Recent reports found that California Governor Newsom cut funding for wildfire and forest resilience by over $100 million just months before the disastrous fires broke out across Los Angeles. The fires in Southern California have destroyed tens of thousands of acres, burned down over 10,000 structures, and have claimed at least 16 lives as of the latest reporting. The fires are vastly uncontained at this point.
The official budget designated to cover the 2024-2025 fiscal year eliminated approximately $101 million from seven “wildfire and forest resilience” programs based on an analysis from the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. However, it was discovered that direct fire prevention spending has substantially increased in recent years.
Among the budget reductions $5 million being taken from fuel reduction teams, which included funds that would’ve been allocated toward vegetation management, which helps prevent wildfires. Other budget cuts included, $28 million from multiple state conservancies that focus on wildfire resilience, $12 million from a “home hardening” experiment that would protect homes from wildfires, and $8 million from monitoring and research spending, primarily dedicated to Cal Fire and state universities.
However, Governor Newsom’s communications director Izzy Gardon suggested the accusations of budget cuts are a “ridiculous lie.” She told Fox News, “The governor has doubled the size of our firefighting army, built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet and the state has increased the forest management ten-fold since he took office.”
The American Tribune reported on comments form Newsom during a recent podcast voicing his frustration with the lack of clear answers he is receiving from local leaders regarding the natural disasters. Some interpreted these comments as the governor deflecting the blame away from himself, arguing that all leaders should take responsibility for everything that occurs under their watch.
“I want to know the answers. So I’m the governor of California and want to know the answer,” he said before acknowledging that many are looking to him for guidance on the wildfires. “I’ve got that question from I can’t tell you about how many people. ‘What happened?’” Lamenting that he wasn’t getting “straight answers,” Newsom added, “My own team saying what happened, and I want to get the answers.”
“I watched the press conference with some of those leaders. We had my team start talking to local leaders saying, what’s going on,” Newsom said. “I was getting different answers. When you start getting different answers, then I’m not getting the actual story, and they’re assessing it, and I get that as well,” he noted, lamenting the confusion surrounding the fires.
Watch Newsom below:
“You have to have a little bit of grace back to the point we’re in this emergency environment and everything else. So I just want to determine the facts,” he said. “But no one has any patience anymore in this weaponized back to the grievance of Trump everyone else. There’s immediacy and lies travel the proverbial world, and it’s hard to get the facts out there unless you have backing of those facts and you can communicate them soberly,” the governor further asserted.
"*" indicates required fields