Comment by JumpCrisscross
Comment by JumpCrisscross 9 days ago
"scenario shows what happens when Congress is less committed than California to tackling forest management. With wildfire management funding constantly tied up in unpredictable budget debates, the current state-federal partnership is fragile and based on the whims of the legislative and executive branches, which can withhold funding based on which political party is currently in power. The Forest Service’s latest decision is the consequence of these issues"
Would California have standing for damages? What would honestly be the consequences if the Governor and Legislature ordered Calfire to conduct controlled burns on federal land? (Can the Forest Service give Calfire permission to conduct burns on its land?)
except none of that is accurate. After the 2017 Tubbs fire, Gov Gavin Newsom did real work and caused a new, binding agreement to be signed between the stakeholder agencies, State, local and Federal. IANAL but I did read the agreement announcement from the Governor's Office. Next, California terminated the employment of the life veteran CalFire Chief, passed a budget increase for CalFire that was ... 10x larger than it had ever had before (?) over time minus details... and set out to work on fires with multi-state partnerships for well-paid fire fighting groups from other states to work on emergency basis.
And work they did .. subsequent years included massive fires that broke records, mostly 2018 and 2020. All the new money and agreements and on-call resources did ameliorate but did not prevent or even lessen, the massive catastrophic fire destruction.
Now, in an election year, someone is definitely jockying for new agreements somehow, but who knows the details... maybe someone here?