Several Megafire Action-sponsored bills (SB 894, SB 973, and SB 1079) aimed at reducing wildfire risk passed unanimously out of the Assembly Emergency Management earlier this week. The bills now move to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
These bills are part of the Joint Megafire Prevention Package, which was introduced at the beginning of the Legislative session by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. It is a historic slate of bills stretching across both the Senate and Assembly, representing the most comprehensive legislative effort to mitigate destructive megafires in California’s history.
Details on the Megafire Action-sponsored bills:
SB 894 (Allen): Wildfire Mitigation Affordability Act, which State Treasurer Fiona Ma and Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis are co-sponsoring,establishes a Wildfire Resilience Loan Program, modeled on the State Treasurer’s successful GoGreen energy financing platform. Through a loan-loss reserve that de-risks private lending, the program can offer below-market interest rates to a broader set of consumers without requiring a property lien, leveraging more than eight dollars of mitigation investment for every dollar invested in the program. SB 894 represents an opportunity for the legislature to take immediate action on a concept highlighted by the recently released SB 254 Natural Catastrophe Study — “Piloting a State-supported loan loss or loan guarantee program would provide security or guarantee to capital lenders lending low-cost loans to homeowners.”
SB 973 (Becker): Wildfire County Coordinator Program establishes a statewide framework that pairs standardized, state-led guidance for assessing wildfire risk and prioritizing the mitigations that matter with locally delivered implementation capacity. Importantly, the bill codifies and expands the Wildfire County Coordinator Program, a proven initiative delivered in partnership between CAL FIRE and the California Fire Safe Council since 2021.
SB 1079 (Stern): Fire Innovation Unit Actbuilds on Governor Newsom’s leadership in providing cutting-edge technologies to frontline personnel by codifying a new Fire Innovation Unit (FIU) within CAL FIRE to give California a formal mechanism to identify firefighter needs, source technologies, prototype solutions, and move successful technologies from pilot to scale across three programs.
Several other bills in the Joint Megafire Prevention Package also continue to advance through the Legislature, including SB 911, AB 1699, AB 1891, AB 1934, AB 1960, and AB 1964.
