As Los Angeles burned, I remembered bills killed by Democrats that might have helped | Opinion (original) (raw)

Not nearly enough is being done by California’s ruling class to mitigate wildfires, as the tragic devastation in Los Angeles has shown.

Certainly, dry conditions and vicious winds fueled multiple wildfires that, at last count, had burned roughly 40,000 acres, destroyed more than 12,000 structures and claimed at least 25 lives.

Yet as tragic as the losses have been, the Los Angeles fires are not “unprecedented.”

We have known for years how inadequate vegetation management, water supply issues, budget cuts and politics have prevented us from being more prepared for the next disaster.

In 2018, 85 people lost their lives and 9,000 homes burned to the ground in the Camp Fire in Northern California.

Not too long after, I was a staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus. Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, who was not leader at the time, represented Paradise, the site of the Camp Fire. Gallagher was rightfully concerned with mitigating future disasters and representing the Northstate meant that wildfires were a top issue for Gallagher. The Camp Fire kicked his concerns into overdrive.

Gallagher had a sensible bill that would increase funding for wildfire prevention and waived environmental review for certain forest management projects (not his first time running similar legislation), which is often clearing out dead, dry trees and other vegetation. Proper forest management is essential, but it is often fought and delayed by special interests through the environmental review process.

But while proper forest management is essential, it can be easily given short shrift because it’s expensive and policymakers would rather spend money elsewhere and can be blocked by environmental groups for various reasons, like a belief that dead, dry trees are no more flammable than live ones and prevention efforts might lead to clear-cutting.

This environmental review process is so often a hindrance for many activities, not just forest management, that it’s almost always waived for projects that must happen, including the Los Angeles rebuild.

Gallagher felt confident about his 2021 bill since wildfires had been deadly then as now. Most Republican bills are dead before being introduced, but who could say no to such common-sense legislation?

His bill did not even get a hearing.

Some politicians have blamed the fires on climate change, but the threat of wildfires is as old as time. The dryness and winds might have been made worse by a changing climate, but if anything that makes the need for preventative measures all the more important.

However, instead of addressing the issue head-on, lawmakers too often default to trivial things like banning gas-powered generators. It’s clear that approach is not working very well and even if California managed to solve climate change, it’s estimated that weather patterns could take centuries to catch up.

Californians don’t have that long.

As Gallagher was lobbying for his bill to get a hearing, news broke that Gov. Gavin Newsom had been grossly exaggerating the results of his wildfire prevention efforts, fueling the perception that wildfire prevention was not a priority.

Previously I worked for the late Sen. Tom Berryhill, whose district included the mountains from Amador County down to Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park. After years of drought and bark beetle infestation, tree mortality was a huge issue there..

Berryhill ran SB 265 in 2017 which would have assisted rural Tuolumne County with additional funding for forest management. Eventually, the scope of the bill expanded to include many other local governments,including Los Angeles County, but cost merely $20 million, which is a pittance compared to the cost to the state now for fire fighting and cleanup.

This bill made it further than Gallagher’s, but died a similar ignoble death, running into the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee’s suspense file.

Forest management works on four fronts: It saves lives and property, it’s environmentally friendly as wildfire emissions are a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, it saves money in the long run and it’s aesthetically pleasing because landscapes filled with dead trees and shrubs look terrible.

We can’t stop wildfires, but we can mitigate their devastating effects. There has to be a political will for anything to change, though. We’ve seen the state move very quickly when it wants to.

While I find nothing positive about what’s happening in Los Angeles, I hope that at least it motivates California leadership to make wildfire prevention a bigger priority.

Matt Fleming is an opinion writer living in Rocklin. He is a former Republican spokesperson and former legislative staffer. He is currently the communications director for the Pacific Research Institute.

This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.