The 2024-25 California state budget, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in June 2024, slashed funding for wildfire and forest resilience by $101 million as part of a series of cutbacks according to an analysis by the state's Legislative Analyst's Office.
Since Tuesday Los Angeles has been battling a series of devastating wildfires that have left at least ten people dead and demolished over 10,000 properties across the city.
Prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump, have blamed Newsom for the disaster with the president-elect commenting "it's all his fault," and urging the governor to resign on his Truth Social website. Newsom has been widely tipped as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
An analysis of California's 2024 Budget Bill, which covers its budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year, by the state's Legislative Analyst's Office concluded it slashed $101 million from seven "wildfire and forest resilience" programs.
The California Analyst's Office is an impartial body that analyses the economic impact of proposed laws and is overseen by the state legislature's Legislative Budget Committee. Cuts included a reduction of $5 million in spending on CAL FIRE fuel reduction teams, including funds used to pay for vegetation management work by the California National Guard. This left the total available for this scheme at $129 million.
An additional $4 million was removed from a forest legacy program aimed at encouraging good management practices from landowners whilst $28 million was slashed from funds provided to multiple state conservancies to increase wildfire resilience.
Another $8 million was taken from monitoring and research spending, which had largely been given to CAL FIRE and California universities, whilst $3 million was removed from funding for an interagency forest data hub. A home hardening pilot scheme designed to make homes more resilient to wildfires had its funding cut by $12 million.
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