After 2020’s destructive wildfire season, infusion of state funding on the horizon
On the heels of a devastating 2020 wildfire season, Washington state’s Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz is more determined than ever to secure a dedicated source of funding to prevent and fight fires — to keep the Evergreen State, she often says, from turning “charcoal black.”
Progress toward that goal was bolstered last week, when legislators in both the House and Senate announced two-year spending proposals that include $125 million for a bill aimed at wildfire prevention and suppression efforts. It includes a new, dedicated account for that money — but no dedicated revenue stream to keep it funded, beyond the will of each Legislature.
Rep. Larry Springer, a Democrat from Kirkland, is cosponsoring the bill with Republican Rep. Joel Kretz of Wauconda. House Bill 1168 passed unanimously out of the House of Representatives earlier this month and is under consideration in the Senate, where legislators have amended it.
If the full Senate approves the bill, it would go back to the House for evaluation once more.
“In the decade of the ‘90s, 86,000 acres of Washington forest and grassland burned every year,” said Springer in floor debate. “In the 2000s, 189,000 acres burned every year. And in the last five years, 488,000 acres burned every year.”
Last year alone, 812,000 acres burned. Waiting for a bigger snowpack or a wet summer isn’t a plan, Springer said, “it’s delusional.”
An infusion of funding
Previous budgets have provided enough to do what Commissioner Franz referred to as “biting at the edges.”
Data shared with McClatchy show the state has allotted the Department of Natural Resources roughly $16.5 million in general fund money per year over the last four years that’s earmarked for fire suppression. The department then goes back to the state and asks for more money after fire season, depending on what it spent fighting fires.
In 2019, for example, it got nearly $12.5 million in general fund money from the state for fires that burned in 2018, in addition to that $16.5 million.
The department’s total costs for fire suppression totaled about $114.3 million that year, data show. Funding for those efforts came from sources beyond the general fund, such as the state’s “rainy day” fund.
The state’s 2020 fire season saw the loss of a child’s life, the town of Malden nearly leveled, and so many homes destroyed and acres burned, Commissioner Franz said, that securing the funding has become her “number one job.”
“I said, ‘I can’t go home from session without securing the resources,’” Franz said in a phone interview this week.
The bill’s text includes that the Legislature intends to fully fund both the state’s existing wildland fire protection 10-year strategic plan and its 20-year forest health strategic plan and “activities developed to facilitate implementation of the Washington state forest action plan.”
A dedicated funding source for not just fire suppression but forest health and community resilience is necessary to adequately address mitigating the fires as a long-term effort, Springer said in a phone interview. He characterizes the bill as mapping out a 20-year plan with those three big components.
The fire suppression element involves the ongoing costs to fight fires, such as hiring firefighters and buying equipment. Franz has said that, in the first biennium, the new money could pay for 100 more firefighters, two new fixed-wing planes, and upgrades to current technology.
The forest restoration piece looks further ahead, getting rid of dead and dying trees, conducting prescribed burns, thinning underbrush. In DNR materials related to the bill, money would in part go toward funding local fire districts and workforce development.
And the third helps communities protect themselves against wildfire, through resources such as grant funding to help homeowners protect their homes or establish firebreaks.
It takes signing on with contractors to do that work over years, Springer said. It’s one of the reasons Springer and Franz have referenced to support their case for an ongoing revenue source.
If you sign a 10-year contract, you can’t count on the Legislature to make a political decision to continue funneling $125 million out of the state’s general fund each biennium, Springer said.
A ‘historic win,’ but the push isn’t over
In the past, Franz has sought a dedicated revenue source to fund a dedicated account. In 2019 and 2020, bills that would’ve established a surcharge on property and casualty insurance premiums were sponsored by Democrats and didn’t see much movement.
Had there been a funding source that included taxing someone, Springer said, this year’s bill probably wouldn’t have passed unanimously out of the House.
Both Springer and Franz plan to keep working toward a long-term revenue stream.
The way Springer sees it, the current bill gives lawmakers two years to decide. This year’s general fund money, he said, is “basically a stopgap to get us started.”
The current state of deliberations is a list of about 20 potential sources of money, Springer said. He and Franz both said it will likely be more than one, and that they’re aiming for sources with a nexus between wildfires and who would pay a tax.
It will take more than an injection of funding to “change the trajectory of a crisis that’s taken us 50 years to get into,” Franz said.
For now though, she’s calling progress this session “a historic win.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
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