
After the most
destructive California wildfire season on record, Central Coast Reps. Jimmy
Panetta (CA-20), Salud Carbajal (CA-24), and Julia Brownley (CA-26) requested that Congress include a fix to the
disruptive wildfire budgeting practice this week in their must-pass FY 2018
Omnibus Appropriations Bill. The letter addresses the long-term problem of
consistently underfunding fire suppression, a practice which currently forces federal
agencies to steal from fire prevention and mitigation funds to fight fires,
so-called “fire borrowing.” The United States
Forest Service (USFS) spent a record $2.4 billion to put out fires in FY 2018,
requiring $527 million in transfers from other mitigation accounts within the
USFS.
Comments
Post a Comment