BILL ANALYSIS
AB 149
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 13, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Nancy Skinner, Chair
AB 149 (Jefferies) - As Amended: March 31, 2009
SUBJECT : State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.
SUMMARY : Adds two members to the Board of Forestry (Board),
both county supervisors (one from a rural county) representing a
county that has entered into a cooperative agreement with the
California Department of Forestry (CDF) for CDF to provide fire
prevention and suppression services within that county.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Creates the Board comprised of nine members appointed by the
Governor, subject to confirmation by the Senate, representing
the following interests:
a) Five members must be selected from the general public;
b) Three members must be selected from the forest products
industry and;
c) One member must be selected from the range livestock
industry.
2)Requires all members of the Board to be appointed, and to be
approved for appointment, on the basis of their educational
and professional qualifications and their general knowledge
of, interest in, and experience with, problems relating to
watershed management (including hydrology and soil science),
forest management practices, fish and wildlife, range
management, forest economics, or land use planning.
3)Prohibits a majority of the members and any of the members
selected from the general public to have a direct personal
financial interest, within the meaning of Section 1120 of the
Government Code, in timberlands. All members of the board
shall represent the general public interest.
4)Includes a legislative declaration that certain Board members
are required to be chosen from the forest products and range
livestock industries in order to represent and further the
AB 149
Page 2
interests of those industries and that this representation and
furtherance serves the general public interest.
5)Authorizes CDF, with the approval of the Department of General
Services, to enter into a cooperative agreement upon the terms
and under the conditions as it deems wise, for the purpose of
preventing and suppressing forest fires or other fires in any
lands within any county, city, or district which makes an
appropriation for that purpose.
THIS BILL :
1)Adds one member to the Board representing a rural county that
has entered into a cooperative agreement with the CDF for CDF
to provide fire prevention and suppression services within
that county. Requires the Governor to give "reasonable
consideration" to nominations provided by the Regional Council
of Rural Counties.
2)Adds one member to the Board representing a county that has
entered into a cooperative agreement with CDF for CDF to
provide fire prevention and suppression services within that
county. Requires the Governor to give "reasonable
consideration" to nominations provided by the California State
Association of Counties.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : As introduced, this bill sought to eliminate the
Board and assign its responsibilities to CDF. However, this
bill now seeks to expand the Board. According to the author's
office, "As the state seeks to supposedly limit fire danger by
increasing state input and responsibility over local land use
decisions, it is important that counties have a seat at the
table when those regulations are drafted and implemented. This
bill will add two local county supervisor seats to the Board,
thus allow local land use planners to have an appropriate amount
of influence over potential land use rules and regulations. The
counties that would be represented on the Board are,
essentially, customers of the services that [CDF] provides. It
is reasonable that these customers have a say in how local land
use decisions are made, both how the decisions affect [CDF] and
fire protection, and how these decisions are made by the Board."
1)Background
AB 149
Page 3
Though the Board first came into existence in 1885, it was not
until 1947, when the Legislature passed the original Forest
Practices Act that a modern Board began to take shape. The
passage of the Z'berg-Nejedly Forestry Practice Act of 1973
reorganized the Board and concomitantly expanded its powers and
responsibilities. The Board is currently comprised of nine
members, who serve four year terms, appointed by the Governor.
Three Board members must be selected from the timber industry
and one member from the range livestock industry. The five
"public" members have no specific association though they must
generally have "knowledge of, interest in, and experience with,
problems relating to watershed management (including hydrology
and soil science), forest management practices, fish and
wildlife, range management, forest economics, or land use
planning."
According to the Board's website, "It is responsible for
developing the general forest policy of the state, for
determining the guidance policies of [CDF] and for representing
the state's interest in federal forestland in California. The
Board is charged with protecting the forest resources of all the
wildland areas of California that are not under federal
jurisdiction."
Existing law authorizes CDF, by contract or agreement, to
provide fire prevention and suppression services to a city,
county or special district. CDF provides these services, under
145 cooperative agreements, to 35 counties, 28 cities, 30 fire
districts, and 23 other districts. This bill adds two county
supervisors to the Board from counties that currently contract
with CDF. Supervisors from the following counties could be
eligible to be appointed to the Board: Alameda, Amador, Butte,
Calaveras, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen,
AB 149
Page 4
Madera, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Nevada,
Placer, Riverside, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San
Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta,
Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Tulare, Tuolumne, and Yuba.
2)Increasing development in counties has increased state
firefighting costs
According to the LAO, local land use decisions are responsible
for an increasing density of homes in the wildland urban
interface (WUI) but the consequences of those
decisions-increased fire risk and medical emergencies-are borne
at both the state and local levels. 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 WUI. Despite the
fact that the total acreage in state responsibility areas (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 that there are about 870,000
housing units in SRAs and the trend is upward.
3)Board does not regulate land use
The author may have introduced this bill in response to last
year's SB 1500 (Kehoe) and AB 2447 (Jones), both of which
attempted to address the above problem. However, neither bill
ultimately gave the Board any land use authority and neither
bill passed. SB 1500 required the State Fire Marshall to
determine whether proposed housing developments should remain in
SRAs and AB 2447 required counties to make certain findings
before approving a development in a "very high fire hazard
severity zone." Thus, it is unclear what "potential land use
rules and regulations" the author is referring to when
justifying the need for this bill.
Among the Boards' fire-related planning responsibilities, it is
required to adopt a fire plan, review local fire safety elements
to a General Plan, and designate, every five years, lands where
the state has the primary financial responsibility for
preventing and suppressing fires (i.e., State Responsibility
Areas or SRAs). However, it does not have any authority to
dictate local land use. In fact, it is CDF (not the Board) who
is authorized to classify SRAs and local responsibility areas
(LRAs) into fire hazard severity zones for the purposes of fire
AB 149
Page 5
prevention and suppression. As mentioned above, it is CDF (not
the Board) that is authorized to contract with local governments
to provide fire protection services.
4)Previous legislation
By adding two additional members to the Board, this bill would
relegate the "public" Board members to the minority, furthering
solidifying concerns, especially among the environmental
community, that the Board's membership does not truly reflect
the public interest nor have the expertise to address complex,
scientific issues that frequently come before the Board.
SB 234 (Kuehl) in 2001 attempted to assign specific affiliations
to 11 Board members. For example, it required members to
represent: sport or commercial fishing industry; an
environmental organization; firefighters union; an expert in
hydrology, water quality or watershed management; an expert in
fisheries or wildlife biology; an expert in botany; timber
products industry; rangeland or nonindustrial timberland owner.
AB 149
Page 6
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Association of Counties
Opposition
CDF Firefighters Local 2881
Defenders of Wildlife
Forests Forever
Pacific Forest Trust
Planning and Conservation League
Sierra Club California
Analysis Prepared by : Dan Chia / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092