Assembly Standing Committee on Emergency Management

And I would like to welcome everyone. We will hear four Senate bills today. Two items will be heard on consent. That's SB 345 and SB 793. Let's begin by establishing a quorum. Secretary, please call the roll.

[ROLL CALL]

Awesome. Quorum has been established. Let's go ahead and proceed. Do we have a motion and second on the consent calendar?

And we have a first by Assembly Member Bennett and second by Assembly Member Hadwick. The motion on, that's the motion on consent calendar. And this is the motion on SB 345 Hurtado, which is do pass to the Committee on Appropriations and SB 793 Archuleta. Secretary, please call the vote.

[ROLL CALL]

All right. Thank you. The consent calendar. Thank you. The consent calendar is out. Do we have any absent members? No, we don't need to hold open roll. Consent calendar is out. Thank you. Okay, seeing no need to hold the roll open. We're going to move forward. I don't see Senator Becker.

It's my understanding that Assembly Member Calderon will present on behalf of Senator Becker. Oh, gotcha.

All right. Today we have with us Assemblymember Lisa Calderon who will present SB 326 on behalf of Senator Becker. Are you ready?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members, today I'm presenting on behalf of Senator Becker SB326. This is an important step for California in terms of managing wildfire risk. California is losing too many homes and communities to wildfire.

You may proceed.

From the author's perspective, that is driving twin crisis in affordability of electricity and the availability and affordability of homeowners insurance. The first crisis threatens the clean energy transition. The second is becoming a major complicating factor for making progress on housing affordability.

As such, wildfires has become a major negative driver for the most important affordability issues confronting the state and our nation. While investor-owned utilities are spending more than $10 billion per year on wildfire production prevention.

The state is investing 2.7 billion, the feds are investing over 900 billion, and local actors are investing significant additional sums for community hardening. There is no strategic plan to assist in the coordination of efforts to ensure what is needed most gets done first and gets done efficiently.

SB 326 creates a framework for evaluating wildfire mitigation investments taken collectively by state, federal and private actors in conjunction with one another. Today, CAL FIRE uses its own judgment, sometimes at the unit level, sometimes at the agency level, in deciding which projects to conduct itself and what grant applications to fund.

This often means that the easiest acres to treat get done rather than the ones most important for reducing risk. It also tends to mean that the best grant writers get resources rather than the communities that may need the money most.

SB 326 would focus the state fire marshals, deputy of community wildfire preparedness, and mitigation to do three specific things as it pertains to advancing comprehensive wildfire mitigation planning.

The first is to develop a wildfire mitigation planning framework to quantitatively evaluate alternative wildfire risk mitigation actions to develop a wildfire risk baseline and forecast to address risk from fire ignitions and the extent that the risk can be reduced, and to develop a wildfire mitigation scenarios report with a range of wildfire mitigation investment strategies and how one compares to the other.

Catastrophic wildfire imposes enormous cost on the State of California and our residents. We are obliged to prioritize our mitigation efforts among all actors to achieve the maximum reduction in wildfire frequency, scope and intensity through targeted investments. That's why SB 326 can help accomplish this.

There is no opposition to this bill, and I respectfully ask for an aye vote at the appropriate time on behalf of Senator Becker.

Awesome. Thank you for presenting that bill. Do you have any primary witnesses in support? No.

Okay. Any - Okay. Are there any witnesses in opposition? Okay, that's fine, guys. I got this. Okay. Thank you for that. So, with that, we're going to go ahead and open it up. If there's anyone who'd like to state their name and whether. If you have support for the bill.

Thank you so much. Melissa Sparks Kranz with the League of California Cities in support.

Thank you. Okay. Seeing no one else, is there anyone opposed who'd like to speak in opposition? Okay. See no one else. We're going to bring it back to the members for any questions. It was moved by Assemblymember Bennett and seconded by Assemblymember Arambula. Are there any questions or comments from members? All right.

Yes. Respectfully ask for an aye vote, please.

Would you like to close on behalf of Senator Becker?

Awesome. Thank you. All right. With that, secretary, please call the vote. The motion is do pass to the Committee on Natural Resources.

Thank you. The motion is do passed to the Committee on Natural resources for SB 326. [Roll Call].

Thank you.

All right. We're going to move forward to our next and final bill, which is Senate Bill 629 by Senator Durazzo. I'm here today on behalf of Senator Durazzo. We have Assembly Member Lisa Calderon. Do you have any primary witnesses in support that you'd like to invite up before you present? No. Okay.

No.

All right. With that,

If somebody walks in the room,

To sit at the table with you. Okay.

Got an empty chair right here.

All right. If that is the case, then if you're ready, you may proceed.

Sure. Thank you. Madam Chair and Members presenting SB629 on behalf of Senator Durazzo. This is one of 13 bills in the Senate's fire response, recover, rebuilding and prevention package following the devastating Los Angeles firestorm. And as California continues to face a year round fire season, it's clear that we must harden California's defenses against future disasters.

SB629 does three things. It applies Woodland Urban Interface, also known as WUI Building Code and defensible space maintenance requirements, as well as other fire safety regulations to areas that burned in a wildfire to make sure that our reinvestments in those communities are resilient in the next fire. Number two.

It directs the State Fire Marshal to include modeling for urban conflagrations in the next update of the fire maps to address gaps in their current process. And finally, it ensures that defensible space inspections occur annually for each property in fire prone areas to ensure that property owners are taking action to to protect their community.

Senator Rozzo asked that I thank the staff of the committee for working with them on the amendments, as well as the various stakeholders that have engaged on this proposal.

The amendments greatly simplify the process in the bill and make it easier to implement the policy it advances, applying the mitigations that we know work for fire safety to areas that need them the most.

They address the biggest issues of the local governments that are on the front lines and ensure the integrity of the science underlying the current fire hazard maps. By having the state marshal do the mapping of areas that need to comply, it takes the politics out of the mapping process at the local level. She wanted to be clear.

This is not an easy bill. It makes everyone, fire agencies, cities and counties, the state, homeowners and builders stretch a little further in service of a goal they all know is the right thing to do.

And that's why you don't see much in the way of support or opposition in committee today on this bill that highlights the balance that this bill will strike. Everyone must do their part to keep Californians safe from wildfire.

All right, thank you. With that, what we're going to do is open it up. If there Is there anyone who'd like to speak in support of this bill?

Hi, I'm Melissa Sparks Kranz with the League of California Cities as well as the California State Association of Counties and the Rural Counties. We've had a concerns position and have worked with the author, Senator Durazzo, and her staff and this committee on the proposed amendments, and we really appreciate that work to address our concerns. Thank you.

Is there anyone who'd like to speak in opposition? Okay. With that, what I'm going to do is bring it back to our members to see if you have any questions or concerns you'd like to raise. Assemblymember Demaio

Everyone understands that wildland fire is, is a major issue, but if you take a look at some of the worst offenders when it comes to mismanaging their properties, it's state and local government. And I think we should start by putting our own house in order first.

This bill has a number of requirements that I think will hit private property owners pretty hard. And as we've talked about in other forums, it's hard for a private property owner to be able to create defensible space when we have so many of these environmental regulations that trip them up.

So on the one hand, we've made it a very complicated process. On the other hand, we're coming in saying, well, you all have to do a much better job.

This is, again, I think the goal is laudable, but I'd like to see us focus first on setting an example as state and local governments, because some of the worst parcels of land are being mismanaged by our state and local government managers.

So I'm going to be opposing the bill, hoping that perhaps we might be able to see modifications to it, focusing on those government sectors first.

Thank you. Assemblymember Demaio. Assemblymember Hadwick.

Hi. I have some real concerns. I can't state, I don't have the stats to back it, but my 11 counties, I would guess, are the most affected and all forested and plagued with fire.

They cannot afford to do a lot of these requirements, and the money isn't guaranteed to them for the funding, nor can we really afford to do it at this economic place that we're at as a state. It. I just hate that we keep saying we need to make our counties and communities do more.

And we, you know, as my colleague said, you know, we need to get our own house in order and from the feds down. So I just, I'll be opposing today. I just want to go on record saying that I'm very concerned about adding this to one of very, one of many things that we're adding to our small, our small counties and our communities this year.

Thank you, Assemblymember Hadwick. Is there anyone else that has a question or would like to speak to the bill?

I'd like to move the bill.

Second.

Okay, so we have a first and second Assemblymember Bennett, seconded by Assemblymember Arambula. I would like to state on the record that the committee staff. I would want to thank our committee staff for working in order to get this bill to a place that we felt was good so that we can present this bill.

We really appreciate that they were willing to work with the committee in order to see if this is something that we can use as a tool for our state. And with that, I'm going to ask Assemblymember Calderon, on behalf of Senator Durazzo, would you like to make any closing statements?

Yes. Yes. And again, just want to reiterate that Senator Durazzo is grateful for the committee's partnership, and she is accepting the amendments, and she's committed to continuing to work with stakeholders on this proposal to ensure that California continues to lead and prioritize the safety of our residents in the face of the changing what we see from climate change coming our way with fires and everything else that comes with it.

So I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Okay. With that, we have a motion and a second. Secretary, please call the roll. And so your, the motion is to pass, as amended, to the Committee on Natural Resources.

SB629 Durazzo. The motion is due pass, as amended, to the Committee on Natural Resources. [Roll call].

Thank you all. The bill is out, and there's no need to hold the roll open. So at this point, we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.