter. I think what I'm trying to observe is that with the types of activities and programs that we have in the Wildfire Enforced resilience program, meeting 40% SDAC DAC requirements generally isn't a challenge because of the work that's being done anyway.

It just sort of happens naturally. There are other programs and areas where it's a little bit less natural. And so you sort of make up some of that difference across the bond.

Got it. And so I guess I want to drive into that point with a question around the counties that you've mentioned were selected for the Wildfire Mitigation Program that you're doing with OES. I'll note none of those, both proposed or actual, are in the Bay Area.

As I sit next to my Bay Area colleague, both of whom are in very high severity fire zones. So that's a little bit perplexing to me. I live in the city that I know, at least on the insurance side, there were three cities that were run on catastrophic modeling.

Arinda was one of them, the Palisades was one of them, and neither of those areas are being focused on. So I guess that's a little bit confusing to me because I'll also note I have an incredible fire chief who just retired who's been working to get Zone Zero in our community.

And I don't know if you're aware of it has not worked. The local fire district has refused to do it. The local City Council has not been willing to partner up in Zone Zero and we haven't done it.

And so, you know, to the extent that there are communities like mine where we just went from mostly high severity in the recent raps to I think all, you know, I'm just a little curious why those communities aren't being at all considered for this funding.

Yeah, your points are very valid and I'd be happy to share with all of you the analysis that we performed because again, it does kind of force rank by county, but it does not necessarily by doing that, allow us to get every community that is at risk or every neighborhood that is at risk.

But it's also important to note that, you know, similar to one of my earlier answers, while the Community Wildfire Mitigation Program, the Home Hardening Retrofit Program, again, is a pilot with six specific communities, there are other grant opportunities that have been funded to other local organizations to do various wildfire risk reduction.

And Chief Winnacker has been, you know, stalwart in this effort and been very vocal and very participation oriented with us in helping be better data driven to help us figure that out. But I'd be happy to have our team sit down and kind of walk through the analysis.

But again, I don't want the analysis that is used in that pilot to at all portray the remaining 52 counties and even the other communities within the existing six counties that have pilots. Even within those six counties, there's only one community that is the pilot.

And it goes back to a little bit of the Chair's earlier comments is we do have to prioritize where we do this work, but it doesn't necessarily highlight that There are several others, including Orinda, communities, Pacific Palisades, that still need this work.

And I think that is why this funding package in totality is so important so we can keep getting to more and more communities.

And I guess, you know, I mean, one of the things that I've been thinking about as we've been having this conversation is, you know, we talk about local matches on the state and federal level. My community, which is a more affluent community, passed our own wildfire bond with overwhelming majority, and we are funding some of this.

It doesn't go far enough. Right. And so there is sort of a question in my mind for more affluent communities, can we do a local match? Can we say you need to pay in some because you have the ability to do so, but we're going to meet you there.

We're going to add to that because I do think we've tried Zone Zero from just a we're going to. They tried the stick and the stick has completely failed in my community. And so we're starting to think, okay, will a carrot work? Because we got to do something.

And I guess this is where the carrots come into play. And so to not be on the list for those carrots feels really quite frustrating, especially knowing that, as Chief Winoker says, I live in the most vulnerable part of the most vulnerable community. So then I wanted to talk about the fuel break.

And by the way, I'm excited to go look at that website to see it work because as you know, Chief Winnacker constantly tells me how it's going to slow fire and now apparently I can see it. And as you know, we've done a ton of fuel break work in my community.

We have struggled to get maintenance money and that has been really, really frustrating because the initial fuel breaks, to cut them is very expensive. The maintenance is not as expensive. And if we do not maintain them, we will be back to cutting original fuel breaks.

And so I guess I want to understand from you guys, obviously it doesn't go into that granularity, but I know you're allowed to fund maintenance, but I don't know that it's happening. So how is that being prioritized?

Yeah, I so appreciate that question because over the last couple of years we have challenged our team with specifically working towards putting more focus in our selection of projects on maintenance.

For every reason you just said, including the cost benefit and continuing the investment that was already made. In the next round of local fire prevention grant program that you see, we will be calling out and pulling aside maintenance projects from new projects.

And giving more priority to maintenance projects because we don't want to let the millions of dollars of important work, including around Orinda, just grow back and become another fire risk when we can put a smaller now investment to maintain it.

So would appreciate and love any additional thoughts you might have on that, but know that the team behind the scenes is already working in that program to specifically call out tracking maintenance and prioritizing maintenance differently than new fuel breaks.

That's great because I imagine, I mean, maybe I'll just ask the question directly. You know, if I were to, as the Chair said, look at how do we prioritize this to get the biggest bang for our buck, I would do it based on the risk levels that you map very clearly in the state.

I assume that's how this happens.

Fire hazard severity zones are absolutely a component. And so the new mapping and the new areas that are in there, we'll see that will be a component of it.

So my fear is, you know, as you were going down that list of who needs a new fuel break? You did. I think what I saw in the initial funding is this all rolled out years ago was you really did that.

And then those, they got their initial funding and then they were dropped off the list. And so I think continuing to focus that money in the highest risk zones with maintenance money is a really critical part of efficient use of this funds.

One of the things that I think is brought up by both of my colleagues is that we as a house, I think are very focused on the affordability issues that are plaguing our community. And what's been mentioned is really the insurance issue. This is no secret. I lost my insurance and it went up 900%.

So it's real as it relates to the affordability question. The other thing that's reflected in the affordability issues Californians are facing is the utility cost. So that was brought up briefly by my colleague.

Right now, the way that all is happening and the hardening of our utility systems is by the IOUs, or for those who are lucky enough, the munis. And for the IOUs, at least, they then get a guaranteed rate of return on that investment. That then is put onto the bills of ratepayers.

And it is absolutely the driving force of the vast majority of the increased cost of utility bills in the PGE territory, at least where I represent.

And so, you know, I do want to highlight that as we talk about making investments in those triggers, in the utility triggers and we are taking those dollars off the backs of the IOUs, the benefit is not just in the risk reduction. We could also see a benefit.

And if we are paying for it, getting rid of that guaranteed rate of return for the IOU and getting that off of ratepayers. And so I think that is an important part as we think of this as an affordability tool. That is an important piece as we talk about utility rates. So I just wanted to highlight that.

Not really question there, but something I wanted to highlight, given that conversation came up. And then, you know, I will say I also want to echo the comments of my colleague about the beneficial fire issues that come up so that they can't actually do it.

I know this happens to my Fire Department all the time where they schedule a beneficial burn. And then the air district says, I know we said that day would work, but now the 12 hours before we have to cancel it. And that costs money every time that gets called off. And so it's not just an annoyance.

And my department is really on top of it. So they do eventually do it, but it's increasing the cost that we are having to put into those beneficial burns significantly. So from a fiscal responsibility perspective, I would also be open to policies we could change to make that more effective.

And then the last question I have is on technology. I noticed that that is in the chapter, but is not as far as I saw in your proposal. I know one of the things that my community is currently contemplating is technology on evacuation route planning and execution.

How do we do that using the smartest technology in the safest way? You know, I live in a place like the Palisades where there's one way in, one way out, narrow roads. It has to be really smart. You have to get the people on the top out first.

Winnaker's done a ton of work on this, but technology is a tool that is super effective in that. And there doesn't appear to be an investment here and I'm curious about that.

So there is a specific pot that's about wildfire detection technology. Are you referring to that? Are you more broadly?

Yeah. I mean maybe the pot can only be used for detection. It can't be used.

There's an allocation that's wildfire detection technology, if I'm remembering that correctly.

Yes, there is ignition detection. So is it limited to just ignition detection? Yeah, that's annoying because that's what I understand is satellite technology is making that technology less important unless necessary.

I will note that in our Wildfire Prevention Grant Program, evacuation planning and other planning efforts are a project that can be funded through that program.

Okay. So hopefully we can look at that as a technology need because I know for many communities from a life saving perspective, that is a critical, critical need that will be really important in getting people out in an efficient and effective way. And those are my questions. Thank you again, Chair, for allowing me to participate.

Before we move to Member Lackey, I just want and keep doing this as we move through this process. But just as the questions were brought up about fuel breaks in terms of prioritization, the fundamental question I would have is should we do a new fuel break when we're not maintaining the existing fuel breaks?

Because I assume the existing fuel breaks were prioritized over anything that we didn't do.

And that's the kind of principle I'd like to have built into this comprehensive plan that we're not going to go to new fuel breaks until we have the adequate maintenance money for the existing fuel breaks unless there's some special reason for that and stuff.

So hopefully we can build all of those things into a comprehensive plan that we all go, hey, these are the principles we can all support and buy into. Assemblymember Lackey.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. When the person from Office of Emergency Services spoke and she made the statement regarding FEMA, I was both reassured and made uneasy because I know that FEMA reimbursements may be in question. And shouldn't we be discussing the possibility and the options related to worst case scenario? Some of those reimbursements fall short.

In the federal funding space as a whole. I think there are a lot of uncertainties. Certainly, FEMA could be a part of that. I don't know that we've had specific signals of FEMA being more at risk than other things. And I think we are trying to be very mindful and aware of what we do and don't get.

I think part of the challenge with a lot of the FEMA reimbursement is it goes like public assistance, for example, goes towards activities we need to do anyway. And so of course we bank on from a General Fund health perspective getting reimbursements back.

But I don't know that the decision of whether or not we get reimbursed by FEMA for say public assistance types of stuff necessarily changes our activities in terms of response to a fire, for example, if that helps.

I'm not sure some degree because it seems like there are certain aspects where this question becomes and looms very large and there is contingency options that are pursued. And the message being sent to us as legislators is that it isn't serious question.

And the degree to which the assistance is relied upon in that example that was given is enormous. And so I'm a little bit worried that we're just kind of a little comfortable with something we shouldn't be so comfortable with.

That's always a risk. I think we are very keenly aware though that is a risk. And I think we're trying to focus. The home hardening program is one that from a bang for its buck perspective is really important. Hardening communities, hardening neighborhoods. We need to work on that activity.

If we lose the FEMA reimbursement, obviously that makes our dollar go a whole lot less. Like we don't get as far.

That's my point.

Exactly. And we can try and have programs set up in a way that make our dollar go as far as they can, even without the FEMA reimbursement.

But I think the core activity that needs to get done is the same to the extent we continue to receive the FEMA reimbursements. We will be able to make more progress more quickly. Certainly with the limited dollar amount that we have available.

If we have to sort of go it alone, if you will, then the progress is going to be slower. I mean, I think that that's just the reality of it because we will have fewer or less resources to devote towards that particular effort.

Yeah. Lastly, I was thinking more along the line we heard about the toggling option, being able to toggle from one option to the next. If in a scenario that say that this particular funding did not come, that we had a backup to make sure that it didn't totally die on the vine.

Senate Member Connolly.

Thank you. Good morning everyone. I want to take a quick step back, maybe for my own purpose as well as for the public, and really ask how does The Wildfire Mitigation Grant Program for home hardening work. In other words, how does the money flow? How do projects get done? If you can kind of provide that overview.

Yeah, Chief Berlant. All right, I'll kick it off and I'll ask my colleague from Cal OES to come join as well. So essentially it's a joint powers authority between the two departments and using the risk based analysis, determined which counties we went to first, went to those communities, found a local sponsor getting closest to you.

North Coast Opportunities in Lake County was who the County of Lake wanted us to use. We worked with them to kind of define which community within their county met all of the social vulnerable characteristics as well as the climate elements. Cal OES then administers.

And I'll again kick it here back to Robyn of how the money actually flows from Cal OES back through the local jurisdictions. But the actual decision of what should be hardened is through an application that we've built that prioritizes.

We do a full analysis of the home and are able to determine which are the most important retrofits balanced with a cost benefit analysis that FEMA requires combined with defensible space. And that can range anywhere between 40 to 50,000 or so per home.

Again, when we went to these communities, we did not want them to just make it available to just anybody. We wanted to target a neighborhood because we need to see what hardening at scale will do in the face of a wildfire.

It's important to note that in Lake County we actually had a wildfire, not a significantly severe fire. Luckily, based on weather conditions, our firefighters were able to stop it, but it burned right up to the edge of the community. That in Lake County we have begun to harden.

But at least that's a very quick overview of the framework. Happy to talk more. One thing that I know over the years you have shared the same frustration we have as far as the pace. And I would just remind that when we kicked off this program with Cal OES, we built the program from scratch.

There had never really been in the state ever a home hardening retrofit financial assistance program. And so we've spent a lot of time making sure the science is right and making sure that we're as fair and equitable as possible. Assemblymember's comments earlier were very valid. What about all the other hundreds of communities that need to be there?

But I would just note that back to the earlier comments about prioritizing. This is a pilot now extended an additional five years, but piloted in just a small number so that we can again start to see the impacts and the barriers.

By the way, very soon here you'll see a report from us that details some of those barriers that we've been challenged with getting participation. Not everybody trusts the government. Many neighbors say we want to see are my neighbors actually going to get reimbursed before I say yes, you can come do retrofits on my home?

There's been challenges in trying to ensure that we meet all of the obligations and requirements of using federal dollars. And so this is just a very quick overview of some of the barriers.

But again I come back to it's been a pilot so that we can better learn and then better prepare other communities to doing this type of important work and creating a framework so other communities can use some of the other grant programs, the other OES or federal dollars that are out there to know how can we bring our own local program that meets the science but also addresses the lessons learned from this joint program.

So I'll turn it back over to Assistant Director Fennig.

Yeah. Thanks again. Robyn Fennig of Cal OES. What Chief Berlant also I think I would add to his answer is that not only is this a community level project, it's also we're empowering locals to manage these are locally owned and managed programs.

So not only are we going through all the hurdles and the challenges anytime you have federal funding involved, the environmental review process, very lengthy, very difficult in a state like California with both CEQA and NEPA requirements. But also we are building that capacity in the local level.

So we've got, you know, CAL FIRE is working alongside local building officials to do those assessments. And so that they are now doing the assessments. We're not looking to CAL FIRE to perform those. And I think that's something that's worth mentioning as well.

And on our our side we're teaching locals who've never touched federal funding before, how do you have to manage what are all the requirements in two CFR and what are all the FEMA grant management requirements?

So after the home is assessed, you know, we work with the counterparts to do continue to do those assessments and then also with the partner to on the grant management side to then go through the process.

So we've gotten a few communities, we've got a few homes that have been hardened and to Chief Berlant's point, now that their neighbors have seen success and that they're actually getting reimbursed for the work that they're doing.

Now we're seeing more increased interest in a lot of these places because again, the big benefit of this pilot program is that large neighborhood scale project. And honestly, in other FEMA programs where you look at other hazards, that's not how it's typically done. You don't have a whole neighborhood getting bought out after a huge flood disaster.

You have one house here and one house here and one house here. Same thing. I mean, California, I think has been at the forefront in terms of mitigation at that community scale scale for decades in other hazards. And now we're getting there with wildfires as well.

No, appreciate the backdrop and I think it kind of put some context around some great questions by my two colleagues on some of the details. Has CAL FIRE, CNRA or Cal OES actually conducted a needs assessment for the number of homes in California that we need to do home hardening on?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, there has been a lot of research in this space. And I'll start with, there is roughly about 5 million homes that are in the wildland urban interface. From our analysis, 90% of those homes were built before today's building codes. Our wildland interface building codes went into effect 2008.

So any home built after 2008 in a wildfire prone area specifically tied to a fire hazard severity zone is built to this new standard. But 90% are existing. What we don't necessarily know is which of those homes has the homeowner on their own done some type of maintenance work.

We know that about 99% of the roofs in California are now fire rated roofs. Not because we've encouraged them to do it, but maintenance requires you to replace your roof every 20 to 30 years. And so we've gone through this iteration that almost every roof in California does meet our current standards.

So there's a lot of maintenance that does occur. I think where we as the state have been focused on is really three places. One is providing education to homeowners of what that standard is. We created a low cost retrofit list to provide easy steps.

Assemblymember Rogers, your predecessor wrote legislation, and we created a list again just to make it easier to know what to do and then to disclose that information.

Two, we built an assessment tool that's on our website that any of us can go and walk around our home, check boxes on your Ipad or on your phone of what building materials you have or don't have and it will give you an analysis of what you should do. But then third, after education and assessment is this financial assistance program. Again, I told you, 5 million homes. That's a lot of homes.

When you look at retrofits being on average $40 to 60,000 needed for that, 90% that are built before. We are focused and prioritized on those most vulnerable, those who can't physically do the work and those who can't financially do the work.

So to your question, you know, there's still a lot of work in this space to try to figure out what is the, the, the exact need that remains out there. But we know it is monumental.

Yeah, no doubt. So this is a question I asked last week as we were getting into kind of a broader overview.

And now as we start to get more specific and really recognizing the centrality of home hardening, as again we're hearing this morning, toward our strategies. Yet kind of as things stand with the current budget proposal, really would be helpful to again try to explain the rationale behind cutting 13 million dollars for home hardening from the General Fund and then backfilling this amount with $9 million of Prop 4 Climate Bond funding.

Again, the backfill issue is of concern. We've covered that unless you have anything additional to add, but the number itself is low. And I know this was touched on a little bit earlier, but if you want to continue to put that into context.

Sure, so the sort of assessment of General Fund savings is of course more of a global budget issue. So when we're looking at developing and balancing the budget, we try and take a look at like all of the priority programs and efforts that need funding and what available funding sources there are.

So in the case of this, there's Prop 4 funding as well as some of this remaining General Funding. As we look at trying to balance and sort of stretch the General Fund dollar, our thinking was, well, there's this other fund source that exists now.

We can get some General Fund savings here to try and balance the overall budget. And as I think everybody here is aware, there's an endless list of things that are priorities and needs a very limited amount of General Funds. So we try and balance that out. There's an alternative fund source that can go towards this effort.

I think it's around 200 million in total in the allocation for this particular effort. So our thought was we can sort of do a General Fund savings here, shift it over to relying on the Prop 4 funding that's now available and dedicated specifically to this purpose. It can't be ssed for anything else.

So we shift over to that available fund source. Frees up General Fund for balancing the overall budget and the many needs that way.

What are you referring to on the 200 million?

I think that's the total allocation for the Wildfire Mitigation Grant Program in the total allocation in the bond. I might be doing my math wrong maybe. What's it.

Sorry, 185.

Sorry. 185. A lot of numbers. I didn't get them all memorized properly. So apologies for that one. 35. 135. 135. Enough efforts. I'll get the number right.

Yeah, no, that was exactly. That was the total and I think that was a big deal. I was involved in getting that in there. So that is kind of the backdrop. So when we're talking about $9 million, that's what I'm concerned about.

Yeah, sorry. So the 9 million that's proposed in 25-26, what we did for the Prop 4 rollout is we sat and did like work group efforts and sat down and talked with departments and agencies and sort of worked through what projects are sort of in the pipeline now. What's the need?

What do we think is realistic to do in 25-26? In this particular instance, the 9 million reflects projects that are sort of not far enough along in the development process that they're going to be ready for funding in 25-26. And then we will continue to obviously be developing additional projects.

And so that sort of reflects in this 26 million, 26-27. And each year will. So it's developing the projects. You have the FEMA application process that takes time. You've got to identify local partners that are going to lead the effort.

So there's a lot of like preparatory work, if you will, that goes into being able to get these done. And so it's sort of fitting the allocation or the appropriation with what's ready to move at a particular point in time. But Eric, I don't have anything to add.

Yeah, I think you explained it. But just to make it perfectly clear, Eric Swanson, Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at the Office of Emergency Services. The 13 million isn't a cut, it's a backfill. So it's 9 million in the first year and then we have 4 million in the following year.

So there's not a reduction, it's just a pure backfill of Prop 4 money.

Okay, yeah, we'll continue to talk about that. Final question. Also in Prop 4, 185 million was allocated towards regional forest and fire capacity programs in order to kind of increase regional capacity to prioritize, develop and implement projects that improve forest health and fire resilience.

As we see our communities facing greater high wildfire risk, can you explain the rationale behind only allocating $6 million for the 25-26 fiscal year?

So it's sort of the same rationale we sat down with Department of Conservation Resources Agency, talked through what exactly was sort of in the pipeline and plan and efforts that were going on right now, remaining existing funding that's sort of in the pipeline through the General Fund appropriations and fit sort of the need with what the level of workload is going to afford.

I don't know if Lisa, if you have any additional or if we have somebody from the Department of Conservation here that detail on it, but it's really it was from it grew out of the meetings we had to discuss with the departments actual need in 25-26.

Zach Lierly of the Department of Finance. I defer to my colleague at DOC.

Shawna Atherton Bauer, Acting Division Director with the Division of Land, Resource Protection for Conservation. And I would like to emphasize that it really is a focus on what projects we felt were ready in this incoming year. So, we were -

How is that being determined?

So, we have an awareness of what our existing grantees are working on currently. And so, we have certain grantees that are ready to move forward with the next phase of their regional forest and biocapacity projects. And so, they have immediate needs for funding in this upcoming year that we feel that we can cover with that second million.

We have other grantees that are still in the process of developing projects that would look for funding in out years. And so, we allocated additional funding in those out years, anticipating that that's when they would be ready to implement those dollars.

What are those allocations looking like now for the out years?

I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I believe it's... we're looking at 13 million for 26-27 and then additional increases in 27-28.

Okay. Anything additional?

166 is listed for the outages.

Yeah, and I would have to pull out the board. You've got the more detailed spreadsheet for the flow. But if I could just for a second, I think this sort of your question sort of goes back to, Chair Bennett, one of the things you were talking about in terms of the multi-year proposal.

And I think this sort of highlights part of the reason why we're trying to do a multi-year proposal because there's a lot of work that goes into place from stakeholders and different entities to sort of prepare for this.

And when you signal some level of multi-year that they can plan to, it helps them to do that planning. Like if there's no assurance or level of commitment that you're going to have funding available for these programs, there's sort of a disincentive to want to do the legwork and the upfront work to get things ready.

And so, by signaling sort of this multi-year and how we're sort of phasing it, it helps support entities to do that legwork.

And I just want to follow up. That's true in some cases and in other cases, but even in those cases I think it's important for you to make that case to us. So, we understand why we're doing multi-year in this. Yeah.

Because otherwise we're kind of fixing.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other piece I wanted

You should be open to hearing good reasons for multi-year, but the burden of proof is on the request.

Absolutely.

And I think the other thing I just want to make sure I clarify is even if we have a multi-year plan, there is still a BCP that comes at a legislature every year that outlines what that next year of funding will be and invites a discussion like this on whether or not it becomes as a sort of consolidated bond BCP, but it outlines for this bond, here's the allocations by program and sort of invites this continuing conversation.

And here comes the LAO response.

Just a point of clarification in past bonds that that out your BCP is a spreadsheet. It's a column that has an amount. It is not a full budget change proposal that explains here's how we're using the funding, here's the prioritization we're using. Here are the types of projects, here are the regions.

So, this is the type of program where there is a very good rationale that administration has provided why we shouldn't flood money out right now we're not ready to spend it strategically. That makes sense.

But for you as the policymakers, if you want the answers to some of these questions about how exactly will the funds be spent in what regions based on what criteria, how will this connect to the regional projects new program that CAL FIRE is going to be running, those are the types of things that would be explained in a full budget change proposal.

And you would have that transparency and natural opportunity if you didn't put it on autopilot. Doesn't mean you can't come back next year and ask these same questions. But it shifts the burden a little bit on the administration to put that information before you if you haven't approved there. This is different from general fund.

There is some certainty that this funding will be spent on these types of activities because the voters have required that it only be spent for that. So, there is certainty for the field that this funding will come at some point.

So, your opinion is there should be that kind of for BCP.

I think we would suggest to you that for some of these programs where there is a lot of uncertainty around how exactly the administration plans to use the funding, you would benefit from some more information as compared to, you know, other programs again that are that you're comfortable with and that have established criteria programs going.

This highlights one where there is a lot of uncertainty.

So, we may have -we may not have a multi-year allocation. We may be convinced to have a multi-year allocation by the administration. We may require that if we do it, we want more than just a spreadsheet, that we want that - those are all the options in front of us as we move forward.

Yeah. And I just would add, we acknowledge that there are absolutely programs in here where less information is needed because they're doing sort of the same thing every year. And there are certainly programs where there is a lot more uncertainty. And we are very open to and committed to making sure we get you that information.

Great.

Thank Assembly. If you don't mind, if I just add a little context. So as, as Department of Conservation uses that 6 million to increase the capacity, I just want to go back to what both Mr. Benson and I mentioned at the top, which is the $80 million for regional projects that will be funded in year one through the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and our CAL FIRE program. So while capacity is being increased, the projects that are in the pipeline, there will be money in year one for those.

Great. Thank you. While we're on hardening and before I go to our next questionnaire, while we're on hardening, I want to make these points. One, it's, I think, really obvious that hardening is going to be a central part of our focus if we want to decrease losses.

And so, you hear from the questions that are coming here, and I think from my comment about it just makes common sense. If you need to want to decrease losses, start as close to the structure as you can.

But we have a lot to learn about hardening because as you point out, it's sort of a new area for us to move in. So, we have a lot to learn. So, I appreciate the pilot projects. I appreciate the fact that you're trying to do them at a community basis, at a neighborhood level, rather than just piecemeal.

And so, every year I think we should make sure we get good updates.

And it doesn't all have to happen in a budget hearing, but it can happen in a report to us so that we're learning more and more about this issue of hardening because that's the where the rubber is going to meet the road in terms of our ability to do this.

But we have a lot to learn about convincing communities on hardening. As you, as you pointed out, as Department of Conservation person pointed out, it's hard to get people to do this. And we have to show people that this is not - if these 5 million homes, it's not something that's going to be optional.

It has to be done if we want to survive in terms of trying to keep home insurance, you know, affordable, that is out there. So, I appreciate that. Let's learn what it takes in these pilot programs and stuff. You've answered the question that one of the questions I had, how did you pick these pilot programs?

And you've done a good job in terms of answering that. The other point I would like to get on the radar screen about hardening that I think is really essential is it has to be comprehensive hardening to earn the substantial home insurance discount that is going to be essential to convince people to do this.

That if some people say: well, we ought to get a discount for if we just harden the roof, we should get a discount. Then if we harden the windows, we should get a discount. Well, if I'm the insurance company, that doesn't sound very convincing to me.

If a lot of people harden their roofs and I give them a discount and they all burn down because their windows cracked in the wildfire and, you know, and all that, it has to be a complete hardening package.

And so, I've talked with the fire marshal about this, and I think there's agreement that we need an identification of what is the definition of a hardened home. That would then qualify you for certification. And that certification could help you when you go to sell your house.

That certification could help you when you're talking with your insurance company about your rates, all of that. But I want to get that on the radar screen. I think that's in this new effort for us to focus on hardening. It needs to be comprehensive hardening.

That's what's going to sell in the long run in terms of the benefits. So, thank you with that. And Assemblymember Caloza.

Thank you to our Chair Bennett. And Jessica Caloza: I represent Assembly District 52, which is Northeast LA, East LA and South Glendale. I live about a block from the most recent fires that we had in Eaton, and we also had the Palisades fires.

And so, I appreciate today's hearing to talk about the Prop 4 funds and the fact that we actually have monies to talk about as we talk about mitigation and home hardening and all these really important issues to really strengthen the resiliency of our communities. My question is really around the funds and all these programs that we've discussed.

I noticed that the programs, you know, don't include Los Angeles.

And given that we just, you know, experience one of the worst disasters in LA, will there be any reconsiderations to adjust the recommendations from CAL FIRE and Cal OES to include some of these new parts of our state that maybe weren't at risk before, but now obviously are.

As we continue the rebuilding and recovery process, are there going to be adjustments made to what you're all recommending to reconsider Los Angeles?

Yeah, I very much appreciate that question. You know, there's a lot of conversation internally, externally, with you as well, related to how do we prioritize projects. Is it all risk based or is it geographic?

You know, we take a lot of discussion of are we funding enough in a certain region and, obviously after the LA fires, a lot of focus on "Is there enough happening in LA?" Let me just affirm that there are. Absolutely.

Los Angeles County projects will be funded through this work. As part of our local wildfire prevention grant program, we specifically work to ensure that we are spreading these projects out across the state in each of our units. Now, what makes a challenge is some projects request more money than others.

And so, it's not necessarily always the same dollar amount. But we have worked very hard at the direction of the legislature, over the years, to do our best to work towards increasing capacity for more organizations to do this work in areas that maybe have not submitted projects in the past.

But I just want to note that, since 2021, there have been 39 state funded resiliency projects within 5 miles of the Palisades Fire. There were 23 state projects within 5 miles of the Eaton fire.

And so, while I don't want to at all, you know, discount the enormous destruction of those two fires and obviously the continued effort for us of, you know, what could be done to continue to prevent that type of fire, I still want to stress that there were projects in the general Los Angeles area.

And we will continue to work with you and the entire Southern California based members to make sure that we're continuing to build up the capacity, so we get more projects within Southern California.

I appreciate that. And I also do just want to point out that there's actually a joint committee hearing next door.

We're actually talking about this very same topic and so happy to share my notes from this hearing with that joint hearing, but that's with the Emergency Management Committee, the Housing Community Development Committee, as well as the Economic Development Growth and Household Impact.

And I know all these different committees, you know, want to help and assist and make sure that we're all successful in the deployment of these dollars. And so would love to work with you and make sure that there's, you know, equitable projects across the state. And so happy - I'll be following up with you and your team.

So, thank you for your time.

Okay, now I'm ready with a bunch of rapid-fire questions, only because I have so many that we're going to have to keep the answers brief. And I'll try to keep the questions brief. Also, as I mentioned, this is going to be a long hearing. This is just a bond.

But of everything on the agenda, the bond is what I think you find the assembly most invested in. And so hopefully the other items won't take as long as this or we'll be here for an awful long time today. So first overall, you know, how's CAL FIRE measuring prevention activities in terms of what's most effective?

What's your thinking right now as you look at fuel breaks, you know, sweeping, you know, clearing, you know, the forest versus controlled burns versus hardening, et cetera? What are the criteria? What kind of thoughts can you share with us on that?

Quickly, let me first start by thanking you for over the years increasing the resources and the budget for us and the personnel for fire suppression, but also fire prevention and natural resources. It is our belief and our strategy that we have to invest and do all of these things.

You know, you talked at the very beginning about, you know, let's focus on the home. And you know, I completely agree that that has to be a focal point, but our strategy has to be doing all of these things together.

If we're not managing the forest, we're going to have large forest fires that burn right into our communities. If we're not investing in fire detection technologies and fire suppression resources, we're not going to have firefighters to be able to battle these fires. But we have very much continued to increase our focus on fire prevention and wildfire resiliency.

You know, Assemblymember Rogers, back to your predecessor, established an entire division within our office and reorganized statutory requirements to ensure that there was dedicated focus within the department and within my office specifically on wildfire prevention.

So, while our team is very much focused on fighting fires and does an amazing job of that, we have a dedicated workforce just in preventing fires. And then we leverage all of those firefighters to do all of this work as well. They're the ones doing prescribed fire, they're the ones doing fuel reduction.

So, you asked me to be brief, but the answer is we have to be doing all of these things. And this package and the previous budget allocations from you have really provided us to be able to really increase the pace and the scale of fire prevention, wildfire resiliency.

We have to do it all. I certainly get that. But we still have to prioritize. We have to have some of everything, but we have to prioritize. You know where that all goes. Is there, is there some kind of thinking or prioritization in that analysis?

I wish there was a much easier answer. I go back to our strategy, has really been focused in three core areas. The parcel level like you talked about at the home, defensible space at zero-to-five-foot community level, doing evacuation clearance prescribed fires, and fuel breaks in and around communities, and then forest health treatments around there in addition to fire suppression. Every community and every day has different climate and weather factors that make every fire a little bit different. And so, there's not an easy formula to say we need to do 25% community hardening, 10% partial. There really is not a silver bullet. We have to be doing an all of the above strategy.

And again, I come back to - even in the face of the severity of fires, the damage we've been experiencing, we are making progress. It's just being overshadowed by the continued destruction of wildfires. But the strategy of doing all of the above is working.

I recognize and I'm spending more time on this question than I wanted to, but I recognize we have to do all the above and I recognize it is fiendishly difficult to try to figure out, "Do we do 10% here," etc. there.

Just from looking at it, we've fortunately had a recent increase in sort of this fire, wildfire prevention activity in that I think in my mind there has not been enough focus yet on hardening. And I think we're starting to recognize that. So, I would just offer from a layperson's point of view, just common sense.

It seems like the mix is - that's part of the mix that we have to that I hope we'll continue to have conversations about; where do we go in terms of that mix. Not trying to decrease the value of any of those, but that's one area that seems to make sense.

And with that I wanted to just ask if, if we had this principle, the proximity to the structure has some significant influence on the prioritization of the spending, what's your thought of that statement, and you or anybody else that wants to - the proximity to the structures that we're trying to protect that.

That has, you know, that should be a significant part of the prioritization strategy.

Yeah, I think it's a complex answer, as I've mentioned, but I would go back to point to one of the reasons you see a dedicated new program for financial assistance for defensible space for projects, again, specifically in the proximity of the structures, adds to our ability to prioritize doing more projects at the home level, at the partial level, in addition to, again, the 135 million that's in the bond for, for home hardening, I think that's going to significantly provide a influx of funding and resources so we can do more.

What I hear you saying loud and clear, we need to do more in the proximity right around the home as well. And so, I think that this proposal in front of you actually does do that.

Great, thank you. And reporting requirements. What are the department's current reporting requirements for these activities and what have you learned as a result of the collection? You can't give us all of those answers, can you? Thumbnail: what are we going to get from you? Are we going to get an analysis of those 45 projects?

Can we have that? Can you help us with that?

The answer is yes. So, two things. One is, again, we've been trying to be more transparent, make it more accessible for the public to be able to see where the work is happening, where the money is being invested, but also where the effectiveness is occurring.

But I would remind that every year, and I know there's a lot of discussion in the last year, and we do bring you a report specifically on our fire prevention efforts documenting what we've done so that you and the public have that available to you.

I would note that with your staff and, with the senate, the administration worked on a very expansive increase to our reporting requirements, down to the number of hours every single CAL FIRE employee is working on fire prevention. I talked about that. Out of our 12,555.5 employees, they're all doing some level of prevention.

But when we think of firefighter classifications, you don't see that. The news doesn't show that. But we'll be reporting in this next cycle, in the coming years, based on, again, your legislation, additional information to make sure you are seeing what comprehensively the department is doing towards fire prevention.

And then what we need to work on, to your point, is analyzing, "Is it enough?" Where do we need to continue to focus? But we're just, again, starting this expansion to get down to the granular detail to give you hour by hour of all 12,000 of those plus employees.

That's going to be an extensive amount of data for you to see what we're doing. But then allow us to come back and have a good, healthy conversation about, you know, where can we continue to invest more?

Great. Yeah, I think that'll be very healthy for us to see that. So, I really appreciate you tracking that. It will make a difference, and it will increase our confidence that we're getting prevention activities as well as suppression activities.

My next question: is anybody from Board of Forestry and Fire Protection able to answer the question about zone zero regulations and when they where we are in terms of that?

Lisa with Resources: I believe I can start with that. And if you need more specifics, I believe colleagues from the board are here as well. But at the Board of Forestry, we are getting that process underway to begin, you know, complying or consistent with the governor's Executive order from earlier this month.

So, a great deal of effort has already been invested by the board to do a lot of the pre work in the pre-rulemaking process, gathering a lot of perspectives, looking at the latest science. A lot of work has been done.

Now we're looking at our initial 2025 public workshop next week, where we'll be gathering all kinds of stakeholders and the public to kind of talk through where we've been, what are the kinds of things that are under consideration now and, you know, gather that feedback.

And so, we expect, you know, consistent with that executive order, to be moving down the timeline to have the regulation portion of that completed by the end of the year.

Okay.

Yeah. Dan Stapleton, Assistant Executive Officer.

Could you bring that Mic? Unlike us, we have to lean forward. You guys can bring the mic right to you.

Dan Stapleton, Assistant Executive Officer. So, yes, we're excited to work with CNRA and CAL FIRE and getting these regulations completed by the end of the year per the executive order. And we will be considering costs as part of that.

If I could opine on this zone zero, it's partially - I think it's going to be easier to sell people on zone zero if we point out to people that if they do that as part of an overall comprehensive hardening of the home, that eventually it will lead to significant cost decreases in their home insurance.

Because I think this is, you know, we talk about 5 million homes, we will not have the resources in California to do an average of $40,000 a home for 5 million homes, in terms of hardening. But I think people are going to be faced with a choice.

Do you want to pay 40 or $50,000 more in home insurance, or would you like to pay 40 or $50,000 and harden your home permanently and you know, do some maintenance of that, but then be able to certify that your home is hardened. That's how I think we ultimately pay for this.

That's how we ultimately convince people this makes sense. And zone zero by itself feels like one isolated step. And if we can tie zone zero into a comprehensive step that leads to a real tangible outcome.

And when the insurance bills start to come, and the insurance bill is, if you're certified, this is your insurance rate, and if you're not certified, this is your insurance rate, that delta could very quickly close the gap on a 40 or $50,000 improvement, not notwithstanding the benefits that you will feel in terms of you're not going to have to rebuild your home, hopefully, if you can really harden your home properly and stuff.

Assemblymember, we've done significant work over the years to align our wildfire mitigations, both being science and research based, but align them with the insurance industry.

A lot of work and partnership has gone in with the Department of Insurance and with the insurers and their research arm to make sure that the science that we know from our firefighters experiencing fires is built in and baked into their requirements. And so, I completely agree.

And I think that's why the governor has challenged us and the board with getting these regulations across the finish line because zone zero is a critical component of the overall agreement of mitigations that we and the insurance industry all agree knows makes a difference.

Great, thank you. And I'll just point out we have legislation that we introduced last week specifically on the issue of certification of homes. We've tried to work closely with the fire marshal in terms of that. So, I look forward to further conversations about that as it moves forward.

One, one more question and that is slower appropriation timeline for the wildfire ignition technology. And we appreciate the comment in there that you want to work with the L-legislature. Basically, is it slower because there are just so many other things going on, or is there something specific you're looking for from the legislature?

And do you have any rough things in mind in terms of this technology?

So, I think this was one of those ones where the options available for in terms of fire detection technology is pretty broad and comparatively speaking, it's a smaller allocation pot. So, trying to identify what is the best use of that limited resource, we think, will benefit from more discussions I mentioned.

We had basically a month to sort of put it together. This is one where the sort of the scope of options to consider is so broad, we wanted some more time to consider that. And we certainly - if there are things that the legislature sort of had in mind in the drafting of the of the Bond Act, it would be certainly helpful to hear what those things.

I'll kick it off with one possibility, and that is fire ignition technology that would catch the fire ignition right away when it begins, and to be able to get resources there quicker, drone resources there quicker, some kind of, you know, suppression resources there by air quicker, to try to keep something under control.

We had 120 fires in Ventura County in the month of January alone. We were able to get on top of all of them, but it's partially because of all the resources that were already so close in Los Angeles, et cetera.

So that's certainly one; that's not to stop the ignition, but it's to do something immediately upon the ignition, so, I'll throw that out there, recognizing there are many other things, but...okay, we look forward to working with you in terms of that.

I'm going to try to go quickly through these other items here, and I want to get this there. All right. And that is, you've done a good job of answering the question I had about why those six counties, and we've had lots of conversation about that.

Could you define, because it keeps coming up over and over again, the term landscape scale projects. All right. What do we mean by landscape scale projects? Just so we're making sure we're all clear.

I'll take a stab here. We really look at our fuel reduction as the overall category. And when we're talking in communities, we're looking at smaller, more precise projects. A landscape level typically is more in our forest health program, looking at a larger area, an actual physically larger area, where overall the ecosystem is being restored.

But again, I think when we say landscape, we mean larger is primarily the best way to put it. In addition to that, the focal point is environmental restoration.

And then the additional impact becomes the wildfire, where, when we talk about some of our wildfire prevention projects, we're more focused on communities solely on protecting them, with the environment being the secondary benefit.

Okay, got it. All right. Anybody have anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, Lisa with Natural Resources: yeah, and just to add to that, I think this is really an evolution in the way we're looking at the work across the landscape.

Sierra Nevada Conservancy, for example, has done a tremendous job bringing together a lot of different partners that are really starting to view how they can work together and expand the footprint of a project and bring in multiple benefits, really.

So, to your point, it's not just about, you know, fuels reduction, but you might be also generating biodiversity benefits, habitat connectivity. There's all kinds of things that can be sort of unpacked when you think about it, at that broader landscape scale. So, we're really pleased to see that evolution.

As we've had the prior grant programs focusing on building capacity in the regions, now these regions together are performing these collaboratives that are able to think at this bigger scale that can really make a big difference.

Great, thank you. My next question here.

I think it was brought up as I was walking out a little bit ago about the issue of the Department of Energy, you know, trying to do cost sharing. This is on the wildfire risk related to electricity transmission. And if we don't get the U.S. Department of Energy funding for this, do we have different plans for using the funds for reducing wildfire risk related to electricity transmission?

So this is another one of those pots where because of the, I think number of inputs, if you will, into the discussion, we left it as a pending allocation because there's a number of things that need to be sort of thought about and talked about before we decide what's the best way to use that particular allocation.

And we'll, I'm sure, I mean there'll be hearings focused on electricity and energy and stuff and they'll be able to sort of talk more about what's going on in that part policy area. But we have close conversations with those colleagues in those departments as these things evolve to try and identify the best way to use it.

It's another one of those ones we just don't feel like we've put our finger on. This is the most effective use of that money.

Great. Okay. Have the perception that CCC has some very. A culture that's very appropriate for some of these prevention activities, et cetera. What's the perception from CAL FIRE and others in terms of partnering with CCC on these kinds of projects?

Well, I will let them as well walk up here, but I will tell you they have been an enormously important partner in several spaces. One, in partnering in doing fuels reduction work and doing fire prevention work. But we've also been honored, if that's the right word.

The Director may disagree, in being able to steal slash hire a significant amount of his Corps Members and bring them into full-time firefighting and other fire prevention positions. And so the CCC has been great and again augmenting, expanding the fire prevention resiliency efforts, but also as a workforce for us as a Department. But I'll turn it to the Director.

Absolutely. JP Patton, Director of the California Conservation Corps. Thank you for the shout-out and the mention of the seas. We're very happy to take this work and the thing that we'll be talking about next is the Greenwood Residential Center, which really is strategically placed to be a great fuel reduction fuel treatment center of excellence for us.

So over 100 Corps Members working on the other side of the coin of fuel suppression. So we now have about 30 CAL FIRE crews dedicated to the fire suppression piece of it. Hoping to expand our fuel treatment efforts as well. So we are the folks, the boots on the ground to do this work.

What do you see as the biggest hurdle for you to be able to expand your efforts?

Not enough centers.

Not enough what?

Not enough locations. So I think there are. We have a long wait list of folks who are trying to join our program. Especially after the work that we did in the LA area got the attention of a lot of young people who want to serve their state.

The faster we can build centers and expand, I think we can certainly take on more folks. We currently have about 1500 Corps Members, and this new center will bring on another 100 Corps Members, which is equivalent to about six more crews for California's preparedness.

How much do you prioritize proximity to communities as you're making decisions in terms of your work?

That is top of mind for us whenever we're considering expansion. We have about 24 centers up and down the state. Greenwood's going to be a strategic one. Fortuna, Siskiyou, San Diego. We don't have a presence yet in the Bay Area. It is serviced by our Solano Center.

But the communities that we serve very much is top of mind for us when we're making these decisions.

So this is my final question. It doesn't specifically relate to the CCC, but for CAL FIRE here, as we're talking about sort of an overall plan. So we talk about hardening homes in Southern California, spot fires are our great threat. We had fire spotting two miles ahead of the fire line.

And spot fires, you can put them out without using that much water if you catch them early.

And in looking at some of the other countries in the world, Australia, etcetera, they have, literally at the neighborhood level, they have people that are there, not firefighters, but people that just get trained to be sort of like their neighborhood, their street spot fire captain. Right?

And they get trained by fire personnel to be able to do that, you know, with some sense of expertise and training, and it can have a huge difference. Just from personal experience, you know, I've watched, you know, I participated in putting out spot fires and stopping multiple homes from burning because somebody was there.

And we literally don't have enough firefighters to have somebody on every street immediately. We need, you know, we need people to get there. And so I'd like to drop that into the overall plan. It's not to have everybody stay. It's to have people that the Fire Department know in advance have said they're planning on staying.

People that in Australia, they give them some equipment and those people can play a critical role in some of these communities. And I could see lots of different partnerships out there with the Community Fire Safe Councils, with CCCs, with CAL FIRE, with the local municipal fire departments and stuff.

So I'd love to at our April meeting explore that more with you as we move forward. Any other questions from my colleagues here? We've done, we've spent a lot of time on this. Really appreciate the sense of partnership and collaboration that's out there with the Administration and with CAL FIRE.

Appreciate your willingness to keep working with us and trying to explain whether you think we need to do multi-year or not and identified programs that you're looking for input from us on. So we look forward to all of this collaboration. Thank you all very much.

We're going to move on to Issue Two: Departments' Operational Efficiencies and Vacancy Sweep Updates.

All right, you have Stephen Benson with Department of Finance again. If you're ready to start the issue, so as noted in the agenda, the 2024 Budget Act estimated the Administration could identify efficiencies in state government by eliminating approximately 12,000 vacant positions in 2025-26 and reducing state operations expenditures by up to 7.95% beginning in 2024-25. By working with departments through the first half of the fiscal year.

The Administration identified that a significant portion of the estimated position and state operations included in the 24 Budget Act were associated with expenditures critical to public safety, fire safety, 24-hour staffing requirements, and delivery of mission-critical public benefits.

So the 2025 Governor's Budget Efficiency Savings takes into consideration the reality of the state spending in these critical areas, and it resulted in updated levels of savings that the Administration believes is feasible compared to the previous point-in-time estimates that were provided.

So the Governor's Budget identified 1.5 billion. 820 million of that General Fund in 24-25 and 1.2 billion of that General Fund in 25-26 and ongoing reductions to state operations of up to 7.95%.

The reductions included estimated personnel services, operating expenses and equipment, and consulting and professional services costs. Related to the Control Section 4.12 on the vacant positions. The Governor's Budget has identified savings of 617.6 million. 234.4 million of that General Fund in 24-25 and ongoing. Associated with vacant positions and elimination of approximately 6500 vacant positions beginning in 25-26 ongoing.

I think has been noted and we talked about with staff and the LAO.

The Administration is continuing to work with the departments to identify more specific program areas and like positions by classification, the number by classifications and some of that more detailed information we are currently actively working through with each of the departments with the intent of being able to provide that more detailed information to the Legislature in the coming months.

And that's essentially where we're at right now in terms of, I'm sorry, in terms of that process.

LAO

Thank you. So this obviously is a topic not just for the departments before you on your agenda today, but all of the departments that this Committee oversees and all of the departments across the whole budget.

So it may feel like a kind of small techie issue, but we think it's actually pretty substantial and has some pretty important questions. A few we would highlight for you. First is on the level of savings. As we've heard already, the Administration for the savings they've identified are below the targets that were included in last year's budget.

So to the degree those savings continue to erode, that creates a bigger budget problem for you to have to deal with. Second, are the programmatic impacts, what are they? Well, we can't know that if we don't know what the actual reductions are.

There are specific numbers we've been given from the Administration but we don't have the backup for where those came from. And we think that's really essential for you to understand.

Are you comfortable with them and if not, then what other options do you want to pursue in order to get those savings that the budget architecture was built around? There's quite a bit of savings identified from special funds. So that obviously doesn't directly help the General Fund condition.

It could if then you want to use special funds to loan to the General Fund or shift costs to.

But absent understanding all of those connections, understanding why are there being reductions made to special fund activities and what are the programmatic impacts and also what is the connection to the fee payers who are paying funds into those special funds with an expectation of a certain amount of service?

If those services aren't being provided, do fees need to be adjusted? So a lot of rippling policy questions with this. And then finally we think this specific information about what these reductions will be is really essential for you to be able to consider new proposals. Even in your agenda.

In the nondiscussion items, there is a request for 33 new positions across various activities to implement new legislation. We're obviously not suggesting we shouldn't be implementing new laws that have been passed.

But for you to consider, do you want to start doing new activities or what other existing activities are being defunded and be able to consider those you'll hear in a future agenda? The Air Resources Board is requesting 50 new ongoing positions. Well, what positions are being defunded there?

So in order to consider new proposals, you have to have, we think, this larger context of what these specific reductions are. So glad the Administration is committing to providing more information, but providing it in May doesn't give you too much time to make these decisions.

So if there are specific numbers here, we think really continuing to ask where did these numbers come from? What is the information behind them is a key part of your overall budget architecture.

There's a reason this is our second agenda item and it is important to us. We appreciate the commitment to get us more information, but is it possible to get the information sooner than May?

So it's a statewide effort, and so I'm not able to today commit to a date. I mean, certainly we are trying to do it as quickly as we can, and we agree with those comments that this information is important to overall decisions and relates to a lot of other decisions.

So all I can say is we're committed to getting it to you as quickly as we can. And I will certainly take back, you know, to folks that there's clearly a desire. I don't need to take it back, as people know that, but clearly there's a desire to get it before May. But we'll reiterate that.

Thank you. And this question that I have for both of you. But when you don't meet the targets, and then, you know, we built the budget around meeting the target. I'm not faulting, but my experience is these are always harder to do than you think. Right?

These vacants, you know, trying to clear all the vacancies sounds really easy. I'll just clear all the vacancies and stuff. But operationally it was tougher at the county level when we would try to do this also. So I understand it's difficult.

But when we don't meet the targets, how does it affect our budgeting then for the next year? It feels like we built that in. And so how do we reflect that in the next year's budget, the fact that we didn't meet the target?

So in this particular instance, we posted with the Governor's Budget where we were at. And the Governor's Budget proposes a balanced budget. So we basically had to make adjustments across the overall budget to sort of account for the fact that there was erosions in those targets.

Okay. Great. Questions? Assemblymember Rogers.

Yeah, just to punctuate the point, I think it was well said. We can't do our job of oversight if we don't have that information. We have no way of knowing whether the programs that are being proposed are going to have the staffing to be successful.

We have no way of knowing whether or not we're going to hit those targets. In terms of the overall budget, presumably, you have some information because you have budget numbers from this year as it finishes up. Where are those coming from? If you don't know which positions are gone, what departments they're, they're actually staffing.

How are you coming up with numbers to tell us what the final numbers for the 24-25 actual budget cycle is if those numbers are real, presumably you have some more information than what's being shared.

So they're based on point in time data that was pulled and sort of there was a construct that was outlined in a budget letter that went out that sort of identified, hey, you've got a universe of vacancies. You know, a certain percentage of those vacancies should be able to be eliminated.

And then of course on the efficiency side, 7.95%. So you can calculate those types of things at the high level, you know, totals for the Department and come up with sort of these numbers that are then out there.

The harder part is, kind of getting to what Assemblymember Bennett was saying, is you then have to get into the details. Okay, where specifically are we going to take these?

And our focus has been on trying to minimize the impact to programs and public-facing services and so trying to go through and work through the complexities of how to accomplish as close to those targets as we can while minimizing those impacts. That's really where the struggle is, the challenge is. And that's what we're still working with.

So the numbers you see in the Governor's Budget come from sort of this higher level targets. And the point in time information, what we're trying to get you is the detail of how you back into that specifically.

Okay, I think that that's the helpful part, the backing into a number that is being used as essentially a placeholder.

Yeah, I mean it's calculated at a higher level number and then you got to get into the specifics.

Yeah, I would be more interested obviously getting those positions sooner just so that we can evaluate elimination of just vacancies, doesn't tell us the importance or the impact of that position. I think we would all be interested in seeing not just the low-hanging fruit, where it is easier to eliminate positions that people aren't currently in.

But how do we achieve what we're trying to achieve with the rest of the budget through the staffing model?

Absolutely.

Quick follow-up question and that is that on page nine of the agenda with Chart 4.12 identifies Department of Fish and Wildlife 190 positions cut, Department of Water Resources 129, and Department of Parks and Recreation 172. How do those three rank in terms of size of the Department relative to the total employment options that are out there.

Across the state or sort of resources agency?

Within this agency? I mean, are we cutting a small department a great deal or are these pretty evenly balanced in terms of, in other words, the largest cut is Department of Fish and Wildlife. Is Department of Fish and Wildlife also the biggest Department?

In terms of positions? No, I don't think they are. I mean, I don't have specific data, but they're probably not the biggest Department.

And then Department of Parks and Recreation, one of the bigger departments?

They are one of the bigger ones, yes.

Okay. And then Department of Water Resources?

They are also a bigger one.

So we're taking disproportionate cuts in Department of Fish and Wildlife. I'm just trying to get. Disproportionate doesn't necessarily mean wrong. But we're taking larger cuts percentage-wise in Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you did the math, that would. Yes, that would bear out.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. All right. Assemblymember Lackey.

Yeah. Just a quick question here. I notice something that's a little bit perplexing. And the Department of Conservation, you have indicated that 64 positions are in jeopardy, right? But you also have two budget change proposals to add 29 positions. So it seems like it's a shell game, is it not?

I don't think we view it as a shell game. I think the way that we're viewing it is there are point in time targets that were established based on some point in time data. And we started working on these drills and exercises and working through how to implement them.

Subsequent to that, there are proposals that are put forward from departments identifying specific needs that they have. And sometimes it's difficult to sort of balance, you know, where you're at in one process with where you're at with this other process.

And we felt that it was, I think, in some ways more transparent to say that when you look at the parameters of the control sections and how they're being implemented, this is sort of what results outside of that and specifically to some specific needs. Here's a BCP that says, hey, there's this need that needs to be addressed.

So in our mind, I don't view it at all as a shell game. I think it's in one way, it's more transparent to say that we're implementing this drill, and here's the parameters of it, and here's how we implemented it outside of that drill and beyond existing resources that we're examining, here's some new things that we've identified that weren't previously considered.

I do appreciate the transparency, but it still seems like a shell game to me. So, sorry.

Any additional questions? No? All right, great. Thank you so much. We'll move on to our next panel.

Welcome.

Good morning again. JP Patton, Director of the California Conservation Corps.

Sloane Viola, Chief Deputy Director of the California Conservation Corps.

Victor Lopez, Department of Finance.

Tesh Zurkenbach, Department of Finance.

Pleased to present about the new Greenwood Residential Center for the California Conservation Corps. The budget requests a reappropriation of about 6.4 million to extend construction funds by one year to complete the project in spring of 2026. Pleased to say the project is on track and the budget for the completion is also on track as well.

So the new center will house 100 Corps Members, including a culinary crew. All of those Corps Members will be engaged in the work of fuel hazard reduction, arborist training work, trail construction, invasive species removal, planting of native shrubs and trees, our culinary program, and much, much more. Happy to answer any questions about the project itself.

Thank you. And I'll look to my colleagues to see. No questions. Great. I do just want to acknowledge the role that you've played in emergency disasters as well. Give you an opportunity to highlight that a little bit before we move on, but I have no additional questions.

Appreciate that. Thank you very much. With the LA fires, we deployed over 800 Corps Members down south. And that was a combination of crews who worked on fire suppression, both on the Palisades and the Eaton. A number of resource crews were also dedicated to supporting the camps there.

So the reefer, the supply, making sure that everyone who is running the emergency operations had what they needed. And then additionally, we deployed about 40 crews to do the watershed protection work as well. And that was a combination of your state corps as well as the local California Conservation Certified Corps as well. So really incredible, monumental deployment.

Thank you for the recognition.

Great. Any other questions? Alright, I think we're ready to move on to issue three. IS that right? We didn't jump to issue three. Oh, you did. Okay, great. All right, so we're at.

We figured while you were out of the room, we'd go as fast as we could.

Wow. I need to leave more often. Right. Exactly.

Well, I may have. Cause I want to make sure my. I've had that reference there. I may call you back up later, but we're going to move on to item four.

Sounds great.

I need to understand which questions got asked too. And if you'll let me know, can you mark which questions got asked?

And let's go ahead and move on to issue four. GO-Biz. Remove sunset dates for the Climate Catalyst Fund Trailer Bill. What is it that still needs to be asked? All right, whoever wants to begin.

Thank you, Chair Bennett. I'm Scott Wu, the Executive Director of IBank. IBank is part of GO-Biz and we serve as.

Could you pull that microphone a lot closer? It's mobile.

How's that?

Better.

Okay, there we go. IBank is part of GO-Biz, and we serve as the state's General-Purpose Finance Authority. Our mission is to provide financial assistance and support infrastructure and economic development. We do this in alignment with our three top priorities. Creating jobs, reaching underserved communities, and addressing climate change.

Central to this work is IBank's well-established reputation as a green bank across all of our programs. Having financed more than $5 billion in green projects in recent years, IBank's Climate Catalyst Revolving Loan Fund, or Catalyst, is currently positioned to take its work to the next level by expanding Greenbank offerings for commercial enterprises.