The federal Appropriations process is a negotiated process that often includes the placement of language into Appropriations bills that is the subject of other ongoing legislation. Funding for wildfire prevention is often consumed by fire-fighting costs. Separating these pots of money is critical to ensuring sufficient resources for good forest management. This is the topic of the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act as outlined by S 1875 and HR 3992. These two measures would treat wildfire assistance funding the same way other disaster assistance funding is treated, thereby protecting any fire prevention and forest management money from being used on suppression.
During Senate Appropriations negotiations and discussions regarding the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, a provision was added to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) the flexibility to spend disaster funding on prevention activities. This action was intended to protect wildfire prevention activities even when suppression funding is fully spent. However, unlike the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, this is a one-year exemption to allow FEMA to spend on fire prevention. This provision does not affect the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, the law that governs disaster relief spending. It is also important to note that while the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted this amendment, the House version of the Homeland Security Appropriation does not contain the provision.
This bill will need to be passed by the full Senate Appropriations Committee sometime after the July 4, 2014 recess, and then sent to the Floor for further action. However, Senate floor action for appropriations measures has stalled after controversial amendments were threatened on the floor during the discussion of other Appropriations issues.
RCRC continues to support the two bills representing the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act in each house, or any other action that would allow wildfire disasters to be treated like other types of federally-assisted disasters, thereby allowing disaster prevention and active disaster management to be funded separately.
For additional information, please contact RCRC Legislative Advocate Cyndi Hillery at (916) 447-4806 or chillery@rcrcnet.org.