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

And Courtney Massengale and Rachel Ehlers. That's right. Hey there. Hey there. So we'll just start in about 30 seconds. I know they want to get the TV feed up and running. All right, let's hold. Let's declare this hearing to order. We are going to establish a quorum. Consultant, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

All right, we've got a great agenda today. Lots of good discussions, and we're going to start, of course, with our wonderful Natural Resources Agency. We're so pleased to have our secretary here to start us off with item 10, which is an overview of the Natural Resources Agency. So we welcome you, Secretary Crowfoot.

Thanks so much, Chair and Members of the Committee. Appreciate the opportunity to provide at the highest level a frame for the more detailed conversation that you'll have today and in coming weeks and months. I want to first acknowledge that, you know, as we do this work to establish a state budget for next year, we continue to all support the rebuild and recovery of Los Angeles, those areas of Los Angeles that were impacted by the horrific wildfires.

I think that's a really powerful reminder of the importance of the investments that you'll consider today to protect Californians and all of our special places across the state from wildfire and other challenges driven by climate change. What I'll do in my short time with you is to share points of collective progress.

We have made remarkable progress across the state on the topics that the subcommittee oversees thanks to historic investments. The General Fund surpluses that we had over subsequent years actually enabled us to invest across the state and in communities on key priorities. And we've been able to make a lot of measurable progress.

And I'll just provide thumbnails of that project progress in certain areas. I want to key on the excitement that exists both within our agency and among many of the groups that you'll hear from today about Proposition 4, the Climate Bond. Thanks to the Legislature and the voters of California, there is $10 billion of additional funding to invest in key priorities to protect communities from climate impacts, protect natural places from those impacts, to help us adjust to the changes that we're experiencing from climate change and continue to combat carbon pollution.

I want to share how important it is that there is transparency and accountability with the way that we spend the funds. That has been a priority for your colleagues in the Assembly. We heard that in their subcommittee meeting, and I imagine it is for you, too.

So we've already embarked on a process around how do we ensure that this bond is actually the best, the most effectively implemented general obligation bond in our agency's history. That means total transparency around the programs that are being created and the funding going out the door. It also means transparency about tracking the outcomes of that funding.

So we look forward to talking more about that if it's helpful. We are excited that a large portion of this will impact underserved communities. You all know that 40% of these funds need to benefit disadvantaged communities and 10% severely disadvantaged communities. And we're also focused on ensuring that this funding actually can impact multiple priorities at once.

So landscape projects, for example, that protect our communities from wildfire while restoring landscape health and protecting biodiversity. We also want this funding to be more simple and easy to access than it ever has been. I think we can acknowledge that government programs sometimes are complicated and that we want to ensure that funding can get out as quickly and effectively as possible so that the money actually works on the ground and supports communities and that more communities, more groups than ever, can actually access this public funding.

So looking forward to partnering with you on the implementation of Prop 4. So, thumbnail update on our progress. And I want to start with wildfire and wildfire resilience. You know, thanks to this partnership between the governor and the Legislature, we have wildfire response that is stronger than ever.

The budget of CAL FIRE has almost doubled, doubled in the last several years. The personnel, same, has doubled. We're bringing on 2,600 additional firefighters across the state. It's safe to say that I can say with confidence CAL FIRE is the most sophisticated, highest capacity wildland firefighting force in the world.

Thanks to these investments not only in personnel, but also in equipment, aviation assets, and technology. We're utilizing thanks to CAL FIRE advanced artificial intelligence, for example, to spot wildfires faster. So our response for wildfire is stronger than it's ever been, as is our proactive upfront actions to to protect our landscapes and communities before wildfires ever come.

Thanks to you all, we've invested almost $3 billion in upfront projects. Think fuel breaks around communities, vegetation thinning where it makes environmental sense, getting prescribed fire back on the landscape like Native American communities have been practicing for a very long time. And that's making a difference.

2,200 projects across the state completed or underway with the funding that's been provided by the Legislature and governor, and more to come. So in our proposed budget this year, we recommend or we request propose to continue to include $200 million of cap and trade funding in this important wildfire resilience work and to allocate $325 million of Climate Bond proceeds to build our wildfire resilience. So let's talk about water.

We know that this weather whiplash that we're experiencing this winter but also in recent years means we have to invest in our infrastructure, modernize our management to continue to strengthen water security across the state, and improve the health of our waterways and river systems.

Thanks to you and the governor, you've invested, we've invested over $8 billion in building our water resilience in recent years. And that's helping communities, including those that you represent, actually diversify water supplies so that they can make it through increasingly intense drought periods that we're experiencing.

It includes important funding in flood protection that has been so important in recent years. You may remember we went from the driest three year period in the state's history. Only a little over two years ago, 5 million Californians underwater rationing. And less than two months later, we experienced what's probably the wettest three weeks in our state's history.

So there's a whole lot that we need to continue to do to adjust to this weather whiplash. And these investments are making a difference. In the proposed budget. We are recommending an investment of about $231 million in dam safety and climate resilience local assistance programs.

$173 million in specifically in flood control projects, including to repair and reconstruct levees so important across the state, including in many districts here close to Sacramento. And then continuing our work on the Salton Sea and stabilizing the Salton Sea and avoiding that becoming the environmental and environmental justice disaster that it could be, which is a state responsibility.

So let's talk about clean energy. Our agency is proud to support as part of our agency, the California Energy Commission, which is one of many energy entities, so I won't go deeply into energy, but I can tell you we're proud for the CEC to continue to play our part in this energy transition. The clear state law led by the Legislature, governor, 100% clean energy by 2045. We want to do that in a way that's safe, reliable, and affordable.

And so investments that we're proposing toward that end are $50 million in demand side grid support to enable the efficiency of our grid, as well as 230 million, 228 million for port upgrades that are so important across our state that will do a lot of things, including serving offshore wind generation.

Let's talk about coastal resilience recognizing that many of you represent communities on the coast. We used to think about sea level rise as sort of a future planning exercise. But we now know that sea level rise and coastal erosion are impacting our communities now and our infrastructure now.

And I know that you on the committee, including Senator Blakespear, have been leading this effort around how do we address this interruption, including the rail line between Los Angeles and San Diego, one of the most used rail lines in the country, currently impacted, debilitated by coastal erosion. So these investments are critically important. And we've made significant progress getting more funding into communities to plan and adjust infrastructure as a result of these sea level rise impacts. And we're proposing more Investments.

Specifically $172 million of Climate Bond funding, 77 million to help communities prepare for these impacts, and 82 million to actually get projects done to protect and restore the coast. Another climate impact are worsening heat waves. And also during the last six years, we experienced the longest, hottest heat wave in the history of the American West.

If you recall, that was the one that really tested our energy system and its reliability. We know that a lot of places in California are very hot in the summer and getting hotter. So we are continuing to invest or propose invest to invest in how do we help communities protect themselves from this extreme heat?

Specifically, $47 million for projects including more trees in communities, green schoolyards to avoid that urban heat island complex, as well as $16 million to our colleagues at the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, formerly OPR, to work with communities on their planning and response.

All of this work that we do across the Natural Resources Agency is about helping people thrive, but also our natural environment thrive. I talk a lot about helping people and nature thrive together, which of course we care about in California, and it's part of our identity. We know that our natural systems are under stress from climate.

Our natural systems are essential for us. They provide things like water and resources for us. And so a lot of our investments we call or we put in the category of nature based solutions. How do we invest in restoring, protecting our natural systems, so important for our communities, but also for this incredible richness of life we have across California. We're one of 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world, which means we have more diversity of plants and animals and life than almost anywhere on planet Earth.

And we've done a really good job protecting that biodiversity. So a lot of our investments that we're proposing in this budget are really focused on nature based solutions that benefit both natural areas, fish and wildlife, and people, including $196 million. And this is funding through the Climate Bond.

$196 million for the Wildlife Conservation Board, 79 almost $80 million for our regional conservancies, our 10 state conservancies that do such important work, and then almost $10 million to continue the work and partnerships that we have with California Native American tribes.

If we think about land stewardship, environmental stewardship, supporting tribal leaders, protecting the environment, restoring the environment is not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, given that these communities have been caring for what we know as California for thousands of years.

So we're really excited with the progress on ancestral land return and co-stewardship, and we continue to propose to invest in that. And then lastly, parks and outdoor access. I think parks and getting outdoors is something that transcends geography, transcends ideology in California, something we're all committed to.

Thanks to your investments, we've made significant progress opening the first state park in over a decade at Dos Rios in the northern San Joaquin Valley. Expanding access into parks through really innovative ways, including providing park passes at local libraries that can be checked out for free, enabling free park passes for every fourth grader and their family.

I've said before, that's a park pass I took advantage of last year when my daughter went through fourth grade. And then automatically signing up those that are receiving food aid from the state to actually get into state parks and not letting cost be a barrier to getting needy families into state parks.

We propose to continue this progress through $286 million of Climate Bond funding, $190 million through state parks programs to continue to invest in new parks and open space in and across communities in California. Not just state parks, actually. These are a lot of these.

This funding would go into local park projects, which are really important for communities, particularly those that don't have a lot of open space right now. Almost $85 million to continue to address deferred maintenance at state parks. I know that's a major priority for the Chair.

We continue to chip away at the deferred maintenance backlog in our state parks. Yep. And I would say over the last several years, including during those General Fund surplus years, we made more progress than we made, I think, in two decades, getting after that, working to reduce that.

But we'll be completely candid, there's, as you point out, over a billion dollars of backlog in deferred maintenance in our parks. And that's things that your constituents, our constituents need like clean and safe restrooms, accessible trails, wildfire safe parks. So that continues to be a priority for us.

And then lastly, $11 million to enhance visitor access and get those projects done. I guess the last thing I would say is we've really held ourselves accountable for establishing very clear commitments within the executive branch around how we're going to make measurable progress on wildfire, water, these other priorities.

So all of these investments aim to continue to make measurable progress that we'll hold ourselves accountable for in coming years. The last thing I would say is just to thank this subcommittee. We have benefited from your, the priority that you put on these key needs and just thank you in advance for all your deliberation.

Lastly, I'll just thank the women and men behind me who are the department heads that are doing this work on a daily basis, as well as all of those non-governmental partners that you hear from who really make the case for these investments. So thank you, Chair.

Thank you. So you guys are going to give presentations?

Rachel Ehlers with the LAO. For your overview items on the agenda, we're just here for questions. We will have comments on the proposal items on your agenda.

Gotcha. Okay. And is it the same thing with Finance?

Yeah. Courtney Massengale, Department of Finance. No additional comments but available for questions.

Great. All right. Well, let's give the Members opportunities to ask questions, and we'll start with Senator McNerney and then go to Senator Blakespear.

Well, thank the Chair for holding a hearing here this morning. Secretary Crowfoot, I greatly appreciate your enthusiasm and your positive outlook here. It's needed. It's important right now. Our committee will be opining on how to expend money for the Prop 4 that has dedicated to offshore wind, the ports, especially the ports infrastructure.

In 2021, SB100 reports showed we will need 150 gigawatts. That's a heck of a lot of watts. Of new power by 2045 and it's likely to grow because of EVs and other electrical demands. We're going to need to put some of those resources out to sea, some of the generating resources out to sea. What can you tell us about how California is moving forward with offshore wind in the face of federal government opposition?

Well, appreciate the question. You know, one fact that I always share with people who don't do state energy on a regular basis is almost 2/3 of the electrons that we generate and we generated last year to power the fifth largest economy in the world come from carbon free sources. So we've made remarkable Progress. It's about 61-62%.

We are really focused on getting that number up in the next couple years during the Newsom Administration. But as you point out, there is a state law that requires 100% clean energy over the next 20 years. We have a plan, thanks to you all directing us through SB 100, to actually establish that.

And as I said, it needs to be a transition that's safe, reliable, and affordable. As you point out, offshore wind, because of the profile of that energy in terms of when the wind blows off the coast, is, and just the scale of that potential resource, is really important to our long term 100% clean energy goals. We continue to be focused on this. The good news is that federal leases were provided or signed and that there are companies that are actively working to develop these projects. So our focus is moving forward with these companies.

As recently as two weeks ago, there was a major convening in Long Beach where we brought together ports and these companies to identify what port upgrades will be needed and how can we help fund them in order to facilitate this. So I would say it's obviously a very dynamic situation with the federal government right now. I won't predict what it may or may not do on energy, clean energy, or offshore wind, but I can tell you our focus remains on achieving SB 100 and offshore wind being an important part of that.

Well, that's good and that's what I understand and expect. As I mentioned last week to the CEC in a hearing last week, we're still waiting for the $45 million in offshore wind ports funding that was authorized a couple of years ago. And the CEC falls under your jurisdiction. Can you give us some assurance that that money is going to be allocated in the near future?

Yeah, I can assure you we are very much working on allocating that funding. It exists in our budget and our expectation is to get it out the door to be able to fund those port upgrades.

Are you concerned, to change the subject somewhat, are you concerned about backfill for the Prop 4 money to to fill state budget holes?

It's a good question. So we are recommending or proposing 2.7 billion of the 10 billion be allocated in the next year. And I think the amount of backfill is 237 million, so less than 10%. I can defer the question to my colleague in the Department of Finance.

But I can tell you this, which is I'm proud that over 90% of this funding will be additive. I think what we've worked to do is only identify backfill and use Prop 4 funding for backfills where we think it's necessary and important. This is obviously a really challenging budget year for you all and the governor to navigate. So from my perspective, we've worked to limit the amount of proposed Climate Bond backfill, but we also recognize it's a legislative concern, really any backfill.

It is, and you'll continue to hear from us about that, I'm sure. Let's see, you talked about the investment in the levee maintenance. How much deferred maintenance are we dealing with here?

It's a great question and an important one in the delta, which I know you partially represent. So, you know, first things first, we need to continue to protect levees from catastrophic flood risk, you know, full stop. We've got some really interesting work happening to try to restore seasonal floodplains.

Think about like the Yolo Bypass, to create, to reduce the pressure downriver pressure on these levees. So they're important. Those are like a nature based solution. But we still have to do the traditional levee strengthening work. The answer around deferred maintenance gets a little complex because there's levees of federal responsibility, state responsibility, and local responsibility.

And so first and foremost, we have, you know, responsibility for those levees of state responsibility, but we also support those that have local responsibility. I'll defer to my colleagues at DWR to give you a quantified number on that because I just don't have that level of expertise. But I can tell you it's been a really important priority for our DWR director, Karla Nemeth, to continue to make investments. And so even in the down budget year, we're proposing additional investments into levee protection.

Well, as you understand, levee failure is a lot more expensive than maintenance. So we need to keep those levees well, and my constituents depend on that. A lot of my district is under sea level, so I need your help there. My last question, I promise, Mr. Chairman. The $50 million in demand side grid support, could you expand on that one a little bit?

Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to pull up my notes briefly on this one.

So as I know you know, but just for those who may be watching or in the room, demand side management is really important. The idea is being able to reduce demand during peak energy usage periods.

And so California has really been a world leader in a program we know as Flex Youx Power to ensure that people actually can, on a voluntary basis, can turn down their power. Think about their air conditioning or their lighting in periods of peak demand, which usually happen in the summer across California.

So that program is coordinated through the California Public Utilities Commission, but also the California Energy Commission. So this is a similar program. Flex your Power is a little bit, as I understand it, like a broader program.

This is establishing 500 megawatts, I should say as of 2024 this past year, over 500 megawatts of resources were enrolled in demand side grids. So in other words, we can actually, in those periods of peak demand, reduce energy usage by upwards of 500 megawatts, which is significant.

And so this proposes to continue that work and to build on that work. $50 million specifically to incentivize customers to reduce energy use and use backup generation during extreme weather events. So this involves actually utilizing state funding to provide a financial incentive to large energy users to ramp down their power during these extreme events.

That's good. I just want to ensure that there's a benefit to customers that are actually exercising Flex because as soon as you get the feeling that, yeah, I'm going to turn off air conditioner, I'm going to sweat it out and there's no benefit to me financially.

Absolutely. And particularly with large users of energy demand, these financial incentives are really important.

But does that. Just to follow up, does that. Are we extending that to regular folks?

Is that I'm going to refer or defer to the Energy Commission or somebody very specifically on the interaction of these organized financial incentives for larger energy producers and these sort of voluntary programs that we publicize during extreme heat events. I will tell you

But, what's the uptake I suppose, for those voluntary residential programs?

Well, I'll tell you this. Flex youx Power in these voluntary residential programs have been, have demonstrated effective energy reduction in the past. The challenge is if you, as you have, if you get too many Flex your Power alerts during the summer, that that essentially that enrollment or that participation starts to tail off.

The good news is last year, as a result of bringing on more battery storage, for example, even though we had some of the hottest, most challenging weather for our grid, we had no flex your power.

So the Fact is, what I would say at my level, which is a non expert, is these voluntary public participation programs are meaningful, but we're also focused on financial incentives for larger energy users to actually formally enroll in the system that then can provide more assured energy demand reduction during these peak periods.

Right, right. Which is the easiest thing to do. I mean, it makes total sense. But I guess I'm just following up on this, on Senator McNerney's good question, which I think is, you know, are we.

Presumably the uptick would be the efficacy, even with a number of incidents through a course of a summer, would be higher if people actually felt a financial benefit associated with compliance.

Yeah. So now we're certainly deeper than my expertise in terms of to what extent can you actually distribute financial incentives beyond, you know, large centralized energy users into, for example, home households? But I would, I will bring back that question to the CEC and have them respond to both of your offices.

I think we're really interested in it and I think we ought to consider it in the context of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund conversation as well, because there's such a climate benefit associated with not there's a grid benefit and there's a climate benefit.

I mean, the more the demand and the more the use during our high demand portions, the more we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel in a bad way from a climate perspective.

Last thing I say, I know there have been innovative, there have been innovative efforts to structure rates such that consumers like me and my family can opt into a rate whereby energy is lower during periods of Low demand and very high for periods of peak demand. So the rate structure as well. But I'll have somebody more expert than me circle back with you on this.

I don't know how. There's this new app on your iPhone, the home app, which shows when your energy in a particular place is cleaner or dirtier. I think they're using ISO data. I'm not totally sure, quite frankly, I'd love to find out. Maybe someone here knows.

But it's interesting because it doesn't always correlate to the 5 to 8, 4 to 9. There's times where they actually say, because that's just a rule of thumb, but it's dynamic. Some days there's more Sunday, some days there's more wind, some days there's more demand somewhere else on the grid.

And the more we can move toward a dynamic pricing system, there's a lot of people. I think with the ease of these apps now you can monitor and adjust accordingly and yet there's just not enough financial incentive associated with doing the right thing.

Yeah. Well, if we can achieve stronger reliability in a way that's more affordable and improves affordability, that addresses two key priorities at once, 100%.

I'd love that to be part of our broader budget conversation. I also think the GGRF conversation merits consideration there too, as you really think about affordability and environmental goals in the context of that reauthorization. Senator Blakespear.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I always like to hear from you and I'm grateful for the overview. I think one of the things that we're dealing with across the entire budget is just really the uncertainty of the federal budget and recognizing that there could be a lot of things very much at risk that are priorities for California.

So I wanted to know, you know, what you're doing in your Department that is responsive to or stress testing the budget, what you think is potentially at risk. And just to hear from you on that particular topic.

Yeah. Well, first of all, we're tracking both federal, sort of the Trump administration's freezing of funding that was already appropriated by Congress. And I will tell you there's, you know, as there is all over the country, significant funding that has been appropriated by Congress that's really important. For example, in the energy space that's currently frozen.

So we're tracking that dynamically. But you know, as others could could explain with more precision than me, there are tens of billions of dollars of funding that have been appropriated by Congress under federal law that are currently frozen.

Number one second is we're tracking closely the impacts of these abrupt massive layoffs on many shared priorities that we have with, with the Federal Government. So think wildfire protection with the cuts to the US Forest Service, these wildfire resilience projects, dam safety, water infrastructure, even parks.

You know, recent reports suggested over 4,000 campsites may, I mean, in the US Forest Service in California may close for the summer, which would put significantly higher demand on state parks. So this is all rolling out in real time.

The governor's office has directed each of the agencies to be tracking the funding that's been frozen, but also these impacts. So I share your observation that this is really dynamic.

And as you all continue to consider the budget, working with our Department of Finance, I know for our May revision, it will update the current fiscal situation from the perspective of the Executive branch, given these changes in Washington, D.C. and I anticipate significant changes to our state budget.

But I don't know if you'd have anything Else from the Department of Finance.

... Department of Finance. Nothing additional to add, but would just echo that we are continuing to very closely monitor how the federal impacts may change our state budget.

Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, you know, I'm asked, I think like my colleagues are all the time, like, what is California doing? And there's really a sense of alarm about it.

And I always tell people we're not able to backstop the Federal Government, you know, having a pared down response to some things that may become needs, that need more. Need more state resource. You know, there may be a lot of changes that are happening. I think hopefully we're able to continue to do the mission critical things right.

So recognizing that, that, that does require a dynamic prioritizing that maybe we haven't done with as much aggression because we haven't had to. And it won't be great, it'll be painful.

But I think making sure that we're doing that and prioritizing is important because I don't want us, and I know you know this, but to just stick our head in the sand and say, well, that's a federal problem, you know.

And so that leads to my next question, which is one of these Executive orders from the Governor suggested that the state should be hiring these very capable people who might be let go from the Federal Government. But we are reducing the number of positions and the amount of money and vacant positions. So how do those two reconcile? Where would these people get picked up into if we're cutting positions?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I'll speak for our agency. Across our agency, we have about 26,000 employees. So any given day or month, there are thousands of vacancies in our agency and across our agency.

I agree with your observation that, you know, this is not a time of programmatic expansion, but we've really focused on making cuts where needed as well as sweeping vacancies, which are a really important efficiency measure. So there's less. We're certainly not in a big programmatic expansion.

There's probably less vacancies than there have been during the height of those General Fund surpluses. But I can tell you that Today, for example, CAL FIRE is working to expand its firefighting force by 2,600 firefighters to address the work week issue that the Governor and Legislature partnered on.

Our state parks, for example, our state parks personnel always focused on trying to bring more, both experienced and junior folks into our state park system. So I can say with confidence that there continues to be opportunities for those that are laid off from the Federal Government.

And we're working to really demystify the state hiring process, which is kind of one of the governor's points, to help those that frankly, you know, had stable careers up until two or three weeks ago to really help them understand their options.

That's great. I think that that type of process improvement and reducing barriers to getting hired, we hear about this across the state government. And so, you know, spending some serious time on that I think is really valuable and important. So thank you for doing that.

And I think, you know, another one of the Executive orders I wanted to ask you about is that he, the Governor proclaimed a State of emergency on March 1 related to accelerating critical fuels reduction projects in the wild land urban interface and increasing the pace and scale of beneficial fire. And so I wonder if that is feasible to do and what you are doing to do that, like specifically, is that actually happening?

Yeah, great question. At the highest level, one thing that we're working to do, I think across government, but certainly in our agency, is to simplify processes that have become too complex. The climate crisis is requiring us to move quickly, whether it's creating new clean energy or getting these fuel breaks on the ground.

And the challenge is, through, you know, no one's fault, of no leader or, you know, group, over time we've created these calcified processes for getting things done that are really complex.

So we have the catastrophic wildfire risk on one hand, but yet we have this very complicated process to go through to get these life saving projects on the ground. The good news is we've made a lot of progress on that over the last five years. So we have, for example, a programmatic environmental impact Report or Programmatic EIR.

It's called the California Vegetation Treatment Program. And 20 million acres of land in California, which is 1/5 of California's land mass, is actually covered in this programmatic eir. So if you want to do a big landscape project, wildfire resilience project, you can actually tear off this programmatic eir.

And what used to take years to plan and prepare is now taking months. So there's good progress, but the Governor is demanding directing us to move even faster. So his recent emergency order actually builds on something we did back in 2019, shortly after he took office.

We took 35 emergency fuel breaks that would impact 200 of the most fire vulnerable communities and said we're waiving the processes that would normally be required, including ceqa, for example, and the California Endangered Species Act. And that's no small decision because we need to protect these landscapes.

But in its place, we're putting in place these best management practices. So these environmental requirements. And so fast forward, we've actually done that waiver process numerous times, both in the context of drought and even on debris removal when we need to move fast in post fire debris removal.

And so what we've created is this thing called the Environmental Protection Plan or the epp, which is this set of best management practices.

So I have confidence that very soon we'll be able to actually begin to enable projects that are initiated this year to get planned and permitted much more quickly than our traditional processes while abiding these critical management practices to protect the environment. That's really the charge from the Governor.

Okay, that's great. Yeah. I think, you know, as the chair of eq, the new chair of eq, I'm really happy to be on this Subcommitee with Senator Allen, who was the former chair of eq.

And there are a lot of things related to ceqa, CEQA exemptions, CEQA streamlining and wrestling with what we're doing about that in the state from a more of a systems level to make sure we're protecting the environment.

But we have a process that is actually able to be accomplished in a reasonable time, provides certainty, isn't hijacked by other interests. You know, these are all things that are. Or leveraged for different purposes. You know, these are all things that are really important policy.

So proposals from within, I think are very useful from the Executive branch to say this is how we'd like to see it and this is where we think we can go and where we can act more quickly. Just two final things.

So I'm very much a fan of our state parks and all of our parks, our federal parks, America's best idea. And I was a big supporter last year of the Bill that Assemblymember Bauer Cahan had, which modified how you make a reservation at a park.

Because we were seeing that they were very cheap to make a reservation and then people weren't filling them. And you'd have these campgrounds that were less than half full, but they have to be reserved until midnight in case someone comes. And of course, nobody is standing in line at midnight to go get that spot. Right.

So there were. And I, we have experienced that in my family that would camp all across the state. And it was very frustrating. So I was happy to see that reform.

And I hope that this was just last year, that it's being taken seriously, that there is some tracking, that there's an effort to have campgrounds be actually full to. Not just that on the reservation system, you know, and when they go like that at 6am when they open every six months, you know, that's kind. That's.

That's an issue. Right. It shows that there's a high demand. And then if we have vacancies, that's just. It's a systems failure. So that Bill, I followed it all the way through and I was a big supporter.

And I hope that it's taken seriously as reform by the agency because these are the kinds of things you can do on your own. And also just say that I. I think the state parks are really well maintained.

And in my district, the one that's closest to me that I walked through to go do the steps at the beach on every Sunday with a group of girlfriends is the San Elijo campground.

And they have five sets of steps that go up the coast there in Encinitas, and the steps get repaired quickly if they have a break. The campground is really clean. It's very old. You know, it's from the post war time, but it is maintained in a really good way.

And I frequently use the example of how well kept our state parks are when I'm talking about the litter abatement Subcommitee and the litter abatement issues we have, like on our Caltrans freeways and different places in the state that are just completely filled with litter.

And one of the things that I say is, you know, it's the same people who are using the freeways or using the city streets or using the campgrounds. And so, you know, blaming it on people. The litter problem is really not the case. I mean, there's a way that this can be managed.

And the fact that the state parks is doing such a good job of it, I think is a reflection of the good work. So I know there's a backlog of infrastructure projects and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get to those. But I also just want to applaud you for doing a really good job.

We can always improve things, but that's important to say out loud. And then I also just want to thank you for your focus on coastal resilience and the rail corridor, which is the second busiest in the nation that goes from San Diego to San Luis Obispo and continues to need attention.

So its natural resources and its transportation and its quality of life and its carbon reduction from people not driving. I mean, there are lots of benefits to that rail corridor that we need to continue to uplift it and prioritize it. And so I thank you for your attention to that.

Yeah, well, thank you. And that's definitely a shared priority. So let's stay close on that. I know that our departments and our Coastal Commission and Coastal Commission Executive directors here today are really focused on that, but where I can be helpful, let me know.

And 105% agree with you on the reservations and the reform that we have to do. I've been camping in state parks with, you know, for the last 30 years, and that was a point of frustration for me. So you have a, you have a partner, an ally in this.

I also want to share that our Director of State Parks is really focused on this. What I'll do, though, is take your question as a request for state parks to update you on the implementation of that, because I think we'll have a good progress to report and we need to be held accountable.

You know, I've got a couple, a lot of the same topics that Senator Blakespear was raising, but I've got some kind of additional thoughts and additional questions. Did you want to. Let me go to Senator Choi first and then I'll go on.

Thank you, Chair, and then also Secretary, for your presentation. You know, I'm learning a lot being new here in this natural resources matters. But the one area that I hear that you mentioned that you are right now investigating how to utilize the offshore energy generation.

And number one question is, is there any place that has been successfully implemented and we can use the same technology? That's number one question. Number two is that to my estimate, what I heard was that that is very questionable and very expensive and also environmentally it can disturb sea life.

And so I have a lot of doubt on that approach. But on the other hand, especially California residents with the benefit of a lot of sunshine, including myself, we utilize the solar panel. And as a result, only about a week ago, maybe my consultant, somebody fed me that information.

During the summertime and also daytime, we have excess energy that we don't know what to do with that. Are we selling it or is it true or not? Then the question is what can we do about it?

If that is true, which I tend to believe, then to me very common sense is that the state can encourage people like me. I knew the theory. I could buy 40,000, 50,000 energy storage, the battery, but it's too expensive.

Well, I would rather pay $300 more of not few hundred, but it'll be 20-30 more dollars for using the grid power at night rather than using my saved energy from the battery.

But if Collectively, so many people homes are equipped with the such battery devices and we capture the surplus energy during the daytime and used at nighttime, then we know what to do with that excess energy. And then also we don't have to investigate the questionable offshore energy device that you are talking about. Can you comment on that?

Absolutely. It's an excellent set of questions. So at the highest level, solar energy throughout the world has benefited from California's leadership. The California and Solar Incentive expanded the use of solar energy to help drive down the cost and actually create solar energy as a really Low cost energy source. Now oftentimes lower than natural gas.

It's fossil fuel sort of competitor. So that's good news. That's the cleanest energy you can find, correct? Yeah, it's great energy. The idea with the offshore wind actually from an energy profile is that it's really complementary because the wind off the coast kicks up and is strongest at night.

So when the sun goes down and we lose that solar energy, wind energy is a pollution free source of energy that really kind of kicks in at an effective time. You asked a question about where has this been done successfully throughout the world There is really good offshore wind that's already in place.

The largest producer of offshore wind now is China. It's by a factor of like a multiplied factor compared to anywhere else. It's doing it really effectively. In California we'll need that offshore wind to be floating because of the depth of our continental shelf. So this is going to be offshore wind that's 2025 miles off the coast.

So it's not going to have a visual, that visual impact that can be concerning to people, but it's in very deep waters. So we need to use floating offshore wind technology. And the good news is it is being utilized in different parts of the world. Most probably the closest parallel is Scotland.

So a lot of our energy experts have actually been over to Scotland to understand how the technology works and to regulate the technology. You make great points about the cost as well as the potential environmental impacts. So there's a lot of work within our agency to better understand what those impacts are on the environment.

Also fishing communities to really understand what are the negative impacts that would need to be avoided or minimized or mitigated. But then the cost too. How do we build this in? We have our energy transition to 100% clean energy, but it has to be affordable.

So there's been a lot of work over the last few years in the Legislature about how can we bring offshore wind in the most cost effective way. Possible.

I'll say on the solar side, you make a great point about the abundance of solar energy creates a situation that during certain times of the year and certain times of the day, we are what's called shedding energy, which is we have more energy than is needed.

And from my perspective, you're absolutely right about how do we integrate more energy storage to actually capture that energy for future use. California, compared to anywhere else in the world, has more large scale energy storage than anywhere else. We brought on 10 gigawatts of ton of large energy storage.

But the point you make about what we call distributed energy storage is really important as well. How can we incentivize those homes that have a solar panel to also get a power wall or a battery storage to actually be able to keep that energy for use later on?

That's an area that we are very supportive of continuing to explore with the Legislature and the California Public Utilities Commission. How do we actually incentivize that in ways that make sense?

The last point I'll make is there's important progress on regionalizing our grid across the west so that when we have excess energy, it can be used by other states and when they have excess energy that we need, it can be used by us.

There have been reasons why that hasn't advanced in the past, but it seems like there's a proposal now within the Legislature that may attract broad support that would enable more efficient grid across the west that will strengthen reliability and bring down cost.

Okay, thank you. Your explanation generates a couple more questions. Number one, regarding the offshore energy generation, the floating device, I think that is, even though 2030 miles away, you may not see this.

Aesthetic purposes, it may be good idea, but there are a lot of vessels floating and traveling in and out, and I am afraid that may cause danger for those vessels traveling over the water. So that's one area. And you also talked about the cost.

And my point is that rather than exploring and trying to pursue building the offshore generation, my focus, the key point was that the excess solar energy during the daytime and even wintertime, we have plenty suns, sun shines. And you said that you see many.

Many industries may use batteries, but my feeling is that I haven't done any study. But the individual homes with the solar panel, I doubt probably 80% of people may not have such battery energy storage facilities in their homes. So my question was if state could incentivize or supplement the cost just like we have done.

If you install a solar panel, we'll give you a tax deduction, tax credit, I think I haven't checked how much I benefited from it. Several $100, $1000. So we can do the same thing rather than installing questionable offshore energy devices. But the focus on energy storage devices and explore that route, that's one big question.

And my positive thought to that number two is that up until that time the energy overflow. When I produce more energy than I use during that peak time during the daytime, then I contribute my energy flows back. If I don't generate it, I use the grid power in the back and forth. So I get the credit.

So my bill is very low, much less than $100, which is really great. That I paid $40,000 for the solar panels was expensive, but I think I did a good choice. But I did not pursue the storage issue.

So if until that point a certain enough storage, individual storage is practiced, if too much energy is contributed to the grid instead of exporting to another state or I don't know, you burn the energy, I don't know technology how you handle that. Because what I understand is the power line has capacity unable to handle excessive energies.

So for those energies by the state, by or Edison Co. Can have a megastorage battery unit in desert area that can capture if up until all individuals store the excess energy during the day, during the nighttime, during the daytime, for nighttime use. So that's two big questions.

I think that's very beneficial rather than investing billions of dollars on the offshore energy generation.

Well, thank you. I'll just tell you excellent questions and I won't attempt to answer with the precision and expertise that some of my colleagues could at the Energy Commission.

So one thing I would recommend based on this is that we follow up proactively with your office just to answer some of these questions in writing and then offer we have some of what I consider to be the smartest people on these topics in the world to be able to sit down with you and talk about this.

We do want to maximize the use of battery storage, you know, centralized storage as well as distributed storage.

And I think the key question that people smarter than me can ask answer is, you know, what is the scale that we'll be able to achieve that we could model that we anticipate being able to achieve in terms of battery storage. And what amount of our energy needs will that, will that address?

My understanding is that we need so much energy, so much clean energy that it's an and not an or. We need to maximize storage and we need to bring on more wind. But like I said, we'll have somebody more expert.

Well, I'll have somebody more expert actually share numbers so you can understand our perspective in terms of what's needed, if that's fair.

Will the gentleman yield? Yeah, I just want to say that the need for electro. I mentioned what, 150 gigawatts. We need more than can be supplied by solar alone. So we're gonna need to look at all these sources, including offshore wind.

Yep. And that would be great. We would, we would be glad to spend time from the Energy Commission with you on what the, what the, what the plan is, what the pathway is to that. 100% clean.

Okay. So on this issue of the federal hiring, you know, obviously it is a strange, it's an understandable but somewhat mixed message as we're cutting and then talking about hiring federal folks. Though of course there's I'm sure some really great high expertise people that we could pick up. And the work doesn't end.

And the hiring process doesn't end. So how does it work in terms of your work with CalHR to identify the job openings per the, the Executive order? I think we're all trying to grapple with what exactly it means and how it will be rolled out.

Yeah. So every agency and really every Department sitting behind me has a set of vacancies. And the vast majority of positions in the state, as you know, are civil service positions. So they're positions that are insulated from the politics. So you have people like me who are political appointees, but we represent of tiny portion.

So that civil service system is deliberate and fair, but also complicated. And so to answer your question, Chair, if you go onto our website, we have a webpage that then connects into other departments with all of the vacancies that exist across our agency. So if somebody actually had the time and expertise, they could mine that.

What CALHR has done in the last three years is really try to simplify that process because there are certain areas where we have a real shortage of employees and I think that includes corrections and maybe some areas of transportation, but even in our agency, things like certain classifications within state parks.

So CalHR has, has leaned forward and has its own website in terms of how to provide an explanation of how one understands what positions are available and then applies. So I would say, as you know, you're asking for sort of an explanation of how we work with CalHR, we promote our openings through CalHR.

And then as they're doing these efforts to publicize this, they've done job fairs for example, throughout the state. They're highlighting these opportunities.

I'm also proud that our agency is the first one that has a career center that is open to anyone from outside of government that wants a job in government can actually organize an in person meeting or a virtual meeting with one of our HR professionals to just say, hey, I came from US Forest Service, I'm interested in opportunities that speak to my background as an environmental scientist.

And that person in the career center will help that unemployed individual from the Federal Government understand what opportunities exist. So I think to avoid complication, I'll say the key takeaway for us is highlighting that career center that actually people can organize an appointment with and simply begin that process of understanding what opportunities exist.

Okay, all right, thank you. Now, so one of.

So I think we're all, as I say, we're all trying to grapple with the implications of this EO, you know, and I read it and it almost, you know, I guess I'm wondering about the next item, of course, and we're going to ask you about it just because you're here.

I know you have to leave at the end of this item. The next item of course is about these efficiencies and all these cuts. And you know, I see that all these under resourced agencies are up, are up for cuts except for fire and one or two others.

But so how does the EO work in conjunction with this 8% efficiencies custom mandate. So I'm just for example, right. I think there's 190 vacant positions at DFW and you and I have spoken about how, you know, under their service based budget review showed that they were severely understaffed.

So we've got 190 vacant positions that are eliminated or proposed to be eliminated under the efficiencies cuts. So does the EO offer any relief? Does that mean that the departments that are senior A will be given at least some of the vacant positions back that have been proposed to be taken away? Or am I.

Are they not related from your perspective.

And share when you talk about the Executive Order, are you referring to the federal employees?

Ah, okay. Yeah. The thing that just came out on Monday that talked about, let's see it says ordered that, you know, there's language in here which speaks to ramping up the federal hires to fill in gaps on the state side. Yeah. So is there an interrelationship there that we should be thinking.

Thinking about? I really appreciate the question. The answer I would, would give you is no. The, the Executive Order that the Governor released earlier this week, you know, one was fundamentally about establishing a return to work of four days in the office or field. That's sort of the primary focus.

But then I think the, the Executive Order also talked about the potential to, for the state to hire federal employees that are now unemployed as a result of these abrupt firings. And so I have no awareness that there's a connection between, you know, essentially enabling federal unemployed folks to take advantage of new opportunities with efficiency cuts.

They really exist in isolation from one another. Okay.

All right. I suspected you'd say that, though I wish that weren't the case. Yeah. All right. Now, on fires, you know, one of the things that was a little, again, you know, trying to do a close read of some of these, of some of these EOs.

I mean, there was this March 2nd proclamation of a State of Emergency for wildfire preparedness and the need to expedite fuel reduction projects throughout the state. We spoke a little bit about it.

Now it, according to the wording of the order, only areas where wildfire risks are created by forest conditions, that was the language used, are subject to the order. So, which for me begs the question of whether it's the intent of the Governor to limit this order only to forested lands.

The answer is no. So forest is a term that I'll say just candidly, is outdated. We should really, you know, we are working to substitute forest for landscape. In other words, you know, there are fire prone landscapes, as you well know, in Southern California that are chaparral based. They're not anything that somebody would consider a forest.

So know that the goal is for the emergency order to speed up projects across the state where there is wildfire risk.

Okay, so, okay, so if the intent is to cover more than just the forested areas, along the lines of what you just described, is there, should we expect any amendments to the proclamation?

I don't believe that an amendment would be required. But I can tell you this. We are going to most likely next week be providing a virtual briefing specifically for practitioners, local governments, fire safe councils, resource conservation districts around how to actually advance projects within the, within this emergency order. And we'll be very clear to clarify that.

And I can tell you you know, having spent time, a lot of time in the beginning of 25 in your district there, you know, we envision utilizing this emergency order to benefit more public safety projects in your district.

For example, community defensible space projects, certain brush clearance projects that are important and need to be put in place as quickly as possible. We want to do that in a way, again, that has environmental safeguards to enable this work to happen as quickly as it needs to, but also in a way that, you know, doesn't.

Doesn't erode the health of the landscape.

Okay. All right.

So the other kind of broader concern about the order was on a potential sweeping language about exemption of environmental laws. And I wanted to, you know, one of the things that was mentioned is that the exemptions, the suspensions, have to be subject to approval by the relevant agencies.

And I wanted to get a sense of how these suspensions are going to work for CNRA as you review.

Yeah, it's a great question. So I'll say at the highest level, and I think it was pointed out, you know, we have a challenge across projects, whether they're clean energy projects or fire projects or sustainable water projects, where our processes to plan and permit these are really expensive and take a very long time.

And so I think part of what we're pushing up against are, you know, the need, the urgency to get these projects done, hence exemptions.

I can tell you that the way we've worked in the past with this framework is how I would anticipate that we do so here, which is that I, as Secretary, would only sign a waiver on the laws within our agency.

And then my colleague, Secretary Garcia at Cal EPA, if there is actually an agreement that those environmentally protective measures, what we've been calling best management practices, it's known in the emergency order as the Environmental Protection Plan, will actually be agreed to and abided.

So, in other words, this is not a waiver from CEQA or CESA, the Environmental Endangered Species Act, in which an entity can go in there and just do whatever they want to do without regard to the environment. Far from it. We are actively in real time finalizing these required best management practices.

So if you are a local conservancy, for example, in your district that wants to do a project, you don't have to go through a very long CEQA process or a permitting process for the Endangered Species Act, but you do actually have to very, very clearly understand the set of environmental requirements for your project and agree to abide those.

And it's only with that agreement that in My position, I would consider waiving those environmental permitting processes. Okay.

All right. Yeah, that's helpful to know, because I think all of us want to see broader infrastructural progress. But these rules are in place for a reason. And I guess I will say, as you go through this exercise, it would be interesting. Are there environmental laws that you find yourself continually being more tempted to waive and why?

And should we consider wholesale change so that we don't even have to go through this exercise for some, while protecting others? I'd certainly be interested in your feedback through that process.

Very open to providing that. And I'll also share that both the best management practices, as well as every project that we waive those permitting processes for will be publicly shared.

So we're actively building out a website that is not only the sort of explanation of how an entity can abide this emergency order and get the projects done, but what are the best management practices as well as what projects have received these waivers.

We're actively soliciting input as well, and we'll talk more about that on the briefing next week around ways that we can implement this in a fast way, but in an environmentally protective way as well.

Yeah, I appreciate this conversation. I mean, I think one of the things that's most pressing in my mind is that there are a lot of requests for CEQA exemptions because we've really been unable to move forward with CEQA reform for any number of reasons.

And so the issues around, like CEQA requiring mitigation, if there's a process that doesn't require mitigation, or I don't know if this does, you know, this process you're talking about. But if there is what sounds like what you're proposing is essentially a wholesale reform, which I think would be better than having so many exemptions.

And I do expect the exemptions to just. It'll be the exception that follows the rule because. Because people are sick of it. I mean, I think we've really come to see CEQA as such a barrier to getting the necessary projects off the ground.

And I mean, the permit streamlining Subcommitee that Assemblymember Wicks was running, you know, that report just came out yesterday, which I read most of, and, you know, there are just large examples of these barriers that we just need to do better. So I'm grateful to have a serious engagement on this from your office. And.

And I'm curious about any thoughts you have about that, because. And one of the things you're saying, they have to follow the rules, like, for Example, nesting season started in February. So like a project can't take place for six months. I would think of fire.

I think trees cannot be taken down just because the noise, even if there isn't a bird nesting in that tree, because the noise disturbs the birds next door. Right.

So some of those rules, it sounds like what you're saying, are still in effect, but it wouldn't take maybe five years to get the permit to be only able to work in the six month window.

Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say a couple things. One is you have Director Chuck Bonham from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife behind me, and he'll be testifying today.

And Fish and Wildlife is actually, you know, to me, a model of an entity that's really figured out ways to streamline, like to protect the environment, but to streamline permitting. We have an effort we call cutting green tape, which is helping, you know, environmentally beneficial restoration projects happen more quickly and cost effectively.

Chuck is really leading that work. So he can talk about this sort of, this nuance of how do you protect yet expedite as it relates to sort of wholesale changes. You know, we're very much, you know, all of our state Executive branch agencies, we're implementers.

So we would really look to our policymakers, our Legislature, our Governor about whether those laws would change. In the case of the emergency order, we're simply taking direction from the Governor to actually execute a different pathway.

I think it remains to be seen just what rules, you know, remain in effect through these best management practices and what get waived. And that's a challenge.

Like these seasonal surveys, for example, are a challenge because sometimes they delay a project for a year because you need to wait until a certain season to do a survey on an animal or plant. And that's important for environmental protection purposes.

But it also, we miss the point if that landscape, you know, burns down through catastrophic wildfire because we can't get the work done. So that's the balance we're really working to strike.

Okay, okay, let me go just delve in a bit on state parks issues and then I think we'll move on to the next panel. So, you know, you and I have spoken.

You referenced our conversations about the extent to which state Parks, this beloved agency that, you know, has been chronically underfunded, it's now facing, you know, $1.2 billion deferred maintenance backlog, as we discussed. But then even with the backlog, they're now, you know, subject to some of the same staffing cuts as other departments.

And it's interesting to see where we're slashing the most and not. And, you know, we've got. We know how underfunded they are, and yet we're kind of continuing to press them on cuts, you know, with a ferocity that we're not extending to other.

To all other departments, certainly some, which just, you know, makes it harder to hire and retain staff. It further erodes their ability to maintain the parks. So I want to kind of deep dive a little bit into this question.

If anything, we should be expanding their funding, given what we know about how underfunded they are vis a vis their mission. What the plan is to address the ever growing backlog. I know you talked about some progress that's been made. That's great. But what steps you're taking from the agency to prioritize funding for parks. I just.

This just seems. This proposal seems like a backward step given all that we know about the delta that exists with regards to them.

Yeah, I would say a few things. First, there are two departments within our agency that are largely reliant on General Fund that saw major cuts in the early 2000s. And as I understand it, their budgets have never fully recovered. And that is state parks and Department of Fish and Wildlife.

And both went through an extraordinary process called the service based budgeting process, which was in part recommended by our colleagues at the Department of Finance to really, at a very detailed level, understand what are the statutory obligations of these departments and how does the budget that's been provided match up to achieving those obligations.

And it's a remarkable process. It includes actually counting the amount of boxes of toilet paper used in a restroom in a specific state park. Like, that's the level of precision. And what it found is both state parks and Fish and Wildlife, you know, need more funding to actually fully achieve their mandate.

So I think it's important to be transparent about that and acknowledge that at the same time, you know, and as a result, we made big progress during General Fund surplus to make major investments into both of those departments.

So a good example for state parks is taking big chunks of deferred maintenance, you know, like big chunks of the backlog down. But to your point, we still have a lot, but large historic investments in deferred maintenance were made.

In the case of state parks, what Director bottom could tell you is important investments were made in capital infrastructure, including new boats. In some cases, Fish and Wildlife officers were on these really dated boats and actually getting. Using that General Fund surplus to update the equipment and facilities.

But now we're in a downtime or we're in a challenging budget. And so what Department of Finance has done, which I think is fair, is asked departments across the board to identify cuts.

And you did reference exemptions, including CAL FIRE, and those are public safety exemptions, because I think the Governor and the governor's office identified that really, public safety is probably the area that is most important in terms of restoring capacity or maintaining capacity. So.

But, yes, conceptually, yes, but the cost of some of their asks are so significant compared to the rather modest concerns that exist at this level that we just. We know is so chronically underfunded.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I sit before you as a champion of these two departments and, you know, making the case for, you know, building their capacity over time. At the same time, you know, we have a significant, you know, budget challenge. And so across our departments, we, you know, we've. We, you know, everyone's contributing. I would.

I would leave it to policymakers. And of course, that's this process over coming weeks and months to determine, you know, between the Legislature and the governor's office how to apportion those cuts.

But I can tell you that, you know, the effort to spread these cuts across departments was really based on a principle of everybody contributing to the budget solutions.

Yeah, totally. And I get it. I'm, you know, I'm in this world too. I just. It seems like it's been too easy to. To put them on the chopping block year after year. There's always been budget challenges. I mean, there's maybe one or two years where we suddenly had. We were a little flush.

But part of how we got to this place is that they've just. It's been an easy place to just shave off. Shave off. And next thing you know, we don't have basic services. And a lot of these parks are crumbling, and these are facilities that people really care a lot about.

And we seem to have outsourced a lot of the land acquisition to the conservancies, which actually gets me to my second question. You know, you and I, I know how much you care about 30 by 30. You know, there's a lot of folks that are really eager to work with state parks on land acquisition.

You know, so I saw that finally the department's hired a lead for real estate. Right. Something that they've not put any. They seem to be a little gun shy about in the past. So I'd love to get your sense about the agency's vision or your vision for them.

There's a vicious relationship here where the chronic underfunding seems to have eroded the culture of ambition in terms of expansion and new services. Because it's so hard for them to just take care of the existing mission because we keep cutting them. So then they don't want to grow, which I get.

I mean, I shudder to think the kind of conversations they have to have over there, but I'd love to get your sense of what this means and how we reverse this negative kind of vicious cycle with regards to parks.

Yeah. So I would say first of all, there are exciting things happening across California State Parks. I mentioned the newest state park, but there is innovation, creativity and some real groundbreaking things happening. So I register your concern around the overall budget and the budgetary challenges.

But I do want to lift up the incredible work happening in state parks. I want to give you one example. State Parks manages about 1.4 million acres of land. By definition, all of these lands are the original homelands of Native American communities in California. Yet there has never been any agreement around expanded tribal access or co stewardship.

In the last five years, thanks to Director Quintero and the leadership, 54% of the lands that are managed by state parks are now under some form of co stewardship agreements between California Native American tribes and state parks. So really interesting and important things happening. But I'll also, I share your passion around. We can't stop here.

We have 280 parks across our state, but we shouldn't stop here. There are tens of thousands of acres of acquisition acquisitions that could happen either adjacent to existing state parks or in some cases within like literally in holdings within state parks.

And I was meeting with our Director and our Chief Deputy just yesterday to try to quantify the amount of low cost acquisitions that we could make. Again, if you're talking about taking another chunk of land right next to a state park, you're not talking about standing up a whole other unit, etc.

Or taking an in holding in some cases can reduce the operational cost because you don't have to work around that private property. So in this case, just to be candid, it's about simplifying process.

Yeah.

And I shared, I shared some of the complex process that evolved over time. We're working with that new leader, Darla Gensler, in State Parks to actually simplify the process. Our leadership at State Parks wants to actually be able to take on those acquisitions.

But the transactional cost in terms of personnel and time and legal to actually get it done has simply been too high. There are remarkable non governmental partners these Land trusts, these conservancies that have gone out and purchased this land and conserved it on their own dime, philanthropic funding that now we're perfectly positioned to bring into state parks.

My commitment over the next couple of years to try to figure out administratively how we can simplify this. And I want to hold myself accountable for a shift in the paradigm of these acquisitions before I leave this role.

Yeah. And I invite you to work. If there's anything on the legislative side, it would be ridiculous for certainly environmental laws, but also others to get in the way of a parks purchase. You know, I mean, how counterintuitive. And yet we all know that happens sometimes.

So if there's any assistance we can provide to make life easier for them and less expensive for them to continue this sort of work, I think we're very interested. And then more broadly speaking, I guess I just want to, you know, I mean, board kind of Subcommitee chair to cabinet secretary.

You know, in the end of the day, it's up to us to give them to fight for them and prioritize them in the budget and provide more resources for them to do their mission so that they're not stuck with these terrible Sophie's choices.

And so I want to just kind of put out that call, you know, for us to try to figure out a way to get them better resourced through our collective positions in this budget process. Yeah, you have my commitment there. That is a high priority for me. Okay. I appreciate that very much, Mr.

Secretary, and appreciate your work, and you're always very informed presentations to our Legislature and all the work that you do. So thank you very much. And we're going to go on to item 11, which touches upon a number of these issues that we were talking about, these quote unquote efficiencies, which is a somewhat Orwellian term.

But Andrew March is here from finance assistant program, budget manager, and we'd love to hear your brief presentation, and then we're certainly going to have a number of questions.

Yes, good morning. Andrew March with the Department of Finance. So, speaking of efficiencies, I think the agenda does a nice job of laying it out, and there's already been some discussion today about it, which secretary Crawford did a nice job of articulating.

So I'll just have a brief presentation of sort of where we're at and what we're committed to providing to the Legislature over the coming weeks.

So the 2024 Budget act estimated the Administration could identify efficiencies in state government by eliminating approximately 10,000 vacant positions in 2025-26 and reducing state operations expenditures across all departments by 7.95% beginning in 24-25.

We worked with departments over the past few months, and those are the numbers that are presented in the agendas that was included in the Governor's budget.

We understand that we don't have the additional detail that the LAO has noted and that the agenda has noted, but this is a priority for the Administration and we are committed to providing this information within the coming weeks. Our goal is early April, if not sooner. Specifically for the departments that are here under the Subcommitee.

That's approximately $500 million in reductions, including $90 million of General Fund, which equates to about 925 positions or so. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or provide any more detail that may be necessary.

Thank you. All right. Yes, Senator Blakespear.

So I just want to make sure that it's totally clear that these are permanent staff reductions. Right. So if there's departments realize that they need some of the positions back, they would need to submit a new budget change proposal.

That's correct, yes. So the intent of the 2024 Budget act was to reduce vacant positions on an ongoing basis.

So this proposal implements the 2024-25 Budget act, which would reduce those on an ongoing basis should there need to be additional positions to bring those positions back or additional requests that would come through a budget check proposal in the future.

Okay. Okay. And then my understanding is that some of the positions that were swept were actually funded with fees. So, you know, that doesn't actually help the General Fund. And I think there were. There may have been. Yeah. So can you address that?

Yes. So specific to the vacant positions, the 10,000 vacant position number was agnostic of funds sourced. So there are positions that are being reduced that are funded by special funds. However, there are no positions that were funded by federal funds or bond funds that are being proposed for reduction. So there are some positions that are funded by fees.

We view it as an overall budget resiliency measure and being able to potentially reduce fees, which would. A topic of discussion that's constantly in this space is around affordability for Californians.

So to the extent that there are fees that could be reduced as a result of a reduction in vacant positions, and we would realize those over the coming years.

But would they be like, for example, if somebody is paying a parking fee and it's going to the parking enforcer? So that's a position that would be swept and eliminated, but the parking fee is the same.

Yeah. So, I mean, there are a number of fees that are set based on the annual budget for a Department. So there may be certain cases where a fee cannot be reduced, but then there are other cases where fees would fluctuate based on the amount appropriated by the Legislature.

Do you have any example of that?

Not this moment, because again, we haven't provided the specific detail by Fund, but once we do provide that additional detail by fund, we're more than happy to engage with your office.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'll just say from my experience in local government, there were not fees that if you cut a staff position, it would end up having the fee to the consumer go down. I can't envision anything where that was the case.

Yeah, there are a number of fees in the environmental space where there, based on the Legislature appropriates the funding and then the fees are set to meet that funding amount. So they fluctuate year to year.

Okay, so, okay, it might be a permit fee or something.

Sometimes permit fees or other. There are a number of fees in the environmental space that do that. Again, more than happy to.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, thank you. We're going to go back to you, but our LAO actually has a couple comments. Oh. oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah, great.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, Rachel Ehlers with the LAO again, you know, our office has put out a report specifically on this, which is most of which is in your agenda. So I won't go over all of the points and actually you all have raised some of them as well. But a few things to highlight here.

You know, this is something the Legislature agreed to as part of last year's budget with the understanding that there would be more detail coming before you to understand how it's being effectuated. And that's part of the detail that you're still lacking, which seems kind of technical, but actually we think is quite important.

First, just from the overall budget architecture perspective, how much savings is this actually generating? And if it is less than was assumed in last year's budget act, which it sounds like already it is, what does that mean for your overall General budget architecture? Where are you going to find those additional savings?

How much savings is actually being generated? So that level of detail you don't really have yet. You have a high level estimate, but that is going to be extremely important both for this budget but also on an ongoing basis. Are you going to need to find additional savings elsewhere?

The second is the programmatic impacts which have been elevated already today. What are the programs, the activities, the staffing that are specifically being reduced at different departments and are you comfortable with that? And if not, you may need to find additional savings elsewhere. But understanding what those programmatic impacts are going to be really important.

The third point, as Senator Blakespear mentioned, is the issue of special funds. If reductions are being made to positions funded by special funds, that doesn't have a direct impact on addressing your General Fund problem.

It could help potentially if you do special fund loans or shift programs onto freed up special funds, or you want to seek to reduce fees and service levels. But understanding that nuance, again is a really important part of your overall budget architecture discussions. And then finally, you have a number of new proposals before you for new positions.

Even in issue eight of your agenda, it includes 50 new positions. It's not on your agenda today, but the Air Resources Board is requesting 50 new positions at the same time, the proposal would reduce funding for them by 21 million for positions.

So in order to understand and weigh the merits of the new proposals before you, it's important to understand what's being reduced and how do you prioritize across those. We're certainly not suggesting you don't Fund newly implemented legislation, but you probably will want to think about the prioritization of that versus long standing activities that may be being reduced.

So again, it's great to hear the Administration is committed to providing this information soon and sooner than the May revision because that wouldn't be very much time. But we do think this is a pretty key part of not only your Department by Department decisions, but certainly the overall General Fund condition.

And as was raised this issue of adding new federal employees to well, where are we having new vacancies arise and what is being reduced? Again, key information for you.

No.

Well, thank you, Mr. March, for your work. Can't be easy to be identifying positions to be eliminated. And I'm really going to follow up on Senator Blakespeare's comment about special Fund positions. Eliminating special Fund positions may not have any benefit.

These are usually funded by applicants, such as businesses that want an agency to do something for them, such as deliver a permit or do environmental review. So eliminating those positions, you're eliminating positions as paid for by outside sources. And so how would this benefit the General Fund situation?

And if you want to take a crack at that, Mr. March, I'd appreciate it.

Yes, happy to. So again, so the vacant positions was specifically around identifying the 10,000 vacant positions. So again, it was agnostic of Fund source. Essentially, we're reducing we identified approximately 20,000 vacant positions last year. So the goal was to reduce the vacant positions by roughly half.

So that's generally what is reflected in the Governor's Budget is reducing departments positions by half. So to the extent that they are funded by special funds, and you would see those reductions. So again, it's not it wouldn't result in General Fund savings.

But overall, as far as as part of implementing the agreement from the 2024-25 Budget act, which was identifying these positions and those savings, the understanding was that all 10,000 positions were not part of the General Fund, that they were spread across all funds. And so this is what's before you as the implementation of what was agreed to.

And I could give you examples about how special Fund positions are proposed for elimination. Couldn't there be a little finer resolution on determining what positions are not special funds so that we can be a little more accurate in terms of what our estimates are?

Definitely. And that's what we're working on right now. And it's a priority of the Administration to provide this additional detail. And so it'll be coming and it'll be released in the coming weeks.

And then we look forward to having additional discussions on sort of what the amounts are for various special funds and what that looks like and where there may be areas where maybe the Legislature is not comfortable with certain reductions to special funds.

So again, I just want to reiterate, let's not cut positions that are paid for by outside sources because those positions are productive and it doesn't do any good to cut them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

But do you disagree with that? I mean, is there a. Because I understand obviously we need to be prudent. So I understand the need for searching out efficiencies. But if there's Literally no General Fund benefit. What is the plan with regards to these special funds positions?

So I mean, in the sense, it depends on the fee, right? So many different fees are different. There are, there are Fees, as Senator McNerney said, it's a direct fee for service. There are other fees.

You know, if you think about the State Water Board, the waste discharge permit Fund, which is based on the amount that's appropriated by the Legislature, then that would fluctuate based on the amount of the amount that's appropriated.

So to the extent that there are reductions in the 2526 Budget act that reduce vacant positions from that Fund and the associated funding, then the fees would follow.

So you'll be looking carefully for ways to have General Fund benefit.

The Although General Fund is a priority, the direction from the 2024-25 Budget act was to look at all funds.

Do you mind, Chair, if I just. Yeah, please. So it's, I mean, to me it sounds like the message that I'm receiving is that first of all, it's a number you're trying to meet based on a previous budget agreement.

But then also if the overall General idea is affordability, that if there are vacant positions in some areas, that somebody's permit fee might go down a bit if those positions are eliminated. So it's not just to help the General Fund, it's also just generally toward the goal of affordability. Gotcha.

And I guess so that's what I'm hearing you say, is that correct? Yeah, but I mean, I think the other point is like, for example, one of the things I feel like I hear a lot is that the Coastal Commission staff is understaffed and that they're trying to deal with a lot of permits and requests for permits.

And so if there is, if there are, the processing of permits more quickly is really important. So, you know, to the extent we're able to have more efficiencies and cut things where we can and simplify forms and processes and delays.

But you know, when you have like one of the things that I'm focused on right now is the difference between the amount of time it takes Caltrans to manage an encampment, a homeless encampment, on the Caltrans right of way, even in light of the Governor's Executive Order saying that he wants on state property there to.

This is an emergency, dammit. Act like it, the Governor said. And so. But the cities will respond in 48 hours and Caltrans can take up two months. So it's like if there are Vacancies like, you know, I want to make sure that there's appropriate staffing to do the job. And so we.

So having that really a much more laser focus on not just indiscriminate cutting, but specific cutting. To me, that's the thing that's most important in this oversight process is to say maybe there are whole areas that stand staffing can be eliminated because they aren't as. It's not our top priority anymore.

But there are a lot of things the state government does that need to be staffed appropriately in order to do the job.

And that's sort of the exercise that we went through in the fall and we're continuing to go through, which is one of the reasons why the number that was presented in the Governor's Budget is not the number that was agreed to in the 2024-25 Budget act, because we understood that there are areas where we can't make reductions, where it's not as.

Exactly.

Doesn't make sense. You know, one of the areas that was mentioned earlier was specifically around for response to the LA wildfires and CAL FIRE. So to the extent that there are other areas, that's something that we're more than happy to have conversations with, with the Legislature.

Yeah. I just think the hope is that it's going to be a really thoughtful process. You know, I could just sort of think about how you could throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. I mean, you.

You get rid of, you know, you get rid of personnel to do the work that helps to generate the revenue, for example, and then all of a sudden, you have less money to do the work, to help people deal with whatever it is, and that could impact their affordability.

So, you know, I just hope it's a, you know, it's a thoughtful process. You know, I think we all understand the need to reduce fees on folks and create more efficiencies, but I would hope that that would be the spirit with which this analysis will be carried out.

Yes, it's a collaborative process, as Secretary Crowfoot was saying earlier. And that's one of the reasons why it's taken us a little bit longer to provide the detailed information to the Legislature.

Okay. All right. So you're not. No chainsaws. Just careful, careful work. Okay. So one thing I wanted to get a better understanding of, part of the challenge I think you have here is that we just don't have a lot of information, and maybe you don't either.

And I understand it's early days, but it puts us in a tough position because without basic information about the approach harms our ability to do our true oversight and just make sure that our legislative priorities are being fulfilled. So, you know, we get it. You know, you're working on it. It's going to go through the spring.

But in the meantime, you know, do you, do you have a sense of. Is there a standardized process that Finance is trying to use with departments to achieve the identified efficiency savings? And, you know, I'm speaking writ large, not just the special funds issue, which is a real one, but a different one.

How are you going about this? I know there was a kind of across the board, 8% call, but obviously some departments are getting more or less. How are you going about that? Analysis and process.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think every Department is different and unique. You know, I'm not trying to be trite, but there are many different circumstances for each Department and we're working through that. I think the difference that you see with the amounts, you know, the 7.95amount was pretty standard.

But the vacancies, every Department had a different level of vacancies and those vacancies may have been different positions, different classifications. So that was, that's, I think, generally where you see different variations. And as noted in the agenda, there are different overall percentages that affect different departments.

But isn't it. I mean, I totally get, I get how it's easier to make these decisions based on vacancies. Right. Because there's not someone in the job. But that doesn't, you know, sometimes it's because, I mean, just because a position is vacant, it doesn't mean the positions are necessary to implement the law.

It's just harder to fill. Or maybe, maybe someone. Lee left and there's a new position that was approved in the last budget. So how.

Yes.

Yeah, so, I mean, that was one of the goals with, you know, eliminating half the vacancies. But then even within that, there is further refinement and reflection that we're going through through to make sure that departments are able to meet their critical mission tasks and then without reducing any services to the public.

Yeah. All right, look, I mean, it's hard work and you know, I mean, and I appreciate the need for this. It's always difficult, it's always painful. But obviously, you know, there's a particular model for cuts that we are seeing play out in a really messy way in Washington.

I know obviously that that's not the, the plan of the goal here, but obviously we're going to be wanting to work closely as this process proceeds to Ensure that, you know, that our needs are continuing to be met and that we're being careful, not taking the easy way out and really being thoughtful about it.

Do you want to just to highlight that the budget agreement included 2.2 billion from this in the current year 24-25. So to the degree that the savings don't materialize or the Legislature's not comfortable with them, that that does create a hole in the budget already that you're moving forward along with the ongoing piece.

So, you know, as you noted, Mr. Chair, it may be early days in terms of the information we're getting, but it's sort of late days in terms of the current budget year, of which this was a piece of the budget puzzle.

Right. And part of the concern, I think, is that we've got, you know, it seems like a rather opaque process within the Administration. How much did departments stand up for themselves? Does it depend on political juice? I mean, you know, I mean, for example, we're looking at, you know, We've talked about CDFW.

You know, there's an 8% or 7.95% guidance, and yet they're looking at a 13% funding cut with 190 positions eliminated. Right. Coastal Commission, I think, was looking at 13.4.

You know, everyone's mad at the Coastal Commission, but one of the big problems that we keep talking about is that they don't have the staff to do the work to fulfill their mission under the Coastal Act, which then slows things down and gets people more angry. So.

And yet now we're talking about cutting them, you know, an additional 13.5%, which will make it even harder for them to do the work that they're mandated under. Not, you know, voter approved initiative. Right. Not just the Legislature.

We're looking to cut in the parks by 172 positions, in spite of all we know that we discussed earlier about their chronic underfunding. So I'm trying to grapple with this and I want to get a better sense of what factors departments were told to consider when deciding these cuts.

And I do, I can't help but feel as though, well, yeah, I'd like to get your insights into.

Yeah. So I think first to the percentages that are displayed in the agenda. It's a combination of the vacancy reductions and the 7.95%, which is why you're seeing sort of that 13% number because, you know, the amount of reductions associated with the vacant positions that was separate from the 7.95%.

That doesn't mean the work. Just because the vacancies are part of that efficiency call, it doesn't mean the work is reduced.

That's correct. And so I think the notion was that these positions were vacant, they weren't doing the work. Notice we're not reducing all of the vacancies that a Department had. So the thought last year with the budget agreement was that reducing by half of the vacancies provided departments enough flexibility to continue to meet their need.

And every Department was different. You know, various departments are under agencies, some are not. In the case that the Department was under an agency, they worked with their agency to identify the level of reductions that the Department.

Okay, but so given what we know about the service based budgeting process review that CDFW went through, for example, and I'm sure we'll get to talk to Chuck about this in a little, in a second, but you're calling for 190 eliminations over there. Do those two.

Does what we know about the chronic underfunding of the Department square with the process you've gone through? I mean, do you feel confident about the exercise you've gone through to eliminate?

Yeah, I think, as Secretary Crofut noted earlier, that across the board that everyone in state government, every Department had a role to play.

And so this wasn't singling out certain departments and they're, you know, to the extent that the Legislature, as LAO noted, is uncomfortable with reductions to a Department, then that means that those savings that reduces the General.

Some folks are getting increases.

I think in various departments there are proposals, there are budget change proposals that are included in the Governor's Budget. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll look forward to the conversation with Chuck.

But yeah, Rachel, just the last point I'd make is kind of level setting. It's probably not realistic to assume that you can get 2.8 billion in ongoing savings without some programmatic impacts. Right. And so understanding the trade offs and where those are is going to be, again, just a key piece of information.

I think the goal was that there would be some efficiencies and sweeps and vacancies and hopefully try and minimize the kind of programmatic impacts and see where we, you know, that's the goal of the word efficiency is hopefully to do the same amount of work, but better and quicker and with fewer resources.

But I think it's probably an important part of the kind of level setting that there probably will be some programmatic impacts and so figuring out which ones you are most comfortable with in these difficult times.

Could I ask one more Follow up question. So is there flexibility for a Department head to say, hey, I'd rather meet the goal this way? So these positions are vacant and they need to be filled. This is critical to our mission. But here are other places where I would like to eliminate.

The process was unique for each Department as far as what the Department identified. So there could have been situations where, you know, it was a point in time exercise that, you know, the 20,000 vacant positions was point in time. So that changes throughout the year. As far as where we are now, certain positions are not vacant.

So departments had flexibility to meet the, you know, the reduction amounts through various strategies, especially the 7.95% efficiency reductions. There are many strategies that were identified. There was a budget letter that was released to departments that identified various strategies that they could meet in order to. Or could use in order to do that.

They didn't include layoffs or any firings of employees. So there were certain options, including hiring freezes, may have been used by certain departments over the course of the current year.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Marsh, and welcome to your month. Thanks. But I, you know, and I do, I do appreciate the difficulty of your job. And look, there's a lot of benefits that will accrue to our General Fund and to ratepayers potentially through the work that you're doing. We just.

Obviously, it's our job to ensure that this is being done in a careful, thoughtful manner that doesn't leave in the lurch a lot of really important governmental services and priorities. So appreciate that. And speaking of which, let's go. Let's move on to item 121 of our important and underfunded departments. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that's true.

This is my birthday month. So I, like. That is a dad joke. That's true. That was my dad joke for the. At least for the next. Yeah, right. Yeah. See, yeah, I'm playing to the demographic. It's well represented in the crowd here.

All right, so item 12, we're going to turn to you, Director Bonham, for an overview of the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Thank you, Chair and Subcommitee Members. It is true. My name is Chuck Bonham, and I am the Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which most days I still think is the greatest job in the world.

And what I'd like to do in a few brief moments is introduce myself and our Department, talk about facts, give you context, tell you why we find joy in our mission at the Department, and then explain a process we've gone through. That we hope earns trust in all directions.

So I have a handout that the Sergeant of arms has shared. I'll get that to that last in my presentation. I've been doing this job for 14 years now, which makes me the longest serving Director in state history. Here are the facts.

If you look at our Department, just in the snapshot of this fiscal year 2025 through 26, we are a $774 million State Budget Department. It is a mix of state federal bond sources. We have 60 Fund sources, 56 special funds.

And within one of our core accounts, the Fish and Game Preservation Fund, we actually have another 29 dedicated accounts. I think your budget staff might say, and perhaps our Department of Finance colleagues might concur. One of the most complicated budget structures amongst all departments.

And in part, in a moment, I'll explain why, I think why we're 3,200 total positions, 2,835 permanent, about 385 temporary. And within that 3,200 number, we actually have over 500 law enforcement officers. So these men and women are on the front line.

They're as qualified as your California hideaway patrol or your sheriff's office, but even more because they are leading experts in the nation on wildlife crimes, pollution crimes enforcement across the state. Here's the context. If I had to leave you with one word about our Department, it's diversity and a strong lean forward into that word.

Bear with me for a moment. Here's why. Think about our people in California, the large population and the diversity across that population. It's beautiful. It's part of who we are. A diversity of People today in 2025 actually stands on diversity that began at the beginning of time.

So if you think about what we now call the Golden State, way back when, before all of our predecessors, this part of the world had the highest diversity of indigenous people, dialects, languages, governments, commerce. So the diversity of people has existed from the beginning of time and carried forward to today.

Economic diversity, fifth biggest economy in the world. Let's get to fourth. Let's get to third. And it's expressed in the Hollywood Hills sign. The aerospace industry, an agricultural community that feeds the nation and the world. The Internet and technology, rural landscapes to urban landscapes. That people diversity and that economic diversity stands on top of natural diversity.

Nature, that natural diversity in California itself is unrivaled. As Secretary Crowfoot mentioned, We're one of 36 globally important biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity is just a fancy scientific name for number of animals and plants. Turns out we have more types of animals and plants than any other state in these great United States.

We actually have more types of plants that are found in California, that are found nowhere else in the world than all the other 47 continental United States combined. And it makes sense.

The highest and lowest point in America on the continent are here within the state, within 80 miles of each other, each of which is 200 miles from the coastline. We have the Mediterranean climate, one of only a few places in the world that have that.

An 1100 mile coastline, an amazing ocean, California Current, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 5,000 lakes. That natural diversity stands as the foundation for that economic diversity and what our people diversity over time have loved and steward. Which brings us to our mission. So you've heard facts, you've heard context.

Here's our mission in plain language and why it's so joyful. You're looking at your Department, who's charged with saving nature across the State of California. That's our job. That's our mission. We save it for people, whether you enjoy it and observe it, whether you hunt and fish.

We save it for the economy because it drives so many functions of our economic engines. We save it for its own intrinsic value. It has worth than just being so. Those are facts. That's context. That's our mission. Let me walk you quickly through the trust part that we've worked hard at.

You have a series of slides in front of you. Those slides are publicly available. We're a very old institution. We trace our roots to the California Constitution which created the Board of Fish Commissioners. It's over 150 years ago. We do today the same thing our predecessors did then.

We help people understand how many fish they can catch, how many birds they can hunt. And we bust the bad actors that poach. But we do things today that no one could have conceived of 150 years ago. We are the home of the state's oil spill prevention and response entity. Knock on wood.

Osper deals with oil spills in the state. You've been talking about state parks, a fair amount today, you may not know. We own 1 million acres in California, almost as much as state parks, 750 properties, including in downtown LA. We do vast landscape scale conservation. We're in the middle of cannabis legalization and regulation.

We manage 250 fisheries in the ocean. And Senators, you've been talking a lot about permitting. If I had known, I might have declined the invitation from Governor Brown when first offered the job. You can't build anything in California without a permit from our Department because There are animals and plants everywhere you look.

I don't think there's a single person in this state alive right now who does more permitting dispute resolution than me. I don't wear it as a badge of honor, but rather there is a way through this dynamic on the permitting front to get where we need our society to be. I'd be glad to talk about that.

So we're old. Your agenda on page 29 says, Since 2001, the Legislature has given us 400 more laws to implement in a quarter of a century. We started a massive process in 2017. We convened all of our communities and we have one of the craziest constituent bases of any Department.

From our legitimate animal rights communities, to our hunting communities, to counties in LA, to the Modoc Plateau Native American tribes, everything in between. We sat everyone down. We talked about what the Department had been, what it is and what it wants to be.

In 2018, this body, the Legislature, instructed me in statute to take our Department through a service based budgeting exercise. You gave us the funding. We hired Deloitte, the national leader in this space, as a consultant. We involved finance staff, your Committee staff, all of our public, and we did it in two years. What is it?

You sit down, you define what your core values and missions are. You bench that work against every mandate you've been given. You understand the tasks necessary to achieve the mandates. You end up with a data driven tool and inventory. To pick an example used earlier, those million acres we manage, they're available for public use and enjoyment.

How do you ensure public use and enjoyment? You need a clean toilet. How many hours per week will staff spend cleaning a toilet at a facility? You calculate that at a labor hour level.

We end up with a spreadsheet that rosters 2,800 plus tasks and it generates how much work is being done benchmarked against the assignments you've been given. Bottom line up front. When we completed this over two years of work, the data clearly shows the Department across these core areas is underfunded by 3X.

We've been open and transparent about that ever since. We update the information annually. Every five years, we review the workload metrics compared to the mandate metrics. What I handed out to you just now is the most recent data, I believe fiscal year 2324 across everything. Good news that X underfunding is down to 2.6.

You can see where it shows up in different core areas. But here's the art of it. There are many ways in which you can cover that gap. Sure. Positions is one of them. But there are other ways as well. And we've been not sitting on our duff.

We've been active in large part because of Secretary Crowfoot and Governor Newsom's leadership and support. You can look at old law and ask yourself, is that law that's 75 years old relevant anymore? Unlike any other agency I'm aware of, we've just completed a lengthy California law review Commission process to assess the entire fishing game code.

It didn't even have a definition section. It was basically one long run on sentence from page one to page 3,000. So we've reformed the whole code structurally and it's allowed us to occasionally say, this law within this broad consensus, get rid of it. You can also achieve efficiencies through technology.

So as a for instance, and a budget change proposal component in front of you for this cycle, get this, Senators of those 250 fisheries we manage in the ocean, the people that make a hard working living commercially, they still record their data on paper logbooks. It's 2025.

We have a proposal in front of you to convert all of that to electronic data, which then allows us to do resource management on an hourly basis, not a quarterly basis. And then that produces efficiencies which show up in this data exercise. But you can also achieve efficiencies through capital investment. Your leadership and the governors.

We took some of the surplus and we bought a new patrol boat. We christened it. It's called the Barracuda. We have it in Half Moon Bay. I got to break the champagne over the bow, which was pretty cool. But even more interestingly, they let me drive loops around Alcatraz in it. Here's how it saves efficiencies.

We built it with a broader deck in the back so that when these vessels are patrolling MPAs and picking up derelict fishing gear, they can put more of that abandoned gear on the deck and reduce the trips they have to go back and forth to refuel on efficiency.

We think we've worked hard to earn trust through the service based budgeting process. We find great joy in our mission to save nation, save nature in California. Our context is important and I've presented our facts about our budget for this year. That's a little bit of the Department. I'd be glad to take any questions you might have.

Great, thank you and apologies. I had a urgent issue with the pro tem I need to talk about. Okay, let's open up to questions. Thoughts from. Well, and by the way, thank you for your service was 17 years.

Don't make it longer than it has to, it's 14.

14 years. Okay. No, but seriously, we know how much you put your heart and soul into this work and we very much appreciate it.

Yes, thank you, Director. And it's nice to meet you in this context. My husband's actually a volunteer with Fish and Wildlife, the San Diego office. And he goes on Fridays for half a day and he wears a uniform and he's a former federal park Ranger. So from earlier in his career.

Thank you, Senator.

So he answers calls about coyote management and he goes out occasionally on patrol related to different things related to fish and things. So anyway, I do really appreciate what your Department does and hear about it at that very ground level. But it's on the volunteer side, so it's much less about the official work.

I think my biggest question is really goes to what you didn't say, which is you talked about how important your Department is and how long standing it is and its roots in the history of our state. But what does this current budget mean to you? I mean, yeah, it's 6 to 7% of the Department, 190 positions.

So what does that mean to you? Can you just offer something that.

Yeah, it means a lot. In my experience, at any given moment in the journey, there can be ups and there can be downs. And for me personally, what I'm trying to judge for the department is over the arc of a longer time frame, are we consistently on an upward. And the answer to that is affirmatively yes.

We are so much more sustainable, transparent, better prepared for the future than we were 15 years ago, as is the state budget overall. In my experience. When I started at the end of the Schwarzenegger Administration, the first assignment I was given as I came into my very first budget cycle.

Who are you going to terminate at the position level? So actual cut related to person in existing position. That's not where we are today. That was the word too. Yeah. Second dad joke that we are not in that spot. And the overall state dynamic is much more improved too because of Yalls leadership. You know why?

Rainy Day Fund, buffer, all that thing. So we are on an upward trend. Even if this year is a downtick, it is still an overall uptick uptrend that I'm confident and excited about. I think I'm also optimistic about our Department because we've proved when there's the moment to invest in us, we can return on that investment.

So we feel very well positioned for when we can have the opportunity to grow again because we've done Our homework, unlike a lot of others. Will it be difficult? Absolutely. It will be, because the work pressure won't change, whether it's energy or housing or transportation.

Thinking only about the permitting perspective or whether it's the dynamic of human wildlife conflict and animals and people having tensions. If you're in Tahoe or in your area around coyotes, that's not going to change. But we are also part of an Administration, and when it is times of austerity, we're going to tighten our belt and follow instruction.

Okay. Yeah. And I think you probably were listening to the testimony before and the commentary from the Committee. And I just want to emphasize that it is really important that we're continuing to figure out how to process permits more quickly.

I have received a fair number from my eight years in local government of complaints about getting through the Department and responsiveness and timeliness. And so I just also emphasize the need for us to continue with process improvements there.

I couldn't agree more, and I'll illustrate a couple of examples of how we've done that. Just thinking in the restoration space, there's a legitimate biodiversity crisis across the globe here in California. It's true too, particularly when you think about loss of habitat. How do you cure that? You restore habitat.

Typically, our programs and staff on Monday might be interfacing with a housing project or an energy project, and on Tuesday they interface with the stream restoration project. Historically, they brought a similar regulator perspective over to the project, which is much pure in sense, if you will, with not impact and entirely designed for benefit.

But it was hard for our culture to divorce the distinction. So we created a cutting the green tape program. And just in the last fiscal year, using new permit authority, consolidated permits, and I had to assign my firstborn to the Legislature to achieve the statutory exemption, or CEQA, for restoration projects.

There were many skeptics, but we do them for stadiums. And our argument was, why not for restoration?

So in the last fiscal year, we accelerated permitting and review for 180 restoration projects that enhanced 42,000 acres, 5 million acres of landscape, terrestrial habitats, reconnected 95 stream miles, saving the applicants $4 million and shrinking the processing time down to 46 days. We can replicate that.

So we've also, and I am at risk of triggering the Chair, pushing permitting reform that's never been done before. Two summers ago, Senate Bill 147 rethought how we handle fully protected species, which had been a barrier to permitting.

Two summers ago, the Legislature and the Governor signed the Western Joshua Tree Conservation act, our first ever across 4 million acres in lieu fee payment program for an endangered species. So there is progress being done. I looked at Mrs. Wick's recent report and she's my Assembly Member.

While we were, you know, at the earlier items, I have it printed to read and at the beginning of each of the core areas she's mentioning, you will see an emphasis on the application process. And the application process alone can be handled both by the applicant and the reviewer in a way to shrink timeline and costs.

But it's a two way street in my experience. And what I found unfortunate in the report was amongst all the quotes about the problem or solution, there was not a single quote from a regulator.

I think we need to de escalate this space of permitting efficiencies and create a space where us as the regulators feel welcomed in it because we practice this day in and day out and we know there's improvement that can be made and we look forward to that.

Yeah, I mean, I'll agree with you and that's one of the reasons I posed that question to Secretary Crowfoot is to recognize that this is work you're doing every day and you have a lot of insights into it.

And when you put your mind to how can we achieve this goal, this efficiency goal, this reduction in time goal. And I think from my many conversations about efficiencies and getting through the governmental process, there is a tendency for both sides to blame the other, for regulators to blame the applicant, for the applicant to blame the government.

But you know, and obviously there are shades of truth in everything, so. But it is, I mean, I do think it's something we need to take very seriously.

I think it is slowing down projects that are important and that we, the regulator side has a very serious role in being at the table and asking the right questions and flagging this is going to be an issue and, and so, you know, all of that needs to be taking place up front in ways that it's just not right now.

I concur and I'm worried. Here's why I want this state to continue to lead the world on meeting its energy goals. If you look at the calculations of what we need to do, it runs straight through my department for permanent. I look at unhoused humans and believe it's a human tragedy that society hasn't found a better way.

So we need to build housing to do that comes through our Department. I look at our infrastructure and transportation grids and I worry about iconic species like mountain lions in the Santa Monica mountains who, who are regularly hit by cars or our freeways, going through coastal estuaries, which are our last best remaining salmon rearing nurseries.

And know that because of climate disruption, we need to modernize our transportation, including the rail systems that are front and Center for you and your region. It goes through our Department. So I'm worried about the responsibility on our shoulder. I share the frustration the average citizen has why can't good things happen faster?

And I know that efficiencies and permit reform is an important focus.

Thank you, Senator McNerney.

Director Bonham, thank you for your hard work and civil service. Thank you. Appreciate that. I clearly see how solemn you feel this job is and your dedication to achieving that goal.

One thing I heard several years ago was that the loss of biodiversity is accelerating worldwide and that there's very few, if any, biosystems that are accepted from that. Do you agree with that statement?

I do. And to a lesser degree, that paradox plays out here in our great state. So on one hand, you heard me a moment ago describing our natural wealth, which is extremely true. The highest number of species, the rareness of them. But unfortunately, we also kind of lead the nation in imperiled species, those that are under threat.

But there are things that can be done. So let me give you a quick, hopeful story. When you're looking at infrastructure, sometimes you can modernize it and fix it. Most infrastructure is remaining used and useful for people.

But occasionally some infrastructure, even the private property owner of it will realize is outdated, defunct, a safety risk, not economically viable. We just completed the world's largest dam removal restoration project in the Klamath River at the end of last year. For 100 plus years, salmon had been lost in the basin, including for Native American tribes.

And our scientists were telling us once you take down these four really large dams, restoration observable from space, it might take about 10 years for salmon to come back. Within 10 days, we saw them swimming past the lowest, most former dam site.

And as of this year, 230 miles from the i5 moment on Klamath River, 230 miles upstream in Oregon, Spencer Creek. We've counted almost 200 fall run Chinook salmon. They haven't been there in over a century. Within 10 weeks after we dealt with old infrastructure. So there's great hope within this fight to save our biodiversity. Often we just have to give Mother Nature a chance.

Well, that's hopeful. Thank you. The chart on page 23 of your handout shows some significant gaps in the capabilities of the Department to meet its mission. Meanwhile, there's asking to propose cutting staff Members even further than they already are, deficient in which several of those are special funds, which I've already railed about this morning.

And I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I'm concerned that that's not a very good way to use our resources. What are the anticipated effects of the programs and services? If the cuts that are proposed are implemented?

We will continue to work day and night around the clock to meet the services expected of the Department. It might be Harder, but we'll make it work.

I think, in the handout I presented what will show up in the most recent data set, which you're seeing, and also shows up in the original data set back in 2019. A couple of areas are the most like under capacity and they tend to be the species conservation work and the environmental permitting work.

That's often the harder work to Fund and in the permitting space. I personally hope I don't ever have to really go through it much, but when you seek to raise fees on people, you can expect a very difficult conversation. That's been true in my experience in fee based programs.

But I will also say, looking at the older slide data and the current, we have actually seen some improvements like we've shrunk our gap, if you will, and administrative support. We've shrunk it a touch in permitting and environmental protection. We've shrunk it a fair amount in operational support.

We've been pretty stable in law enforcement, but it's gotten worse. In a couple of the other columns you're seeing outreach and education, public use and enjoyment around our lands. I'm just really grateful we have the tool because in prior years my predecessors or staff would just show up and say something.

We have these 60 funds and 29 dedicated accounts in part because our constituents never trusted us historically. And they'd ask to have a fund for pigs, a fund for ducks, a fund for 1600 fees because they wanted to see how every dollar was spent. I think this kind of tool helps us deal with those concerns.

I'm going to go parochial on you here. I have quite a bit of the Delta in my district and I'm worried about how ongoing work there is going to be affected. Yes. How do you think that will affect the Bay Delta Regional Office specifically?

It can't because it's mission critical work we do on the biological front that as you know, also factors into the water supply management decision front. That's a core component of our economic engine and livelihood for both people in the special place of the Delta and the millions of people in Southern California. So it can't affect it.

I am worried on the federal front in that we do a lot of work that's scientific collection and gathering that has a contractual funding relationship with sister federal agencies. And as Secretary Crowfoot mentioned, we're in the middle of analyzing, assessing, determining whether that's stable or at risk.

Well, in the delta specifically, we have. The invasive species are a critical issue for the indigenous species. Yes. One of the things I want to talk about is the big rat, Nutria. Nutria.

Rodents of unusually large size.

Now, are people going to have to get permits to shoot those things, destroy those things?

No. So we. I don't have those statistics at my fingertips, Senator, but I can follow up this afternoon. We're probably four or five years in a program that this Legislature has financially supported us in doing. And I can quantify how many people I've put on this, how many nutrients we've trapped and how many we've eradicated.

And it has to happen and we have to keep doing it and we have to get that number as close to zero as we can.

Sorry. So was his question answered? Do you have to get a permit to shoot this rat?

No.

No. Okay.

Do they taste good?

The Federal Government has just started a campaign to persuade people to eat them.

Really?

And that's also a core strategy that the State of Louisiana does use. Enticing people to eat them.

Tastes like chicken?

Is this something that's an emerging threat? It's coming from South America?

Yes, but. So there's a period in the 70s and 60s, was it present in the state. Our Department at that time thought we eradicated it. Somebody somehow somewhere brought them back. And for about 10 years we could see this start. We built a program. We're in the middle of trying to eradicate them again.

So if you're a water manager, definitely a risk. You have levy and other infrastructure, they burrow. But if you're a habitat lover. We're trying to restore one of the world's greatest wetland mosaics. These animals eat that in a way that just takes back all your gains on restoration.

All right. We're going to do a hunting expedition. Okay. I just want to do a little bit more of a deep dive on the service based budgeting kind of an update, I guess. This report came out in 2021. There hasn't been a lot of.

I'd love to get just an update from you in terms of the progress made on some of these gaps. Particularly the two most striking were on permitting and environmental protection and then species and habitat restoration. So could you give us a sense of what's happening on those two tabs?

A lot that's better. Still a long way to go. But as to use of the product. Every budget change proposal you've received since our initial report is based on the data and service based budgeting. So it tends to be a narrative component of all budget change proposals you've seen submitted since then. We think that's really useful.

It also is a dashboard analytics tool. So we've got visuals that kind of. It's like a thermometer tracking progress on each of the gap areas. And we field a lot of questions from your staff, both policy and financial, like, hey, how does this affect cyberspace budgeting? We can turn things around.

We're in the middle of the five year update, so you're looking at the mandates and the missions to figure out the numbers. And we can run data requests that you may have of us. So then when you think about permitting and species habitat conservation.

Right now as I sit here, I couldn't tell you the change that reduces the gap in the last couple of years, but I can look at that. And then I also know anecdotally we're doing things like the cutting the green tape program. We've created the restoration management Permit, We've completed more natural conservation community plans.

So I know what's being done that's improving in that space. But I can follow up with the actual quantified action that produced the increase and shrunk the gap.

Okay, we'd love to continue engaging with you on that. Obviously, there's other areas that were the gaps were less severe but still substantial. But I assume some of the same principles apply. And look, these are two areas that are often the hardest to fund.

Yeah, I mean, to be real about. It, why is that? Point me to a Fund source that wants to protect biodiversity.

Well, I mean, you know, how about. The Habitat Conservation Fund, which is something I'm a champion for. Yes.

And then show me how it's additive over an existing need. And for example, in my years of experience, there's a moment where we Talked about whether CalRecycles Tire Recycling Fund might be able to contribute funds to our Department. Why? What's the single biggest killer of wildlife? Car collisions.

The logic's there, but when you talk about that in a budget space, understandably, someone else is already using every penny in the Cal Recycle Fund. It didn't go anywhere. Or to take another example I've experienced, it's a vast ocean out there. It's a hard living for men and women anymore. They're watching salmon disappear.

They're looking at regulation on crab because of whales. So there is an amount of work that's happening in the ocean that we're not charging fully on our commercial fishing fleets. There's a moment that predates 23 of the Members here now where the proposal was to increase fees on commercial fishing. And the answer legislatively was no.

It's a struggle. And this exists for all of the 49 Fish and Wildlife agencies. So let me be blunt. Their original architecture in the 40s and 50s was primarily about hunting and fishing. Right.

Their predominant revenue stream was license and tax on hunting and fishing gear, which happens at the federal level, and the license to hunt and fish sold at the state level. There's a big difference between some of the states transition over the years and other states who are still largely dependent on that Fund source.

My Department today does so much more than just hunting and fishing. That alone can't Fund $1.0 billion. And if you tried to make it, it'd be patently unfair. So you are stuck with what else and it's difficult. The Florida approach is a tax on real estate transfer. Oregon did a bottle Bill.

The gold standard is Missouri a percent of the state sales tax. Now is that going to happen here? So you're left trying to find moments of opportunity when you've been able to invest with us and Governor Newsom in the surplus years. We've done great with it.

We've tightened our belt for efficiencies so the downturn years are less painful, which is where we are now. And you're prepared to grow again when the opportunity arises. That's been my strategy because I can't find a single additive new source which is sustainable that everybody can support.

Well, we've talked about it. We had to spend some time on this. All right, two things I wanted to ask. One thing that came up last week with regards to Prop 4, you know, so we have a section in Prop 4 where $75 million was set aside for these three particular priorities.

So California, so island restoration, climate ready fisheries and kelp ecosystems. And the only one of those three that was funded was climate ready fisheries with 21 million. Do you have a sense of when the Administration is going to come forward with the other two sections?

Yes. And then also here's the rationale which I would openly share on how to handle right now the proposal for just one of those three objectives. So as you mentioned, this line item in the bond is 75 million between our Department and Resources Agency.

By the way, our department's name checked in the bond only twice for only 1% of the total $10 billion. This 75 million and 25 million for improving our hatcheries out of 10 billion. So we looked at the three objectives for the 75.

That doesn't mean you're not going to be involved with things. I mean just.

I'm just saying for name checked and specific appropriation. So the first Objective identified in this line item, island, you know, island restoration and protection. We don't have information that tells us what is meant by that. And we'd like to open up a conversation of what might have been intended in the Legislature for that.

So we didn't know what that's about.

Okay.

And then we looked at the other category, which is kelp. And make no mistake, this is a tragedy. This might be one of the single biggest ecological collapse in America in the last 10 years. It's as if you would wake up tomorrow and most of our old growth redwoods are gone.

It's just happening underwater and people aren't aware of it. So we've lost most of our kelp because the 2014 change in the ocean produced the massive heat bloom. Right. They cut down on the stars and then they start seeing urchins and we're. Stuck in a cascading effects.

But we're in the middle of designing kelp plans, working with the academics, with TNC and another part of this Prop 4 bond is $135 million for the Ocean Protection Council, much of which is available, potentially lose for kelp. So we thought if we're thinking across the three possible objectives, we don't understand what islands is for.

OPC can probably do more on kelp than thirding 75. And we're in crisis on our fisheries. We're right now in a federal venue discussing whether we'll have a third year of salmon fishing closure. It's not inevitable. We will be talking about fishing options too. But it may be the case. We're in the middle of our crab fishery.

One of our most lucrative, having to change practices because the ocean has changed. Whales are swimming more near shore, straight into the crab gear and the crab gear is entangling whales. So we need help in that space. Which is why we propose about $25 million right now to just focus on climate safe fisheries.

And that's the rationale. All right, that's helpful. Thank you. Yeah. Because we were talking about it last week. I'm glad I get such a clear answer. Okay, now, talk about salmon, right? There's a nearly, I think 11.8 million. So nearly 12 million for the salmon monitoring and the tagging and the cohort restoration reconstruction program.

Now there's a $25 million pot for CDFW to use the latest technologies to support genetic genetically diverse salmon. I guess the thought was that could this tagging and cohort reconstruction program be funded on that pot instead?

It could for sure, like possibility always exists. And this is the beginning of the conversation through the process, my first time in front of you, but I'd say please not. And here's why. We run the world's largest hatchery system. It is 50 plus years old.

In the last five years, because of your investments, I've been able to modernize much of that using about $45 million. We've just completed our first ever independent engineering review and assessment of what it looks like to take all that infrastructure and climate proof.

It this is going to mean over the years I might have to keep coming back for capital investment kind of public works conversations. Meanwhile, I already know that deferred maintenance and operational risk in that asset is way greater than 25 $1.0 million. Way greater than 25 $1.0 million.

So then when I look at the 75 million and I don't yet know the good intentions we need to do on island ecosystems and I think that kelp could probably be in the one year cycle covered by OPC. We need this on climate fisheries. There are 250 fisheries we're managing in the oceans.

These are hardworking men and women. These are jobs they're tying up at the dock. So you asked about the tagging. This is also related to efficiencies.

We used to in our hatcheries have to let the salmon grow a little bit larger because we put a tag in it called a coated wire tag that's about as big as your fingernail.

Because we keep the salmon a little bit longer in the hatchery, they're out of a natural cycle when we put them back in the river. We just did a test this year, first time ever. We put the fish immediately back in the river. Well, how do you tag them? Parental based tagging is Edna. It's less lethal.

It allows us to genotype a fish from the moment it's born across successive generations. It allows us to manage the data set when they're returning to make smarter management decisions. The investment is going to produce multiple returns, including on efficiencies, let alone for salmon. That was our thinking on how to utilize and optimize.

I got you. I mean obviously we're, you know, only asking the question because there's other priorities.

Totally get it. And that's, that's part of the process for sure.