As wildfires in California killed at least 20 people and caused billions of dollars in damage, some social media users criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for cutting money for fire prevention.
Many posts, including one on Fox News, said Newsom cut about $100 million in fire prevention from the state budget months before the Los Angeles fires.
Some posts cited a January 10 Newsweek article that reported that Newsom signed a budget in June that cuts funding for wildfires and forest resiliency by $101 million. Republicans in the California state legislature made similar statements about fire prevention cuts, citing state budget information. President-elect Donald Trump posted a Breitbart article citing Newsweek repeating the $100 million claim.
Newsom said his $100 million cut was a “ridiculous lie.” He included a rebuttal on his new website, California Fire Facts. However, the website did not analyze the $100 million figure. It argued that the budget for Cal Fire, California’s department of forestry and fire protection, has grown during his term, focusing on the big picture of the budget.
Newsom is correct that the budget has increased. But it’s no lie that money (actually more than $100 million) was cut.
State Fire Department Budget Status
In 2021 and 2022, California recorded budget surpluses. Gokce Sencan, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, said the state has invested an additional $16.3 billion to address problems ranging from drought and sustainable agriculture to wildfires and heat waves.
As part of that, the state allocated $2.8 billion to improve wildfires and forest health. But after budget deficits in 2023 and 2024, the state cut that amount by $191 million ($47 million in 2023 and $144 million in 2024). The budget deficit reached tens of billions of dollars.
Cal Fire, which manages approximately 12.5 million hectares (31 million acres), responds to hazards and disasters, including fires. The department’s budget is approximately $4.2 billion for 2024-2025. The majority of the funding comes from state funds, but also includes reimbursements from local departments and the federal government.
The Newsweek article cited an analysis by the Office of the State Legislative Analyst, a nonpartisan agency that works for state legislatures, that showed a $101 million cut. The office told PolitiFact it cited a report from Newsweek outlining the governor’s proposed 2024-2025 budget.
The proposal included $101 million in cuts to wildfire and forest restoration funding. This represents a cut to the previous surplus-year budget agreement that called for distributing one-time wildfire funds over four years from 2020 to 2024, said Rachel Ehlers, who works in the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The adopted budget’s spending plan reduces planned multi-year, one-time wildfire-related funding by $144 million.
“Let me emphasize: This was a reduction for a one-time expansion, not a reduction to Cal Fire’s ongoing baseline programs and funding,” Ehlers said.
Of the $144 million in savings, the largest amount, $46 million, was for a pilot project through the Department of Environmental Conservation focused on generating hydrogen from biomass. The goal of the forest management project was to address forest health and wildfire risk in the Sierra Nevada region.
The pilot never got off the ground, Ehlers said. The budget also cuts $35 million for wildfire resiliency projects on state-owned lands and $28 million for projects conducted by state conservation groups.
Many of the program cuts were small on a percentage basis. For example, the forest health program decreased by about 0.5 percent, from $555 million to $552 million. Firefighting and manual labor, which uses hand tools to fight fires, decreased nearly 4%, from $134 million to $129 million. Fire prevention grants remained at $475 million, equal to $90 million for fire prevention projects.
Jim Stanley, spokesman for the state’s Republican Caucus, also pointed to numbers showing a proposed $100 million cut versus an actual $144 million cut. We asked Stanley if Republicans opposed the cuts at the time. He quoted House Republican Leader James Gallagher as saying the June 2024 budget failed to adequately fund public safety.
In 2021, Cap Radio (a former PolitiFact partner) reported that Newsom “misrepresented his accomplishments and has not even invested in wildfire prevention.” Investigation found Newsom overstated the number of acres treated with fuel intercepts and prescribed burns by 690% (nearly an eight-fold increase) in the very forestry projects he said should be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. “It appeared.”
Cal Fire’s budget and spending have increased.
Cal Fire’s total base wildfire protection budget has nearly tripled over the past decade (from $1.1 billion in 2014-2015 to $30 billion in 2023-2024), according to a March analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office before the 2024-2025 budget was approved. in billions of dollars). .
Cal Fire’s overall budget also increased. The combined budget for fire protection, emergency fire suppression, resource management and fire prevention has more than doubled over the past decade, from $1.7 billion in 2014-2015 to $3.7 billion in 2023-2024. Newsom’s office sent us similar information showing budget increases.
The number of employees responsible for fire prevention also increased similarly over 10 years, from 5,756 to 10,275.
Another way to look at Cal Fire is through spending rather than budget amounts. That’s because it’s not uncommon for states to dip into other funds to spend more than budgeted to address fires.
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that during Newsom’s term, total Cal Fire spending will increase from $2.74 billion in 2019-2020 to $4.59 billion in 2024-2025 (not adjusted for inflation or including additional costs incurred due to the current Los Angeles wildfires). It was estimated that it increased.
Last November, California voters approved Proposition 4, a $10 billion climate bond that allocates $1.5 billion to forest health and wildfires.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird and senior correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.
