This week, RCRC-supported Assembly Joint Resolution 18 by Assembly Member Jim Patterson (R-Fresno) passed out of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Introduced less than a month ago, the resolution calls on the State of California to support the federal bill H.R. 167 (Simpson, R-ID and Schrader, D-OR) - the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA). Long-supported by RCRC and the California Forest Watershed Alliance (CAFWA), of which RCRC is a founding member, the WDFA would change the way wildfire disasters are funded. The ultimate goal of the WDFA is to help protect fire prevention and forest management money from being used on firefighting costs.
The WDFA is supported by a broad coalition of local government, environmental, and community groups, and would effectively separate fire suppression costs of the most catastrophic fires from other budgeted forest activities. This special set aside, would prevent “fire borrowing” or the action of taking funding out of critical fire prevention and forest health programs to pay for the costs of responding to catastrophic and particularly costly wildfires.
Just twenty years ago, the United States Forest Service (USFS) was spending approximately 15 percent of its total budget on firefighting; today they spend 40 percent or moreon firefighting. . In the past two decades, the agency has been forced to shift more and more away from fire prevention and forest health activities to focus their limited resources on fire suppression. This system creates a large backlog of needed projects that could prevent future fire disasters. Moreover, the potential need for the money later in a fire season makes land management agencies extra cautious about large-scale forest health projects due to the possible need to de-fund those projects mid-year due to fire borrowing.
RCRC continues to push for a policy change to put fire disasters on a par with the way other types of disasters such as floods and hurricanes are funded, and allow for critically needed fire prevention projects to be completed to end the vicious cycle of wildfire disaster in California. RCRC strongly supports the voice of the California Legislature joining this effort and supports AJR 18. Read RCRC’s support letter can be accessed here.
For additional information on the WDFA, please contact RCRC Legislative Advocate Cyndi Hillery at (916) 447-4806 or chillery@rcrcnet.org.