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

Alright. You ready? Hey. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate that you were able to fight your way through the crowd to get here.

It's a popular place to be this morning. Today, we're happy to have our colleagues back from the Natural Resources Agency. We have eight presentation items today. For each presentation item, I'll ask each of the witnesses in the agenda to introduce themselves before they begin their testimony. At the end of the presentation, members of this subcommittee may ask questions, make comments, or request a presentation on any of the non-presentation items.

We'll not be taking a vote on any of the items on the agenda today. After all the items are heard, we'll take public comment. For members of public who wish to provide comment, please, limit your testimony to the items on the agenda. Each member of the public will have one minute to speak, assuming we have enough time at the end of the agenda for one minute. And let's begin with issue number six, please.

Hi, Chair Bryan. Brian Cash from the Natural Resources Agency. I'm here to present control section 15.04, which doesn't sound very thrilling.

Wow.

But it is something that we've been working on for a while, And it's one of those things where you think, "why didn't we do this ten years ago, fifteen years ago"? It's a new operational efficiencies control-

Excuse me. I'm gonna ask everybody. If you put your document between you and the mic, it's hard. If you can pull the mic to the side of your document so we all, including myself, we have to be right up here. There's a huge difference between being here. I just want you to see the difference between being here.

Most of us are trying to speak like this, but in this room, we have to speak like this.

Got it. How is this?

That's yeah. That's good. I'm the one that has to lean forward. You guys can pull the mic, so I'm trying to.

Alright. So this control section, it allows departments to collaboratively fund projects at a landscape or multi jurisdictional scale. And it allows the Department of Finance to transfer these climate bond funds, appropriated by the legislature to designated primary state entities.

So if you have three different departments, four different departments funding a specific project, you would be able to instead of setting up grant agreements with four different grant agreements with one entity, you'd be able to transfer the funds to one of the state departments and to be able to do that. So, we're very excited about this. This is an efficiency. I know the legislature has been asking us "what are you doing to get more efficient?". Here's a good example.

Great. Thank you. Great. Seems like it makes a lot of common sense, but let's see what LAO had to say about it.

Morning, chair. Brian Metzger with the LAO. We found the proposed control section to be reasonable as a way to jointly fund those landscape and multi-jurisdictional projects that they spoke about, and it's consistent with language that's similar to what's in the bond measure itself, which we think is important. However, there is a notification and approval process for finance, but there's no notification process for the legislature.

So we would recommend the legislature consider whether it would be helpful to receive at least summary information about how this proposed control section is being used to kind of help track project funding and make sure that it's working as intended.

Department of Finance have any concerns about that request?

We, well, are happy to consider the legislature in notifying as part of the control section.

Great. And do you have any other comments you want to make?

No comments, but available for questions, Courtney Massengale.

Great. Well, as I said, I think it certainly makes common sense. Are there particular places in the bond that stimulated you to do this and say, "hey, we think on these particular parts of the bond, we're gonna need this multi jurisdictional approval process"?

Yeah. There are. It can be used across the board on the bond, and I think it'd be helpful in a lot of different sections. Bu the multi benefit land repurposing program, the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program, the Regional Projects with Cal Fire SNC, Sierra Nevada Conservancy and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and the Forest Health and Watershed Improvement Program. We thought that those would be ones that would really benefit from this.

And in terms of how the funding- I wanna be clear on this- the funding will still go to each of the departments. Departments will approve a certain amount of funding, but then all of the reporting on that funding will come from one department?

Correct.

Okay.

And the funding will be transferred over to that department, the one department that's gonna be the lead department.

So when we see a summary for the end of the year, we have a department of "x". Will that funding be reflected in their expenditures or will it be reflected in the department that consolidated all the expenditures?

Correct.

Not in the other expenditures of the other department.

Yes.

But the revenue, we will have granted the revenue to the original department.

Yes. The appropriation initially goes to the other department.

Right.

And then through the Department of Finance, it's transferred over to the lead department.

Both the appropriation and the expenditure will be reported from the other department.

Correct.

Got it. Okay. Great. Alrighty. Staff, any other things else you wanna clarify in terms of this?

Right. Alright. Hey. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Appreciate having LAO run the traps on the on this also for us. Right? Okay. We're gonna go to, item seven.

And that's biodiversity and nature based solutions, for 2026 and 2027 spending plan.

Hi. Good morning. Manisha Kapasiawala, Department of Finance. The climate bond allocates $1.2 billion for protecting biodiversity and accelerating nature based solutions over the lifetime of the bond. This funding is allocated across various programs administered by the Wildlife Conservation Board, the California Natural Resources Agency, and nine different conservancies.

The 2025 budget act allocated $390 million across these entities for programs such as establishing wildlife crossings and corridors, restoring ecosystems, reducing climate change risk, and improving public access to nature and tribal nature based solutions. The governor's budget includes an additional $199 million to continue supporting these and other programs. Some new proposals and program highlights in the governor's budget include the following: one is priority habitat restoration and new public access opportunities across these projects for Salton Sea communities, and restoring and connecting wildlife habitats across the San Andreas Corridor.

I'm joined by representatives from the departments with allocations in this chapter, and we are available for questions.

I will turn it over to Dr. Jennifer Norris, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Board, who'll provide a brief overview of and new updates regarding the board's work in protecting biodiversity and advancing nature based solutions.

Good morning, Chair Bennett. I'm Jennifer Norris, the executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Board, also known as WCB. WCB provides grants to tribes, governments, and nonprofits to support conservation investments statewide. Since 2022, WCB has received nearly $1.2 billion from a mix of voter approved bond and general fund sources to support biodiversity and nature based solutions projects. We have provided grants to partners in every single county and every terrestrial ecosystem for habitat protection, restoration, and wildlife oriented public access.

We've supported seven ancestral land return projects and helped return 38,000 acres of culturally significant land to California Native American tribes. Additionally, since 2022, nearly 60% of WCB's investments have provided meaningful benefits to underserved communities. We are proud of our accomplishments and excited for the work ahead. The administration's 2026-2027 climate bond expenditure plan includes $111 million to WCB for biodiversity and nature based solutions investments.

WCB would use these funds to support projects that are helping us meet our commitment to conserve 30% of California's lands and coastal waters by 2030, also known as 30 by '30, the state's nature based solutions climate targets, and outdoors for all strategy.

As you are aware, WCB was delayed in dispersing our 2025-2026 Prop 4 funding while we navigated the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. Thanks to the passage of AB 107, we are now moving forward with Prop 4 grants.

In February, we awarded $30 million across several high priority projects, including planning for wildlife crossings on Interstate 15 and State Route 62, habitat restoration for pollinators across multiple coastal counties, spring habitat for migratory birds, and meaningful access to nature for the underserved community of Watsonville. We are actively developing nearly 30 land acquisition projects throughout the state. As you know, they have a fairly long lead time, but those are coming to fruition.

And nearly as many habitat restoration projects for the conservation of rivers, forests, wetlands, deserts, and more. If approved by our board, we will expend nearly all of last year's $256 million allocation by the end of the calendar year, and then we'll turn to the many high priority projects waiting in the queue for FY 26-27 funds. As I'm sure you are aware, the demand for WCB funding exceeds what is available by many times.

For context, we opened our application portal last April for Prop 4 projects. And by the June, we had we had received nearly $1 billion in requests, which is a good thing to have.

Lots of conservation to do. We have a small but incredibly efficient and effective team and know we will be able to report on more amazing accomplishments this time next year. What's being requested this year is what we reasonably believe we can expect to get accomplished with existing staffing on our current workload. We're proud of the work we do with our partners, and we look forward to the year ahead in protecting California's natural world. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else?

Brian Metzger, LAO. We find the overall approach taken in this chapter of Prop 4 to be reasonable. We think it balances the demand for these solutions with the capacity of the wildlife conservation board as well as the conservancies. One program to note is 30 million of the proposed 111 million for the protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife resources and habitats will be granted to DWR, for priority habitat and public access projects at the Salton Sea.

And funding those projects likely makes sense given the tight timeline for the state to complete nearly 30,000 acres of habitat projects by 2028.

We also would note that WCB is awaiting direction from the legislature about the geographic scope of the San Andreas corridor program, for which it proposes $20 million in '26, '27 of the total 80 million that's in Prop 4. And so to the extent that the legislature has specific priorities about, you know, the reach of the San Andreas corridor program, now would be the time to specify those.

Well, thank you. Few few comments before I get into questions. And number one, Mrs. Norris, you're right to be proud of what the WCB has done. But I think you're also you also have the best job in California to be able to allocate and create sort of the permanent acquisition of land and preserve the nature that we have here.

You hark back to Teddy Roosevelt and creating all those national parks and how many generations have benefited from that.

And California and Californians are wise to keep making this investment by approving these climate bonds and these environmental bonds, you know, that we've had go forward. I know there's a lot of times people have concerns about them, but the demand is is enormous. And so congratulations to you and your efficient team at Wildlife Conservation Board.

And our partners who bring us all these great projects. They get the credit.

Yeah. Great. And that certainly is true. And it's, I think, something that California should really be proud of.

Just what we've done with Wildlife Conservation Board. And specifically as LAO has brought up the San Andreas corridor program. And a few things. One, my overall concept is if we expand this too much, we dilute sort of the ability to get the maximum bang for our buck.

I agree.

And then particularly if we expanded into areas where the land acquisition is going to be very expensive per acre, I think that that's probably not, from my standpoint and my input from a legislative standpoint, will be not to to expand into areas that are going to drain a lot of the dollars when we have such a big footprint that we're trying to deal with.

I've also had request to slightly increase the the allocation from 20 million to 25 million out of the 80 million. So not change the 80 million, but just accelerated some. Curious whether you have any concerns about going from 20 to 25 million as we move forward.

I don't have any concerns about that. I think, obviously, it's up to the administration, but my understanding is there is a fairly coherent set of partners with a strategic vision for that part of the state, and the work that they do will be this year, next year, ongoing. I'm sure we can find a way to get those projects accomplished through.

Thank you. Department of Finance have any concerns if we went to '25 from '20?

Good morning. Andrew Hall with Department of Finance. Obviously, we don't know any of the details on that yet, but we're happy to work together. No immediate concerns.

Okay. Great. The $30 million for the Salton Sea project. We identified this in here. That's a fast acceleration of spending at the Salton Sea.

So my concern is just to make sure that we are efficiently spending those dollars that we're not throwing dollars forward, etcetera. What kind of assurances can you give us that this rapid acceleration in terms of Salton Sea expenditures going to be handled efficiently and appropriately?

Brian Cash from the Natural Resources Agency. I think we can assure you because the states completed already 3,896 acres of the 14,900 acres that we need to finish. And then there are 8,000 acres of projects that are already in the pipeline underway and then 3,630 acres that are funded and where they're working with the contractor to begin construction. So things are moving very quickly there and efficiently. So don't think this will be a problem.

Feel comfortable. And then second question that we had there for you is will these, projects count under the 40% disadvantaged?

Most definitely.

That's great. Alright. Appreciate it. Assemblymember Rogers, is with us here today.

And do you have any questions? We're on, issue seven because we're waiting to cover issue one until the Assemblymember Ransom as our guest arrives. Anything on issue seven? Great. Thank you.

Alrighty. So that's issue six and seven. We promised we promised Assemblymember Ransom that would try to wait, so we're gonna go to eight unless the people for issue eight are not here. They are here. Good.

Okay. Go ahead.

Good morning, Chair Bennett and members of the committee. My name's-

Pulled out a lot closer.

How's that, sir?

You don't have to lean forward so much if you wanna pull it even closer. My suggestion I'm sorry to micromanage you guys, but put it to the side of your paper and then bend this thing over. Right?

Lack of experience. I appreciate your assistance.

There you go. Alright. You're not doing it right, but I'm gonna let you go on. Go ahead.

I appreciate the grace. Good morning. Chair Bennett, members of the committee, my name is Jake Sholand. I'm the Deputy Director of Fire Protection Programs for CAL FIRE, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. California's fire environment has extended to a fire year. This can be seen from many fires since 2014, including the devastating January 2025 LA fire siege.

In March 2026, we have already mitigated large fires, including the Springs Fire in Riverside County, the Crown Fire in Los Angeles County, and the Paramount Fire in Kings County. Certain aviation assets have now been staffed continuously, including day and night operations to meet fire activity demands and rapid response requirements, which also increases the need for ongoing flight crew training to maintain proficiency and readiness across all aerial firefighting disciplines.

CAL FIRE's fleet has also modernized, transitioning to 16 CAL FIRE hawk helicopters and adding seven C130H air tankers for a total of 72 aircraft. These platforms are more advanced and capable, but also require more intensive and frequent maintenance across complex systems, including avionics, electrical, communications, and suppressant delivery systems. Maintenance staffing has scaled accordingly.

From 90 maintainers in 2015 to 2020 to a 152 by 2024, a 171 in 2026, and a 191 proposed under this contract. This reflects increases aligned with a larger, more complex fleet and year round operations. Maintenance has also shifted from a five day a week model to a seven day model, though staffing remains lean compared to our federal counterparts.

Pilot staffing has grown from a 108 pilots in 2024 to a 163 under the proposed contract in response to year round fire activity and increased mission demands, including support for our C130 air tankers. Sustaining these operations require a larger, highly trained pilot workforce developed through a rigorous training pipeline and specialization.

These positions align the program with FAA part 135 requirements, expands the support pilot core for transport of personnel and supplies, and enables dual shift operations, and strengthens relief capacity to address absences and attrition. At the same time, we are competing in a tight labor market. Industry labor pressures have driven contractor negotiated salary increases of approximately 51% for pilots and 20% for mechanics to recruit and retain a qualified workforce.

This contract reflects today's reality, a year round mission, a more complex fleet, and the personnel required to safely and effectively meet California's wildfire demands. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Department of Finance?

Julianne Rolf, Department of Finance. I'd like to note for the record that this BCP said that, the cost increase would be up to a certain amount, and we'd like to note that the amount stated in the BCP, which is $66.5 million for the first year, is the the final amount of the contract increase.

Thank you. LAO? Brian Metzger, LAO. Consistent with the framework we provided to approach environmental issues in the 26-27 governor's budget, we find that this proposal addresses important health and safety concerns and merits consideration for budget year funding. Absent this funding, CAL FIRE would not be able to fully use its air tanker and command center aircraft to respond to wildfires.

And without those aircraft, more communities and residents would be at risk. And therefore, we recommend approval of this proposal.

Great. Thank you. My, first question is: the whole issue of recruiting and trying to make sure that we have adequate mechanics to be able to do this. What percentage of these mechanics are in house mechanics? And what percentage do you contract out for, mechanics to help in terms of maintenance?

Mechanics, specifically. All the mechanics within the CAL FIRE's aviation program are provided through this contract.

Alright. So they're they're they're all CAL FIRE employees?

Negative. They're all the contract employees.

Okay. When you said provided through this contract, they're all contract employees.

Correct.

And pilots?

For the fixed wing pilots, they are also provided through the contractor. The rotor wing, the Firehawk helicopter pilots are Cal Fire employees.

Okay. And the how many contractors are out there providing mechanics and providing pilots?

SO, specific to your question, anybody can bid on the contract, the personnel that we're talking about would transition to the new contracts, sir. They they're they're not replaced. And so, there's a number of folks that have expressed interest this last cycle. There was, two that put in for the bid for the contract.

Any anything that we could be doing to try to increase competition in terms of these contracts? I know we have a shortage of mechanics across the country in terms of auto dealerships and and and everything else. My concern is five years from now, these costs are gonna run even faster ahead of us as we move forward. And I don't imagine that AI is going to be something we're going to be relying on to do the mechanical work on these aircraft for quite some time.

Any thoughts about where to go to protect us from five years from now real serious inflation in terms of labor cost?

Yeah. In terms of the entities available to provide services, I believe one thing we can do is start earlier and allow that our request, our fee process to be distributed for a longer period of time. I do not believe we're in any critical threat or endangerment of somebody not bidding on that contract. It's more or less them understanding what the components of the contract are. So we had three this last time that were highly interested.

One did not make the timeline, and then the other two, obviously, did comply. I know of five that had interest at the beginning.

So what would we have to do to increase the notification of-

That's on my side, sir. Being able to prepare and have that contract written and put out early where it has enough time to answer questions for the suppliers that want to put in for it.

Anything you need from the state in terms of approval to get going?

No, sir.

Alright. Great. Thank you. Appreciate you identifying that.

I've seen firsthand how effective this is at knocking down those small fires when they first start, and anticipate we're going to have this become a bigger and bigger problem in terms of trying to stay on top of those. What do you see five years from now or ten years from now? Any new technologies that can help us go after these early outbreaks and try to keep these things down to less than 10 acres?

Yes, sir. I do think technology can assist with this. One is the early detection of the fires. We're seeing successes with the alert camera system, let alone the satellites that are coming out in 2028. I suspect that we're going to see a higher percentage increase than we see today on identifying those fires at time of start and then putting resources on the road.

Technology and the unmanned aerial systems- we're looking at things in there that we can use to not only improve this initial suppression of fires, but also support them logistically to a higher capacity than what we are able to through manned systems.

And how about the the technologist, for lack of a better word, that we need on board to be able to man and support those new technologies? Challenges finding those people, or are we and we feel comfortable in terms of the supply chain of workers that could handle that?

Not necessarily a challenge to find those people since some of this contract does address the ability for us to continue with emerging technology in aviation as well as increased modifications to the aircraft to bring them into the the new technologies that are available now. So this contract already accounts for that. I do not suspect any challenges in obtaining those people or meet meeting those needs.

So this is a issue that's important to me in terms of trying to have us get ahead in terms of all the things we need to do prevention wise. California's at a real tipping point.

We're at a real crisis in terms of our home insurance, and we have a real responsibility to try to be as proactive as we can, whether it's home hardening in terms of making sure our water systems are not prematurely one running out of water, but also how quickly we can make sure we stop the spot fires before they become large.

And so look forward to each year trying to have more conversations if we're fortunate enough to continue to be here and and have those conversations with you. So thank you.

Members, any other questions on this item? It's item 8. Welcome Assembly member Ransom. Welcome Assembly member Connolly. Alright.

Staff, you got what you need? That's good. Alright. We're going to go to item one, and we really appreciate that Assembly member Ransom was able to make it.

Okay. This is the golden mussel containment, part of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. We've had this recent increase in the threat from the golden mussel, and Assemblymember Ransom has joined us in her role on as a chair of the committee on emergencies.

And so, appreciate you being here. Our pattern here is to hear from the agency, hear from the Department of Finance, hear from LAO, and then we dive in for questions after that, and we'll let you take the lead on that. Alright. And so go ahead, whoever's ready to begin from the agency.

Good morning, Chair, Members. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Meghan Hertel. I'm the new director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I have our- hopefully, I'm using the microphone right.

Pass?

Yes. She's a fast learner.

Look at that. Two months in, and I've already got the microphone nailed. I've got the golden mussels, and you'll see the handout in front of you. We think a picture is worth a thousand words.

So there's some really helpful images in there that can help you see what this looks like in the water and how this is impacting people, and I will now pass it over to our deputy director.

Morning, Chair, Members. I'm Chad Dibble, Deputy Director for the Wildlife and Fisheries division at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Closer?

Yeah.

Wow. That's real close. K. Better?

Yeah. That's better.

Okay. So-

I don't know why you guys don't wanna set it to the side and bend it over, but I'll let you do it.

I'll start over again. I'm Chad Dibble, Deputy Director for the Wildlife and Fisheries division at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Thank you for having me this morning. You had some specific questions. Would you like to dive right into those, or did you wanna have a little bit of an overview of where we are with golden mussel?

Give give us an overview. Not not a long overview, but an overview before we dive into the question.

So just a reminder, golden mussel was first detected at the Port Of Stockton in October 2024. This discovery was the first known occurrence in The United States- or in North America, excuse me. Golden mussels are native to China and Southeast Asia, but they have invaded waters of other countries and territories and are now in The US.

Unlike quagga and zebra mussel, the golden mussel can tolerate brackish water and low calcium levels, which basically means we have a lot more vulnerable waters in the state than we do with quagga and zebra. Golden mussel adults attach to surfaces, and their larvae is suspended in the water column, which allows them to be transported through flow or conveyance systems or what have you. So, again, very fluid in the system.

Golden mussel is currently present throughout the Delta, the state and federal water projects, and the water supply systems that receive water from the Delta. To date, we have found no detections outside of any water body, that does not receive water from the Delta.

Golden mussel threatens the reliability of the state's water supply, our beneficial uses, and the environment. Infrastructure that is located within infested waters requires costly retrofitting and or ongoing removal of the organisms to maintain operations of gates, screens hydroelectric facilities, and flood control structures. To give you a little bit about where we are: so following the detection of gold mussel, the department pulled together what we call the golden mussel task force. This is a group of representatives from state, federal, and local agencies.

It also includes several subcommittees, one of those being a subcommittee for our partners, and that is where we allow cities, counties, reservoir managers, and their recreational operators or water districts to meet with us and discuss and have sort of a forum for them to discuss what's going on with golden mussel and work through.

The gold muscle task force developed what we call the golden mussel response framework, which was to provide recommendations to all of you, many of our policymakers, our managers, and the public on how to respond to golden mussel detections throughout a common framework across agencies and jurisdictions. So that's really what's led our effort to date of Golden Muscle and how we're coordinating among state and federal agencies and our partners.

Today, we continue to work within our existing capacity to delineate golden mussel infestations across the state, prevent the overland spread, and to mitigate impacts. So this includes working with our water managers to prepare control plans, maintaining the invasive mussel toolkit that we have online that provides lots of public outreach and educational materials for folks to use and distribute, presenting to groups about golden mussel.

We've done state presentations, national presentations, international presentations, local presentations. We're working with a lot of folks to get the word out and talk about preventative measures and what people are doing. We also continue to assist with water managers or reservoir operators, we like to call them, about muscle introductions, and this includes sort of education and training on pre-inspection of vessels and conveyance systems that might be used for our equipment or other ways that mussels could spread.

Digging into your questions, reminder, this Proposal is for eight positions that are funded by the $20,000,000 the department received this year through Prop 4. So your first question was how will positions requested work together?

These eight positions will work with water managers of infested and non infested waters to prepare control plans, which are required. This will help to prevent overland spread and the spread of downstream water flow from moving these invasive mussels around. These positions will also help us to provide a new capacity to really expand a statewide education and outreach campaign so that we can do more, than we're doing now to educate the public on what they should be doing, to prevent, and contain golden mussels.

And then mostly, I think the most important part is that it will support our continued efforts in the golden mussel task force. And this is primarily in three areas of monitoring, research, and our partners' efforts.

In the monitoring space, this allow us to greatly expand the amount of waters we're able to test now across the state. I think we'll be up to about a 162 water bodies this year that we will be able to test.

In the research space, it allows us to continue to coordinate with DWR, academic institutions, private sector, internally, and all to work on things like "Everyone's Interested", which is eDNA testing, allow us to do more, villager viability studies, villager morphology, understand what's really happening with these mussels. It's working on research to evaluate which type of coatings or UV light systems or things that that you could add or modify through your infrastructure to help ensure that you can these mussels won't attach.

We're also looking at exposure times for these mussels with heated water temperatures, and we're looking at other ways and tools that we might be able to manage mussels throughout the system.

So it's really allowing us to build that capacity and maintain our ability to participate with folks to really look into what we can do. In the partner space, we've created other subgroups, and we're continuing to work with the subgroups we have, which includes our local water districts and agencies and others that are affected by mussels infestations. And then lastly, it allows to coordinate with our law enforcement division. The positions proposed here do not include officers, but it does allow from the $20 million that we received; there is funding there to support overtime for our current officers.

That $20 million will also be used to purchase a couple of new K9 officers and train some of our existing officers to be able to do to have better scent detection dogs for golden mussel. Our wildlife officers are heavily involved in gold mussel efforts, and to date, they've made up more than 4,000 contacts on educational contacts with boaters across the state. Second part of that question was how does the department expect the boating inspection to operate?

So part of the changes to Fish and Game Code 2301 and 2302 requires us to update Title 14 for consistency. During that update, we are planning to expand on the regulations to address overland movement and filed conveyances or or vessels.

And we plan to establish a process in that that would allow us to vet qualified private businesses that inspect and decontaminate conveyances. So our hope is that we can create a process that allows us to authorize individual businesses, third parties, if you will, to be able to inspect and decontaminate vessels, which will help in the boating space. So it's not just related to the the reservoir that you wanna be at.

We've been working hard to establish a statewide boat inspection program, which we'll try to pilot here and work through. We're having those meetings now with with water managers and agencies across the state to try and figure out how best that could be implemented.

The hope is to improve the consistency amongst reservoir prevention efforts so that the boaters have a more simpler process and an understandable process about how they can access one water body or another. We are now a part of the administrative users of what we call the "watercraft inspection database".

This is a national database used across 28 states in the Western US, and it tracks the last known use date and location of the water vessel or the watercraft of where it was.

So when it comes to your water body, there's a system that you could be logged into and you can understand where that boat has been, whether it was clean, whether it's decontaminated, etcetera, etcetera, and help provide a little bit more helpful information to the person who's deciding whether that waterbody or that watercraft should enter their waterbody. We trained our staff to be trainers.

We're working with folks to work through that, and we're hosting hand on training sessions this spring for agency water managers and marinas, boat shops, etcetera, to understand better how they can have preventative measures in place at their reservoirs and their water bodies. Next question you had was how will these positions support-

Before you go to the next question, how many personnel did you have doing these things before this allocation, and who is doing this?

It's hard; I can't give you an exact number. What we did prior to this when this was an emergency action and we took this in 2024, we essentially redirected our staff. We did have existing staff working on Quagga and Zebra, and there's many similarities to the efforts that are going on now. But we turned and basically redirected a lot of our staff to put them to this attention. We have not had a lot of ability to do these types of things.

We're utilizing the Prop 4 funds we have now to really be able to expand into these arenas, recognizing the issues that are coming up for our boating communities, for water supply communities, etcetera. So we haven't had a whole lot of staff. We've probably been on the order of about the same as where we are with staff that are doing quagga zebra work, and that is funded through a federal grant, primarily through a federal grant with the state, Fish Restoration Act voting access funds.

And how many employees is that?

I don't have the number offhand.

We'd be happy to follow-up with your office and give you that information.

Two? Twenty? Two hundred?

Manisha Kapasiawala, Department of Finance. As of the current year, 18 authorized positions for the quagga and zebra mussel program.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Great. And, we'll need to be fairly efficient in your answers to questions two, three, and four, please.

We can move on. So we think all of these efforts will support the Delta community. They're gonna learn from the research and the water managers that are in that space. They're gonna be able to take that and utilize it to their specific operations that they need. We think that, the voluntary boat inspections will help the Delta community and recreational boating happening.

We think all of these things together will help keep that understanding that the Delta is a place, and supporting the ongoing economic benefits there. So we're we're really hopeful that all of this will be beneficial to the Delta and their communities. Question three was, dealing with positions to support water managers. Again, as mentioned, these positions specifically, we will be working directly with water managers to develop their water control plans. That that is something that is absolutely needed.

It's part of the process, and it's really what the staff will be dedicated to do. And, also, again, they'll be following up with the research that we're doing and participating in that. Water managers are engaged now. We're happy to continue to engage with them, authorizing them through permits or things that they need or just the research that we're able to do and the information we have that helps their research to understand how to better manage their water systems.

The last question you had was dealing with grants.

And I'd just tell you that the Prop 4 funds we have right now are not planned to have grants; they're not eligible for grants. Last year, the department did on an emergency action redirect Sport Fish Restoration Act funds, voting access funds, specifically. We ran a proposal, a solicitation out. We awarded $1.3 million to support decontamination units, high pressure water stations, and improvements to boat ramps really in the boating space because they are boating access funds.

So we were working with water managers to ensure that they could try and stay open for boating access.

Thank you. Before I go to the member's questions, we've asked for an itemized breakdown of these of the $20 million. Staff's asked for that. When when can we expect to get that itemized breakdown of how the $20 million is going to be spent?

I'd like to invite our Director of Finance to come up and answer that question.

He can just use the microphone there. Yeah.

Good morning, sir.

No. But they're coming to turn it on for us. Here we go.

There we go. Morning, chair. Dan Reagan, deputy director of fiscal service division for department. We can have that for you today.

Cool. That's prompt. Alright. We'll take it. Alrighty.

Okay. Department of finance.

Andrew Hull, no no comments, but happy to answer any questions.

Sonia Petek, LAO. No no real comments. We think this proposal makes sense. And as the department noted, a lot of this work is already being done, but it's being done with redirected positions.

So the request for these additional positions will allow them allow those people to go back to what they should be doing and allow these new positions to handle this urgent It's workload.

What what has happened with the quaga muscles and the those things while these people have been redirected?

As I mentioned, a lot of that is very similar work. So we're adding additional capacity to the folks that are in the field, maybe an additional stamping sample collection for gold mussel with the quoga efforts that have been going on. But we've been studying that for quite some time. So we're able to take a little bit of a of a slowdown in that workload repressing on gold mussel instead.

But largely, it's a it's a combination of things and adding on to their workload of of the water bodies they're already sampling.

Has the quagga infestation significantly changed? No. Okay. So we've stated about the same level of quagga infestation.

Good at containing it, which is why it's so important for us to be up in front of golden mussel and and recognizing that it's in the delta now, and we wanna try to contain it

as much as possible. Great. Assemblymember Ransom, if you don't mind, I'm gonna ask these three quick questions because I think I'm I'm I'm on a roll here. I guess. And and that is, how do they fight it in China?

How do they fight it in Asia?

I don't know that. We do not we're not aware of any solutions to this issue, of treatments and things that are manageable at this point, others in the so we're still working through that. That's the research we're trying to figure out. It's a invasive species that has, not been able to be handled.

So are all of their water bodies in in infested?

I do not know that.

The one thing I would add is when a species is native somewhere, it often has other native predators or controls that keep it in check. And when it comes to a new novel environment where it doesn't have those same things to keep it in check, that is when it becomes invasive and becomes out of control. I'm not an expert on, China's situation on this, so just to clarify. But in general, you know, where something is from, it's usually a little bit more balanced.

I I would hope that by next year when you guys come here, you can give us the answer to that question because it seems to make common sense for us to at least try to understand what's happening in the place in the world where this is most dominant in terms of that. Are are all the lakes infested? Have they just thrown their hands up and given up? And they just deal with unclogging their valves and, you know, the expenses involved or or something else.

But I appreciate if we could do that. Is it your perception that once the the gold mussels in a body of water, you've lost that body of water?

I wouldn't say lost. I think you're going to have some significant cost to maintain any infrastructure that might be in there. The water body for the purposes it was created, it's still reasonably there.

No. I don't mean you've lost a body of water, but you've lost about you're you're not going to you're not going to eradicate the gold mussel from that body of water.

Our understanding right now, it will be very difficult. You are pretty much going to be in a Maintenance Mode.

And so realistically, are there any other places in the world? I mean, certainly, if if it was happening in in China, gold mussels probably shown up other places, Africa or Europe or some place. Has anybody come up with a program that has realistically been able to stop the spread of the gold mussels since it seems to be We will

look into that and get back to you on what progress has been made, but there's there's lots of research still going on here in the state. Not all water bodies are created the same same with other countries, and so we'd really need to understand that. But part of the the research teams that are working on this are looking into that.

I I would I don't have the answer for you today, but our teams are working together with the universities to figure that out and understand what's happening globally and how that could apply to California.

The final thing I would like to leave you with, I'm trying to identify what is the realistic goal for us in California. It's a realistic goal that we're able to confine it to where it is now, which is the delta and bodies of water that are linked to the delta or 50% of the of of the water bodies outside of the delta we can protect? What's the realistic goal that we have?

If if if that realistic goal is is we're going to lose the question just as how fast are we going to lose. That's a different kind of investment than if we really can do that, but we really need to see some evidence about that.

So that'd be really helpful for us to have that information.

Sure. That's incredibly helpful, and I think that's a really useful question to be asking. The most effective thing we can do is prevent the spread of it. Right? And so if we can keep it contained to where it's at and keep it from getting into bodies of water that are not connected to the delta

Right.

That will save us significant costs and management going forward. And so that's why you see a lot of focus right now on education, containment, cleaning of vessels. But we will follow-up with you from some additional context.

Question is how realistic is that to to keep it from spreading? Assembly member Ransom.

so first of all, I wanna thank the department for being here. Congratulations on your new position. Really awkward timing. Right? This this new invasive species is very concerning for the community.

So my community includes the San Joaquin Delta, and it's been ground zero for the golden mussel invasion and infestation. And so we're seeing the impacts very firsthand. The delta is a critical lifeline, not only for, you know, boating and ports and recreation, but also for agriculture providing nearly $30,000,000 or 30,000,000 residents, I should say, and more than 6,000,000 acres of Farmland, with water. And so it's definitely under threat as you have already, talked about. And so you've all seen thank you very much.

I agree with you. Picture is worth a thousand words. For those of you who have not seen, there was a packet that was sent. This is, you know, what golden muscles look like, and it's definitely not it's nothing exciting about this when it takes over. And so we know that this is a oh, okay.

We know that, right now is a spawning season. So we're really concerned that we need to act right now, with the Golden Muscles. And the fact that the dollars that have been allocated thus far are not getting to people on the ground is very concerning. I just wanna be clear that, like, $20,000,000 is barely a scratch in the surface to what is necessary.

It's barely a starting point, and it's very insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge, especially knowing that this thing is very resilient in comparison to other things.

And so without sustained investment in, eradicating the golden mussels, California families bear the cost through higher water rates. Just wanna share another thing. This is an intake pipe valve. This is infestation because it gets inside and it completely takes over. And so I know you all are are very aware of this situation happening, but we are really, really needing to stave off a crisis.

And so I'm really concerned the urgency cannot be overstated when it comes to this. And so as I I'm listening to what your request is, I definitely I know you have a hard job. I know you have the quagga mussels and the zebra mussels, but I really would love to know more details about all of these positions because what we don't want is we know everyone that has run the department. We've run departments. We we love budgets.

We love poor staffing. But how does this actually help the people on the ground? I just heard you say that there's no grants. Well, the people that are in these different water departments, these managers need funding to deal with the invasive species that they've never dealt with before. They need decontamination immediately.

So to have all of the funding go to a department to do research research, which is necessary, at the same time, we also need to do the work to start, you know, eliminating and decontaminating. And so I wanna make sure that we stand up funding that will empower the people on the ground to start, you know, scaling, you know, pushing back on these golden muscles. So no funding, you know, grants to the folks on the ground is very concerning.

Not having details on, like, how a marketing marketing specialist is going to help, an an analyst is going to help. I I really am concerned that they're really a list of positions, but not enough detail into how this these positions are so much different than quagga and zebra mussel.

You know, I can understand if you said, hey, we wanna add a couple of positions. And then speaking with water managers, they don't really they're not excited about canine dogs. They don't feel like the dogs do the same type of work that the humans are able to do. You I'm I'm sure we all have different opinions. Right?

But I'm just sharing what I've learned from folks in the community that are very concerned. Chair, you you asked about the what China's doing. I can tell you that they spend $4,000,000,000 annually on operations and maintenance to mitigate the cost, and and that's happening throughout the different areas.

And so I just don't wanna, you know, send funding to a department, which I respect and and we can't do this without you, and I know that we can't do without you, but we have to consider the people on the ground. If you speak to the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California, they're estimating that it's gonna cost $100,000,000 upfront just for treatment facilities and chemical costs.

Additionally, they're year ongoing operations. They're also a department, so I get it. Right? But we do need to figure out how we can do the research, but not just spend all the money on I heard research, you know, that's very big. I heard education is very big.

But while we're researching and educating, the golden mussels are spawning and growing. And so we have to figure out how do we prioritize containment? How do we prioritize decontamination? And so those are kind of the things that I wanna talk about. So I do have a couple of questions.

I know you're like, where is this lady going with this? I do have some questions if that's okay. Thank you, chair. So when we are talking about the funding when it comes to the Delta, should we be considering using the funding for decontam have you considered, I should say, using some of this funding for decontamination sites? We've estimated that it's at least $1,500,000 to per site for the five sites that are pretty much fighting this right now in the Delta.

So have you thought about or looked at ways to get something to give relief to those that region?

Yes. We have thought about that. Actually, part of our conversations with the water managers in developing the regulation changes that we're that we're talking about is giving us the authority to authorize people to have decontamination sites. So third party businesses, vendors, people that could actually make a business out of this to some extent could offer those services. We've also looked into other locations of where you might be able to strategically place different decontamination sites, whether those are state run or privately run or some other way.

County run is a is a conversation yet to be had about the expenses and the cost and how that would be initially set up. We have also been working with a a company that develops what they call dip tanks, and those can be put on-site and removed. I think you've seen those. Those are just a giant I I'll call it a giant hot tub for for watercraft where you back it in.

It's hot water instead of doing the system that you have to do where you're putting hot water into the boats and checking all the things.

You basically just dip the whole trailer and boat into the water. So we've had lots of conversations around that and ways to work through that. We recognize the impact that the delta has, and that's a big portion of what we're trying to do.

And so when we talk about the staff that we have, they're focused on, first and foremost, working through what the law mandates, which is the water managers need to have these control plants, which are on that side of helping out waters water structures and supply, all the things that you mentioned in the pictures you've shown. We're working through that to help with those managers develop those plans to help them understand what they can do in that space.

The second space we talked about is in your recreational piece that you're talking about. We've been working with those partners. Part of that is education.

Creating a state wide system is part of that process to where we can help educate each of these individuals that operate these marinas, operate these reservoirs, operate these, watercraft inspection station or watercraft stations, to have the education that they need to be able to safely deploy these techniques and tools that we're learning and we have to ensure that boaters have access, marinas stay open, people can safely travel their boat from one location to another.

Okay. So with that being said, if we're we're thinking about these things, why is that not part of the funding? Like, why are we not enumerating? We want dead stations, and how much those are gonna cost, and why are we not immediately deploying these things to these areas if we think that that is a solution? I I I know that this body would move with haste if we say, you know and I'm just saying with urgency because this started in the Delta.

We talked about this, I wanna say, last October. Now it's all the way down south. And so while the Delta is the epicenter, we I appreciate that you're talking about the stations, but I wanna know how do we go from, you know, talking about staffing to actually setting up these here's the dollars that we're requesting.

We're going to put this many dip stations in, and we're gonna send our people out to educate the people on how to use them so that we can start to deal with the actual issue. I hope I'm making sense, and I hope I'm not offensive.

But I I just when you're saying you're thinking about this, have you how many dollars would it cost for each dip station, and how long would it take you to set this up?

We have done some research on that. We have the dollars. We've been working with the companies to figure that out. The department doesn't have the ability to determine which locations it would be and what those costs would be on on capital outlay, if it's state land, if it's private land, leasing it, how that would play out.

So we're having those conversations with the parties that might be interested, but the department doesn't have the ability to to to take that on, if you will, without significant support from finance and and through the other avenues of the the the state.

Okay.

And based on your budget as are you expecting that each individual water manager is going to fund even if there's a private authorized private contractor? So each this is a statewide issue. Right? But we're gonna ask San Joaquin Counties and, you know, Los Angeles County, each water manager, we're gonna authorize them, but then they have to go find the dollars even though the you all aren't able to give them grants.

Do they have to go find their own funding even if you are setting up the ability for them to hire contractors to do this work, private entities to do this work?

Currently, the expectation is that the water body reservoir operator manager would have to fund that unless there's additional funds, which is why last year we redirected emergency funds to go help them in that space to create the decontamination units and the things that they could they could try and buy to help ease that that burden on them to ensure that voting access stays open. You have you have a a mix across the state of folks that are paying attention or able to respond to gold mussel.

We have multiple water bodies in the state that literally have nobody, no person sitting at the entrance to it. We have other folks that have completely shut down their reservoirs and and water bodies, and we have others that have found some sort of a mix to have some kind of a some type of a containment process, inspection process, decontamination process. So we really have a mix out there of of the ability of folks to do this.

And so our job as a department has been to educate them and help them understand what the national standards are, what the processes are that are happening across the West with, dealing with quagga and zebra and other species, which are very similar in this space, and ensure that that those protocols can be used and folks can open their water bodies safely.

But largely, it is dependent on those reservoir operators who have the control to decide to be open or not at this point, to figure out how to financially staff that.

And I'm I'm

I'm gonna ask staff to try to be more efficient in their answers because we are Okay. We this is a $20,000,000 item. We have a couple billion dollars worth of wildfire items that we still have to get done before 12:30. That will be equally efficient. Okay.

What's great? Question. Can I can I do one efficient response on this?

Yes, please. Efficient is what we're looking for.

Assembly member, your questions are very fair. And it's always the question of do you put the dollars on the ground in implementation, or do you invest in staff that can try to work across a broader landscape? Because this is such a small amount of money, we prioritize staff that could support more water managers on the ground versus putting a few limited things in place on the ground. It is a difficult discussion in that trade off.

Okay. Thank you for that answer. So with the staff positions, how will the funds reduce the time in getting the permitting approvals so that the efforts can move forward?

Efficient. The staff will be dedicated to supporting those efforts right now and part of the title 14 regulations we're updating. Currently, when you get a water control plan approved, you are exempt from restricted species and SCP needs for the permitting that you're talking about at least from the department standpoint. So our efforts to update those regulations will include that same provision you have now for Tristanid mussels.

And so, therefore, you will eliminate those needs for the permitting, but you do need to comply with the water control plans.

Okay. And this is a three year three year request. Right? So after three years, what is your plan, if the local, prevention efforts still require intense coordination?

Andrew Hall with Department of Finance. Yeah. This this funding is sort of a three year gap, you know, A B a AB 149 expanded the definition, placed requirements on CDFW. This funding would allow them to get through three years, but also included with that, was legislative intent, to do kind of a broadening, a look at the harbors and watercraft fund administered by parks, invasive sticker fee.

And so this is funding that they're gonna get them through that period until we can do the broader effort.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate you all. I just wanna say I I understand that you need money in your department. I just I really implore you to figure out what we can do to help the folks on the ground as this thing is spreading.

And we're in spawning season, so we don't even know what to expect. So thank you for your your time.

Assemblymember Rogers and then Assemblymember Connolly and Assemblymember Rogers, you're gonna have this

Great. I'll be really brief too. I I draw a little bit of a parallel to some of the efforts in my district around Urchin.

of the things that they have been doing is investing in emerging economies or finding an economy that works for that species. Is there any economic potential for the mussels? Because I I I joke, but I'm not joking. If we create an economy that I have full faith in the ability for us to make it go extinct

Yeah. And one

Yeah.

Are there any of those efforts?

I do I'm not aware of any efforts at this time, but that's it's a great question.

K. That's something that I'd be interested in, is if there are potential there because I know that there's a cost side to keeping the muscles clear, especially on critical infrastructure. But if there's some form of economy that can be created that incentivizes folks to help us with that effort, I think that that'd be really beneficial to the state.

Part of what we are looking at is what economy and businesses and jobs can be stood up around, cleaning of vessels and supporting, waterways to be able to be prepared to take those vessels.

Right. Great. Thank you. Assemblymember Connolly?

Thank you. My questions really kind of were in parallel to the assembly member. So just to reiterate, and no need to answer further at this point, but why is the money not going directly to locals who are dealing with the issue on the ground? Really getting more in information on how the positions will interact and collaborate with local managers and our locals in general. Is there funding available to assist water managers directly?

If yes, what is available? So I think we got some answers to that and it sounds like there'll be follow-up discussions. While I have you though, I wanted to ask a non Golden Muscle containment question. And that is, I sent a letter last month about extending, the liquidation date for the CDFW contract with Occidental Arts and Ecology Center for their work to develop and steward a $2,000,000 block grant to implement a program that builds California's capacity for a successful beaver coexistence.

Do you have an update about extending the liquidation date?

Okay.

Good morning. Manisha Kapasiwala, Department of Finance. Finance is aware of and tracking this issue, and any changes that are made to the budget would appear at the time of the May revision. Thank you.

Any other member questions, comments? I'd like to just summarize where we are, and that is I think you've heard from legislators, family member Ransom and and others in particular, that they're questioning how much should we put this into these positions and how much should we put this into, specific programs that are out there. And so I think that remains for us a question.

And so we really appreciate, number one, getting the answer from your department of finance head that will have the itemized breakdown that that will help us. For the benefit of of everybody, I'd like to just give the overview in terms of how I I I see this, and that is we have a crisis with the golden muscle that's come in.

We reassign staff that was working on the quagga. I would hope that we've that that quagga team does not necessarily have to be as large forever that that it is, you know, right now, you know, hopefully, we would get the education done and and be able to have some of those people transition into the gold muscle team. Maybe we don't need as many positions, therefore, in the gold muscle program. So I'd like the Department of Finance to continue to to look at that.

But I I I want to caution us on the other side, which is every water body would like us to fund their gold mussel sort of containment efforts.

And yet no water body wants us to tell them make the major decisions for them about their water body. For example, are you going to have recreation or you're not going to have wreck? Do you wanna have recreation boating? You are putting your water body at a lot more risk, and therefore, those people dependent upon that water body for water potentially have a lot higher expenses. Are the benefits of the recreation enough to off to justify that risk?

Should the state be funding if you decide that you want to have recreational boating on your particular water body? Should the state be funding the golden mussel issue, or should the people taking advantage of that recreation be paying for the actual that it we're we're certainly going to hear from the water bodies that they they want that. So I I it is not an easy as you identified, it's not easy, particularly when you have almost an unlimited demand from water bodies for, this help.

So, specifically, though, you're sort of trying to say we wanna stay away from the actual investments in, you know, dipping tanks and, you know, these other things at at least at this point in time because you don't know how much bang for the buck you get. And if you do it in two or three places, but you you don't do it statewide, etcetera.

So the answer I'm hearing from you is that you have you think you have more leverage with personnel who can then leverage these water bodies to maybe coordinate their investments or coordinate the rules or get grants, etcetera. Canine dogs seem like they're a specific thing. Why is that investment an investment you are making when you're not making these investments and these other things? Can you help us with that?

And if you can't do it in sixty seconds, I'd like to take it offline and have this conversation go offline.

I'd like to take it offline if we can, but

Sure. Okay. Great. That's fine. Because we'd we we need to move on.

So I was trying to do a summary and and ask that

Your summary was excellent, chair. What's that? Summary was excellent.

Alright. Thanks. Alrighty. So we will now go on to what's that? LAO already weighed in that she had nothing to weigh in about.

Right? Yes. She was our most efficient spokesperson today. Alright? Okay.

On on this issue at least. Thank you very much. And we're going to move on to wildfire prevention and response and overview, and this is coming from the LAO's office. And I want to emphasize LAO alone is doing this presentation, and then we will have CAL FIRE representatives up for more specific questions about this. Remember, Ranson, thank you very much, and let's stay in touch.

Alrighty.

Yes. You we have the benefit of having staff plagiarized most of your report and put it in staff's report also. So we have had the benefit of reading your report potentially twice.

So, let's go ahead and get into a quick summary of your report so that we have questions. Right?

Sounds great. Good morning again, Chair Bennett and members of the subcommittee. Brian Metzger with the legislative analyst office. Our office was asked to provide a brief overview of state wildfire prevention and response funding to help set a baseline for the subcommittee's consideration of other topics on today's agenda. And in preparation for this hearing, our office prepared a handout that we will use to guide our remarks today, and you should have received a copy of that ahead of the hearing.

On page one of our handout, we felt it was important to acknowledge the different levels of government that are responsible for wildfire prevention and response activities in the state. In each of these responsibility areas, one or more entities lead the administration and funding of these activities. Who leads the administration and funding of these activities can be important as it informs where and how the state uses its funding for wildfire prevention and response. Most of this is self explanatory. I'll be very quick about it.

You know, first, we have the federal responsibility area, the federal forest service, and the the newly created wildland fire service are the lead entities in that area. Second, the state responsibility area where CAL FIRE is the lead state entity. And third, the local responsibility area where we have local city and county fire departments and fire protection districts that lead those efforts. It's important to say that while each one has its own responsibility within that area, they coordinate across them for things particularly during wildfire response activities.

On page two of the handout, we describe the increase in state funding for wildfire resilience activities over the past several years.

We focus on CAL FIRE, but acknowledge that a significant amount of money has been appropriated to state conservancies and other state departments for these activities. We have a summary figure later in the handout that provides some of that information as well. But on this page, we show that over the past ten fiscal years or so since twenty fifteen, sixteen, the amount of funding for wildfire resilience activities at CAL FIRE has increased from about 100,000,000 to about 700,000,000 in 2526.

The amount of funding has fluctuated over time. A large amount of that new funding came through wildfire and forest resilience budget packages that were approved in '21 and '22.

And since twenty eighteen, nineteen, about 200,000,000 in greenhouse gas reduction fund monies has been available for use on forest health and wildfire prevention, as well as fuels crew crews research and monitoring. We'll come back to those monies later in our testimony and in the hearing as well.

On page three of the handout, we felt it was important for the legislature to have the additional context for the increase in wildfire resilience funding as it still remains a relatively small percentage of CAL FIRE's overall budget about 10 to 20% over time. The vast majority of CAL FIRE's budget remains dedicated to base fire protection, such as firefighting personnel and equipment and to emergency fire suppression through the eFund. We acknowledge that it's also difficult to pull apart CAL FIRE's budget into these respective categories.

So some of that base fire protection money, may be used for some wildfire resilience activities as well. On page four of our handout, we provide the summary figure I mentioned that provides the kind of list of funding categorized for all state departments and conservancies. Just to be clear, this figure does not include prop four funding that will be on the next page. There are a lot of programs on this page, so I won't go into each of them, but I did wanna highlight just a few.

We bucket the greenhouse gas reduction fund monies into two categories.

You'll see the forest health and wildfire prevention category at the top is about $990,000,000, and then there's $210,000,000 for fuels crew research and monitoring. Later in the agenda, you'll be able to see a further breakdown in the agenda of the 200,000,000 for GGRF across the different programs.

You'll see a lot of funding for the forest health program, fire prevention grants, state conservancy projects, and notably less funding for some of the community hardening projects, such as defensible space and home hardening, as will be discussed in a later panel on successful wildfire prevention. And as we noted in our framework on how to approach environmental issues in the governor's budget, it will be important for the legislature to revisit that balance and to make sure that the monies are being expended on its highest priorities.

On page five, we provide a summary of prop four, the, wildfire and forest resilience chapter.

This also will be covered in subsequent items, so I won't go into it too much, but wanted to note that there are additional community hardening monies in this chapter that were not reflected or that that would build on other monies in the previous page. Together with the 3,600,000,000.0 in the previous figure and the roughly 600,000,000 through 2526, that's about 4,200,000,000.0 in total wildfire resilience funding over that period.

There are about 300,000,000 in prop four funds that are proposed in 2627, an additional 600,000,000 that remain to be allocated. However, prop four funding is only available over the next several years. And so for the last page of page of the handout, we wanted to address the issue of ongoing state funding for wildfire resilience efforts.

The agenda poses a question about these sources of funding, and it's an important question as there will be a notable decrease in state funding expected over the next several years as a lot of that one time funding is expended. We find just a couple of sources of ongoing state funding. The first and largest is the GGRF. Again, like we said, since twenty eighteen-nineteen, there's been $200,000,000 as a fixed allocation for wildfire resilience activities.

With the adoption of the new cap and invest structure starting in 2627, the amount of GGRF revenues allocated for these activities may vary depending on the projected revenues for the cap and invest system.

And that is because the new structure prioritizes certain activities based on a tier tiered structure. So while the new structure maintains an up to $200,000,000 in GGRF, The final amount will depend on revenues, and it will depend on how much money is already allocated to those prioritized projects. And so in the governor's budget, they they project that for 2627, GGRF revenues will only be able to fund a 142,000,000 of the 200,000,000 for wildfire resilience activities. Another source is base funding for Cal Fire operations.

It's tens of millions of dollars that go into resource management and fire prevention operations, and some significant portion of that does help with wildfire resilience activities like defensible space inspections.

However, we would note that these are resources that are are occurring through the state budget, through the state, you know, budget process that that we're dealing with today. There are other sources of funding that are available for this work. Notably, utilities that are collecting billions of dollars from rate payers and are extending some of that to, you know, fund fire prevention activities related to things like electricity transmission, you know, undergrounding power lines, you know, clearing vegetation.

There are also long standing federal grant programs that when a major disaster declaration is declared, allow us to have some funding for wildfire resilience activities as well. But again, this issue is a very important one.

And, with that, I'll conclude my remarks.

And if

you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer

those. Great. Thank you. Let's try to do this efficiently. I know we have a lot that we want to do.

I know Assemblymember Rogers indicated and Conley. So we will handle that. Very quickly, the things I'd like focus on is number one. LAO does a particularly good job of giving us overviews and giving us background information. So I appreciate that.

I'm curious as to the capability of LAO to dive in if we ask for identification, a long term ability to dive in because we, from the dais, just have difficulty analyzing how effective is one investment versus another investment are contained burns versus forest clearing versus clearing right around a particular community. And our partners at Cal Fire are, I think, doing a, you know, an improved job of trying to get us that data.

But LAO plays such a unique role in terms of being able to come in and objectively look. I'm interested in LAO playing that role for us, not in every area, but in this particular area because it's so hard for us to identify.

So I'd like you to take that back to the LAO's office and let them know that's something I'd think it'd be really beneficial if we could turn to LAO and say, what's your analysis of CAL FIRE's breakdown in terms of of their spending and stuff.

Right? The second thing is, you know, the ongoing funding that's out there. If it wasn't for prop four, we would really be in trouble in in in a lot of ways. And I think, unfortunately, that's just how we're going to be funding, quite a few of our our environmental programs and was prop four funding. If you look at it probably two more years from now, we're pretty close to having we will be close to expending most of that.

So we have a dependency on that that I hope Cal Fire I mean, LAO could help us start to figure out how can we rearrange because there are many people in the legislature, and I've been upfront with Cal Fire about this, that believe Cal Fire is an essential function of the state of California. It should be funded by California's general fund. We should be allocating a certain percentage of our general fund to Cal Fire.

And instead, we're trying to take it out of temporary sources like GGRF, etcetera. And that is not a healthy way for us to fund as important of a general function of the state of California as Cal Fire is.

I recognize that because of climate change, because we passed a tipping point recently, we have made a commitment to scale up our Cal Fire funding. And so temporarily, maybe difficult for the for the general fund to have taken on that whole spike. And so we have temporarily dipped into g g r f and prop four. But it should be temporary, and we should gradually shift that back to general fund expenditures for that.

So I'd like you also to take back to CALF to LAO that we would really appreciate your an ongoing effort for us to try to help make that shift as we go back.

That's it. I don't have specific questions. I just wanna get those two things said in in, you know, in front of all the stakeholders here and make sure that we're upfront in terms of that. Assemblymember Rogers and then Conley.

Yeah. Thanks so much, chair. I actually just wanna piggyback on that as well and express my concern that in a couple of years when the bond funding and some of the other one time investments are gone, the backfill is GGRF, which the work the legislature did last year deprioritized to a tier three, not a tier one as it had been under the Dodd bill. And I think many of us are expecting that there's going to be very little from, GGRF four tier three priorities.

And so would hope that we and this is for kinda all of these presentations we're about to do.

I'd hope that we can have a conversation about how better to fund those critical services. And I think especially right now when you look at, draws at the local level in the the LRA, which I know is not what Cal Fire is supposed to do, but is increasingly being asked to participate in.

And then also in federal territory, we've seen the US Forest Service just pull back significantly from California, and there'll be an additional poll, I think, on CAL FIRE's resources to try to make up that gap or plug that gap as well.

So I I I hope in the next couple of years, we can talk about what that next step is going to be as those funds start to expire because I do think that there's going to be a need and an expectation from our community that we maintain that that effort.

Assembly member Conley.

Yeah. Very similar. And I think, both colleagues said it well. Obviously, common themes are given the importance of of this block of funding to our communities, the sense is it's very cyclical right now, and it is kind of drawing from different pots of money. I guess a quick couple of questions just, to get your thoughts.

So, I mean, is there a consistent funding amount, that wildfire prevention programs receive? Or is it going to continue to just vary by budget cycle? And kind of related, what options could the state explore to secure ongoing, stable funding for secure ongoing stable funding for wildfire prevention activities?

Yes. Brian Metzger, LAO. That is a very important question. I think based on our, you know, initial analysis of the ongoing state funding that is available for these activities with the new cap and invest structure being dependent, that that portion that's for wildfire resilience activities being dependent on GGRF revenues, it will continue to fluctuate year to year. And the base Cal Fire operations funding is limited in what it's able to assist with when it comes to wildfire resilience activities.

So in terms of you know, to your other question about options for potentially raising, you know, ongoing sources of revenue, I mean, they're

Or and or stabilize.

Or stabilize.

So I think we're pushing back kind of on the premise

Effectively. But go ahead. Yes. Apologies for interrupting. Yeah.

There there are some options that present themselves in terms of revisiting the cap and invest structure the way it's currently, you know, the the tiers are, you know, structured and maybe potentially thinking about whether the tier three allocation should be the way they are, thinking about potentially securing more fixed ongoing funding through the GGRF in that way.

There are potentially, you know, thoughts about reinstating a state responsibility area fee or some other similar fee structure wherein beneficiaries of these fire prevention services are paying for them within the state responsibility area. We understand from, you know, a policy rationale, at least, that that would make sense. We have heard that there are some administrative difficulties with that fee as it was previously structured, but there could be something similar that could provide ongoing funding.

And then as we've mentioned with our framework for budget decisions, thinking about looking at the current Cal Fire budget as it's constructed and the money that we're putting in and thinking about whether the activities that are being funded could be funded in a different way or be used for wildfire resilience activities in a different, mix than is currently envisioned.

Those are kind of three top of mind ideas, but again, we're certainly happy to bring this back and think about it more.

I just wanna yeah. Excuse me. Assembly member, Katie Petronorris, has to leave. She has some questions for Cal Fire, and so she'll be sending those to you and asking you to respond. And if you could if you could copy all of us on the questions and you could copy us on the responses, that way we all have the information.

Thank you very much. Assembly member Gallagher.

Yes. Thank you. So I I wanna agree with comments that were made by the chair and the assembly member. One, we should not be funding suppression out of GGRF. You know, that that should be in our general fund.

I've totally disagreed with moving that over. Yeah. One, reducing greenhouse gas and wildfire prevention activities make a whole lot of sense. And you guys have reported, I think, time and time again that the that activity forestry management per dollar reduces more carbon than many other activities that we do in the state. Is that correct?

Unfortunately, I don't have that information today, but I could get back to you.

It's in your reports, but, you know, so that I mean, to me, you know, we need to get back to a general fund commitment to our men and women at CAL FIRE who are doing, you know, that amazing work fighting these fires, which by the way, we're having to fight these catastrophic fires because we haven't been doing the work on prevention. Right? Which means that should really be the priority, you know, is making sure that we're getting that money up.

But in fact, we're actually decreasing that money. Is that correct?

In this in this year's budget?

In this year's budget for the GGRF component, yes. We're the the $1.42 is less than the 200 that has previously been allocated.

And can I think maybe the peak was 2021 when we, I think, allocated close to about a billion dollars for wildfire prevention and resiliency activities? Is that right?

Have to go back to my chart here. Actually, it was more recent than that. It was 2324. But again, there were significant amounts of wildfire resilience monies that were approved through packages and, as you said, 2021 and 2022. So that may have been the multi year.

Yeah. And I think that's just working that's just tracking CAL FIRE's

Fire resilience funding Correct.

Correct.

Which is

a key part of it, no doubt. But there's other, you know, funding that we put into that. So we we reached about 1,000,000,000. What did we spend last year total on wildfire prevention activities?

I don't have that number in front of me.

Department of Finance will probably be able to get that.

We'll get into that as well. I do know the answer, I just wanted to get it out on the record. It's decreased every year since 2021 and now, it was brought up by the assembly member, we've deprioritized the prevention funds and put it in the third tier. Is that correct?

Yes. Correct.

They're getting third tier. What's ahead of them? Is high speed rail ahead of them?

High speed rail is ahead of them. There are a number of other there state operations money, there's a pot for legislative discretionary spending, $750,000,000 of which is going towards CAL Fire's GGRF Fund shift. Those are some of the things.

That was by SP 8040. Right? Authored by Senator Lamone and McGuire last year?

Passed and by the legislature, to prove signed by the Congress.

Passed by this legislature. I voted no, I don't think we should have done that deprioritization of wildfire prevention. Now what we have is high speed rail gets greater priority, a billion dollars a year approximately at a cap and trade and we're lowering the amount of money that we're giving to wildfire prevention.

Now $147,000,000 compared to $1,000,000,000 for a project that has serious problems. Audit after audit has found that money's being wasted. Right? We're not spending it on what should be the most important priority, stopping these catastrophic wildfires that these men and women have to fight every year.

Right? Because we're not doing the work that we should and funding the work that we need to do on the prevention side and destroying our communities and we're losing our community members because we're not making that a priority.

It's completely back ass words and I'm just tired of it, quite frankly. We need to get back to the right priorities, not deprioritization but prioritization of wildfire prevention and I think that's where this committee is at. I hope we can do that work and right that wrong.

That's been going on but it certainly was made even worse by August last year.

Appreciate your comments and we have issues three, four and five where we will be touching on these exact same issues again. Only we'll have CAL Fire up here with us also and so if everybody's comfortable, we're going to move on to issue three and finally, CAL Fire, after being here at 09:30, gets to come up here at 11:00.

Hopefully we'll be able to get through these next three items because this is the meat of what I think we wanted to have these these conversations about.

The title of issue three is what does successful wildfire prevention and resilience look like? I'd like us to focus on what is what is it that CAL Fire believes that looks like? What is it that CAL Fire and Department of Finance, think we should be investing in?

Then what kind of vision and what kind of thoughts do we have from a legislative standpoint that we'd like to share with CAL FIRE and the Department of Finance? With that, turn it over to you and let you start us off chief.

Thank you, Chair Bennett, members of the committee. My name is Joe Tyler, I'm the director and fire chief here at CAL Fire. Everyday, CAL Fire, along with our partner agencies and grantees, focus on fire prevention efforts.

The work begins with helping homeowners maintain defensible space and offering guidance on home hardening. It extends to supporting neighborhood level mitigations, such as Fire wise communities and large scale fuel reduction efforts, creating fuel breaks in and around communities, conducting prescribed fire and advancing forest health and landscape level restorations.

Together, these actions help prepare communities for wildfire, reduce fire intensity and strengthen our ecosystem. This is the work that CAL FIRE has been performing, for decades.

While we were internally aware of the work we were doing and the fuels reduction projects that were an effective tool for fire prevention, we really didn't have a system in place that tracked and evaluated the effectiveness of these approaches.

That's been important especially for assemblywoman Petrie Norris and this committee to really show and be able to track those efforts. In the 2024, the department launched the fuels treatment effectiveness program application.

It can be found on the public spacing website of CAL Fire to effectively evaluate the impacts of vegetation management treatment treatments have on fire behavior and a highlight of how fuel reduction activities not only assist prevention efforts but how they protect life, property and our natural resources.

Now every time a wildfire occurs within a quarter mile of a fuels treatment project, local CAL FIRE unit personnel are notified in order to evaluate any potential impacts the project may have had on a fire, such as reducing fire behavior and assisting in emergency operations. This isn't just our 21 units but also our six contract counties.

In fact, between 07/01/2024 and 06/30/2025, there were 65 fuel reduction treatments that were documented as having a positive impact with most treatments providing multiple positive impacts.

54 of those projects, reduced damage, 53 assisted in containment, 30 assisted in ingress and egress and 17 reduced the fire behavior. We provided a chart to you today and it's posted on your committee website as well, that displays the positive impacts of these 65 treatments.

Thanks to the fuels treatment effectiveness program, we can now better measure the effectiveness of the vegetation treatments.

As an example, a fuels treatment project on Broome Ranch Road in Ventura County was completed in 2020 and positively impacted the university fire. It began on 11/14/2024. The project slowed the rate of spread and intensity of the fire and allowed firefighters to use Broome Ranch Road as access to the fire, which they were able to contain that fire, at approximately 15 acres.

We also provided to you a copy of the fuels treatment effectiveness report for that specific incident, which is what we're doing regularly and posting them on the public facing website. It's small incidents like these that demonstrate the how effective fuels treatment can be and many times the public never hears about them.

The treatment helped the university fires, to keep it small and allow firefighters to engage in direct mobile attack. We're also able to see how multiple projects impacted larger fire wildfire incidents such as the Park Fire in 2024. More than 429,000 acres burned starting in Chico, burning through Butte and Tehama County. The damage could have been worse without previous prescribed fire treatments but in total there were 15 treatments that reduced both the fire behavior and reduced damage.

Eight treatments on that fire assisted in emergency evacuations and another eight assisted in containment. When the wildfire reached areas that had been targeted by prescribed fire, the reduced fuel slowed the spread, gave firefighters a safe place to work and protect those communities.

I'm proud to say that our fuels treatment effectiveness reports are publicly available as I talked about earlier on our website. Now more than ever, as has already been talked about in previous discussions, we need to be focused on preparing our communities and our natural landscapes before the next wildfire.

One of the things that you ask, that is important to note, is how can we be successful and address our wildfire crisis? Well, after the work that we have done in seeing where we are at now, we have to maintain a strong wildfire suppression response.

We have to continue vegetation management that includes healthy and resilient forest lands. We must maintain community level preparedness and parcel level mitigations.

This comprehensive all of the above strategy has proven to be an effective approach to mitigate wildfire impacts and enhance community resilience, while at the same time recognizing we need to do more, especially after seeing the devastation in January 2025.

Defensible space and fortifying homes against wildfire are important actions, but community level and broader landscape scale projects are also critical in protecting the built environment. For example, when you have an actively managed landscape where fuels have been reduced and beneficial fire can be a management tool.

Both the heat energy and number of embers produced from wildfire that in those landscapes are reduced and fire won't spread as hot, which is less damaging and easier to contain, creates fewer embers released.

Meaning fewer embers that make their way into the homes and the communities. As California's climate continues to undergo transformation, it threatens the way of our life for our citizens.

Consequently, we must collectively strive to create a more fire resilient natural landscape and foster a society that is keenly aware of and responsive to the benefits and threats posed by wildfire.

Achieving those goals necessitates collaboration between state, local, federal, tribal and private partners to effectively implement our all of the above strategy to be successful in California. It's important to thank the legislature for your support so far and the continued support that you have.

As a result, California has made continued major investments in mitigation efforts to be crucial in our strategy. I am happy to answer any questions you have when that time comes. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

I'm sorry. Patrick, With the task force. Thank you very much.

Thank you, mister chairman. I'm Patrick Wright, director of the governor's wildfire and forest resilience task force. Happy to walk through, prepared a brief set of slides just to give you a little bit of a framework over what's a very, very challenging topic here.

Just to start with, for those of you who may not be familiar with the task force itself, the most recent version of the task force was launched way back in 2021.

The major purpose of the task force was to provide oversight of what, at the time, was the nation's first comprehensive plan. Whereas Elio talked about before, we've got a dozen different state agencies, federal agencies, local agencies.

The whole point of the original action plan in 02/2021 was to compile all that in one document so that you and others could get a better handle on the relative roles and responsibilities of all the agencies involved and to set a path forward that would then guide the levels of spending that we've had over the last several years.

A big, big emphasis as chief Tyler said to try to align federal, state, local, private, and tribal organizations that otherwise would be working in silos. The way we're structured reflects that.

We've got an executive committee that has federal, state, local, tribal representatives that's co led by secretary Crowfoot. Chief Tyler is also on our executive board as our variety of other senior folks.

Then we have an inter-agency team that tries to pull off that together, an advisory council and various inter-agency and key stakeholder work groups. Our signature is our quarterly meetings. We rotate between Sacramento and going out into the region.

These meetings have been just a tremendous opportunity for the local folks to have an upfront candid conversation with secretary Crawford, chief Tyler and the federal agencies on what's working, what's not working.

To showcase their projects, to basically challenge us to align better, to help them get where they need to be. We had a meeting just last month in Jamestown. We had 850 people registered for a meeting that had no action items.

So it's a real testament to the level of interest and enthusiasm there is for folks to work together and align ourselves to try to tackle this problem. We have accomplished a lot.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but it's important to note that we have collectively invested billions of dollars since since 2021. We've treated collectively more than 700,000 acres annually with a huge in key increase in particular in prescribed fire, largely to the leadership of of chief Tyler and Cal Fire really stepped up in that way. We've streamlined processes.

You're familiar with the governor's last year emergency proclamation that provides now a one stop shop for permitting that otherwise would have taken more than a year is now thirty days or less in most cases. We certainly hope to extend that.

The Department of Conservation has a very large sizable regional fire and force capacity program in which is we're building capacity throughout the state to allow local and regional groups to better tackle the specific issues in their area.

We have a number of inter-agency work groups on a lot of different topics to make sure the agencies are aligning their assistance programs in particular.

Then we have a whole series of new apps and new dashboards, in particular, inter-agency tracking system that will show you where literally all the projects have taken place for the last several years. Federal, state, local, state parks, CAL Fire, forest service. You can see it all on our dashboard.

So we've accomplished a lot but we've got a long way to go. We tend to organize our work into three different, buckets. One is community protection, landscape protection and then a framework for regional action.

As you can see, all of these of course, are overlapping as every day goes by. Regional and local groups are doing a better job of integrating their work, particularly integrating landscape and community work as they move forward.

On the landscape side, just to put it simply, our highest priority, our studies, our modeling, our scientists tell us we've really gotta have a laser focus on high hazard landscapes. We're finding out more and more, the more we can target those landscapes, the more cost effective our investments are gonna be. So that's gonna be high priority.

We also now know that strategically based fuel breaks work. There was some question about that several years ago through Cal Fire's work and other works.

We know if they're placed properly in both Northern California and Southern California, they can be a key part of both our resilience, program and our firefighting program.

I'm going to stop you. I'm going to interrupt you right there just because I don't want to lose that question. What's the evidence with with these wind driven Santa Ana fires? What's the evidence that suggests the the strategic fuel breaks work when the embers are spotting half a mile ahead?

That's a good question. The key is in many areas, an analogy might be a seat belt. If you got a seat belt on and you're in a crash that's a 100 miles an hour, seat belt's not gonna help you but for most fires, what happens when you have a fuel break is the flames literally drop from being crown fires down to surface fires.

We saw this in Lake Tahoe where the city of South Lake Tahoe was literally saved because of the fuel break system that was built by the forest service in Cal Fire surrounding South South Lake Tahoe.

Same is true in Southern California to a lesser extent. Yes, they're not gonna solve they're not gonna stop fires but they do two things. They reduce the rate of spread and secondly, they provide a place for firefighters to stand to make a stand. That's been a really critical, distinction that hasn't been, evaluated until recently.

Okay. Thank you. We'll have more questions but go ahead.

Then finally, reforestation, I think is gonna be a bigger and bigger topic. Recent study by CAL Fire showed that unless we get a better handle on reforestation, we're going to lose millions of acres. Up to half of the Sierra Nevada's conifer forest could be turned into highly flammable shrubs.

We've got a lot of work to do with our forest service partners to try to make sure that those landscapes remain healthy and resilient. That's the landscape strategy.

I want to emphasize that the priorities of Northern California and Southern California are very different. In Northern California, the highest priority by far is reducing the density of our forest through thinning and prescribed fire.

We'd like to do as much prescribed fire as we can. Unfortunately, given the density of our forest, most often you've got to go in there and do mechanical treatments first to make sure it's safe and then move with prescribed fire.

That's the highest priority to the together with the fuel break system in Northern California to try to get a handle on things.

In Southern California, you can see it's a very different picture. In the montane forest with that are high elevation, you have the same issue. Forests are too dense. They need to be thinned through mechanical thinning or prescribed fire but the highest priority is dealing with ignition reductions along the state's roadways.

We've just partnered with a group of agencies down south. It's called the Southern California Ignition Reduction Program that is organizing themselves to an inter-agency process. It's got the forest service, CAL Fire, CALTRANS stepping up in a big way to try to get a better handle on ignitions.

You can see from the slide, 95% of ignitions are human caused, two thirds along roadways and what's critically important is we need to get rid of the invasives along the roadways, which are much more flammable than the native chaparral.

It's a multifaceted problem but we are organizing ourselves to try to take a holistic approach to it. It's a good example of what the task force brings to the table, a forum where agencies like CALTRANS and the feds who would never previously work together, are working very closely together to try to identify the highest priority areas in Southern California.

Finally, let me just mention briefly our framework for how how to better get this done, how to get it done more quickly and efficiently. What we're trying to do is assemble a statewide network of five and ten year plans, through the Department of Conservation's regional forest and fire capacity program.

Where in one plan, you have all the federal, state, local, private and utility projects. So you and others can see where those projects are being made, so they can jointly invest. They can do larger projects across boundaries.

That process is up has been up and running now for a couple years and is beginning to bear fruit as you'll see these as these plans come along over the next couple years.

We're also of course, trying to continue streamlining. We're working hard internally to come up with a long term version of the governor's emergency streamlining process. So we can look forward to seeing that soon.

We're doing more and more to try to align funding as you heard earlier between all the different agencies that might be able to contribute to these projects.

Just to give you a flavor of that on the next slide here, this has been our current approach, fund dozens and dozens of projects in Southern California and track each of them. This sounds good and has enabled us to hit a lot of high priority projects.

The problem is you're talking about dozens and dozens of grant applications for individual projects. Dozens of reporting requirements, dozens of individual cases where you've got to hire crews and contractors to get the work done.

So we're trying to with CAL FIRE's help, Department of Conservation's help to scale up. So the next slide is the future. We've got six areas of Southern California here with six regional forest and fire capacity plans. You've got CAL Fire stepping up with block grants that funds a whole range of projects across this region.

With the RCD of San Diego as the lead, they took $5,000,000 from their forest health grants, $5,000,000 from their wildfire prevention grants and then that money was distributed to the 23 of the highest priority projects in Southern California.

Again, instead of having 23 separate grants and projects, you've got one block grant, $10,000,000 that gets all that work done at one time. That's where we need to be.

We need to scale up. We need to move more towards block grants, more towards bigger, larger projects and then finally of course, as you and others have mentioned, we need to better capture the benefits of these projects. We're getting increasingly sophisticated, about doing this.

This is an example again from Southern California, where folks have evaluated the benefits of getting this fuel break network in place using ignition reduction percentage as a key indicator.

So we're rapidly moving away from acres treated into a whole series of metrics that can tell you and others what the true benefits of these projects are. How are we reducing density of forest? How well are we reducing fire risk? How well are we protecting communities, etc.

That's the package that's moving forward together. To sum it up, we need to be smarter by using these tools to better target our highest priority landscapes. We need to go bigger through block grants and funding multiple projects at a time and we need to go faster by continuing our one stop shop for permitting.

Then finally, as you and others have emphasized, we need to do a better job of capturing the multiple benefits of all these projects.

Mister Wright, are you headquartered here in Sacramento?

Yes. I work out of the governor's office and the resources agency.

Great. Thank you, my staff will be reaching out to you. I have lots of questions as a result of this and so I'd like to have a good opportunity for us to really sit down but I really welcome you, you can just feel your passion about wanting to get this right and that's exactly what we need right now.

We've really crossed the tipping point. California is at great risk. Great risk economically if we don't get home insurance rates under control and businesses.

Let me just emphasize. I appreciate that but I just want to emphasize. We get all of our work done through our partners.

Sure. Absolutely.

I want to pick your brain about how to get all that work, about how all that work's getting done. Your patient is important for coordinating all of this activity going forward. Thank you very much for that. We do have questions and so Britney, you're here from Sierra Nevada.

Good morning chair Bennett. Brittany Covich. I'm with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. I'm the policy and outreach division chief. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy, we are a state agency under California Natural Resources Agency and our work really focuses on conservation and restoration in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade region of the state of California.

I'll give a little bit of background on that region for everyone. It is 27,000,000 acres that we serve. It's roughly a quarter of the state. We cover about 24 counties, so it's a large portion of the state and it includes, as you saw in Patrick's fire risk map earlier, a large percentage of the state's high fire risk.

One point that I want to make is that about 67% of the landscape that we serve is federally managed. We have close relationship with our forest service partners, our bureau of land management partners and the National Park Service.

I make that point just to kind of iterate that all of our communities are really embedded in these forested landscapes. So we have many small communities up and down the Sierra Cascade region.

They are all very deeply embedded in the forested landscape. I want to make a point that we have a very small population, of course, compared to the rest of the state. However, we have tens of millions of visitors that come to the Sierra Cascade every year to visit places like Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes, etc.

So not only are we looking at reducing wildfire risk to the people that live there, we're also looking at reducing wildfire risk to those folks that are coming to visit and the our region really is the backbone of the state's water supply.

So all of the reservoirs that feed the state water project, the Central Valley project and many of the municipal water agencies, San Francisco Public Utilities District, East Bay Municipal Utilities, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Those source watersheds flow from the Sierra to the remainder of the state. So it is a critical piece of our state's water supply system. We also represent about 50% of the state's forest carbon.

A good portion of the state's forest carbon is locked up in trees in the Sierra Cascade region and I think that is important to note because we are a fire adapted ecosystem.

This part of the state relies and many parts of the state rely on fire to remain healthy and so for us, we look at that and recognize that it is not a matter of where fire will hit or it's just a matter of when.

We know every part of this landscape is going to be touched by fire at some point and needs to be and it's our job to help make sure alongside all of our partners that when fire hits, it hits in a way that is beneficial and not damaging.

That's what I was going to, it's not just when but it's how fire hits. So that we don't lose the trees, we lose the other ones. Right?

Exactly, yes. Precisely because of that, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, we fund a lot of wildfire risk reduction projects and we do our best to prepare the landscapes across our region for fire, so that when it does hit, it doesn't do damage.

A lot of times measuring success for that can be tricky because we are trying to assess damage that hasn't occurred. We are trying to look at at at the disaster that didn't happen and so that can sometimes seem invisible but there are a few metrics that we do look at that you can see.

For example and these align really well with the metrics that CAL Fire has been tracking. For example, one of those measures of success that we look at is was there avoided or reduced damage? Good example project of that in the Capels Creek Watershed in El Dorado County, there was about a 4,000 acre prescribed burn that was completed.

When the Caldor fire came through that area, it both changed the trajectory of that fire and also when the fire came through the Capels Creek Watershed, the prescribed fire project.

Essentially little to no damage was done within the footprint of the prescribed fire area. We also look at did the project aid in fire suppression efforts. Very similar to how CAL FIRE is tracking. Was it a safe place for fire crews to stage? Was it a place that allowed for safe evacuation?

Great example of that is the Park Fire that chief Tyler spoke about, the Cohasset project that we helped fund with CAL Fire, essentially provided a buffer for evacuation and for fire crews to be able to get on scene and do fire prevent or suppression work that they were expecting to do to reduce the risk of that fire.

The town of Cohasset and much of Forest Ranch stands and the trees there are green because of that work that was done previously.

Another measure that we look at is, did the project make the landscape more resilient than it was before? So a good example of this is the research that's been done in the Iloat Creek Basin in Yosemite National Park. That is a landscape where beneficial fire has been happening for a number of years.

It's restored that forest to a more historic state and the research coming out of there indicates that the water yield coming from that landscape has either maintained stability or actually increased even during drought.

So there's enough evidence and enough energy behind that that even some of the water agency partners that work within our region. So you've a water agency, Gloucester County Water Agency, even the state water project through the Department of Water Resources are now starting to engage in and even drive forest restoration projects.

Because they know it's so critical for maintaining forest restoration projects, because they know it's so critical for maintaining stability of the state's water supply. Then another measure that we look at is, did the project protect or enhance other benefits?

We oftentimes will fund a project to reduce wildfire risk but it has other co benefits associated with it. Good example of this is the Sly Park vegetation management project that was done just outside of the community of Pollock Pines.

Not only did that project, that's actually a long term collaborative project with fire adapted fifty that CAL Fire and a number of others have been really engaged in.

Community of Pollock Pines when the Caldor Fire came through but also our grantee, the Eldorado Resource Conservation District, had reported to us that the trail community in that area where the fuels reduction work had been done along the trails, it actually enhanced the actually enhanced the trail communities experience on that landscape.

It was a better trail experience for all that were involved and then last measure that we look at is avoided carbon emissions. We know that if you reduce the intensity of a fire, if you reduce the, damage that a fire causes, you leave more trees alive which leaves more of that carbon locked up in a stable fashion in our region.

The next question that I kind of wanted to answer is, how does the Sierra Nevada Conservancy prioritize projects or prioritize the funding that we receive?

The short answer to that is we take the priorities that are given to us by the legislature and the administration and we match them with local priorities on the ground. Good example of this is a Sierra Nevada Conservancy received very, very gratefully, the wildfire funding from Prop four in early action.

That was very clearly a signal was sent very clearly to us that community protection was a high priority. So we ran a grant program that was very narrowly focused on community protection. We received $40,000,000 worth of project concepts for $15,000,000 available.

We said no to projects that were not immediately adjacent to communities. That was the priority. Good projects but not the priority at the time. I also just wanted to kind of end with another key point. It would be really easy for us to kind of focus in and say protecting homes, protecting people is the priority.

The reality is the most damaging wildfires that have been happening in our region recently have come from well outside the community and have burned the community after they have come through the forest.

Examples of that, Dixie fire came from well outside of the community, burned down the community of Greenville. A camp fire came from well outside the community of Paradise, burned down the community community of Paradise.

Caldor Fire started well outside of Grizzly Flats, burned Grizzly Flats. When we look at projects, we have to look both from the community out and the forest in and that is also kind of a big reason why we do look at a wide variety of benefits when we're looking at the projects that we choose to fund.

I wanna ask you a question about that specific thing before we sort of jump into the next and that is those fires that start out. Are you suggesting that there's a better investment that could be done out to protect the community than doing three times as much as we had done in the community?

In other words, I'm really just asking from a common sense standpoint. Would a half a mile or a mile fuel break between the community and the forest have been much better.

Is that not better than forest clearing someplace out there? Because the further you get out, just the more range. You're suggesting there is science that says it's better to go out 75 miles, 50 miles, in a broad arc than closer and tighter around the community?

It's a great question. I actually really appreciate that question. I think what we have found is that the majority of our partners are looking at projects in and around the community but that's not the only place they are looking at reducing wildfire risk.

Even though we would love to treat a good portion of the landscape, the concentration does tend to be in and around communities because we know that's the place that we can do the most protection.

If we are not also looking beyond farther into the forest, we run the risk of losing those resources that we find really valuable. Our water resources, our recreation resources, etc. So it's a little bit of both.

I appreciate that. If there's a place out there 50 miles away that creates a great opportunity to break that fire so it doesn't race for the next 50 miles or because you treated that fire, you're able to get there quicker and actually control it. It's just I'm trying to adding up the common sense of that. Yes, there are other ancillary benefits, watershed protection, etc.

We're always going to be fighting limited resources and if you have $15,000,000 and $40,000,000 worth of projects, I think you heard from the legislature really clearly and I think you still are hearing from the legislature really clearly.

They want community structures and community lives. I want to be very sensitive about that from this committee and that is, the other is very important too and I have every year a greater appreciation for the other being important.

It's just how do we prioritize and how do we make that distinction? Thank you. Give me give me one second. We're going to go here.

Do you have a specific about that particular issue or do you have general comments or general question?

Quick question on that is part of it, I think is working with our federal partners, which there's been more of that lately. I think it's been very positive. Right?

There's legislation that allows us, if it passes on the federal level, allow us to do more on the the federal lands and streamline some of the processes. Fires have burned on federal lands for quite some time and not been put out.

I'll add to that the bear fire that was burning near Quincy for quite some time on federal land before the wind picked up and burned down the the town of Berry Creek, which by the way had a reduction project planned for it but CEQA said, 'no, sorry. Eighteen months out before you can do that project'.

Then the project was never done. Even though it had already been studied by the Butte Forest Fire Safe Council to do that project.

Would that project have saved that town?

It absolutely would have.