For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.

IN THIS ISSUE – “Not Only A Little Different, But Radically Different”

          Blue and Red states polarizing, says a UCLA polisci prof

 

LAWMAKING & POLITICS

CLIMATE CHANGE & FIRE

Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

FOR THE WEEK ENDING APR. 8, 2022

 

CA Lt. Gov. Makes History With Bill Signing

Sacramento Bee

With California Gov. Gavin Newsom heading south for vacation, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is minding the shop, the first woman to serve as head of state government since 1976.

Lest you think that merely consists of keeping Newsom’s seat warm, Kounalakis last week marked the occasion of her temporary promotion by signing a pair of bills into law.

First up was AB 2179, the somewhat controversial bill that extended renter protections past the March 31 expiration date through June 30.

“California’s nation-leading rent relief program has provided much needed relief for more than 220,000 households across the state. Today’s action will provide additional time to thousands more who are in the process of acquiring emergency relief,” Acting Governor Kounalakis said in a statement. “I am deeply humbled to take this action and to be part of history today as the first woman in state history to sign legislation into law. I remain more determined than ever to ensure that while I may be the first to do so, I will certainly not be the last.”

Then there was SB 504, a bill that makes certain that Californians who have been through the criminal justice system are notified when they are eligible to re-register to vote. The bill also clarifies that registered voters no longer need to apply to vote by mail, as vote-by-mail ballots are now required to be mailed to all California voters.

“I’m so honored for Acting Governor Kounalakis to sign my voter access and equity legislation into law,” said bill author Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park. “With Acting Governor Kounalakis as our head of state, it’s a long-awaited historic day for California that’s made all the more significant as we observe Women’s History Month.”

 

Listen to What Newsom Does Not Say, When It Come to the Economy

Sacramento Bee

Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to tout what he calls the strong, vibrant California economy. He doesn’t mention the less flattering statistics. The governor cited in a March 25 statement the latest state unemployment report, which showed the jobless rate sinking to 5.4% in February as 138,100 new jobs were created.

“These latest numbers show that California is continuing to drive our nation’s job growth,” Newsom said.

The governor’s statements are accurate and linked to state and federal jobs reports compiled by nonpartisan agencies.

What Newsom did not say was that California’s February unemployment rate tied for the second highest in the nation, well above the 3.8% U.S. average. He didn’t say that an estimated 50,000 people in the state were laid off or fired from their jobs in January, the highest number in the nation.

Nor did he cite statistics showing California is 92% “back to normal,’’ according to a comprehensive yardstick of 37 indicators compiled by Moody’s Analytics and CNN Business to track the economic recovery. California ranks 39th. The U.S. average this week is 95%. Texas is at 101% and Florida, 99.6%.

Of course, said Newsom spokesman Alex Stack, 92% “just means we have more room to grow.” The index and other numbers are why economists are proceeding with more caution than Newsom as they discuss the California economy.

It has grown more quickly than the nation’s, and should continue to do so, said Alexander Specht, associate economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Institute for Applied Economics.

But Specht and other economists warned of at least two factors that could slow growth. Among the most ominous: Labor shortages persist, and prices nationally in February were up 7.9%, their steepest pace in 40 years. California’s gasoline prices continue to be far higher than any other state’s. Its $5.84 per gallon average Tuesday was 61 cents higher than runnerup Hawaii.

Michael Bernick called inflation “the main threat to ongoing employment growth in California,” and saw no clear path to easing the price spikes anytime soon. Bernick, a former California Employment Development Department director, is now an employment attorney at Duane Morris LLP.

The labor problem involves difficulty getting people to want to work. “Right now one big issue with California’s economy revolves around the labor force,” said Specht. “While the state has been posting impressive job gains, businesses still cite issues hiring workers for open positions,” he said. As a result, “It is unlikely these job gains will continue at anywhere near this month’s rate,” said Bernick.

Among the numbers Newsom cited to tout the state’s progress is how California has averaged monthly job gains 12 of the past 13 months. Twenty percent of regained jobs nationwide were in California, and the state has regained 87.2% of the jobs lost in March and April 2020, when the pandemic triggered an historic economic collapse.

But here are some of the more sobering numbers:

▪ Unemployment claims. California had 22% of the nation’s unemployment claims during the week ending March 26, a percentage that’s been consistent for some time, even though the state has 11.7% of the nation’s workforce.

Stack explained that part of the reason for the numbers involves California’s tourism-dependent sector, which continues to lag because of slow international travel, particularly from Asian nations with strict COVID-19 protocols.

▪ Unemployment rate. The 5.4% rate for February trailed only New Mexico and tied Alaska. Stack said that California’s unemployment rate tends to be higher than the nation’s for structural reasons, such as the seasonal nature of its tourism and agricultural industries.

▪ Layoffs and discharges. California had the largest increase in the country in this category in January, the latest data available, as 50,000 people were fired or otherwise involuntarily left their jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only seven other states had increases in this area last month. Stack noted that the California layoff rate was only 0.1 percentage point higher than the national average, tied with 11 other states for 18th highest layoff rate.

▪ Quitting jobs. The “quit rate,” or the percentage of people voluntarily leaving their jobs, was up in three states in January: California, Hawaii and New Jersey. Stack cited another way of looking at the rate, pointing out it was slightly lower than the national average..

▪ Job openings. The number of job openings in California in January declined more than any state in the nation. California reported a decrease of 103,000 job openings during the month.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article260130495.html#storylink=cpy

 

Primary Election Ballot Finalized

LA Times California Politics

Plans for California’s primary election are now firmly in place, as state officials certified the list of candidates for statewide, congressional and legislative races on Thursday — one of the last big steps before the first of more than 22 million ballots are mailed to voters no later than early May.

But how many of those ballots will actually be cast?

There’s often a strong correlation between high-profile races and voter turnout. It’s why presidential election cycles, for example, hold most of the records in California for voter participation.

But an early review of what’s in store for the June 7 statewide primary suggests the biggest races will feature only a few well-known candidates and a field largely comprising unknowns or newcomers. And a lack of marquee races could again result in an election in which the voters who show up aren’t representative of California’s diverse population.

It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that the real race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom might have been held last fall when several prominent candidates ran in the historic gubernatorial recall election.

While 10 of the candidates who were listed on the Sept. 14 recall ballot have chosen to run for a full four-year term as governor, none of last year’s best-known challengers opted to take a second shot at Newsom— likely viewing the Democratic governor’s resounding defeat of the recall and his $20-million campaign war chest as offering long odds for a different outcome in 2022.

(One of the best-known recall hopefuls, reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, debuted Thursday night as a contributor on Fox News.)

In this election, the two most recognizable challengers are state Sen. Brian Dahle, a Lassen County Republican, and Michael Shellenberger, a Berkeley environmental and homelessness activist. Shellenberger is a former Democrat who’s now a “no party preference” candidate, one of seven unaffiliated contestants in the governor’s race. Three unheralded Democrats are challenging Newsom. Two candidates are members of the Green Party.

The largest subset of gubernatorial candidates is composed of Republicans — 13 in all, and more GOP hopefuls than in any California gubernatorial primary since at least 1990.

With the governor’s race mostly drawing a field of long-shot candidates, political watchers have turned their attention to the election for attorney general in which incumbent Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is running for his first full term against four challengers, including outspoken Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert.

Schubert is a former Republican, offering her a bit of separation from GOP challengers Eric Early and Nathan Hochman. One Green Party candidate, attorney Dan Kapelovitz, is also running.

But party identification is a powerful selling point for a lot of voters and loyal Republicans, even though they are outnumbered in the larger electorate, could coalesce behind one of their candidates and win the second spot on the November ballot alongside Bonta. If Schubert is to break through, she’ll need a hefty campaign war chest and possibly some additional support from independent groups that can replace the financial help usually offered by a candidate’s political party.

Bonta, meanwhile, is likely to spend the primary and general election seasons talking about crime. Almost all of his opponents will surely seek to paint the criminal justice reformer as too liberal for the job of top cop.

Low turnout, less diversity?

The last time that a majority of California voters cast ballots in a gubernatorial primary was 1982, when then-Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian won the GOP nomination for governor and Democrats selected then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. (Deukmejian, of course, went on to narrowly beat Bradley in November.)

But since then, turnout for the state’s nonpresidential primaries has been anemic. Its lowest point was in 2014, when only 25% of registered voters cast a ballot in the primary that sent then-Gov. Jerry Brown and GOP challenger Neel Kashkari into a two-man general election showdown.

In 2018, when Newsom and Republican John Cox won the top two spots, fewer than 38% of registered voters showed up.

Low turnout, researchers say, means an electorate that doesn’t really reflect California.

An analysis by USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy of the 2020 presidential primary (in which less than 47% of registered voters cast ballots) found a significant underrepresentation of Latinos. While Latino adults comprised almost 31% of California’s eligible voters, they accounted for only 19% of the votes cast in the March 3, 2020 primary.

“Voters in California’s upcoming June primary are very likely to be older, wealthier and disproportionately white,” said Mindy Romero, director of the USC research group. “This small group of voters decides the makeup of the November ballot for everyone.”

The shortcomings of primary elections were the reason cited in 2012 when Brown signed a law moving all ballot initiatives to November elections. That may have helped ensure greater participation in making big decisions on public policy, but the problem with primaries remains.

Romero said the fewer times a voter casts a ballot, the fewer times political groups show up in future elections seeking support, a vicious cycle that perhaps only state and local elections officials can break.

“Greater outreach and resources are needed to more effectively reach voter groups who are less frequently contacted by campaigns,” she said.

 

California Is A “Jackpot” for Dems in 2022 Elections

Conventional wisdom (and recent polling) tells us that this year will be a tough one for congressional Democrats.

But if there’s one place the party can still look to for a glimmer of hope, it’s deep blue California.

Last week, the House Majority PAC, congressional Democrats’ main political committee, spent $102 million on broadcast and digital buys in 51 markets across the country, including nearly $12.2 million in five California markets: Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

In total, it’s more money than the PAC dropped at the start of previous cycles, which one could read as the Democrats panicking to get ahead of a potential midterm massacre. (The NRCC certainly took it that way.) But in California specifically, the Democrats are taking a tone of optimism — and, dare we say, confidence?

Abby Curran Horrell, the executive director of the House Majority PAC, called California a “jackpot” in an interview with The New York Times, noting that the political slant of several Republican-held districts has shifted left following redistricting, including those of Reps. Mike Garcia, David Valadao and Michelle Steel. The Cook Partisan Voting Index has those seats listed as tossups. We can also expect an open CA-13 to skew heavily Democratic this fall.

The party does have to defend Reps. Katie Porter and Mike Levin in November. To be fair, however, even those defensive districts lean Democrat, per the Cook.

The big question underlying all of this is whether victory in California will keep Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a position of power heading into the Biden administration’s third year. Best case scenario for Democrats: California representatives all keep their seats and add four more.

But between the departure of some 28 Democratic House members and the tough odds in dozens more districts across the country, any wins in the Golden State will likely be a small comfort.

Republicans will have abundant money to try and win their races: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced he’d piled up $31.5 million in the first quarter to get to $104 million so far this cycle — which his team called a record — as the Bakersfield Republican looks to pick up enough seats to become speaker.

 

Golden State Leads Blue State Delegation

NY Times

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.

As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions. Spurred by a U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to soon upend an array of longstanding rights, including the constitutional right to abortion, left-leaning lawmakers from Washington to Vermont have begun to expand access to abortion, bolster voting rights and denounce laws in conservative states targeting L.G.B.T.Q. minors.

The flurry of action, particularly in the West, is intensifying already marked differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country. And it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties. Control of legislative chambers is split between parties now in two states — Minnesota and Virginia — compared with 15 states 30 years ago.

“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” said Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Americans have been sorting into opposing partisan camps for at least a generation, choosing more and more to live among like-minded neighbors, while legislatures, through gerrymandering, are reinforcing their states’ political identities by solidifying one-party rule.

“As states become more red or blue, it’s politically easier for them to pass legislation,” said Ryan D. Enos, a Harvard political scientist who studies partisan segregation. “Does that create a feedback loop where more sorting happens? That’s the part we don’t know yet.”

With some 30 legislatures in Republican hands, conservative lawmakers, working in many cases with shared legislative language, have begun to enact a tsunami of restrictions that for years were blocked by Democrats and moderate Republicans at the federal level. A recent wave of anti-abortion bills, for instance, has been the largest since the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

Similar moves have recently been aimed at L.G.B.T.Q. protections and voting rights. In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, fallout from former President Donald J. Trump’s specious claims after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Carrying concealed guns without a permit is now legal in nearly half of the country. “Bounty” laws — enforced not by governments, which can be sued in federal court, but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — have proliferated on issues from classroom speech to vaccination since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the legal tactic in Texas.

The moves, in an election year, have raised questions about the extent to which they are performative, as opposed to substantial. Some Republican bills are bold at first glance but vaguely worded. Some appear designed largely to energize base voters.

Many, however, send a strong cultural message. And divisions will widen further, said Peverill Squire, an expert on state legislatures at the University of Missouri, if the Supreme Court hands more power over to the states on issues like abortion and voting, as it did when it said in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering was beyond federal jurisdiction.

Some legal analysts also say the anticipated rollback of abortion rights could throw a host of other privacy rights into state-level turmoil, from contraception to health care. Meanwhile, entrenched partisanship, which has already hobbled federal decision making, could block attempts to impose strong national standards in Congress.

“We’re potentially entering a new era of state-centered policymaking,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside. “We may be heading into a future where you could have conservative states and progressive states deciding they are better off pushing their own visions of what government should be.”

But no state has been as aggressive as California in shoring up alternatives to the Republican legislation.

One package of pending California bills would expand access to California abortions and protect abortion providers from out-of-state legal action. Another proposal would thwart enforcement of out-of-state court judgments removing children from the custody of parents who get them gender-affirming health services.

Yet another would enforce a ban on ghost guns and assault weapons with a California version of Texas’ recent six-week ban on abortion, featuring $10,000 bounties to encourage lawsuits from private citizens against anyone who sells, distributes or manufactures those types of firearms.

In a “State of the State” address last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom took more than a half-dozen swipes at Florida and Texas, comparing California’s expanded sick leave, family leave and Medicaid coverage during the pandemic with the higher Covid-19 death rates in the two Republican-led states, and alluding to states “where they’re banning books” and “where you can sue your history teacher for teaching history.”

After Disney World employees protested the corporation’s initial reluctance to condemn the Florida bill that opponents call “Don’t Say Gay,” Mr. Newsom suggested Disney cancel the relocation of some 2,000 West Coast positions to a new Florida campus, saying on Twitter that “the door is open to bring those jobs back to California — the state that actually represents the values of your workers.”

Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who teaches political science now at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, said that without strong Republican opposition, Mr. Newsom has been using the governors of Texas and Florida as straw men.

“It’s an effective way of strengthening himself at home and elevating his name in Democratic presidential conversations,” Mr. Schnur said.

Conservatives in and outside California have criticized the governor for stoking division.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is a Republican presidential contender, noted in an email that Disneyland was closed three times longer than Disney World during the pandemic, and that hundreds of thousands of Americans moved to Florida between April 2020 and July 2021 while hundreds of thousands left California. Mr. Newsom, she wrote, “is doing a better job as a U-Haul salesman.”

“Politicians in California do not have veto power over legislation passed in Florida,” the spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, added. “Gov. Newsom should focus on solving the problems in his own state.”

The office of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — who, in 2018, ran on the slogan “Don’t California My Texas” — did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment.

In an interview, Mr. Newsom noted that California has been grappling for decades with the cultural and demographic changes that are only now hitting other parts of the country, including early battles over such issues as gay rights and immigration. “I’m very concerned broadly about what’s happening and whether or not it’s fully understood by the majority, not just of the American people but people within my own party,” he said.

“We are not going to sit back and neutrally watch the progress of the 20th century get erased,” he added, decrying the “zest for demonization” and an “anti-democratic” tilt in recent policies to restrict voting and L.G.B.T.Q. protections.

“If you say nothing, you’re complicit,” Mr. Newsom said. “You have to take these guys on and push back.”

California’s stance has broad implications. Although U.S. census figures showed stalled growth in the state in 2020, its population of nearly 40 million is the nation’s largest, encompassing one in nine U.S. residents.

“In a world in which the federal government has abdicated some of its core responsibility, states like California have to figure out what their responsibilities are,” said Mr. Michaels, the U.C.L.A. professor. “The hard question is: Where does it end?”

For example, he noted, the fallout could mean that federal rights that generations have taken for granted could become available only to those who can afford to uproot their lives and move to the states that guarantee them.

“It’s easy for Governor Newsom to tell struggling Alabamians, ‘I feel your pain,’ but then what? ‘Come rent a studio apartment in San Francisco for $4,000 a month?’”

In recent weeks, several states including Colorado and Vermont have moved to codify a right to abortion. More — Maryland and Washington, for example — have expanded access or legal protection in anticipation of out-of-state patients.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/us/state-laws-republican-democrat-division.html?campaign_id=49&emc=edit_ca_20220404&instance_id=57554&nl=california-today&regi_id=80823166&segment_id=87457&te=1&user_id=ebedd9f525ae3910eeb31de6bb6c4da0

 

Legislative Analyst Posts Definitive Analysis of Climate Change in CA

Sacramento Bee / Legislative Analyst

In an alarming and remarkably comprehensive series of reports sent to lawmakers this week, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office detailed to broad and deep impacts of climate change is wreaking on California. Although the six analyses didn’t make legislative recommendations, nor did they pull any punches in laying out a future plagued by increasing wildfires, rising seas, extreme heat, poor air quality and increasingly at-risk vulnerable populations. Among the current and expected impacts of a changing climate:

Wildfires, heat and smoke will force more frequent school closures —disrupting education, child care and availability of free school lunches.

Housing, rail lines, bridges, power plants and other structures are vulnerable to rising seas and tides. “Between $8 billion and $10 billion of existing property in California is likely to be underwater by 2050, with an additional $6 billion to $10 billion at risk during high tide,” the office found.

For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area alone, 13,000 existing housing units and 104,000 job spaces “will no longer be usable” because of sea rise over the next next 40 to 100 years. And up to two-thirds of Southern California beaches may become completely eroded by 2100.

Extreme heat is projected to cause nine deaths per 100,000 people each year, “roughly equivalent to the 2019 annual mortality rate from automobile accidents in California.”

Project manager Rachel Ehlers said the reports aim to help lawmakers incorporate climate change in decisionmaking outside of traditionally environmental realms, including housing, health and education. For instance, would a new housing policy “have the potential to inadvertently worsen climate change impacts?”

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Series/1

 

“Vulnerability of Our Forests is Catastrophic”: Fire Season 20222

Sacramento Bee

Most of California is bone dry. Climate change is growing demonstrably more extreme by the year. And even though some significant rain fell earlier this week, it’s well short of a “March miracle.” This year figures to be a bad one – another bad one – for California wildfires.

The 2021 fire season saw more than 2.5 million acres burn, the towns of Grizzly Flats and Greenville leveled by flames and the unprecedented evacuation of South Lake Tahoe as the Caldor Fire sprinted into the Lake Tahoe Basin.

We have no way of knowing exactly what might unfold in 2022.

But what is clear is conditions are again primed for another long, dangerous wildfire season. The state is on track to enter its third year of drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor as of last week had designated just over 40% of California as being in “extreme” drought conditions, compared to about 37% at the same point in 2021.

The driest regions include parts of the North Bay area and the northern Sacramento Valley, each devastated by major fires since 2017. Drought is one of the big concerns, but it’s not the only factor in the state’s extraordinary wildfire risk.

“The vulnerability of our forests is really catastrophic,” said Scott Stephens, a wildfire science professor and head of the Stephens Lab at UC Berkeley.

On top of that, extreme weather – severe windstorms, dry lightning and extended heat waves – is becoming more commonplace by the year. “California continues to experience longer wildfire seasons as a direct result of climate change,”

Escalating fire risk over a longer portion of the year comes in tandem with ongoing debates about how to best mitigate, prepare for and combat the disasters.

Fire danger could be extreme this year after Northern California bounced between precipitation highs and lows in recent months.

Record-breaking storms in late 2021 – a “bomb cyclone” system in October, followed by the snowiest December in history for the Central Sierra mountains – gave way to extraordinarily low rain totals since the start of this calendar year.

That’s not a good pattern, particularly for grasslands, Stephens said. They add vegetation in heavy rain; dry out in drought conditions and become wildfire fuel. “The grassland biomass is really connected to conditions in the last two years or so,” he said. “When you get these pulses of rain followed by long dry periods … there’s no doubt that that will enhance fire spread.” Stephens said, however, that shrubs and forestland don’t change as quickly in response to the “ping pong of weather.”

The storm earlier last week was the first real significant rain of February or March for much of Northern California, and Stephens said it would probably take two or three weeks to dry out.

But fire fuels are also drying out “more quickly, more efficiently” as average global temperatures rise, he said. Just days before the storm, several Northern California cities broke high-temperature records three days in a row.

If California is lucky enough to get a few more moderate storms from April through early May, “it’d slow the start of fire season, perhaps by a few weeks,” Stephens said.

A Newsom administration task force on Wednesday announced a strategic plan to expand the “use of beneficial fire” – prescribed burns by state and local agencies, as well as cultural burning by Native American fire practitioners – to treat forestland and prepare them for wildfire season.

“As climate change continues to exacerbate wildfire conditions, we’re bringing federal, state, tribal, and local partners together to more effectively address the scale of this crisis,” Newsom said in a prepared statement.

The plan includes a goal of “expanding beneficial fire to 400,000 acres” a year by 2025, between state, federal, local and tribal entities. It would be a big increase compared to recent years: Cal Fire and the Forest Service conducted planned burns on about 80,000 acres a year from 2017 through 2020, according to the task force’s plan.

Efforts are ongoing by each agency to manage vegetation with prescribed burns, as well as forest-thinning efforts. The Biden administration earlier this year unveiled a wildfire prevention plan that includes not only planned burns and thinning, but seeks to have some of the most at-risk communities build protective boundaries. It’s a vast, 10-year plan.

Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension whose input is included in the plan, said the acre targets in state and federal plans are “almost arbitrary.”

“The acres will come if we put all the right pieces in place,” Quinn-Davidson said in an interview. Those pieces include workforce development, funding and creating additional partnerships fire practitioners who can offer invaluable experience, like tribal groups, Quinn-Davidson said.

Don Hankins, a Chico State geography professor who specializes in pyrogeography, said that “revitalizing” the practice of cultural burning will require an educational paradigm shift. “Native peoples in the state used fires to steward the landscape to mitigate the impact of past climate change events and wildfires, and maintained a very rich and productive landscape,” Hankins said.

“The formation of the state and policies that came about removed that for the past 200 years. “That’s part of the reason the state is suffering right now.” One of the most important features of the state’s plan, Quinn-Davidson said, is that California last year set aside $20 million to establish an insurance claims fund for private burners, easing liability.

Other obstacles remain. “So many barriers are more social and administrative and legal” than practical, Quinn-Davidson said. “Perspectives of liability and insurance – those are our main barriers.”

Hankins said recent legislation and policy plans, such as California’s strategic plan and the Forest Service’s 10-year plan, are starting to remove barriers by forging more cohesive partnerships between the state, local governments, the federal government, tribes and private landowners.

On Thursday, for instance, Cal Fire released a “forest management handbook” for small-parcel landowners in the Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascade mountain ranges, targeted at those who own between 10 and 100 acres of land. But will change happen fast enough to ward off imminent wildfire threat?

“Probably not, in terms of this year,” Hankins said. “We are definitely in a very urgent situation. The more time that we spend not burning and not putting fire on the landscape, the more areas of the landscape become vulnerable to potentially disasters. “So we do need to be acting more quickly.”

Stephens, the UC Berkeley wildfire scientist, estimated that climate change represents no more than 25% of California’s wildfire problem, with most of the remaining 75% related to forest management.

Cal Fire’s newly appointed chief, Joe Tyler, told Fire Aviation earlier this month that the state may have up to 10 new firefighting helicopters available this year. The agency’s budget is $3.7 billion for the current fiscal year, with $2.1 billion of that dedicated to wildfire protection. Those are respective increases of about 45% and 62% compared to five years earlier, according to a January report from Legislative Analyst’s Office. Among key “augmentations” this fiscal year, per the report, were $143 million to support 16 new Cal Fire hand crews and a near-quintupling of annual spending on wildfire threat assessment, from $2 million in 2020-21 to $9.5 million in 2021-22. Newsom’s initial budget proposal for the 2022-23 fiscal year, which begins July 1, includes $1.2 billion more toward combating wildfire, which would be used to fund about 20 fire crews as well as additional equipment like helicopters, fire engines and bulldozers.

More:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article259906985.html#storylink=cpy