Playing with fire

In order to win votes for AB398, the measure extending California’s cap-and-trade program through 2030, Gov. Jerry Brown offered a sweetener to Republicans representing rural areas: a suspension of the state fire prevention fee.

State lawmakers approved the fire fee during the recession in June 2011. It’s a levy that’s intended to support fire prevention in the (overwhelmingly rural) areas where the state shoulders primary firefighting responsibility. Most of the hundreds of thousands of fee payers pay less than $200 a year for each habitable structure.

Since its passage, the fee has been highly contested by fee payers, many of whom say it’s an illegal tax. Republican state lawmakers tried for years to get it repealed, without success.

Brown muscled the capand-trade measure through the state Legislature on a rare bipartisan vote.

But negotiations over the fire fee are nowhere close to being over.

Tax activists pursuing a lawsuit against the state for the fire fee have said they intend to continue their pursuit. (Among other things, they’re not satisfied that the fee was suspended for 10 years rather than fully repealed.)

There’s also the matter of what the fee was supposed to fund. California is only going to need more fire prevention in a time of climate change.

The state expects to spend the balance of the money collected by the fire fee on prevention projects in fiscal year 2017-18.

At that point, according to CalFire deputy director Janet Upton, bills for current fire prevention projects will be picked up by the state’s cap-and-trade fund.

This creates a new strain on the state’s cap-and-trade fund. Fire prevention isn’t an obvious candidate for this fund, either. The governor got his bill, but it’s going to produce new fiscal and political headaches.