BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1617
Page 1
Date of Hearing: June 16, 2008
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Loni Hancock, Chair
SB 1617 (Kehoe) - As Amended: June 9, 2008
SENATE VOTE : 21-13
SUBJECT : State responsibility areas: fire prevention fees.
SUMMARY : Imposes an annual $50 fire prevention fee on
structures located in the State Responsibility Areas;
establishes a fee assessment appeals process; requires fee
revenues to be available to the Board of Forestry (Board) and
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF),
upon appropriation by the Legislature, for fire prevention
activities in SRAs, attributable to benefits conferred on
structures subject to the fee.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the Board to identify all lands where the state has
the primary financial responsibility for preventing and
suppressing fires. These state responsibility areas (SRAs) are
generally lands that are (or were, prior to development)
largely covered by trees, brush, grass, range and other
undeveloped lands. Fire prevention and suppression in areas
not classified as SRAs are the responsibility of local or
federal agencies.
2)Excludes from SRAs, federal lands and lands within the
exterior boundaries of any city, except a city and county with
a population of less than 25,000 if, at the time the city and
county government is established, the county contains no
municipal corporations.
3)Requires CDF, within SRAs, to provide wildland fire prevention
and firefighting personnel and equipment, and may provide
rescue, first aid, and other emergency services if the
activity does not require additional funds.
4)Requires the director of CDF to classify and update or
reclassify, if necessary, SRAs into fire hazard severity zones
for the purposes of fire prevention and suppression. Each zone
must be based on factors including fuel loading, slope, and
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fire weather.
5)Authorizes CDF to inspect all properties for compliance with
state forest and fire laws.
THIS BILL :
1)Defines "structure" to mean a building that has a certificate
of occupancy issued pursuant to Section 9591 of the Health and
Safety Code.
2)Requires the Board, by July 1, 2009, to adopt emergency
regulations to establish a $50 fire prevention fee (fee) to be
charged on each structure on a parcel that is subject to
property taxes and is within a SRA. On July 1, 2010 and
annually thereafter, the Board must adjust the fee pursuant to
a specified inflation index.
3)Requires the fee to be included on all secured property tax
bills issued for the 2009-10 fiscal year and sets forth
procedures for a county auditor to levy and collect the fee,
and transmit the fee to Treasurer to deposit in a special
fund.
4)Requires counties to retain from the fee collected, an amount
authorized by the Board sufficient to reimburse each county's
actual and reasonable costs for levying and collecting the fee
consistent with a cost recovery agreement entered into by the
department and each county.
5)Requires the fee proceeds to be available to the Board and
CDF, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for fire
prevention activities in SRAs, attributable to benefits
conferred on structures subject to the fire prevention fee.
The activities include:
a) Local assistance grants.
b) Grants to Fire Safe Councils, the California
Conservation Corps, or certified local conservation corps
for fire prevention projects and activities in SRAs.
c) Inspections by CDF for compliance with defensible space
requirements around structures in SRAs as required by
Section 4291.
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d) Public education to reduce fire risk in the state
responsibility areas.
e) Fire severity and fire hazard mapping by CDF in SRAs.
f) Recoupment of startup costs incurred over a period not
to exceed one year.
g) Other prevention projects in SRAs, authorized by the
Board.
6)Directs the Board to establish a local assistance grants
program for fire prevention activities relating to the
presence of structures within SRAs, including public
education, that are provided by counties and other local
agencies, including special districts, with SRAs within their
jurisdictions. The amount of each grant must be based on the
number of structures in SRAs for which the applicant is
legally responsible and the amount of moneys made available in
the annual Budget Act for the local assistance grants program.
7)Establishes an appeals process for anyone who is required to
pay the fee. A person may file a petition for a
"redetermination" of a fee with the Board and CDF within 30
days after receipt of the property tax bill. CDF is required
to adjudicate the petition and make a determination, including
elimination of the fee, in writing.
8)Requires the Board, by January 1, 2011 and annually
thereafter, to submit report on the status and uses of the
fees to the Legislature.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, $500,000 to CDF to promulgate regulations to
establish the fee; about $630,000 in 2009-10 and 2010-11 to map
subject parcels; $2-5 million annually in fee collection costs;
about $47 million in annual fee revenue starting in 2009-10
based on about 870,000 structures in SRAs and the assumption
that for every ten residential structures there is a
non-residential structure.
COMMENTS : The author substantially amended this bill on June 9.
Previously, the bill required CDF to develop and assess a
minimum fee of $100 on all SRA landowners based on a property's
fire hazard. It now establishes a flat $50 fire prevention fee
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on all structures in SRAs to be used for fire prevention
activities attributable to the presence of these structures in
SRAs.
Intent of the bill
According to the author's office: "The presence of people, homes
and other structures in SRAs pose an added burden to the state's
firefighting resources. Individual owners of property with
structures within SRAs receive a disproportionately larger
benefit for fire prevention activities than that realized by
those residing within the state's urban and urbanizing areas,
where cities provide structural fire protection. With
escalating fire suppression costs, it is essential that there be
increased emphasis on fire prevention and the funding of fire
prevention activities attributable to structures in SRAs."
Brief primer on SRAs
SRAs primarily consist of privately owned forestlands,
watersheds, and rangelands. According to the Legislative
Analyst's Office (LAO), roughly one-third of the state is SRA
(about 31 million acres) and about one percent of SRA acres are
publicly-owned lands. SRAs lands are found in every county
expect San Francisco and Sutter Counties. These lands either
serve a commercial purpose (e.g., ranching or timber harvesting)
or provide natural resource values or benefits such as watershed
protection. Even though SRAs have structures on them, CDF
removes lands from SRAs, every five years, when housing density
reaches more than three units per acre.
Unambiguously, CDF's role in SRAs is to prevent and suppress
wildland fires. However, CDF is also authorized, but not
required, to provide rescue, first aid, and other emergency
services if the activity does not require additional funds.
Moreover, it is the Board's policy to respond to structure fires
if there is a threat to wildlands. Even though state law does
not require local governments to provide fire protection within
SRAs, in practice they have assumed the responsibility for
structure protection and basic medical assistance. According to
the LAO, about 70 percent of SRAs are covered by some form of
local fire protection, funded by property taxes or special
assessments.
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In 2006, while a vast majority of incidents CDF responds to in
SRAs are non-fire medical emergencies, CDF spent about 75
percent of its time fighting wildland fires, 95% of which,
according to CDF, are caused by humans . In its analysis of the
2008-09 budget, the LAO found that CDF's budget has increased
150% since 1997-98. One of the cost drivers of CDF's growing
expenditures is increasing development in the wildland urban
interface (WUI). Despite the fact that the total acreage in SRA
has remained stable over the last 15 years, the number of
housing units in SRA has increased by 15% over this period.
Based on 2005 data, the LAO reports there are about 870,000
housing units in SRAs and the trend is upward.
Legislative Analyst's Office has long advocated for SRA fees
As in past budgets, the LAO recommends that the Legislature
enact a fee on SRA property owners that would pay for 50% of the
state's General Fund baseline cost for fire protection (roughly
$265 million). It further recommends that residential
homeowners pay most, if not all, of this fee. Annually, this
would amount to about $310 per structure. In the long term, the
LAO recommends that the Legislature use risk criterion when
setting fee levels.
This bill embodies a long-standing LAO philosophy that
landowners in SRAs directly benefiting from state services
should pay for a portion of those services. Concerns have been
expressed by counties that a SRA fee would require landowners to
pay twice for the same level of fire protection. However, local
assessments, used to pay for life and structure protection, do
not include the costs for state wildlife fire prevention and
protection, which landowners in SRAs disproportionately benefit
from by living in an environment with greater inherent fire
risks. Of course, through income taxes, these landowners pay a
portion of wildlife fire protection but since they experience
greater benefits than the average taxpayer it is reasonable that
they pay a larger proportion.
Moreover, local land use decisions are responsible for an
increasing density of homes in the WUI but the consequences of
those decisions are borne at both the state and local levels.
In the Sierra foothills, for example, the number of medical
emergencies CDF responded to more than doubled between 1993 and
2000. Finally, when a wildland fire threatens a housing
development, the need for firefighting resources significantly
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outstrips the local supply of firefighters and state taxpayers
as a whole are paying these costs.
Courts has held that "special assessments" on property, in
amounts reasonably reflecting the value of the benefits
conferred by improvements, are not "special taxes" under the
California Constitution. Similarly, development fees for
building permits are not special taxes if the amount of the fees
bears a reasonable relationship to a development's likely costs
to the community and benefits to the developer. While the
author admits that the $50 fire prevention fee is somewhat
arbitrary, this bill has been carefully structured such that the
fee collected "is a reasonable amount for the necessary fire
prevention activities that are appropriate and attributable to
the presence of a structure within a [SRA]." Moreover, a payer
of a fee is not legally entitled to a specific benefit (i.e., a
fuelbreak surrounding his property). Rather, the benefits of
the fire prevention fee must accrue to landowners in SRAs in the
aggregate.
Among other uses of the fee, this bill establishes a local
grants program to local governments and districts, Fire Safe
Councils and the California Conservation Corps for fire
prevention activities related to the presence of structures in
SRAs. There is near consensus that there are insufficient fire
prevention resources statewide and the large majority of local
fire departments or districts are focused primarily on structure
protection and medical emergencies. While the total amount of
fees generated by this bill is not necessarily commensurate with
the magnitude of the problem, it provides sufficient incentive
for both state and local governments to ramp-up fire prevention
activities that are unquestionably more cost-effective than fire
suppression.
Flat fee redux
In 2003, the Legislature enacted budget trailer legislation that
charged an annual flat fire protection fee of $35 per parcel on
all private lands within SRA. However, this fee was rescinded
the following year before any revenues were collected because of
logistical difficulties in fee collection. Concerns were also
raised that the flat fee was inequitable since owners of large
parcels would have paid the same as owners of smaller ones
despite higher fire protection costs for the former group. In
response to recommendations from the LAO, a previous version of
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this bill would have required the Board to establish a
risk-based fee according to the fire hazard severity zone in
which a structure is located and other criteria. Fees would
have been reduced or eliminated if a landowner had sufficient
defensible space, for example. However, the bill now reverts to
a $50 flat fee-expected to generate about $47 million
annually-due to the administrative complexity and cost of the
previous version.
SRA Fees and Governor's proposal in budget conference committee
The Governor proposed in the budget this year a $125 million
annual surcharge on property insurance policies statewide to
offset CDF budget reductions and to pay for program expansion.
In the May Revise, the Governor revised and broadened this
proposal to include all natural disasters and introduced a $78
million risk-based surcharge (1.4% or $12.60/household) based on
the presence of structures in high-hazard zones (earthquake,
flood, and fire). Homes in low-hazard areas would be assessed
0.75% ($6.75/household).
The Assembly budget subcommittee approved the Governor's
proposal and trailer bill language to implement the LAO SRA fee
proposal in concept ($125 million), while the Senate rejected
both. Thus, both items are being heard in the budget conference
committee.
Suggested Amendments
1.Page 5, line 18-19 should read:
The fire prevention fee shall be collected levied by each county
in the same manner and at the same time as secured property
taxes.
2.Page 6, after paragraph (2), insert a new paragraph (3):
(3) Grants to a qualified nonprofit organization with a
demonstrated ability to satisfactorily plan, implement, and
complete a fire prevention project. The department may
establish other qualifying criteria .
3.Page 6, lines 30-31 should read:
Other fire prevention projects in the state responsibility
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areas, authorized by the board.
4.Page 7, lines 3-5 should read:
By January 1, 2011, and annually thereafter, the board shall
submit to the Legislature a written report on the status and
uses of the fund pursuant to this chapter. The board shall also
evaluate the effectiveness of its grants program, report the
number of defensible space inspections in the reporting period,
the degree of compliance with defensible space requirements,
measure to increase compliance, if any, and any recommendations
to the Legislature.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Fire Chiefs Association
California Fire Safe Council
California League of Conservation Voters
California Native Plant Society
California Trout
Defenders of Wildlife
Planning and Conservation League
Sierra Club
Opposition
California State Association of Counties
Regional Council of Rural Counties
Robin Yonash, Greater Colfax Fire Safe Council
Analysis Prepared by : Dan Chia / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092