BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1863
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Date of Hearing: April 11, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Cameron Smyth, Chair
AB 1863 (Chesbro) - As Amended: March 26, 2012
SUBJECT : Mutual aid: reimbursement.
SUMMARY : Expands the definition of what constitutes a
"disaster" under the provisions of the California Disaster
Assistance Act (Act), allows the costs of food and lodging for
mutual aid responders to be counted as part of the financial
assistance to local agencies and the state provided under the
Act, and appropriates $40,827 from the state's General Fund to
Mendocino County for mutual aid costs incurred during a
Mendocino "manhunt." Specifically, this bill :
1)Appropriates $40,827.29 from the General Fund to Mendocino
County to reimburse the County for the costs it incurred for
the food and lodging of outside agencies' personnel that
offered mutual aid to the County in the 2011 manhunt for the
suspected killer of Matthew Coleman and Fort Bragg City
Council Member Jere Melo.
2)Expands, for the purposes of the Act, the definition of
"disaster" to include a public calamity that includes, but is
not limited to, an uncommon situation that requires law
enforcement, that is or threatens to become of serious
epidemic proportions, and for which local resources are
inadequate to protect the lives and property of citizens or to
enforce the law.
3)States that a public calamity does not include the perceived
need for planning or other activities related to crowd control
for general public safety projects, or a situation requiring
the enforcement of laws associated with scheduled public
events, including, but not limited, to political conventions
and sporting events.
4)Includes, for moneys appropriated under the Act used to
provide financial assistance for local agency and state costs,
the costs of food and lodging for mutual aid responders as a
result of a state of emergency proclaimed by the Governor.
5)Makes legislative findings and declarations about the 36-day
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manhunt in Mendocino County from August 2011 to October 2011.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Creates the California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA)
for the coordination
of overall state agency response to major disasters in support
of local government and for homeland security activities
throughout the state.
2)Authorizes the Governor, with the advice of Cal EMA, to divide
the state into mutual aid regions for the more effective
application, administration, and coordination of mutual aid
and other emergency-related activities.
3)Allows cities and counties to create disaster councils by
ordinance in order to develop plans for meeting any condition
constituting a local emergency or state of emergency,
including, but not limited to, earthquakes, natural or manmade
disasters specific to that jurisdiction, or state of war
emergency.
4)Allows cities and counties to enact ordinances and resolutions
and either establish rules and regulations or authorize
disaster councils to recommend to the director of the local
emergency organization rules and regulations for dealing with
local emergencies that can be dealt with locally.
5)Allows cities and counties to act to carry out mutual aid on a
voluntary basis and enter into agreements.
6)Allows a governing body of a city or county to proclaim a
local emergency and provides that the governing body must
review the need for continuing the local emergency at least
once every 30 days until the governing body terminates the
local emergency.
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7)Creates the California Disaster Assistance Act (Act).
8)Defines, for purposes of the Act, the term "disaster" to mean
a "fire, flood, storm, tidal wave, earthquake, terrorism,
epidemic, or other similar public calamity that the Governor
determines presents a threat to public safety."
9)Defines, for purposes of the Act, the term "project" to mean
"the repair or restoration, or both, other than normal
maintenance, ore the replacement of, real property of a local
agency used for essential governmental services, including,
but not limited to, buildings, levees, flood control works,
channels, irrigation works, city streets, county roads,
bridges, and other public works, that are damaged or destroyed
by a disaster, and includes activities and expenses specified
under 10a), 10c), 10d) and 10e) below."
10)Provides for reimbursement of local agency and state costs
under the Act as follows:
a) Local agency personnel costs, equipment costs and the
costs of supplies and materials used during disaster
response activities, incurred as a result of a state of
emergency proclaimed by the Governor, excluding the normal
hourly wage costs of employees engaged in emergency work
activities;
b) To repair, restore, reconstruct, or replace facilities
belonging to local agencies damaged as a result of
disasters as specified;
c) Matching fund assistance for cost sharing required under
federal disaster assistance programs, as otherwise eligible
under the Act;
d) Indirect administrative costs and any other assistance
deemed necessary by the director; and,
e) Necessary and required site preparation costs for
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mobilehomes, travel trailers, and other manufactured
housing units provided and operated by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
11)Provides, for purposes of the Act, for any eligible project
the state share shall amount to no more than 75% of total
state eligible costs.
12)Provides, for purposes of the Act, in spite of 11) above,
that the state share shall be up to 100% of total state
eligible costs connected with specified disasters.
13)Defines, through state regulations, the term "mutual aid" to
mean "voluntary aid and assistance provided by one
jurisdiction to another, consisting of the provision of
services and facilities, including fire, police, medical, and
health, communication, transportation, and utilities."
14)Specifies, through state regulations, that the intent of
mutual aid is "to provide adequate resources, facilities, and
other support to jurisdictions whenever their own resource
prove inadequate to cope with a given situation."
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown. This bill is keyed fiscal.
COMMENTS :
1)In 1970 the Legislature passed the California Emergency
Services Act, partly to mitigate the effects of natural,
manmade, or war-caused emergencies that result in conditions
of disaster or extreme peril to life, property, and the
state's resources. The purpose of the Emergency Services Act
is to ensure that the state and its political subdivisions,
such as cities, counties, districts, and local governmental
agencies, as well as the federal government, other states, and
private agencies, coordinate their emergency services
functions to deal with any emergency that may occur.
In 2008, the Act was amended to establish the California
Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) and on January 1, 2009,
Cal EMA became the entity responsible for the state's
emergency and disaster response services, including activities
necessary to prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate
the effects of emergencies and disasters on people and
property.
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2)At the heart of California's mutual aid system is the master
mutual aid agreement signed by Governor Earl Warren on
November 15, 1950, which was entered into by and between the
state and its departments and agencies and the various
political subdivisions, municipal corporations, and other
public agencies within the state.
Mutual aid is the voluntary sharing of personnel and resources
when an agency cannot deploy its own resources sufficiently to
respond to an unusual occurrence. Resources are requested by
the affected agency through a system established by the Master
Mutual Aid Agreement and Emergency Services Act, which can
then be executed on a local, countywide, regional, statewide,
or interstate basis, as needed.
According to the Cal EMA, a Master Mutual Aid agreement has
been adopted by most cities and all 58 counties in California.
This agreement creates a formal structure within which each
jurisdiction retains control of its own personnel and
facilities, while giving and receiving help whenever it is
needed. The state is a signatory to this agreement and
provides available resources to assist local jurisdictions in
emergencies. California is divided into seven mutual aid
regions in order to apply, administer and coordinate mutual
aid.
Generally speaking, there is no reimbursement for providing
mutual aid. The agency receiving the mutual aid is
responsible for the care, feeding, and shelter of personnel
from those agencies that have responded and have volunteered
as mutual aid resources. In some instances, reimbursement for
costs related to mutual aid may be possible under state and
federal disaster declarations (usually reserved for very
severe disasters), otherwise, all mutual aid costs are the
responsibility of the individual agencies.
No jurisdiction is required to unnecessarily deplete its own
personnel, equipment and service capabilities in order to
furnish mutual aid resources. When an agency receives a
request to provide mutual aid, the rule of thumb is that it is
reasonable that the response consist of up to 50% of available
on-duty personnel.
3)This bill appropriates $40,827 from the state's General Fund
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to the County of Mendocino to reimburse the County for costs
it incurred during the Mendocino "manhunt." In 2011,
Mendocino County faced a 36-day manhunt for a man suspected in
the fatal shootings of a Fort Bragg city councilman and a
county land trust official in the redwood forests of Northern
California. The search involved the Mendocino County
Sheriff's Office and
31 other local, state and federal agencies, including the U.S.
Marshals Service.
In addition to reimbursing Mendocino County for mutual aid
costs, this bill also sets up a process going forward for
reimbursement for law enforcement-related mutual aid if the
Governor determines that there is a threat to public safety
and that threat meets the bill's expanded definition of what
constitutes a "public calamity."
4)According to the sponsor, the California State Sheriff's
Association, this bill will assist counties, especially rural
counties, which have limited resources but still have a need
to respond to significant public safety events. For example,
situations like the one in Mendocino County involved special
tactical and SWAT teams, and a rugged and difficult terrain
which required air support by helicopters.
5)According to Cal EMA, state agencies and local governments
sometimes enter into other mutual aid agreements that
stipulate that the responding agencies will provide mutual aid
without reimbursement for short periods, such as the first 12
or 24 hours of an emergency, and that the requesting agencies
must pay the responding agencies for any aid provided after
that time.
The Committee may wish to ask the author whether Mendocino
County has any other agreements or MOUs with neighboring
agencies that specify reimbursement, and whether those
particular agencies assisted with the Mendocino manhunt.
6)A similar bill, AB 1873 (Galgiani) which is set to be heard by
this Committee on April 11, 2012, also makes an appropriation
from the state's General Fund to reimburse several counties
for costs related to providing mutual aid. Given that local
agencies are turning to the state in order to help with
funding of mutual aid costs, the Committee may wish to
consider the following:
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a) If the state is going to reimburse local agencies, in
this case Mendocino County and the other two counties that
would be reimbursed under AB 1873, what kind of information
does the state need to see in order to ensure that the
costs listed for mutual aid lodging and food are
appropriate and reasonable? There appears to be a lack of
information in both situations about the breakdown of costs
and which agencies that provided mutual aid those costs are
attributable to.
b) Should there be a per-day cap on expenses for lodging
and food, and if so, should Cal EMA be responsible for
developing guidelines and developing the forms used by
local agencies to request reimbursement?
7)There have been previous legislative attempts at setting up a
process for mutual aid costs related to housing and food to be
reimbursed by the state. In particular, there was a bill in
1984 by Senator Campbell, SB 1935, that would have set up a
five-year pilot program and would have established a financial
assistance fund to provide law enforcement mutual aid
assistance to local agencies that provided or requested such
assistance. SB 1935 would have appropriated $1.5 million from
the General Fund to the "Law Enforcement Mutual Aid Financial
Assistance Fund" and would have provided for reimbursement for
the actual food, lodging, and transportation costs of the
assisting agency, not to exceed a specified per diem rate, and
would have also covered personnel costs of $240 per day of
each assisting employee. Under the provisions of SB 1935, the
State Controller would have made the payments to reimburse
local agencies for their costs.
A committee analyses of SB 1935 noted that during that time
"fiscal constraints and increasing demand are severely
impacting a local jurisdiction's ability to participate in
mutual aid." Additionally the "lack of strong local
participation in a statewide mutual aid program could be
seriously detrimental to the well-being of the State of
California as a whole." One of the cons listed in the
analysis of SB 1935 notes that the bill "would Ýhave]
established another level of bureaucracy and increased state
control over local governments" and would, in effect "become a
grant program giving the Office of Emergency Services (OES)
more control over local law enforcement action."
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Governor George Deukmejian vetoed SB 1935, with the following
message:
"I am concerned that in providing state reimbursement of local
law enforcement agencies for providing mutual aid we would
establish a precedent that represents a major restructuring of
the current mutual aid concept, and could lead to an
expectation that the state should reimburse local
jurisdictions for all mutual aid services."
The Committee may wish to consider whether the reasons why
Governor Deukmejian vetoed SB 1935 are still applicable today.
8)The Bureau of State Audits (BSA) recently released a report in
January 2012 focused on California's mutual aid system. The
Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) directed BSA to
determine whether participation in the system by local and
regional agencies is viable given the economic stresses on
locally governed bodies throughout California, along with
direction to examine the reimbursement process by Cal EMA for
local agencies requesting reimbursement for resources provided
during an emergency response. Cal EMA, for the most part,
invoices for mutual aid provided under the California Fire
Assistance Agreement or other specific agreements and not
mutual aid provided under the California Disaster and Civil
Disaster Master Mutual Aid Agreement, which is generally
provided without reimbursement.
The audit found that a majority of the 15 local fire agencies
that BSA interviewed stated that they have not evaluated the
impact that providing mutual aid has on their budgets.
Moreover, the majority of these local fire agencies said that
they absorb in their operating budgets the costs of responding
to mutual aid requests. Similarly, the five local law
enforcement agencies BSA interviewed stated that they have not
evaluated the impact that fulfilling aid requests have on
their budgets.
In light of BSA's findings, the Committee may wish to consider
whether or not the fiscal downturn has impacted local
agencies' willingness to participate in mutual aid agreements.
9)The Committee may wish to consider whether the provisions of
this bill that set up an ongoing process for reimbursement for
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mutual aid responders undermine the foundation of California's
statewide system of providing emergency mutual aid services.
Mutual aid agreements, by their very nature, are agreements
based on reciprocity - the agency that needs immediate help
because of a lack of resources can count on their neighboring,
regional or even state agencies to offer help, and in turn,
that agency will provide help in a reciprocal manner at a
future date.
The Committee may wish to consider whether it is better to
deal with special circumstances, like those in the Mendocino
manhunt that may warrant the state's financial involvement, on
a case-by-case basis.
10)This bill requires a two-thirds vote of each house.
11)Support arguments : The California State Sheriffs'
Association believes the bill will assist counties, especially
rural counties, which have limited resources but still have a
need to respond to significant public safety events, and will
ensure local government finance is not unduly impacted.
Opposition arguments : This bill may undermine the
long-standing history and nature of mutual aid agreements and
the underlying foundation of reciprocity. The bill's
provisions that reimburse mutual aid lodging and food costs
will set a precedent of requiring the state to bear these
costs.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California State Sheriff's Association ÝSPONSOR]
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Debbie Michel / L. GOV. / (916)
319-3958
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