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

Good morning and welcome to the first hearing of 2026 of the Assembly Budget Subcommitee for Climate Crisis, Resource, Energy and Transportation. Today, I'm really pleased that we have Secretary Crowfoot here. Still need to get this. There we go. All right. I'd like to get the mic closer to me is what I'd like to do. There we go.

I think we got it. All right, anyway, how about back in the back? Can you hear me now? That was kind of a weak hear me now back there. Okay. All right, they've got it. But anyway, I'm really pleased to have Secretary Crowfoot here today. This hearing kicks off our weekly sub four hearings.

We're going to dive into all the details proposed at the governor's budget. I think I speak for everybody in the room when I say this is important aspect of California government, what this budget Subcommitee does.

And so I look forward, many of you people we will see multiple times throughout the spring at these hearings from Wildfire Resistance, Water Security. The investments that we make today will really shape how California and whether California can respond to the climate crisis that we're facing out there. We're committed to trying to hang on to fiscal.

To deal with the fiscal challenges being presented to us by the Federal Government at this point in time and at the same time try to make sure the dollars we spend and the investments we make are prioritized on those things that are going to have the biggest impact for California.

The essential things we have to do, because at this point in time, we will have to make sure we do all the things we have to do, and we won't be able to do many of the things that we want to do. And that's just the reality of where we are at this point in time.

So a couple of housekeeping notes. We have eight presentation items today. For each presentation item, I'll ask the speakers to come up and introduce themselves and who they're with at the time that they begin their testimony. At the end of the presentation, Members of the Subcommitee, the vast thousands that are here today, may ask questions, right?

Make comments and request presentations on anything else. We won't be voting on any agenda items. As we get into the presentations, I'll talk a little bit more. But as you're out there, if you're a staff Member, what's more important to us at these hearings this year in particular, is our ability to ask questions. Let you respond.

Let us respond back to you. So we would like you to focus your comments on the big changes that are happening, the important things that we need to know any salient issues that are out there rather than just come up and go.

And we have $20 million for this and $14 million for that and $18 million for that, which nobody in the room, quite frankly, can listen to and concentrate on long enough.

So it'd be far more a far better use of our time because every question in here that we have, and we've already shared in advance with you, I'm going to try to make sure we get some answer to as we move forward. So now, those comments are not for Secretary Crowfoot. We know you well.

Everything you're saying is going to be salient to us. So please stick with your original, your original comments as you come forward. And with that, we'd like to call you up. Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of California's Natural Resources. Now, they're hearing better, right? And potentially your last time in front of this Committee representing this Governor, right? At least.

Right?

Yeah, indeed. So, first of all, Chair and our Committee consultants, huge thanks for your leadership over the last several years. It is, you know, we talk about partnership, but it is truly a partnership assembling this budget. And this budget enables us to do everything that we do.

So given this is our eighth and final opportunity to present a budget to this Legislature within the Newsom Administration, we do want to share sort of an overview of the progress we've made and the challenges we continue to face.

And as we highlight that progress, just know that thanks to, you know, your guidance and you're shaping the budget, we've been able to achieve that. So I'll start by saying it's been a remarkable decade.

California is very much on the front lines of climate change and all that we're experiencing, both the impacts that threaten Californians and, of course, global leadership driving a safer, cleaner future. On the impact side, we have experienced two millennial droughts in the last 15 years, so called because scientists told us they would happen once every thousand years.

The second of those droughts was the driest three years in our state's history, followed six weeks later by what is probably the wettest three weeks in the state's history.

So, really epitomizing this weather whiplash that we are experiencing, we ended that last dry period with 5 million Californians, underwater rationing and certain animals, including salmon runs, on the brink of extinction. Nine percent of our state has burned due to wildfire in the last decade, much of it catastrophically.

That's been dangerous, obviously, to our communities and to our residents, but also damaging to our natural resources, including our watersheds that provide our water supply. In 2022, we experienced the hottest, driest heat wave in American history in the west that had that disruption to our grid. And we have doubled down on energy resilience since then.

And then, and then sea level rise, which sometimes gets dismissed as a future planning exercise, is having impacts today, whether it is saltwater intrusion into the delta or the disruption of passenger rail service between Los Angeles and San Diego as a result to erosion, in part worsened by storm surge and sea level rise.

We are a Mediterranean climate, so we don't face these challenges in a unique way. There are different parts of the world that have our exact challenges.

And we formed a Mediterranean Climate action partnership with 15 other governments around the world that are facing these same challenges to roll up our sleeves, to figure out how we protect our residents and our communities and our landscapes. You mentioned the Federal Government. You know, we navigated. We.

Governor Newsom came into office and navigated some points of tension with President Trump in his first term on protecting and restoring the environment. We had four years, from our perspective, a remarkable alignment with the Federal Government and historic investments.

And now we find ourselves again navigating what is in many ways, we think, a hostile federal policy landscape to do the work that we do together. We've navigated very tight budget conditions, including this year, as well as historic surpluses that have allowed us to make generational investments in the work that we care about.

And through this, all the challenges, the dynamic budget, the changing federal relationships, we have made great progress, $40 billion of investment thanks to this Legislature and the Governor, on confronting climate change and protecting our environment. We are decarbonizing the grid as California, the fourth largest economy in the world, faster than almost anywhere else.

You know that last year, two thirds of the electrons that powered this vast economy in our vast state were clean 90% of days last year, at some point in that day, 100% of our energy was delivered by clean energy resources. We're shifting to better, less polluting technologies faster than imagined.

I worked for Governor Brown a decade ago and we set a goal of 1.5 million zero emission vehicles and we were laughed at. That was seen as a moonshot and we collectively met and exceeded that goal three years early.

We've made huge progress towards building our resilience, our ability to adapt and weather and continue to thrive amidst all of these extreme events and challenges. Wildfire. Resilience. Your investments, Governor's investments have allowed us to get upwards of 2,500 to 3,000 projects on the ground across the state around communities before wildfires ever strike.

These are fuel breaks around communities. These are restoring cultural and prescribed fire across our landscape. This is ecologically based vegetation thinning all which has made a difference.

Cal Fire has a portion of its website now that's dedicated every time we experience a wildfire, they assess whether there were wildfire resilience projects in the area and how they impacted the shape of the fire. And we're understanding it is working.

Obviously, conditions are worsening across our globe with our atmosphere, so our challenges get deeper and the investments we're making are collectively making California communities safer. Local water resilience is building. You know, the Sustainable Groundwater Management act, thanks to our Department of Water Resources, is being effectively implemented. Local groundwater basins are coming back into balance.

We're finding better ways, faster, more nimble ways to collect these stormwaters when they come and get them underground, Whether that's in our cities or in our rural areas. We and Governor Newsom continue to believe that we have to invest in the backbone infrastructure of our water systems. We are a system of systems. In California.

Over 3,000 water agencies, but 2/3 of Californians get their water through our state water project. And that's why Governor Newsom is so focused on modernizing our conveyance through the delta, addressing subsidence and its impacts on the state aqueduct and so much more.

And then I'll say in coastal communities, and both of our elected Members here today represent coastal communities. Great progress has been made. The Legislature had the foresight to invest funding that helps coastal communities plan to continue to thrive and adapt as sea level rise intensifies and that changes the contours of our coast.

So I believe we're making great progress there. You all passed a law, with the governor's strong support of setting a legal target to conserve 30% of our lands in coastal waters this decade. And we're making progress. Investments have enabled over 2.5 million acres of additionally conserved lands in the last three years alone. And the work continues.

Our Wildlife Conservation Board just last week or the week before, approved $60 million more through Proposition 4 funding for more conservation. Conservation is important, obviously, for fish and wildlife and this tremendous biodiversity we have. But also as our buffer to these impacts in our communities. We need nature as much as nature needs us.

I'm so gratified on this journey that we're on to address historic wrongs with California Native American tribes and support tribal leadership. California Native American tribes have been the environmental stewards since time immemorial. We disconnected ourselves from that wisdom and that leadership for a very long time.

And actually these, the agency I represent and other state agencies were openly hostile to that leadership. That has changed. I'm proud that state investments have helped to Fund over 100,000 acres of land return. Many of the tribes ultimately getting land back were dispossessed of land since California statehood for 175 years.

We know that tribal leadership means, generally speaking, better protection and restoration of our landscapes. And it doesn't stop there. Co management, the tribal access, finding respectful ways to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge. So gratified with this. At the same time, your investments, our investments have helped more Californians get outdoors.

The fact is a lot of Californians don't live in communities with safe and healthy welcoming parks or feel disconnected from our nature. So there have been upwards of a billion dollars of funding over the last decade. And enabling more Californians to actually get outdoors, that means more kids in parks, that means more people on the coast.

And it's really, really exciting. And then lastly, you know, we have collectively innovated and always focused on innovation. That includes Cal Fire now using satellite data to fight fire and to manage forests and to measure methane.

Over at the Cal epa, we created California Nature, an online platform that really helps Everybody plan out 30 by 30 in their own backya, which is exciting. We've done things like brought fishing and hunting licenses online, so you don't have to carry a heavy book, but you literally carry your smartphone into the wilderness.

So there's so much that we've done together and I'll tell you this, which is we're not stopping here. If you listen to Governor Newsom, he talks about running through the tape and I can assure you that that is a conversation that we have outside of, you know, privately within our cabinet.

So we are focused like a laser on completing key projects, whether it's the world's largest wildlife crossing north of Los Angeles, sites, reservoir and projects that are really important to communities like Fresno west, which is a 500 acre park along the San Joaquin river in Fresno, which is a community that needs more parks.

Also breaking ground on projects that we're not going to realize in this Administration, whether it's improvements to Exposition park, which is the large urban park in Los Angeles that our agency manages, that will welcome the World cup fanfest this summer, but also the Olympics in two years time, as well as the Salton Sea, which has been a major area of progress, but an ongoing challenge.

How do we reduce dust emissions that impact communities and restore vital habitat? Streamlining project delivery. We've heard this from the Legislature and the Governor. We need to do important things faster, faster and more cost effectively. So I'm really proud that we found new ways to streamline wildfire safety projects.

For example, getting projects over 250 projects streamlined through our permitting process to happen in weeks, which would sometimes take upwards of two years. We have improved or accelerated habitat restoration work. We call it cutting the green tape.

One of my first meetings in this role was with conservation groups who told me that fully a third of a project budget for stream restoration or purely environmental restoration project could be taken up in environmental planning and permitting. So we set out to change that.

And thanks to some statutory reform that you all enabled, we're delivering environmental restoration faster and even expansion of our state park system.

Senator Allen led a Bill that many of that the Legislature passed and the Governor signed last year that reduces the bureaucracy to bring in no cost acquisitions that conservation groups have aggregated that allows us to expand our state parks. So more on that to come. We've got an updated action plan for wildfire resilience.

You may have heard that the Governor, thanks to legislation that passed last year, is launching an updated water plan to focus on supplanting water supply that we're going to lose in coming decades. We even have our next installment of our strategic plan to protect our ocean and coast.

And we're doing this in a way that's trying to maintain continuity and our progress, given just the urgency that the Legislature and the Governor brings to this, while giving space to the next Governor and the Next Administration to put their own mark on these priorities.

I'll lastly say this year I'm personally investing a lot of time in elevating, trying to drive forward our nature based solutions solutions.

You all passed a Bill the Governor signed requiring our agency to identify specific targets, to expand the way that we improve the health of our landscapes and our waterways, our watersheds, to actually not only absorb more carbon and retain more water, but preserve biodiversity and have all these benefits. So I'm really quite excited about that.

And then I'll say that one challenge we continue to face, and you'll hear more about this in the budget, is addressing human wildlife conflict. Conflict. Lions, bears, wolves. You know, we can take great pride in California in that we are supporting restoring the health of our ecosystems.

And what we've learned over 100 years is our natural systems require all the animals to be present to actually be a balance. And this provides challenges, particularly on wolves. How do we coexist? How do we ensure that small communities that depend on the ranching economy can continue to flourish.

And even as this endangered species continues to recover in California. You'll hear more from my colleague, Director Megan Hurdle, about this. That's an area of real focus because it's a growing challenge, I guess. Last, last I'll say is huge. Thanks for your leadership on Proposition 4, the climate bond.

Much of what we're able to share in new investments comes through the Climate Bond. We took your direction last year that we need to make our funding programs clearer, easier to understand, easier to access by all communities across the state. So we're really partway through making improvements.

And what I hope you hear from groups that you talk to in this budget process and your residents is that the Climate Bond programs are actually making a difference and can make a difference. And as always, we're very open to any suggestions or direction you have. So I'll leave it there.

But just with a thanks to the Members who came in before. Before or actually after I had a chance to just say thank you. The progress that we talk about, it was only, is only possible because of this partnership and these and these investments that you make year in and year out. Thank you.

Well, this just reminds me of how valuable your contributions have been to this state. And I'm sure you if, if this is the end, and we have no idea whether that's the case, it's a remarkable legacy that you're leaving for California. And so there will there.

When people think about the Wade Crowfoot era, there's a lot for you to be very proud of. And we're very fortunate in California to have had your leadership.

I appreciate those kind words. But let me say this, which is I have one of the best jobs because I get to stand up and brag about our progress, but the people behind me and the women and men that lead our departments, frankly, there's 26,000 people in our agency that get up every day and do this work.

And they were here long before I came and they'll be here long after I came. And I just want to acknowledge Brian Cash and Amanda Martin, who help us get smart for these budget hearings and really guide our budget. It's a team effort and I couldn't be prouder.

And I would say we should all be very proud of the public servants across our agency.

There's nothing more satisfying than being part of an important chain. And know you're doing your part in an important chain. And you certainly have been a big link in that chain. So thank you, my colleagues. I appreciate Assemblymember Rogers Assemblymember Lackey coming in. We'll give you a chance in a moment.

I want to respond just at high level about California and California's environment, about some things that I think based on your overview are important for us, from my perspective, to start out as an overview, then we'll have my colleagues, if they have any introductory comments that they'd like to make, and then we'll get into questions after that.

But the first thing I want to respond to or point out is you talked about the variability that going from the worst, the worst drought to the most intense rain that we have. When you think about it, everything about California suffers from and benefits from enormous variability.

I mean, if there's one thing that defines California, it's variability in everything from our income distribution to our climate to just enormous. And it's a joy and it's a benefit and it's a challenge all at the same time. And so we have to maximize, taking advantage of this variability, but we also have to prepare for this variability.

So groundwater storage, wildfire prevention, looking at species and trying to keep them balanced in the midst of all that variability. One important thing I wanted to point out, second thing I want to point out, since this is a budget Committee, is that essentially we don't use General Fund for climate, environmental sort of investments.

We count on the public to every now and then vote for a bond and that gives us a climate bond to work on. And we count on only one ongoing revenue source, and it's one dedicated to. Dedicated essentially to try to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And that's our greenhouse gas gas Fund. And so it is important.

I was just on a meeting yesterday and people said, well, you know, climate doesn't need anything because we have some dedicated sources for that. And you know, the bond and this. And I agree from a General Fund standpoint, as long as we actually use those dedicated sources for the environment.

So I know it's not a surprise to you, but we're trying to make sure that that one of the legacies that we leave is that these two funds, Bond Prop 4 funds and GGRF funds, should really be used for the environment and for reducing carbon in our atmosphere, particularly the GGRF funds that are out there.

You referred to 30 by 30. And I want to emphasize how valuable I think marine protected areas are because of how special our coast is. And if we can make sure we ramp up our efforts on marine protected areas, that pays huge dividends in the long run. And we've seen that over and over again. Two Final things.

One, if we don't adopt a better and new approaches to wildfire management, we're going to continue to have more and more communities burned down. You know, to have the eight largest fires in California's history take place in the last nine years means we've passed a tipping point.

There's no question to have three whole communities burned down in the last eight years. We never used to have whole communities burned down. We have a crisis, and the crisis is basically ember showers coming in. And the solution to ember showers is hardening our homes.

But it also means, I think, a rebalancing of our investments in wildfire prevention. We have been spending a lot farther away from urban communities, and I don't want to decrease that, but we need to balance that because lives are at stake.

So if we have to clear an area, I hope we'll start to say the closer we are to an actual life being saved, to an actual property being protected, the better off we will be in California.

And so I'm looking for that balance and hope that we'll have great support from all the agencies that you manage for this massive effort that we have to have to convince Californians in high fire risk areas to harden their homes. If people don't harden these homes, we won't solve this problem.

We'll have an insurance crisis that will be enormous. And if California becomes unsustainable economically because of fire insurance, we can't support all the other things that we do out there. So I have some questions. One of them will be the Mediterranean Climate Action. That's new to me to be aware of.

So I want to hear more about that. But I'll ask that when I get into questions. I want to turn to introductory comments by my colleagues. Anybody have Assemblymember Rogers, Assemblymember Lackey?

Yeah, absolutely. And I have mostly questions more than comments, but just really wanted to say thank you. As the chair noted, we don't know what comes after this year, but one of the things that I do think has been a hallmark of the administration's change in approach has been the relationship with our indigenous communities.

And that's been felt particularly in my district up on the North Coast. People are grateful for it. They're grateful to see that leadership and that partnership. And for me, when I think about all of the things that this Administration has done that other administrations have not done particularly well, that stands out to me in that recognition.

So I want to thank you for being a leader in.

In that space and for pushing projects forward. And I will have some questions as well.

Thank you, Assembly Member Lackey, for your introductory comments.

Yeah, thank you. I guess one of the most salient points that I'd like to make is the fact that I appreciate the fact that you and I may see some things differently, but your level of engagement is greatly appreciated. One thing I've noted is how much you show up and not just staff, but you yourself.

And I think that's refreshing. And I want to at least commend you on that front. And I hope that other secretaries will follow your lead because it really does make a difference when we're able to actually address you personally. And I want to recognize that. And thank you for it. Thank you.

Any other introductory comments? Okay, great. So can you tell me real quickly, mediterranean climate action, since you brought that up before, I forget, how often do we meet, interact, etc.

In the role I find myself in? I'm involved in a lot of international discussions with other governments in other parts of the world. And over years we would hear from other governments saying, yeah, we know about your wildfires. We have the exact same thing.

And it turns out that there are a number of governments that govern over climates just like ours. So think about the European Mediterranean, but then parts of Australia, Chile, South Africa, and it has to do with your distance from the equator.

And essentially we all have Mediterranean climates, generally temperate climates, wet season, dry season, all facing worsening wildfire, heat and drought. So we decided to essentially roll up our sleeves and build this partnership, not wait for our national governments to get us together.

And this partnership is all it's not actually focused on anything related to clean energy or the energy transition. It's all focused on how do we do a better job protecting our folks from heat, wildfire and drought.

We've had three global convenings, and I'm excited to say that next month in April, we're having our global, our sort of our global meeting in Los Angeles where we're going to be able to we're doing a day each on what we're what we've learned in California on wildfire, on drought and extreme heat.

And I'll tell you, we've learned a lot from each other and it's helping us take faster, better action to protect our communities. Wow.

Love to be kept informed or get a summary of what happens at the meetings and stuff.

If you could ask your staff to our convening in Los Angeles. So open invitation for any legislator who wants to join.

Wonderful. We'd like to have more information about this. I appreciate it. Could you. We're, we're, as my colleagues that came in late, we're trying to make sure that the presentations don't dominate the question and ask answer and the interaction part of this. So we want people to focus on the important things.

But we're all going to have to try to be efficient to be able to get through the questions. But we're trying to make sure we get all the questions covered here. So without, without going too far into it because we could spend a lot of time on it.

But could you summarize the biggest impacts of the federal cuts on the state in this budget for area and you know what, what kind of things you think we have to do to adjust as a result of those? But mostly I want to get on record what are the federal cuts doing to us?

Yeah, I'll be brief on this. Obviously there's a lot of attention to what the federal Administration is seeking to do with California's authority to protect air and water. And I won't really focus on that because those are my colleagues at Cali, Pennsylvania.

I will say that, you know, last year was a very chaotic year from the perspective of our agency working with the Federal Government because almost overnight our key partners lost huge amounts of their capacity and so much so that things were changing week over week.

And that is our Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the federal water intertwines with our own, our U.S. forest Service, that manages a large portion over a third of our state land, our national parks, our Bureau of Land Management. All told, the Federal Government owns and manages about 50% of our landmass in the state.

So when they lose capacity in a pretty chaotic way, it impacts the state. I'll give you one example, the River Forecasting Center. So there is a joint flood operations center here in Sacramento where federal experts and state experts sit.

And when these atmospheric rivers are bearing down on California, we're using federal technology through the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in some cases planes literally flying into the storm to collect data. And that is feeding into the Flood Operations center, the River Forecasting Center.

And we've made great strides at understanding or predicting where the specific impacts of those storms will be and then pre positioning national guard equipment, etc. Well, overnight we lost the federal staff to that river forecasting center.

So we had to make an emergency decision to actually supplant the loss of that capacity with state funding because we couldn't let this winter happen without that river forecasting center being in operation. So that's one example.

There's other examples, including losing this really important network of storm buoys off our coast that predict storm swells that could impact our coastal communities. And our federal partners on the ground in California are great. So this was not a decision that they made, but it just has created a lot of challenge and frankly, a bit of chaos.

I think it's very hard to measure just how devastating the loss of quality public servants can be to these programs. That sort of the public takes for granted that we have this information. We ought to be able to predict the weather, we ought to be able to predict floods, et cetera.

And certainly the public expects those things to happen. If I could jump to a philosophical issue that I think we constantly wrestle with, which is much of what we do is to try to prevent catastrophes, try to prevent things from happening, try to prevent species from going extinct or whatever.

But it's really hard to measure that and do a cost benefit analysis of prevention.

And if you have any insights on how we can or whether you folks are focusing on things that we should get out to the public more and better about, how do we measure and put a dollar figure almost or some kind of value on prevention of bad

things happening, it continues to be a really huge challenge. You know, the metaphor I use is health care, which is you're always going to pay for that. Emergency room care for the patient that's in acute condition, but it's much, much more expensive than keeping the patient healthy in the first place.

We know, for example, on the wildfire front, the ratio that's often used is upfront, proactive actions. Before wildfire ever, ever starts. If you spend a dollar on those types of actions, you save $7 on the response costs. I'm really proud that we've surged, you know, our wildfire response.

We have the most sophisticated wildland firefighting response on planet Earth, thanks to Cal Fire. It's also really expensive. And so we've been trying to focus more obviously collectively on these upfront actions, but it's really, it's.

We haven't, we haven't, we haven't found a way to quantify and really create the apples to apples comparison that we really ultimately need to.

Thank you. I have some other questions, but I want to let my colleagues ask some questions and then we'll go from there. Go ahead. Assemblymember Rogers, thank you.

And I want to start off by thanking you for mentioning the buoys and the role that that plays in my district. We're particularly concerned about the loss of tsunami technology that, you know, Crescent City has relied on for a number of different incidents to be able to plan.

And so if you want to talk a little bit more about sort of ways that we still have not closed those gaps, if there's anything that you see that the Legislature can help in assisting with in that front, because this certainly has exposed vulnerabilities for California without those good federal partners.

Yeah, well, I'll just say that, you know, the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noaa, has really been the science leader on understanding and monitoring and being sort of early warning systems on these issues. And NOAA is being and has been disassembled. So we've lost all of that scientific capacity.

And I'll tell you, it's not like they send a memo and say that we're stopping this. A lot of this is, you know, we've really had to. Had to react to.

So I will say I'll take it as homework with our Ocean Protection Council to understand if there are specific equipment requirements that we haven't been able to supplant that more funding could provide. But simply put, you know, science has made significant advancements in protecting our coastal communities, as you know better than I do.

And we can understand when storm surge is coming thanks to that monitoring network. And if we don't have that monitoring network, literally our communities are less safe. And where you represent, you know, the tsunami danger there is among the highest in the world. That's hard for people to understand that don't.

Haven't really dug into the science, but it's a, it's a, it's a clear and present danger not to have that, that technology and that monitoring. So I will get back to you on the specifics there.

But generally speaking, you know, we've also not wanted to simply default into supplanting what the Federal Government refuses to do because we need, we need federal investment. You know, this is not something that all of a sudden state taxpayers can take over.

On the land side, as I said, federal agencies manage half of our landmass, and the only waters we manage is up three miles off our coast. The other three to 200 is the Federal Government.

So we need to continue to make the case that, you know, we'll do what we need to and step in to, you know, and these acute emergencies. But the expectation has to be that the pendulum swings back to federal investment in this.

Yeah, and that was exactly. Kind of what I was curious about is, especially since we only have that three miles, most of this data is being collected further out in federal jurisdiction. And so I don't know what tools we have to try to correct some of that.

One of the questions I wanted to ask you is, you know, obviously we've talked about the Governor wants to wrap things up. We've heard him say that before, wants to bring things to completion.

A lot of the things that he has done that have been really great have also been done through some Executive orders that haven't been codified. So do you have any that you are particularly interested in that you think have really had a meaningful impact on California?

The Legislature should look to see if it's worth putting in statute so that then it doesn't matter what the Next Administration comes in with, that we have some protections in place for that work.

Well, I'll always be careful not to share any legislative advice because ultimately that's the governor's office. But I will say that our streamlining processes have worked and in many cases they're temporary.

So for example, we have an exemption, it's called the SERP and it allows the Director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife to waive certain environmental permitting requirements on pure environmental restoration. And what you'll hear from conservation groups, I believe is that it's been an absolute game changer.

It's reduced the time and cost and let the conservation funding spread. That has a sunset, for example, over the last year in another area, we have been able to vastly accelerate the getting wildfire safety projects on the ground.

The Governor issued an emergency or, sorry, an Executive order under his emergency powers that enables myself and Secretary Garcia at Cal EPA to waive environmental permitting requirements if those projects abide a 13 page environmental protection plan. So what this means is a fuel break, for example, that a fire safe council was planning around.

A community used to have to go through upwards of two years of environmental review. Ceqa, Endangered Species Act, Coastal Act. If it was in the coastal zone, we've waived that, which is, you know, we don't take lightly.

But in exchange for what is a very robust set of environmental permitting or environmental protection requirements that's temporary and that expires in May.

So, you know, there are, there are, those are just two examples, I won't belabor this, that we put in place that we believe are working and then would leave it to the legislative leadership or you all if, if it makes sense to codify.

Yeah. And last question for you. Prop 4 had a requirement of at least 40% of the funds going to vulnerable communities. How are we monitoring that and how do you track that Progress.

Great question. First of all, I'm proud to say that I think the programs and the spending for this, this bond are more transparent than ever. So we now have one stop shopping for folks that want to understand what this bond is funding.

If you're a community or a group or a government, you want to understand potential funding, you can actually go on there and search for funding sources. Including in this is guidelines for all the entities within our agency to improve their processes, including a shared definition of the 40% threshold that we need to meet on disadvantaged communities.

As you know, there are different definitions in state law and policy and that sometimes creates real confusion.

So we've just rolled out an online tool, geospatial tool that actually enables you one to be able to pinpoint if the area a project would be or their own community falls within this, this threshold or is a community that that falls within this threshold. That's really important for tracking.

So it really in real time, I might get in trouble for this, but in real time we'll be able to provide reports to you all as funding is going out the door, how we're meeting our goals, our expectation is not just to meet the 40%, it's to exceed the 40% over the life of the program.

So we're creating more transparency for interested non governmental entities to track this, but then also to be able to provide you much, much more nimble reports around how we're doing on this on this target.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Assemblymember Connlley, Assemblymember Lackey.

Thank you. Chair. Good morning Secretary, great to see you sharing and really thank you for your leadership for the relationship and let's have a great final year. Right. So a little bit of a follow up on Assemblymember Rogers.

Obviously the goal, and I think the Chair spoke to this as well, is to make sure that Prop 4 monies are getting out to communities, to individuals, whether we're talking about things like home hardening, other aspects of bond funding. So one of the goals, Prop 4 is to make the bond funding more accessible to people.

What have historically been the challenges for the agency in increasing accessibility? What have you done or planning to do to address those challenges with Prop 4?

It's an excellent question because I think if we're being honest, state funding programs have been too complicated, too long, too cumbersome and uncoordinated. I mean, and that's not to be too hard on ourselves. But the fact is we built some funding programs that historically are very complicated.

And what that means realistically is only the most well Resourced communities can compete for those funds. So if you're a smaller community or you're a poor community, or you're a community based organization that doesn't have a big budget, you can't compete for that funding.

For in the past, for example, we never did any advance pay or essentially advancing the funding. So conservation groups or community based organizations literally have to carry millions of dollars of cost. They have to do the work and then submit for the reimbursement. And the state process has taken too long. So we've made progress over time.

And there are a couple of key examples or models. The state Coastal Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Board have sort of flipped the funding construct on its head to say rather than us administer 17 different programs with different time frames and different requirements, and then you actually have to be an expert in weaving those programs together.

What they said is, we're going to take our different programs and we're going to essentially pool the funding. And then we have a rolling application process. So if you're a community and you think you have a good idea, come to us and you, you submit what's called a pre application, a concept note.

So you don't spend six months or nine months and a lot of, a lot of city funding putting together a proposal if it's not feasible. So for those two agencies, they, they approach the agency, they come with that concept note.

If it's got potential because it meets certain criteria of these programs, then the agency staff provides feedback and then they do more of an application. That's. Those are, those are two examples of where we've, we've really worked to try to change this and also maximize advancing funding and then also require our agencies to coordinate on similar programs.

Because the fact is, you all established a really broad bond and a lot of these programs do overlap. So if I'm a community and I want to improve the fire safety of my community, there's not just one program, there's several programs. And so we've really driven our departments.

And you should ask them about this when they come up, how they're coordinating with others. Sorry, I put them on the spot there. Nervous laughter because it's true. I mean, we have to be far more sort of customer oriented.

You know, I think in the past what we've done, and you can understand why it gets done like this, is a very fastidious application process that's really long, that's seeking to eliminate any risk, but the risk is moving too slow and eliminating communities that are most vulnerable when you have these processes.

So, yes, we need to manage risk, yes, we need to ensure transparency and accountability, but we have to get the money out faster and more accessibly. And I believe we're on that path.

Assembleymember Lackey.

Yeah, thank you. Well, one of the more obvious questions, obviously we're, we're a budget Subcommitee. And what I'd like to know is where's our focus need to be on providing more effective wildfire prevention? Because everybody is motivated. We've seen the immense tragedies. Where should we prioritize our focus on budgeting? Where is the big demand?

Yeah, thank you for that question. I would say, you know, first, first and foremost, you all have almost doubled, if not doubled, Cal Fire's budget in the last several years for important reasons. Cal Fire is a stronger responder than it's ever been.

We have more boots on the ground, over 12,000 Cal Fire employees, the vast majority wildland firefighters on the ground every day that are either fighting fires or getting these protective projects in place.

We have more aerial assets than we've ever had, including these C130 tankers that were surplus from the military, including night equipped Black Hawk helicopters, including utilizing satellite technology. So the response is really, really strong.

And, and when you're out there explaining to residents or your constituents, you know, we can say with confidence that we have strengthened the ability of Cal Fire and partner agencies to protect us and, and to keep fires small before becoming large and catastrophic. As we've talked about, that's necessary but not sufficient.

We have to get in there before wildfires ever strike and take like a concentric model approach, which is one hardening and preparing communities for wildfire, because wildfires are part of our natural environment in the West.

And so we're never going to prevent wildfires, nor should we, because if we do, then our forests build up and we have these catastrophic wildfires. So in the community, around the community with fuel breaks and fuel breaks have again and again demonstrated their effectiveness.

The idea being you reduce the vegetation right around neighborhoods and communities and you give firefighters an opportunity to make a stand. And then more broadly than that, we need to get back. And the way I talk about it is restoring the health of our landscapes.

The fact is, before we were a state, Native American tribes were doing a whole lot to manage our landscapes, particularly in central and northern California, and we outlawed those practices. So we got to get back in there and reduce the density of our forests in an environmentally responsible way, get prescribed fire back on.

What that's going to mean is wildfires not picking up all that momentum that these gigantic catastrophic wildfires have done. I do appreciate and agree with the chair's priority for in community mitigation, because I think we can demonstrate that we made a lot of success on vastly scaling out those projects around communities.

Fuel breaks, vegetation thinning, prescribed fire, and we need to continue to invest more within our communities. What we saw with the LA firestorm was a wildland fire that became very quickly an urban fire where, you know, houses were catching each other on fire. So I'll just share that.

I don't think that there has been a bad investment that this Legislature and Governor have made because it's an all of the above approach.

And I will say this year, particularly as a result of bills that you all passed and a report that's due through the earthquake Authority in April, we're really focused on what additional mitigations can we drive in the state within communities, to hardened communities.

Okay, thank you. My last question has to do with dam safety funding was just a few years ago where we almost had a catastrophic flood rating to the spillway in Oroville Dam. Very few people realize how much water is stored and how important of a feeder that dam actually provides.

But I'm worried about, again, prevention, the dam safety measures that have questionable funding in the future. And I find that to be very disturbing. Is there anything that you. Any enlightenment that you could give us on the dam safety funding and its future?

Yeah. So, first of all, I'll agree with you on the importance of dam safety. A lot of us, you know, see a dam or a reservoir, and we think about water supply. But a lot of these dams that exist in California serve primarily as a flood safety and a protective measure.

And of course, we're protected here in Sacramento from Folsom Dam, which provides supply. But it's really fundamentally about protecting us from flooding. And we know that the most catastrophic, extreme event in terms of loss of life can be flooding.

The Division for the safety of dams, which is part of the Department of Water Resources, I believe, provides very strong oversight for dam safety. The challenge is that many of these dams are owned and managed by local water agencies.

And the challenge is a lot of those dams are coming, are quite old and are revealing themselves to have seismic challenges and major, major structural challenges that are quite expensive.

So I'll tell you that the biggest sort of point of vulnerability and tension is, you know, the how, how can those locally managed dams be refurbished moving forward, and what amount of state subsidy, you know, would or should they require?

There have been a Little bit of that to date, but the state hasn't subsidized those, those, those local dams to date. I do think, though, at any point, you know, we can provide real time briefings through our division for the safety of dams, dwr on specific, on specific dams across the state.

Thank you. So I'm going to just very quickly try to follow up on a few things because we are fighting time here now. But I appreciate your response on Wildfire.

The question that you had started with prioritizing community hardening, because I think that's the area we have been deficient in and it's, it's, it is fundamental to the solution. As you pointed out, Wildfire is part of the natural environment here.

I don't think as climate change gets worse, we're likely to be able to say, zero, we've been able to keep all the fires small. It's just not very likely that's going to be the case. But as Assemblymember Connolly 's been pointing out a lot, the value of community hardening is really important.

And that means hardening the homes and the other, the other infrastructure that is there in those communities. So appreciate our opportunity to work with you and your agencies on trying to make sure we get that done. It's absolutely critical to California and there's just no way around that.

Second thing is, in Prop 4, there's a requirement that 40% of the funding go to vulnerable populations. We've had a couple questions about that. But are we actually tracking that? And do we have, do we have numbers on that at this point in time?

And I see your deputy nodding his head, so I'll let him answer if you'd like, but go ahead.

Yeah, I'll defer to him on the specific numbers because I don't have those off the top of my head. But I can tell you this, which is we have built a structure and a system to track, you know, each and every allocation that gets made within Prop 4 around.

Is it heading to those communities and if it's not so, as I said before, that system will allow for, I think, a really nimble way to update this Legislature.

Great, thank you. And we've spent a fair amount of our time, budget time here talking to you because I think it's so valuable. You have such a great perspective and it's really been helpful. So I'm going to ask you for one final sage piece of advice.

And that is, you've been here eight years, you've seen the big stuff. What is it that is most important in your mind that we try to continue for the next eight years?

Well, I'll share that. It is important to help important things happen faster and better than they can. You know, I'm really proud of our progress. But I also, we have real challenges, economic challenges of building more housing, environmental challenges of building more clean energy and restoring.

And I'll observe, you know, seven years into this job that well intended, you know, system that we built up over time is not optimized to move quickly and effectively. So I'll tell you what I'm passionate about moving forward is maintaining, you know, this level of environmental quality and safeguards that we have in California, no doubt.

And ensuring public participation and tribal consultation and figuring out ways to get this, get to get this work done more quickly and effectively. That's what we have to do because climate change is not waiting for us and it's bearing down and conditions will become worse.

So we have to, while we've, while we've achieved a lot together, we have to continue to achieve more and do it in a faster, more effective way.

Great. And since it's a great segue into the rest of our hearing has to be prompt and quick. We have a 12:30 sort of 12:45 deadline with that's with comments too. So thank you very much. Really, really applaud your great leadership.

Yeah. And we're a phone call away through this process, as always.

Thank you very much. All right, we'll now go to the Legislative Analyst Office and ask to pick the pace up now for everybody here. Right. Thank.

Good morning. Rachel Ehlers with the Legislative Analyst Office. I will be as quick as I can.

Well, but you've got important stuff to say. You don't have to rush. But we just want to be the perfect amount. Perfect balance. Right? That's what we're looking for.

I will be speaking from a handout which you all should have framework for approaching the natural resources budget, which is also on our LAO website and on the Committee website. And it takes comments from two reports that we put out in the past couple weeks, which you should also have and which are also on our website.

So I think my intention here today is to provide some context over in our sort of overarching budget comments on the environmental budget.

I'll use environmental budget as a shorthand for departments within the Natural Resources Agency, Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Food and Agriculture to help set the context for the discussions you'll have later today as well as in the coming weeks.

So turning to page one of the handout, I think one of our most important points that is kind of the blanket under all of the comments is the state budget condition. The good news is the stock market has been booming and is continuing to boom.

In fact, about a week and a half ago, our office updated our revenue estimates to reflect that. The question is just how long will that last?

And as I know you heard in full Committee hearing from Gabe Pettic, the Legislative analyst, my boss, there are a lot of concerning signs based on what we've seen historically of an overheated market. And so the question is how long will that last and at what degree?

Also even just this weekend, changing international context that could affect our economy. Even with the booming stock market, the budget is only precariously balanced.

The budget proposal before you from the Governor relies on new borrowing, $6 billion in new borrowing, which brings the total wall of debt, as we call it, to 34 billion, as well as using 10 billion in reserves.

So usually when a stock market is booming as it is, that's the time you're putting money into res, not taking money out. So there are a lot of concerns we have about this. Looking ahead to the coming years, both our office and the Administration forecast multibillion dollar deficits, 20 to 30 billion dollars a year.

That is the structural gap between our forecasted revenues and forecasted expenditures, even not forecasting a downturn in the stock market. And the governor's budget proposal before you, while balanced in the coming budget year based on the administration's assumptions, does not really materially address these challenges. And these out Year deficits.

There's been some indication the Administration may come before you with some proposals in May. We don't think that gives you a lot of time to think about some of the hard choices that will be before you.

And addressing these challenges is going to be difficult given that a lot of the kind of easier tools before you, like pulling back one time spending, using reserves, using borrowing, are already tools that that have been utilized. So you're looking at really looking at ongoing program reductions or raising revenues.

So turning to page two of the handout, while we have concerns about the overall structure of the administration's proposal, when we look specifically at the environmental proposals, we think the Administration deserves a lot of credit. They really, for the most part, focused on really high priority immediate proposals.

There are some exceptions which we can talk about, but we think it's a really good starting place for you. But even in this budget context, even proposals with really strong justification come with trade offs. Every new dollar you're spending in a deficit situation means you're having to make reductions or raise new revenues elsewhere.

We have a lot of special funds within the budgets discussed in this Subcommitee that can be really helpful, particularly when there's a General Fund shortfall. However, we think the bar should also be high for special Fund proposals. Special funds can be tools to help you across your budget.

It can loan to the General expenditures that historically have been funded by the General Fund. Those thinking about that high bar of is this an actual essential activity regardless of Fund source, we think is important. And we also recommend that you start thinking about solving those out year budget deficits and preparing for a potential revenue downturn now.

So turning to page three, we took sort of a different approach this year with our budget publications for you. As always, we looked at each individual proposal and looked at its merits. But as I mentioned, we found that a lot of them did have some justification.

So given the budget condition, we thought what would be helpful for you is to provide this kind of a framework to think about how do we approach the various proposals given the larger context and help guide your decisions.

These criteria we came up with may not be your exact criteria, but we thought that they would be a helpful starting place.

So I'll walk through them quickly and recognizing that you had a question in your agenda, I'll try and be efficient and address one of those questions as well and give you some examples of what some of these criteria might, how they might be applied. So the first, apply a very high bar when approving new proposals.

We would suggest thinking about health and safety and immediate pressing needs when you're thinking about what you are going to spend new funds on. So some examples that will come before you in the coming weeks and even in your agenda today are things like new contracts for pilots for Cal Fire's fixed air aircraft.

You want to be able we as a state want to be able to use the tools that we have like our aircraft when there are fires and not have them grounded because we didn't provide funding to be able to utilize them. That to us is the kind of example of something where it's pressing its immediate.

If it's not funded this year, then there's a problem. There's a proposal for fish and wildlife to address nutria, the invasive species. If we took a couple of years off of that, for example, the pop could explode and start chewing through levies.

These are the types of immediate pressing proposals that even in a budget problem we think merit very strong consideration. There are some proposals moving to the second that we think fail to meet this high bar that may have really strong policy rationale behind them that in a different budget condition you would really want to support.

These would be things like making ongoing the the farm to school program, providing fresh fruits and vegetables to students.

There are billions of dollars in federal and state funds already going to student nutrition and there may be ways to kind of fold that some of those activities in but that isn't in our mind while there's again a strong rationale for it from a policy perspective meeting that health and safety immediate pressing need.

So we also offer some suggestions of ways you might want to modify proposals to reduce pressure on the General Fund. Even if the proposals have a strong rationale. Thinking about alternative funding sources are there fees you might be able to raise always come with trade offs for the fee payers.

But thinking about other alternative sources you could generate to support some of these activities. Thinking about funding priority proposals at a lower level. Sometimes doing a little bit of something is better than not doing it at all. Even if you can't afford to do it at the level that is proposed.

So again there's some of these on your agenda today that you'll be discussing. But maybe you bring on new Conservation Corps Members, but fewer than you would have or repairs at Expo Park. Maybe you do some of them but not all of them.

These are the types of trade offs unfortunately that you are facing taking steps to address the budget condition. I think one of our big pieces of advice to you is be careful not to make the problem worse even as you're trying to solve it.

So thinking about activities that are just being phased in, it might be easier to pull them back or slow them down or pause them rather than moving forward.

Now, beginning the process of identifying additional budget solutions using these hearings that you're going to have over the next few months to think about things like raising fees, that takes time. Takes time to implement. You can't just turn it on if there's a budget downturn.

So thinking about potential trade offs, structures, unintended consequences, using the time now to get those plans in place even if you're not ready to implement them yet, and then again avoiding policies that will create additional out your budget pressures.

Some of that is happening on the policy process and we know that you always have that strong oversight through the appropriations process. But again, we think that the bar should probably be even higher in this budget context. And then finally ensuring remaining expenditures focus on the most important priorities.

Even though you're in a limited budget context, that doesn't mean you can't fund the most important things. It also doesn't mean you can't spend more money on something you're not spending on now. It just means making the trade off and the reduction and pulling back elsewhere.

So a couple of examples we give in our report is thinking about zero emission vehicles, for example. What are your highest priorities there? Do you want to spend more on medium and heavy duty? Well, maybe that means spending less on light duty from the existing funding that you have.

How do you weigh charging versus vehicles in the context there? Similarly, with Wildfire has already been touched on as there is when you figure out how much you can spend, then it's thinking about how much for forest health activities as compared to community protection activities.

It's not that there aren't resources to spend, it's just a matter of thinking about what the highest priorities are. And that can be harder, especially coming off of a surplus year. So it's a different mindset. It is a really different mindset to think about shrinking and reprioritizing rather than just adding.

And then finally turning to the final page of the handout, just some high level comments on proposition 4. As you can see here in the figure, the Governor's budget includes 2.1 billion in new spending from Proposition 4.

Combined with the funding that the Legislature provided in the current year, that's just over half of the total funding authorized by the voters. As we looked across the proposals seemed reasonable to us, consistent with bond requirements. We didn't see anything that seemed to jump out at us as inconsistent with the bond or problematic.

You can see across the different chapters there are different levels of funding moving out the door and proposed to move out the door. But the rationale the Administration provided to us made sense for why those differences.

You may recall that last year the Administration had provided a multi year plan for funding to kind of put it on autopilot. In response to feedback from you all, they have changed that plan and now are providing budget change proposals at one year at a time to give you more opportunities to weigh in.

So we thought that that was appropriate. We have heard that there have been challenges getting prop $4 out the door. It is pretty slow at this point thus far. A lot of that has to do with the emergency regulation process that the departments have had to go through.

So you all just passed AB107 which will help that process in the but there is still out years and what the regulatory process will be. There is policy bill moving through the process too that could address that. We highlight in our Prop 4 report there are a few new activities proposed for the first time.

A lot of Proposition 4 is just continuing longstanding state programs, but there are some that are new where there is really an opportunity for the Legislature to weigh in and express your priorities if you have them. You also could defer to the Administration to make a lot of those decisions.

There are a lot of experts, as the secretary mentioned. What did he say? 26,000 just in CNRA. But if you had ideas when you were crafting the bond, you may want to express those now. I'll just give you a couple of examples. There is a category called reduce climate impacts on disadvantaged communities and expand outdoor recreation.

That's pretty broad. You could do a lot of things with that money. So that's an example. Where do you want to defer to the Administration to decide or is that something where you want to express your priorities? Nature, climate, education and research facility grants, again, pretty high level.

Even in a category that's a little bit more narrow like home hardening. There are, as we talked about in hearings last year, there are a lot of decisions about what size are the grants, how many communities can get access to that funding. Do we want to protect fewer homes or more homes?

At a lesser level, lots of policy decisions. So these are the types of of areas where this is the moment for you when the funding is being appropriated to weigh in with statutory language if you want to help guide the direction on how those funds are spent. The last two bullets here. There is some budget control language.

I think you will have it on a separate agenda item in a future hearing that would allow the Administration some flexibility to spend money across departments. We think that sounds reasonable. We can talk about that when that item comes up.

And then there are some proposition for proposals that interact with other proposals, General Fund proposals, some on the flood area, some in the defensible space area. So when we will highlight these for you when they come up. And we think it makes sense to think about Proposition 4 and other funding together.

So you're not taking an action on one side of the budget that may throw off the proposal on another side. And with that I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much. I'm going to jump with my comments which are once again you've come up with LAO's office, come up with some, I think, very insightful suggestions and recommendations for us.

There's everything in here is what I think we should use as we try to deal with the budget crisis that we have coming forward and particularly the principles that you've identified on page three.

So for anybody listening coming through budget sub four, I hope we would all be in agreement that these are really sound principles that we ought to follow. And then your suggestions on page four, increasing the reporting language, trying review some things in tandem, I think are excellent.

So I've just mentioned to staff, I want to make sure we try to follow these principles as we go forward. So thank you very much for that. And colleagues, any questions? Great. Thank you. I have one specific question and that is we're a small part of the budget relative to the massive amount that is out there.

And there is a question as to as we hear as we're going to be in real crisis when it comes to health and human services, just real crisis.

And I think the case has to be made from our side of it why this small amount that we spend here is essential for us to continue to spend it here.

And if, if the LAO's office has any insights in the future or if you have them now at the top of your head, off the top of your head, why? What are the long term health and human services impacts if we don't do a responsible job with our climate, environment, energy, transportation spending here.

Any quick thoughts on that?

Just yes. I think the programs that are funded through this budget have real impacts both on humans as well as our natural environment and intertwined. We at the LAO have never suggested that the Legislature take a across the board approach.

5% cut to everything or if resources is just 4.2% of the budget, then all of the it should be 4.2% of the solutions. It's really an issue of priorities. The same way in your household, if you lost your paycheck, you wouldn't cut all of your expenses across the board, you would prioritize your housing and cut your Netflix.

Right? So I think, thinking about your priorities.

LAO's office. Have a thought on the funds raised with the auctions. Greenhouse gas funds raised with the auctions, should they primarily be focused on trying to reduce carbon emissions in, in California?

I think our long standing message to you is that those are legally flexible to use for any purpose. And so we would suggest that you use that as a tool to focus on your highest priorities, whatever those are.

Thank you. All right, we're ready to move on to issue three. And again, as representatives, as representatives come up, if you'll please introduce yourself and who you are with. And this is safe drinking water, drought, flood and water resilience.

And I'll remind you again, try to hit the highlights and we can all get the details out of the report. Thank you very much. Who would like to go first?

I'll start. Good morning, Chair and Members. My name is Vin Dong Ling with the Department of Finance. I'll be giving a brief overview of the water related chapter in the Climate Bond.

Okay.

The climate bond allocates $3.8 billion for safe drinking water, drought, flood and water resilience over the lifetime of the bond. This funding is allocated across various programs administered by the State Water Resources Control Board, Department of Water Resources and other departments within the California Natural resources agency.

The 2025 budget appropriated $1.2 billion across these departments with significant investments in water quality, safe drinking water, water reuse and recycling, and dam safety. The Governor's budget proposes an additional $792 million in 2026-27 to support these programs.

A couple of the most significant 26-27 proposals are, for example, $229 million to the Department of Water Resources for various flood projects such as levees in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta and flood control and flood risk reduction projects both within and outside of the state Plan of Flood Control.

There is also $75 million to the water board for grants for water recycling projects, $38 million to the water Board for grants and technical assistance for multi bin.

Excuse me. It sounds like you're doing exactly what I'm concerned about. $75 million for this $38 million. We don't need to hear. We need to hear what the new different programs are. What's the new emphasis? And we can get those details.

Otherwise, I think we have, for example, six important questions we have for you folks here and stuff. So can you hit the highlights without. Without doing the dollar figures right?

Yes. One of the new programs is the $38 million to the water board for stormwater projects. 26-27 is the first year of local assistance or project funding for that program. So I want to highlight that as one of the new programs. And for.

For other new programs or specific questions on new programs, I'll have to defer to our representatives at the Department, which are all here today as well, to answer specific program questions.

Okay, thank you very much. All right.

Good morning, Mr. Bennett. Members. I'm Sonja Petek with the Legislative Analyst Office. Just a few comments. I mean, first we just point out that the proposed approach in the water Chapter of Proposition 4 seems reasonable and appears consistent with the requirements of Proposition 4.

We also would note that across departments, the planned approach really took into account the long term sort of planning process that departments started last year for how to spend proposition $4 over the course of the bond and also departmental capacity.

So in some cases, some of the departments are still trying to get that funding that was appropriated last year awarded. And in large part because of developing emergency regulations, which, as my colleague pointed out, will now new decisions will have to be made in light of AB107 exempting that spending from the APA.

We'd also note that there are a couple areas where we noticed there wasn't spending being proposed in 26-27 or not a lot of spending being proposed. One of those was in the groundwater management and in stream flow bucket as well as in the dam safety bucket issue that you just brought up.

However, when we talk to the Department of Water Resources, things still seem on track. So for example, in the groundwater management area, the Department really took a step back, you know, 10 years, you know, after more than 10 years.

Now after Sigma was passed, taking a step back, working with the groundwater sustainability agencies to see sort of what projects they're going to need as they're implementing Sigma. And the plan is to really get guidelines in place and solicit the proposals and get spending going in 27-28.

And then when it comes to dam safety, there was a lot of funding approved last year. So that funding, they've been developing the regulations and then that funding will go out in 2-27 and then they will likely come back next year with some additional proposed funding.

Great. Well, I certainly welcome the fact that the Administration is actually pulling back in some Areas, particularly if we've made a substantial investment a year ago and those funds haven't gone out, it buys us time to sort of analyze what are the best expenditures, etc. So I certainly welcome the fact that that's happened with dam safety.

$2 million is in the budget for this year. What are the lessons that, that we've learned here? It's the first question that we've identified for you. What are the lessons that we've Learned from the 2021-2022 climate package for the whole issue of dam safety? We've had my colleague, Mr. Assembly Member Lackey, ask about that.

So can you fill us in on lessons learned?

Yeah, sure. First, I'll address your first question on the 2 million in the budget right now. That is for state operations to actually administer the program.

The $228 million that you approved for the program last year, the 47.5 million that is mentioned in your question in the packet, that was appropriated as General Fund, but it was a budget solution. Then that shifted to Prop 4. So that funding did not go out the door.

It was shifted to Prop 4 as part of that 228 million. We did, though, anticipating that funding, did a solicitation of dam owners. And what we saw is the need is great. We had about $1 billion worth of proposals come in to our shop to try to prioritize for that 228 million.

So as we heard, there is a great need out there in this program. We're looking forward to getting the funding out the door this summer. We're working on the guidelines now, not regulations. We have shifted to get that done.

Great. Thank you. Do you have questions? Great. I'm going to rip to $45 million for the state Water project. Those funds instead of being going out for a competitive grant.

I want to emphasize asking the question doesn't mean I think you shouldn't be doing this, but it means I want to get on record, why are you doing this when there are people coming to us and asking for the others? So can you help us with this?

And people on question three, if you'll be ready to come up, go ahead. Question two.

Amanda Martin, Natural Resources Agency. The State Water Project supplies, you know, water to 27 million Californians. And three out of four of our disadvantaged communities rely on the water from the, from the State Water Project. So that's a big bang for our buck.

When we're talking about the number of people served, meeting our disadvantaged community targets, et cetera, this is important to address the California aqueduct maintenance, repairs of those damaged areas. It's a high priority and it's also consistent with the 2021 California Water Commission

white paper on where we should be investing in infrastructure, specifically sort of the backbone of our, of our water infrastructure. And the 45 million is for that, but there is some for competitive grants as well.

Great, thank you. Anything else you want to add? All right. No, no, thank you. There might be another. Before you leave. Yeah. What's the total anticipated cost for the state water project? Repairs that we need. How much, how far does the 45 billion go?

So the 45 million will get us. I'm sorry, John Yarbrough, Deputy Director for the State Water Project and so the 45 million will let us build five temporary projects, interim projects that are going to buy us time to do the planning for a long term effort.

Right now, the total for the long term effort we are expecting around 3.9 billion over the next 20 years.

3.9 billion over the next twenty years, right? Correct. Wow. Significant investment in the state water project. All right, great. Thank you very much. Question three there grant outreach. What grant outreach has occurred for the $75 million for the water conservation in the agriculture and urban areas in last year's bcp the Department stated they planned to refine.

It's out your request based on findings from previous years. What did you learn?

Kay, good morning. Glad to be here. Paul Gosling, Deputy Director for Sustainable Water Management with the Department of Water Resources. So we earlier, a couple weeks ago have started the outreach on doing scoping.

We've done a survey to get input and I think that's really important with this step this year coming in to make sure that we go out, we do the scoping, we hear from the local agencies and communities as to where the priorities are so we can develop the guidelines, regulations, whatever vehicle we use to make sure that these funds get used to the highest priority for the needs out there.

So we've started that process right now.

All right. And what you learned from the past?

Yeah, and actually that's, that's one of the things that we're hoping to learn from the scoping sessions is to hear from the local agencies.

We know ourselves that having as much efficiency in the grants that are put forward is going to be real important for cost savings for the agencies in our own process to make sure that they get out as quickly as possible.

Thank you very much. Question 4. The Department said shared they expected a delay in implementing grant programs because of the emergency regulations process. Can you share your Revised plans considering the passage of AB107 and the APA exemption from for previous years and current year Prop 4 appropriations.

Okay, yeah, sure. Hi. Good morning. Joe Karkoski with the State Water Resources Control Board. I head up our division of Financial assistance. So one of the things we're able to do right now is actually get money out the door and committed.

So we adopted, our board adopted in the summer our intended use plans for our drinking water State revolving Fund and also for our clean water State Revolving Fund. So embedded in those intended use plans included guidelines for distribution of proposition for funding. So for both drinking water and clean water.

Now with the APA exemption, we're able to rely on those previously adopted guidelines. Our board actually processed emergency regs for water recycling. And I think it was the day after we got OAL approval we got the APA exemption. So we're good either way. But we basically have.

We were working on staging water recycling grant projects prior to that. So we anticipate getting the funds appropriated for this fiscal year for water recycling committed. We anticipate. On the wastewater side, you had a question about vulnerable communities. So all of those grant funds for the small community wastewater will be going to disadvantaged communities.

So we anticipate getting that funding. So it's about half of the total appropriations going to wastewater, the other half to drink. So the half going to small community wastewater will get committed this fiscal year. And then we also have actually some workshops going on for the U.S. mexico border funding that are taking place this week.

So we're going to San Diego and then Calexico. So those have funding guidelines associated with them. We were able to drop the regulation regulatory provisions. So that should speed up the funding by I'd say a month or so. And then it eliminates the risk that we might have gotten sideways with the APA in some, in some way.

So we'll be able to get the money out the door much more efficiently. And you all appropriated all of the local assistance funding for the U. S. Mexico border funding, so we're golden.

So along the lines of Secretary Crowfoot's comments about we need to do things faster. Right. Are there other departments out there that would like to comment on 107 and the APA in terms of its impact,

I'll just add from the Department standpoint, we started the, again, the scoping process to do the normal process if we had guidelines, because we need to do that first, whether we had regulations or not. What, what 107 will do is allow us to continue with our normal process of getting guidelines out without a redundant regulatory oal process.

So it will keep us on track where we originally had scoped and planned the timing to get these grant programs out the door. So it will keep us on track on a normal bond grant program program.

It's good for us to get on the record what the values are of this. And so that's why I'm asking this question. And I think we have you would like to also respond to that. So we're going to ask.

There you go. Hi, Bryan Cash from the Natural Resources Agency. I just wanted to echo those comments across the board. Departments within our agency and EPA and CDFA will be able to speed things up faster. We there are departments like the Wildlife Conservation Board and State Coastal Conservancy.

They've actually moved forward and are going to be making awards very shortly or already made awards. So this will really move things along.

It reminds me some of when we were working on a project when I was a county supervisor and we were doing mitigation for the environmental impact. And then we were asked to do mitigation about the mitigation that we were doing. And it was like, where, where does that end Right. In terms of going forward?

So thank you very much. The question number five, Salton Sea people who would like to respond to that, but we have sort of been factoring in revenue from the Salton Sea Salt, the Salton Sea Lithium Fund that hasn't materialized. And you've read the question. But I am concerned that we project this revenue, but it never comes in.

And so we're talking about trying to resolve our structural deficit issues, et cetera. Can you enlighten us on how long, first of all, just how long have expected revenues, how many years in a row have they not come in as we projected they were coming in? And what's the plan for the future?

Good morning. Andrew Holt, Department of Finance Just wanted to acknowledge that we have brought a Member from our revenue team who's going to be able to get into some of the details here. Great forecasting. Yeah.

Good morning. William Flores Jones, Department of Finance so the 23-24 to give you a bit of context on what past forecasts assumed about the projected revenue timeline here, the 23-24 Budget act anticipated revenues, lithium revenues as early as the 24-25 fiscal year. The 2024-25 Budget act anticipated revenues as early as the 2025-26 fiscal year.

I can provide you a bit more context for how our office conducts that revenue forecast. Sure.

If you'd like, yeah, so given that the, the lithium extraction excise tax is a new tax with no historical revenue data, in order to produce this forecast, our office essentially tracks the activities of firms which we know to be investing in lithium mining operations in the region.

We do this by consulting mainly publicly available information, including press releases, announcements and Executive statements from businesses which we know to be invested in operations here. Yeah, we do this in order to track planned start dates, deduce production timelines and estimate expected volumes as the businesses increase production. So, bit more context, right?

Salton Sea lithium extraction requires significant capital investment and a firm's financial viability is significantly dependent on the price of that lithium carbonate which they plan to extract. To provide a bit of context, context here, the per ton price of lithium carbonate fell to all time lows in 2024.

In the first three quarters of 2025 where it was trading around 7 to $8,000 per ton. We have regained a bit of that price momentum the last quarter of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, now trading around $16,000 per ton.

But for some context here, right, when this tax was initially implemented and past the per ton price of lithium carbonate was around all time highs of $70,000 per ton. So we can see how that may affect an individual firm's timeline when trying to establish the financial viability here.

Additionally, each project is contingent on a variety of state, federal and local permits, assessments and approvals, as well as the successful implementation of a new and developing extraction technology referred to as direct lithium extraction, which is needed to collect lithium from this, this reserve in the Salton Sea, specifically where the lithium lies in geothermal brines underneath the crust of the Earth.

Yeah, great.

So this is, this reminds me of the comments that we made earlier, which is the state of California has to deal with such great variability. We've gone from the price of lithium of $7,000 a ton to $70,000 a ton. And we're trying to create business plans and projections and revenue flows in the midst of all that variability.

Which in my mind means that we have to be more cautious about expecting certain revenues from these funds if we're going to do the hard work of actually getting rid of this projected structural deficit that we have coming forward. Thank you very much for that.

But I have great staff person who we want to make sure we're complete when we're finished. So she's rapidly writing the next question. All right. That I want to make sure we have the answer on before we leave, which is in the meantime, using Prop 4 Fund positions meant to be funded by lithium.

What will we use next if we don't have these lithium funds? It's not sustainable. With this Lithium Fund.

Andrew Hull with Department of Finance. You know, this is sort of something that we deal with every year. You know, luckily over the next few years we're going to have Prop 4 that is an eligible funding source. We will have to come back and see, you know, what happens in a few years and we'll find a solution.

We always do. But I think it's too early to, to, to be able to speculate on that.

But I'd like to make sure that we've used this to clearly call out, we have a problem here and it's, it's not sustainable and we are relying on Prop 4 funding that is supposed to be for capital cost. And we can't, we can't always, we can't always do this.

We're going to have to, to make sure those projections that we just deal with this crisis along with many others as we go forward. One of the things I'm concerned with is I don't want us to lose our credibility with these efforts.

If we lose our credibility and we don't imagine where we would be in the state of California right now if we didn't have Prop 4 funding. I mean, we would be really in trouble in terms of our climate efforts and, and, and what we're trying to do. So. Thank you very much. Question six. All right.

And the sustainable groundwater. I don't think. Mr. We probably should have asked this question while you were up here already. Right. But you know, Can you, can you expand on the scoping process for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Grant program? We have, we heard lots of people want this funding.

How do we figure out with all these groundwater agencies out there, what's going to be the prioritization method you're going to follow?

Yeah. And thank you and Paul Goslin, again, the scoping for this is going to be really focused, per the bond language, on implementation projects, previous bonds, funds and grants. At the time when SGMA was coming into play, it was a lot of planning activity going on.

So there was a lot of grants going out to critically overdrafted basins. In 2021, $7.6 million, a lot of that they used to update plans, prepare their plans, and start the process for implementation that round. For non critically overdrafted basins. This kind of points to your demand. There was roughly $187 million in the bond.

We had almost $800 million in applications so it really spoke to the demand that was out there. So for this money and funds for sustainable groundwater management, it is going to be focused on implementation, not planning.

There could be some planning component, but it has to lead to a physical project on the ground that's going to improve groundwater conditions. So again, we're going out with scoping. We're hearing a lot from local agencies because right now they're in the throes of implementation and the necessity of that is going to be very, very important.

We do have a number of areas that we may consider focusing the funding on. One is usually we keep an open ended option for them to just bring in what their needs are. But I think we also as state have some interest.

One is we have issued corrective actions to the agencies about things they need to do to improve. Even though we've viewed them as substantially compliant, there's a number of things we may want them to at least have some balance and focus on those improvements as well as these other drivers going on.

Subsidence management, which we just issued, a best management practice document, ties in absolutely to the long term solution for conveyance and other problems caused by subsidence. So we are going to really look towards those districts that do have subsidence areas to focus in on resolving that as quickly as possible.

So I think some of those areas we're going to float out as part of the scoping process.

You know, we're in a catch 22 to some extent in that I think we want to use our funds to try to reward people who are GSAs that are doing the right thing and doing good things.

And at the same time some GSAs that maybe are, you know, doing the appropriate things and stuff, we'll end up with needs that we may have to end up fixing. I hope we can, we can find a balance. What's, what's your sense in terms of what we should prioritize at this point in time?

I think our intent going in is it's going to be eligible to all the groundwater sustainability agencies and other agencies. You know, we do have some agencies that we found were not substantially compliant and following the process, they were sent to the Water Board who intervened and they are going through their process.

So the process of the act is actually working. We've seen the return of some basins that we sent to the board through their process, their deliberation resolved issues and have returned basins back.

So I think it's going to be a natural process where we may have basins throughout the implementation period that may go from us to the board if we feel they're getting, they're not keeping on track and they'll return to us. So I don't.

Just because they fall into disagreement with us on where they're at doesn't mean that they should be harmed or not supported. So our level of support, technical assistance, other assistance is across the board and some of these agencies that are having problems that go to the board actually need a lot more guidance and assistance.

Great, thank you. And that's it for the questions here on this. We're going to move on to issue four, coastal resilience. While people are coming up, I'm going to take a quick 60 second break for the restroom.

Okay, Coastal Resilience. Who would like to go first?

Good morning. Courtney Massengale with the Department of Finance. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the Coastal Resilience chapter of the Climate Bond. The climate bond allocates 1.2 billion over the lifetime of the bond.

The funding is allocated across various departments including the State Coastal Conservancy, Ocean Protection Council, Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Parks and Recreation. The 2025 Budget act appropriated 279 million across these departments for programs such as coastal flood Management, sea level rise mitigation and adaptation and climate ready Fisheries Management.

The governor's Can. Can you guys hear her in the back? Okay, closer. Good. We got you. All right. Bring that. Yeah, nice and close. All right.

The governor's budget included 107 million for coastal resilience. To continue supporting these and other coastal resilience programs, I am joined by representatives from these departments and we are available for questions.

Great. LAO.

Hi, Sonia Petek again from the LAO. Just a couple quick comments. We would just note for you that relative to the other chapters of the proposition for bond, spending is not on. The spending is not happening at the same pace in the Coastal Resilience chapter. And there are a few reasons for this.

We talked with the Administration about this. The bulk of funding in this chapter goes to the State Coastal Conservancy and they've had a few constraints in terms of spending funding. One is staffing capacity. And you may note that the proposal this year for 26-27 includes a proposal for five new positions at the Coastal Conservancy.

And we think this makes a lot of sense. They just need more people to help manage these proposition for expenditures. In addition, they experienced some unanticipated delays in the emergency regulations process, which is something that don't typically have to do.

So a lot of the 25-26, dollars and awards have not been made have not gone out the door yet. So of course AB107 should help with that. However, we'd note that depending on what happens, we don't know if there's going to be a similar APA exemption for future years spending.

But anyway, we would just note that the sort of relatively smaller amounts being proposed for 26-27 sort of reflect those some of those realities for the State Coastal Conservancy. And they'll be getting the previous year's funding out the door in the upcoming year.

Great. Other comments. Great. Assemblymember.

Yeah, just picking up on that thread and I think you noted that about 32% of the bond chapter has been allocated in the first two years. Understand why. But the LAO also notes that this budget is really focused on near term issues.

And this specific portion, I think more so than even other areas that we touch, we really do see long term impacts or long term giant liabilities that are out there.

So I'm wondering just a little bit about how the Administration is trying to balance that challenge that you're having, getting the dollars out the door, with understanding that some of these things like coastal erosion and low lying areas where people live become exponentially more expensive the longer that we wait to actually address them.

Yeah, so as the LAO mentioned, we've had difficulty getting funding out the door. And for specific details, I'll defer to the Coastal Conservancy. Yeah, the delays are related to the emergency regulation process, but noting that there are some long term and short term difficulties there.

But we are trying to balance kind of that with how we've allocated funding throughout the bond.

And do you think the five additional positions, is that sufficient to be able to move this money faster?

Yes, we do think that those positions be able to support getting this funding at the door. And with the help of AB107, that's going to be very significant contribution to getting that funding rolling to grants and other entities.

I'm happy to speak to that as well. Hi, I'm Evan Borgnis Sloan, Deputy Executive Officer at the Coastal conservancy. So given AB107 passage last week, we are actually able to start moving grants out the door at our February 19th board meeting, which was this day it was signed. So that was really serendipitous.

So we are moving forward with our FY25 funding. And given that the bond passed In November of 2024, we've been working with partners over the entire year to get applications through our rolling grant process. And so we have a large suite of projects that we're planning to move forward.

And yes, there's been some delay, but we're confident that we can move them forward quickly.

Great. And then kind of picking up on the theme that the Secretary started off with around green tape. There are many examples within sort of this space where there still exists substantial green tape that also is slowing down these projects. I'll point to you have cited in the analysis, kelp restoration projects, for instance.

Is the Administration proposing any changes procedurally to couple it with the dollars that are being pushed out the door as well to get more projects faster?

You should probably stay.

We'd like to see if we can bring everybody up at a different point during the day.

Perfect. Good morning. I'm Jen Eckerle. I'm the Executive Director of the California Ocean Protection Council. And just in response to the question about kelp restoration, you know, we've been working very closely for many years with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to coordinate our efforts on kelp recovery and restoration.

So we've made over $10 million in investments to support near term science pilot restoration projects in the water, activating commercial fishermen to help with those efforts. And the Department is now in the process of developing kelp restoration and management plan. So that's really kind of the foundation for how we're going to keep this effort moving forward.

The near term investments that are making those long term impact on the ecosystem. So in addition to that, the Ocean Protection Council has a meeting with. On March 23, we will be bringing as an informational item science guidance about coastal and ocean habitat restoration.

And I think that's a really good next step to help inform priorities and investments as we move forward for restoration in the ocean.

Great. Yeah. And just as an aside, I hear all the time from educational institutions that have a role in this, whether it's white abalone or kelp, whatever have you that that sometimes they're treated more as commercial operations than educational operations. And that might be an area where we can find some streamlining of these projects as well.

Yeah, thank you. To bring that up. We are also working on an aquaculture action plan to address some of those issues and really think about the difference and the needs for commercial aquaculture permitting versus these other efforts that are targeted around restoration and bringing back endangered species. Species.

Yeah. Excellent. I know Washington has a one stop shop for aquaculture projects. I know we're kind of spread across multiple agencies. So anything we can do to try to kind of pull it all together and make it easier for folks, I think is a good thing.

Yes, we're hopeful that the Aqua culture action plan will do just that.

Great. Thank you so much. Last question. Potter Valley. Potter Valley Dam. Thank you.

I'm just going to say. Yeah, you should.

Can you talk just a little bit about timeline of it? How the. I think the technical term is mucking from the Federal Government. With that processes moving forward. And what do you anticipate in terms of complications that that might present in this budget and in future years?

Yes, definitely. So the primary federal involvement at this time is their review of the hydroelectric license surrender application that PG&E submitted. In the near term, we don't anticipate that process to really impede our spending of the 5.5 million.

There is a number of projects that are needed downstream and above stream the dam in terms of habitat restoration in order to get the system ready to receive all of that sediment and water.

There's fish passage projects that need to occur as well as potentially some of the planning that's needed for the water security and resilience planning for the two basin solution. So in terms of the allocation and

also raising Coyote Valley Dam and other

proposals, it's a proposal that Huffman, Congressman Huffman, helped facilitate the two basin solution, where essentially a facility would be built that could allow for diversions from the Eel to the Russian. And so that was developed with lots of community and partner engagement and is a potential project that we could be involved with.

And lastly, I did want to mention that federal delay with the license surrender in the long term could definitely impact the timeline of the two basin solution and the timeline of the dam removal. But at this point, we are operating under the assumption that the dam will be removed, given PGE's position.

And we think that a slow FERC process, you know, won't impede our current spending.

Great. Yeah, absolutely. And I know Congressman Huffman has secured funding from the Army Corps of Engineers and others for some of this work. So grateful to him for that effort. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. That's it. We're going to move on to issue five. Thank you very much, everybody. Outdoor Access. And I'll point out we have questions for fish and Wildlife and for state parks.

Good morning. Courtney Massengale with the Department of Finance. Again. I'll be giving an overview of the Outdoor Access chapter of the Climate Bond. The climate bond allocates 700 million for park creation and outdoor access over the lifetime of the bond.

This funding is allocated across various programs administered by the Wildlife Conservation Board, Department of Parks and Recreation and other departments within the California Natural Resources Agency. The budget act of 2025 appropriated 466 million across these departments with significant investments in the statewide park program, reduction of climate, investments on disadvantaged communities, and expanded parks and trail access.

The governor's budget includes an additional 35 million for these programs as well as investments in the Department of Fish and Wildlife's outdoor recreation program and the Sonoma Development Center Open space lands operated by the Department of Parks and Recreation. I'm joined by representatives from these departments who are available to answer questions.

And more specifically, I'm joined by Liz McGurk, the Deputy Director, Department of Parks and Recreation, to talk more about The Sonoma Development Center Open lands. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, my name is Liz McGurk with California State Parks, and in 2023, the Department, the Sonoma Development Center Open Space was transferred to the Department of Parks and Recreation to be managed as both a public recreational space and in recognition of the diverse sensitive habitats and natural resources in the area.

Since 2023, the Department has invested roughly $3 million to support basic operations at the Sonoma Development center, including permanent and seasonal staff and maintenance, vegetation management, natural resources management, et cetera. The governor's proposal would create an actionable roadmap for the long term stewardship of these lands.

The program focuses on creating a general plan process by which we will guide the site's future. It will take into consideration the preservation and restoration of sensitive habitats and natural resources in the area, specifically the protection of critical wildlife corridors that exist.

And it will offer the public an important opportunity to weigh in on the future of the space, including trails, recreational space, spaces that complement these natural resource values. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Question.

Yeah, just diving in a little bit on that since I think we've been dealing with SDC since 2013 or 2012, how are those efforts going to partner with some of the efforts around the new Cal Fire Station that's going to be out there, the housing proposals that the county of Sonoma has been particularly interested in partnering with the state on?

How is that all going to be integrated into one process? And how do you envision that the folks who live there in Glen Ellen and others can participate?

So not to speak on behalf of my colleagues from other agencies that are advancing those efforts, I think state parks plans to play a key partnership role in those efforts as we are managing the recreational spaces that will be available to the public and to those communities.

So we'll work with our partners at Cal Fire as they're, you know, executing their plans for the fire station. And as you know, the other development is happening. I think we'll play a key role.

Our focus will be to advance the efforts of the public recreational needs, the community needs of the open space, and to ensure that those voices are heard as we're planning for that park and for the future of that space.

Yeah, and just kind of as an aside for folks who don't know what the Sonoma Developmental center was, it was a dual diagnosis patients center in the Sonoma Valley that actually does have a long history of mistreatment of individuals there that goes back almost 100 years.

So there have been cases where in which the remains of family members have been guarded by the state, not returned back to family members. And I think as you walk through this process, you're going to hear a lot from folks about that history, helping to rectify that, about tribal involvement in the area and recognition of that.

And so I would encourage you to have a very clear plan on how the public can participate because they're going to, they're going to force their way into the process one way or another. And understandably so I think being proactive about that could be helpful.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate those comments and we definitely agree with you. I think a robust public engagement and engaging with our California native tribal partners is going to be essential as we move forward. So thank you for that.

The great advantage of the citizens voting for Prop 4, you know, and for, for our ability to have bonds, these kind of things just would not be undertaken without that. My question is for Department of Fish and Wildlife. You saw the question. But for the benefit of the public, Basically, we've appropriated $10 million to you.

You're now asking for another 20 million for visitor access. And we'd like to have more information about how you plan on using the, the funds for visitor access to state owned open space lands, which is a little bit different than state parks, et cetera. Right.

So thank you, Chair and Member. My name is Megan Hurtle and I'm the new Director of California Department of Fish and wildlife. I'm 13 days in, so lucky number. But given my newness, I've actually brought some colleagues to answer that. But I didn't want to miss the chance to thank you for all your work and introduce myself.

Welcome aboard.

So with that.

Thank you. With that, I will pass it to Chad.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Members, my name is Chad Dibble. I'm the Deputy Director for the Wildlife and Fisheries Division at the Department. It's a fair question and we're pretty happy to talk to you about it. We actually have given you a handout. I think that's now in front of you.

And it talks about first what we're doing with the 10 million that we've received this year. Looking forward to the 20 million that we're requesting for next year. We've identified eight projects across the state that will be utilizing these funds. This is really us building on money that you invested in us back in 21.

I think it was 21 or 22 where we were able to enhance several of our properties. This includes things like cleaning up the properties, bringing in interpretive panels across different places. You'll see some examples in the handout of bridges that we've recreated. ADA access, providing public bathrooms at some of our facilities that we don't have regularly.

So this is building on what we did before and we've identified eight properties that we've started engaging now. As you know, construction can take a while and it takes some. There's some things to go through. So we're working through that process with those. Additionally, the 10 million is going to support us in our land management plans.

The Department owns over a million acres. We have 700 properties. Some of those aren't accessible at all.

And that's just due to the fact that we haven't been able to utilize or have the opportunity to evaluate the resources on those properties and to determine what type of public access they should have and what things could be allowable on the property based on the resources that are there.

So we're going to invest a little bit of those dollars just to go into some of those properties. We haven't been able to get to, to think and look at how we can potentially open those up in the future. A second piece is something that's pretty important to us.

We have a lot of properties that we call unstaffed lands or unstaffed lands, and we don't have access to be everywhere. In some cases, we don't know what the public access is or how many people are coming or not and how well these investments are working and if we're seeing improvements.

So some of these funds will be for us to invest in some of the technology that we have today to assist us because we don't have the resources to have somebody sitting at a gate or a front kiosk counting cars or asking for people as they come in.

Many of these are really wild places and we want to keep them that way. So it's kind of nice to just have it open to the public. But we do need to have an accountability and we'd like to know how well they're being utilized and hear from people.

So these are things like QR codes, drive strips, camera traps, investing in some of those things that allow us to track user, user frequency. And then lastly, there's a portion of the 10 million that we're spending now that's helping with our statewide education interpretation. So this is really enhancing our interpretive panels.

Everybody loves to go look at the pictures and see what you're going to see on this property. What sort of animals are there? What am I expecting learn a little bit of history about them. We need to update some of those.

Some of those are old, some of them have changed, they need new languages, they need additional assistance for our, for a more open inclusive access. So, so we're working on a lot of those. We did a lot of that in 21-22 and you'll see some examples there of what that looks like.

So that's really important for us working with the tribes to try and better hear their voices and help put some translation in what these properties, how they were valued traditionally and just sort of explain that to the public and have an educational moment there. So that's really where we're at with the 10 million.

The 20 million is to invest in more of that. We've identified 21 other properties that we would continue on these activities. We have a list of things that we've been working through of what types of upgrades they would have. You have a map in front of you that shows where in the state those are located.

We are trying to expand across the state. There's always concerns of investing in only one area and you'll see that we're trying really hard across our properties to spread these resources across the state. And you'll also notice that we are complying. Our target is 100% on the DAC at disadvantaged communities.

We're using like a five mile radius that seems reasonable that somebody in those communities could get to those properties. And we're trying to identify properties that meet that with 100% to ensure we're meeting the bond commitments. But also the Department is just putting our best foot forward.

This was very helpful and that's I think the advantage of you having the questions in advance and being able to be prepared. So we really appreciate this. I would strongly encourage you to try to use technology to as efficiently as possible keep track of our unstaffed lands.

I think there will be increasing pressure on those unstaffed lands as technology gets better, people find ways to be able to access unstaffed lands. And I think of how fast swimming holes suddenly with the rise of the Internet went From you know, 50 people being there on a weekend to 500 people being there on a weekend.

We need to counter at the same time with, with our resources to be able to track and, and manage and stay on top of that. But thank you very much, this was very helpful, really appreciate it. Any other questions on this and stuff? Right, we're ready to move on issue six, river forecast and snow survey resources.

And this is one that's Important to me to focus on a few particular things. Right,

Sure. Good afternoon. Laura Hollender, Deputy Director of Flood Management, Dam Safety from the Department of Water Resources. I'll do a few opening remarks and then happy to answer your questions.

So I just want to start out by saying that with the reduction in federal resources and services, California is now vulnerable to gaps in flood emergency forecasts that are essential to public safety and also to gaps in critical snow survey data that is essential to water supply forecasting for the state's water supply.

This proposal is intended to address those gaps. Since the 1950s, state law has required DWR produce, river stage forecasted forecasts and water supply forecasts. Beginning in the 1970s, the state of California began to partner with the National Weather Service and other federal entities to perform these services.

And you heard a bit about that from the Secretary earlier this morning. Over the decades, it has been a strong partnership form between the state and the Federal Government that shared in these forecasting responsibilities.

This proposal seeks to restore some of the capacity that was lost or the capacity that was lost, and to insulate these critical functions that the state is required to do from further pursuit, further future disruption. These funds will also help us do some of the state's most important initiatives, including forecast informed reservoir operations.

Without accurate forecasting, it is very difficult to do Firo, as you know, we need the data and information for our reservoir operations. So with that, I'll stop there and happy to answer any questions.

Okay. LAO.

Sonia Petek with the LAO in thinking about the framework that my colleague Ms. Ehlers presented earlier, we find that this is one of those proposals that meets that very high bar for your consideration due to the health and safety, critical health and safety factors at play, including water supply forecasting, emergency response and flood management.

Thank you. Anything. So I would like to focus. I agree with the assessment that meets the LAO's sort of standard there. I agree with the decision of the Department to make this permanent and not temporary. But what I would like to do is have you clarify for the public a little bit more.

How much is at risk as a result of this federal cut? What are the real impacts for California? Why is it, why was it better to have this partnership working, you know, in the first place? How unprecedented is it to have this partnership end, you know, at this, at this point in time?

Because as I look at it, the significance of the money the Federal Government is saving on this pales by comparison to the benefits that were being provided to the public and compared to the trillions of dollars we seem to be spending in Federal adventures abroad.

We're ignoring some of these very basic things that we should be doing here. So could you fill me in in terms of impacts, please?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two primary impacts. One is directly to lives and safety and property.

We use river forecasting and forecasting in general to be able to tell the locals when high water is coming, you know, when they need to maybe make some evacuation decisions, you know, where storms are likely to hit, where we might see thresholds, where, you know, we need to pre position materials and that type of thing.

As a state, the other side is water supply. We as a state have responsibility to accurately do water supply forecasting. And that is important for things like drought, to prepare and plan for drought.

But also so all the communities sort of know what is coming down as far as if there's any going to be any restrictions that way or other things. And so it's just many, many, many, many impacts.

I mean, you know, earlier this year we were worried about in this winter whether we were going to be able to do 24 hour forecasting, you know, and when you see many storms and especially atmospheric rivers come down the horizon, it's just very important to be able to have those capabilities.

Thank you very much. The second half of the question is how is the Federal Government able to even make decisions without the watershed data that it's been gathering in the past? And would the state end up sharing our data with the Federal Government so the Federal Government can do its job? My next question.

Yeah, no, happy to answer that. Yes. So operation of reservoirs is subject to many, many rules. So there's inflow and outflow requirements, delta requirements, many things, snowpack. And having accurate water supply inflows is a large piece of that. And so without that data, you tend to make more conservative decisions about how much water might be available.

And so we do plan and have planned to share our information. It's online, it's required as part of the California Open and Transparent Water Data Act. So we will do that.

We have as far as cost sharing routinely in the past we have had the Federal Government, they have paid for quite a bit and this and frankly more than the state. So in some ways having more state investment for state required responsibilities is also important.

Thank you very much. Any questions?

Yeah, so not really a question, more of just kind of a comment about how important Firo has been in my region in Mendocino and Sonoma county and shout out to Marty at Scripps for his work on this, but especially coupling it to the conversation we had just a minute ago about Potter Valley and water security in the area.

We would like to see an expansion of that as much as possible across the state and would like to better understand what types of resources. As the chair was sort of asking about thinking about California as its own kind of nation state.

How do we continue to advance this from its pilot project stage where we've seen huge success, to something that could be a water management tool for folks across the state?

Yeah, Vero is absolutely a tool we want to invest in further, you know, apply across the state. Absolutely.

How have you been able to contact the federal employees that were laid off and are they candidates for the positions for this?

Yes, yes to both questions. We've had long standing relationships with a lot of those employees that have either decided to leave through the sort of fork in the road or were laid off. And yes, they absolutely are candidates for the positions that this budget proposal would allow us to hire.

Thank you very much. We're going to go on to issue seven wildfire readiness, seven day per week schedule, CCC hand crews.

Good afternoon. Oh, I'm sorry.

Good afternoon.

Who would like to go first? I'll go first. Good morning, Chair Bennett and Member. My name is JP Patton, Director of the California Conservation Corps.

It is my honor to serve your Corps Members and I want to appreciate you for the time you extended our Corps Members their Government Education day when they paid a visit to you and your offices. I'm also excited to share that this year marks the CCC's 50th anniversary.

As you well know, the CCC is one of the state's most cost effective investments and dual benefits protecting our natural resources and communities while preparing the next generation of our workforce to meet the challenges ahead.

While we have few other budget proposals today, my opening remarks will focus on an attempt to answer one of our most urgent priorities providing the support necessary to align CCC hand crews as close as practical to Cal Fire's seven day a week 66 hour operational schedule.

Therefore, our proposal requests 49 staff positions and 47 corps Members in order to make this transition. However, I want to reemphasize the current landscape. California, as you well know, no longer has a wildfire season. Rather it is a year around occurrence.

Our corps Members already work side by side with our Cal Fire collaborators and when Cal Fire responds, there's often a CCC crew right there with them.

Given this new reality, the CCC's model and program are not designed to nor have sufficient depth for the new reality of year round 7 day coverage while also meeting consistent supervisory, statutory and mission mandates.

CCC hand crews are currently on a 4, 10 schedule during base time and surge to a seven day schedule week during peak season which is April through November. These hand crews are also under the dispatch authority of Cal Fire, not the CCC, as they are part of Cal Fire's direct resource count and control.

As such, they are called out to serve whenever they are needed. However, due to staffing capacity issues caused by sickness, unplanned absences, vacancies, burnout and the like, 20% of these hand crews end up being downed by Cal Fire and unable to respond or be dispatched.

On top of that, the culinary training and administrative staff under this new reality are severely strained as well. In addition, when hand crews are called out, they are often called out at the expense of the training and the education opportunities that they are entitled to as part of the participation in the program.

That is one of the elements of what separates or is the distinction between a CCC crew versus the CDCR crews versus the CMD crews. The Corps model is not just about labor, it is the educational and personal development corps Members undertake as well.

And when crews are exclusively used for hand crew labor to meet workload demands, it undermines the legislative intent of the program and limits corps Members abilities to gain the job readiness and other skills and development necessary for their success.

The proposal provides the resources that CCC hand crews can be fully staffed and supported to meet today's operational reality. It means supporting CAL Fire in a faster initial attack and containment more reliably. It means more proactive fuel reduction to protect homes and communities and more importantly, it means improved safety, reduced burnout, stronger operational stability for our program.

To address a few of your questions in advance, if we focus on a solely relief staffing pattern, that cost would be about 7.5 million in the first year and 6.7 million ongoing. That funding would only support 15 conservationists which are the crew supervisors and then 12 con supervisors who oversee and mentor those crew leaders.

It would also supply four culinary positions and 43 corps Members. What this would not include would be the six admin positions to do workers computer health and safety and then the 12 sort of intermediary C2 positions.

So I would caution that we can if we make this transition, we would still remain on a 410 schedule and that there would be gaps in coverage between what our schedule looks like and the overlay schedule of what Califier offers. Know that.

Again, I just want to reiterate this does not include the training and education component of our program to the question of reimbursement as an alternate funding source. Reimbursement is a foundational element to our baseline crew operations and accounts for 45% of our overall funding.

However, our specialized crews, like the fire crews, operate under a model of full funding which has a different fiscal and administrative structure that is incompatible with going out for federal reimbursement.

In fact really undercuts the idea of the problem that we are trying to solve, meaning that if we need them to be available to be dispatched by CAL Fire and yet they are on a project where they can't be pulled from that creates attention.

Additionally, the federal funding landscape and uncertainties surrounding the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting programs makes reliance on federal funding also a challenge and an issue for as well do remember that every dollar invested in fire prevention saves more in disaster response and recovery down the road while strengthening California's climate resistance to wrap.

In addition to the hand crews, our other budget proposals also ensure we fully activate and our rebuilt Greenwood center replace aging emergency response vehicles and address critical deferred maintenance, all of which comprehensively ensure that we show up against the risk of stranded investments and future proof them.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions about those proposed investments as well.

Brian Metzger, LAO we find that this augmentation of the hand crews would provide relief to existing hand crews and allow them to maintain their current capacity when some members are temporarily unavailable, and if fully funded, would allow them to operate on a daily year round schedule that is consistent with Cal Fire's requirements.

Thank you very much, LAO.

But as we presented in our framework at the beginning of the hearing, this proposal could be funded at a lower level to make progress towards some of those intended objectives without spending as much General Fund. And as you heard, there is a lower amount that could potentially be considered. You know, that would allow for prioritizing

relief funding for existing hand crews and of course would come with trade offs, which is reduced hand crew availability during certain times of the year. But in light of the budget condition, we recommend that the Legislature consider this as a potential alternative and have to answer questions. Thank you. Department of Finance.

Hi, Julianne Rolf from Department of Finance. I want to highlight one thing about the corps and how their program is working now. They're already strained during the peak season to meet the seven day a week. And while the relief staffing could help in those months, fires don't care in the off season if it's base or peak.

And they also don't care if it's a weekend or not. And so we want to make sure that we are prioritizing our fire response as a state. And this proposal seeks both the relief staffing so that we meet, you know, the operational needs as close to 100% of the time, as well as providing seven day coverage.

And one of the things to note too is while we're reducing to the standard 19 crews on a given day, that can surge up to the full 33 crews with this proposal.

And so we want to make sure that, you know, the state is able to address any fire situation throughout the entire year, throughout seven days a week for the 52 weeks of the year.

Thank you. Number one, I really appreciate you answering the questions in your presentation, saving some time. It did save time, but it also helped focus us on the, on the key differences and the importance and stuff. Do you have questions? Right.

Overall, I think that there are significant value in CCC, but I think it's underappreciated in the public because people don't know that much about what is going on. But to the extent that we can marry this with the great efforts being made by Cal Fire and the expansion of that.

What I'm concerned with is as this is an expansion of expenditures by the state that is this an expansion of expenditures that is going to move us even to more of an imbalance in terms of how much are we focusing on community hardening versus how much are we focusing on hardening farm at a greater distance away from communities.

So I will be advocating and trying to push for CCC projects to be those projects that are immediate community hardening right around communities immediately helping in terms of home hardening kind of efforts, et cetera.

And if CCC can find a way to move itself into the whole field of hard home hardening in an appropriate way, whatever, I think it would be really beneficial for everybody because it would help us with this balancing that we really desperately need, I think which is greater prioritization on our expenditures being closest to the lives being protected.

A dollar spent right there keeping a structure from burning with somebody inside of it has to become a higher priority in California than a dollar spent 75 miles away from a community that's going to burn. And so I hope you could look into that. We'd love to.

My office would love to talk with you more about your ability to potentially make that transition. If there are no other questions, we all set. Then we're going to go on to issue eight. And we made it through our eight topics.

If we pull this off here, and that's the California State Parks Library Pass program, Then we'll be ready for public comments. Comments up to 1 minute. You like to go first? Sure. Great. Pull that microphone nice and close to you, please. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. It's a real pleasure to be here. Armando Quintero, Director of California State Parks

Even closer. Even closer.

My whisper voice. Is that better? Are we there?

You're close, but you could get even closer. That's better.

All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. The governor's budget requests on ongoing transfer of $6.75 million from the General Fund to State Parks and Recreation Fund to transition the Library Parks Pass program from prior one time funding to an ongoing program.

The program was launched under the California Outdoors for All initiative as a three year pilot from 21 or in 21 and 22. And this program provides 33,000 state park library passes to more than 1 more than 1100 libraries across the state and in tribal libraries as well.

60% of these pass users report an annual household income below $60,000. Demonstrating that this program is really expanding access and in fact, this pass is the most checked out item in our public libraries in California.

And I might just say if you ever go by a library, go in and talk to a librarian and ask what they think about the State park pass. It's really a popular item.

While the Department does offer other free and low cost pass programs such as the Adventure Pass for fourth graders, the Golden Bear Pass for income eligible Californians, the Distinguished Veterans Pass, and the Disabled Discount Pass, these are all tailored to specific groups.

The library pass is the only free pass available to anyone with a library card, and half of the population of California has a library card and 5 million of those are children. The time spent outdoors and in nature is crucial for both mental and physical health and well being.

We all saw what happened during Covid public lands were packed. And also since Covid attendance at public lands and parks continues to be higher than before. Covid scientific studies estimate that every dollar spent on creating and maintaining trails can save almost $3 in health care costs.

Additional studies show that access to parks and open space can reduce stress in children, improve academic performance, increase physical activity and improve sleep. Excuse me. Numbers of visitors remain high, as I just said, and the demand for open space continues across the state.

This proposal represents a modest investment with proven exponential outcomes and we appreciate your support and are happy to take questions.

Brian Metzger, LAO, we find that this proposal does have merit as one way of increasing access to state Park. However, using the framework that we presented to you at the beginning of the hearing, we recommend the Legislature reject this proposal.

LAO.

In our framework, we encourage the Legislature to apply a high bar to new spending proposals and prioritize those that address near term significant immediate health and safety risks, as well as other time sensitive objectives. We find that this proposal does not clear that bar.

Furthermore, the proposal commits the state to ongoing General Fund spending and at a time when significant deficits are projected, and other programs that are currently funded and offered by parks will continue to provide additional access to state parks if this program does not continue in its current form.

Department of Finance anybody?

Daniel Ross-Jones, Department of Finance would just amplify something that the Director had mentioned, that 60% of users of this program report income under $60,000 annually. And unlike the many other good pass programs that the Department has, this is the only one that does not come with other additional requirements for access to it.