Sensible Strings for California Fire Aid

"President Trump visits California on Friday to survey the wildfire damage, and no doubt he'll hear requests for federal aid. A relevant question is whether this aid should be conditioned on policies that will reduce future damage.

Democrats want a blank check, and they're comparing the fires to hurricanes. The fires are horrific and the damage in property and lives enormous. But the fire damage is worse than it would have been if not for the policy mistakes in Los Angeles and Sacramento on water and forest management.

Washington has in the past tied aid to financially troubled cities and Puerto Rico. New York state established a financial control board to impose fiscal reforms on a city that couldn't muster the political nerve to make changes without outside pressure. The California fires are both a natural and man-made disaster, but California's political leaders seem incapable of reform. What then should Congress and the Trump Administration ask for?

One bad idea is tying a debt-ceiling increase to wildfire relief. Democrats would accuse Republicans of holding suffering Californians hostage for an unrelated GOP priority, and they'd do the same to GOP states after the next disaster. A financial control board to manage state fiscal policy is desirable if probably a political bridge too far.

But reforms directly connected to the wildfires and their severity make sense. Take the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act, which the House passed Thursday, 279-141. Its co-sponsors include California Democrats Jimmy Panetta, Jim Costa, Ami Bera, John Garamendi and Scott Peters. Their districts have been damaged by wildfires caused in part by decades of fire suppression that have led to a buildup of combustible vegetation. Sixty-four Democrats voted aye.

A permitting thicket impedes proper management on federal lands, including in the Santa Monica Mountains and Angeles National Forest where fires have burned. It takes the U.S. Forest Service on average 4.7 years to begin a prescribed burn -- 9.4 years if an environmental impact statement is challenged in court -- and 3.6 years for tree thinning and brush clearing projects.

The Fix Our Forests Act would clear some of the regulatory overgrowth by prohibiting courts from blocking fire mitigation projects because of technical flaws in environmental reviews. Federal agencies wouldn't have to redo land management plans every time a new species is deemed to be threatened.

The bill would also let utilities clear trees within 150 feet of electric lines on federal land (the current limit is 10 feet), so they'd be less vulnerable to catching fire in heavy winds. Utility vegetation management plans would be automatically approved after four months.

Donald Trump and Congress could also roll back national monuments designated by previous Presidents for "preservation" under the Antiquities Act. Democrats have used such designations to limit logging and mining, but they can also interfere with forest management.

President Biden in his final days established the Sattitla Highlands National Monument on some 224,000 acres of federal land in northern California close to where several forests have recently burned. Last year he expanded Barack Obama's San Gabriel Mountains monument to include areas above Altadena that have been burning.

Mr. Biden cited the need to protect supposedly sacred features such as indigenous artifacts, some five dozen species of plants, trees and critters, "rare anorthosite complex rocks that are 1.2 billion years old," "ruins of grand recreation resorts" (burned by a fire in 1896), and "a missile unit built during the Cold War." Yes, a sacred missile site.

The way for Mr. Trump to present this when he visits California isn't to tell the state the feds will make Los Angeles suffer unless it toes his line. The way to do it is to offer sympathy and help while explaining that the goal should be make the state more resilient to fires and a variable climate. Voters will get that.

Mr. Trump can explain to voters what the state's policy failures are, even if he can't force Sacramento to change them. But Republicans in Washington can at least fix the federal government's blunders that make wildfires more damaging than they need to be." [1]

1. Sensible Strings for California Fire Aid. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Jan 2025: A14.