Little fires everywhere

Politico

07-03-2025

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With help from Alex Nieves, Mike Lee and Marie J. French
FIRE HOSED: California wants to do more on wildfires, but paying for it is already getting messy.
There's, of course, the request for $40 billion in federal funds to help Los Angeles recover after the fires, which Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats are negotiating with President Donald Trump and Congress.
But there's also a lot of new promises to fire-proof California, including new building and landscaping requirements on millions of property owners, that don't come with any additional money.
Already, politicians are getting into tiffs over how to spend the money they have. Take Proposition 4, the bond voters approved last November to raise $10 billion for climate, water and fire projects. Though they agreed on an overall spending plan for the money last year, the Newsom administration and the Legislature are now negotiating the details.
One of the Newsom administration's proposals is to use $305 million of the Prop. 4 money on programs that it previously planned to use the general fund on, including a $13 million project to fund fire-resistant home upgrades, so it can use general fund money elsewhere.
State senators in a budget subcommittee hearing last week said they didn't like that strategy, arguing the bond promised to add new programs rather than backfill cuts.
'This is not what Prop. 4 promised the voters,' said state Sen. Jerry McNerney. 'Do we really want to break trust with California voters?'
Stephen Benson, Finance Department assistant program budget manager, said the shifts still meet the intent of the bond but acknowledged they wouldn't create new programs.
The state Board of Forestry is hearing from local officials worried about the cost of new fire-resistant landscaping requirements within five feet of homes.
'You have to do it with the carrot,' said Greg Murphy, the chair of Berkeley's Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, during a board workshop Tuesday, its first since Newsom's directive last month to finish up the long-stalled rules. 'How can homeowners access those kinds of financial resources?'
Retrofitting a home to fire-prepared standards could cost $2,000 to $12,000, according to a Headwaters Economics report last year. The board will have to come up with a more detailed cost of its new landscaping requirement as part of its rulemaking, which it will formally kick off in June.
There's a couple ideas for how to pay for it. In California, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and Assemblymember Lisa Calderon have proposed to channel 40 percent of the growth in state revenue from an existing tax on insurance premiums into a new grants program for retrofits. The bill, AB 888, does not yet have a hearing date.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats and Republicans are rallying around the cause of thinning out fire-prone forests — if Trump's Forest Service cuts don't get in the way.
Sen. Adam Schiff, who led a bipartisan letter to FEMA on Wednesday asking for more time for LA fire victims to apply for disaster relief, sounded distinctly more open today to waiving environmental rules around forest thinning than he did last year, when he voted against the Fix Our Forests Act in the House.
'I have concerns ... that parts of the bill seem more focused on timber harvesting than they do on wildfire mitigation,' he said today during a hearing. 'They're not concerns that can't be overcome.'
But the staffing cuts — which could reach 7,000 in the coming months, as Marc Heller reports for POLITICO's E&E News — overshadowed the bipartisan enthusiasm for the bill.
'If the true goal is to fix our forests, please start by fighting for the restoration of the most basic staffing levels, both full-time and seasonal, to do the good work already underway,' said Jonathan Houck, a Colorado county commissioner. 'None of this should be controversial or partisan. It's certainly not in Gunnison County.' — CvK, DK
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THAT'S JUST YOUR OPINION, MAN: Republican lawmakers don't have the power to overturn California's vehicle emissions standards, the federal Government Accountability Office said today. But that's not going to stop the Trump administration and Congress from trying.
The opinion, issued in response to a request from Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Schiff, says the same thing as an opinion from 2023: that Congress can't use the Congressional Review Act to overturn California's permission from EPA to go further than the federal government.
That goes for EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's request to Congress last month to use the CRA on three California rules, it says.
'EPA's recent submission is inconsistent with this caselaw,' it says.
Representatives for EPA and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who as Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair is expected to introduce a resolution launching the review process as early as next week, dismissed the opinion.
'Chairman Capito continues to agree with the EPA that these waivers are rules, and subject to a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act,' spokesperson Brent Scott said in an email.
Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that the state is ready for the court fight. — AN, ML
SPEAKING OF WAIVERS: Democratic lawmakers in New York are getting cold feet over one of the truck emission standards Congress is threatening to revoke.
Two upstate Democrats introduced a bill this week to pause enforcement of the state's Advanced Clean Trucks rule until 2027. New York is one of five states signed onto California's rule requiring manufacturers to sell increasing percentage of electric trucks starting this year.
New York's trucking industry says the state lacks necessary charging infrastructure and that electric heavy-duty models are still too expensive and lacking in range for many uses. Those arguments mirror complaints in California, where truck fleets and dealers say manufacturers have sent fewer diesel models to the state to stay in compliance with ratios that mandate a percentage of their total sales be zero-emission.
The California Air Resources Board has pushed back, arguing manufacturers aren't trading available credits used to make up EV sales deficits.
A similar proposal by New Jersey Democrats to delay clean truck regulations has stalled there. Other states have adopted a 2027 start date for the regulations, including Colorado, Maryland and Rhode Island.
The concerns could all be moot, if Congress revokes the waiver. Enforcement of the rule would be paused while the legal case plays out. — AN, MF
THE VIEW FROM BAKERSFIELD: California's top water official, Karla Nemeth, told farmers and water managers in Bakersfield today the state is open to working with the Trump administration to revise environmental rules that limit pumping water to cities and farms.
She said she expects updating one particular rule governing pumping in the state's main water hub, called the Old and Middle River flow limit, to be part of ongoing negotiations with federal counterparts this spring and throughout the year, she told the audience at the Kern County Water Summit.
'My spidey sense is that's probably going to be part of what plan comes out of the federal administration to implement the president's executive order,' Nemeth said. 'The state is open to that. We're looking for a federal partner to help us work through that information together.'
She called the January executive orders issued by both Trump and Newsom to 'maximize' water supplies in California 'ample direction.' — CvK
LIKE A BAD NEIGHBOR: A State Farm spokesperson confirmed that an executive recorded by the O'Keefe Media Group making candid remarks about the Los Angeles fires was no longer with the company.
In the recording, the executive says there shouldn't be homes in the Palisades and that people like to live in natural areas because of their ego but drought turns them into tinderboxes. He also talks about State Farm's hiring practices and decisions not to write more policies in California.
'These assertions are inaccurate and in no way represent the views of State Farm,' the company said in an email. 'They do not reflect our position regarding the victims of this tragedy, the commitment we have demonstrated to the people of California, or our hiring practices across the company. The individual in the video is no longer affiliated with State Farm.' — CvK
— Los Angeles County is suing Southern California Edison over the Eaton Fire.
— Lara released a list of insurers who agreed to pay out fire damages without an itemized list of losses — and those who didn't.
— California utility regulators are setting up another fight with solar advocates two years after the state slashed incentives.