EDITORIAL: Trump’s use of FEMA as a cudgel against California is childish

Jan. 09--President Donald Trump's Twitter declaration on Wednesday that he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold funds from California "unless they get their act together" on forest management showed both a lack of understanding for how that money is spent and a lack of compassion for the fire survivors relying on it.

Yes, it's plain that the state should have been more aggressive in addressing the forest conditions that have helped fuel the awful wildfires of the past several years. A February 2018 Little Hoover Commission report knocked the state for policies that emphasized fire suppression instead of clearing 129 million dead trees from Sierra Nevada forests and using "controlled burns" to clear out underbrush.

But California leaders have already accepted and acted on this criticism. The state has increased and plans in coming years to further boost its forest management funding. Meanwhile, it's undeniable that the federal government, not just the state government, has also dropped the ball on forest management. There are 33 million acres of forest in California. More than half are controlled by the federal government. State and local governments manage 3 percent. The remaining land is privately controlled.

Federal government indifference to fire risks on lands it controls is not new. In 2008, The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board decried the George W. Bush administration's "steady decline in federal fire prevention efforts in an era in which blazes are growing in number, intensity and duration." And as wildfire risks have soared in the West because of dry, hot conditions related to global warming, the U.S. Forest Service budget has been cut by more than $2 billion since 2016.

This historical backdrop is why on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in sending a compelling, justified letter to the Trump administration asking the U.S. government to double its spending on forest management. The letter noted that of the $111.3 million that California had spent on forest management since 2017, nearly half was on federal lands.

Was it this letter and its implied criticism of the Trump White House that led the president to lash out? Was it the war of words Trump has had with newly reinstalled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat? Was it the president's desire to change the topic from the federal government shutdown that he has forced without the support of many elected Republicans and that has halted federal wildfire preparations? Who knows.

Can he withhold FEMA funding? Will he? Few knew that Wednesday, either, as Trump's self-indulgent, impulsive management style drew the ire of Democrats and Republicans alike.

In their own polite way, the Republicans who represent the Northern California community that suffered the state's worst wildfire of all -- the Camp fire that killed 86 people and torched nearly 14,000 homes in November -- had the most damning words for Trump. Calling that fire "one of the worst disasters in our nation's history," state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Tehama, and Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, wrote: "We thank the president for being attentive and personally visiting the community to tour the devastation. This Twitter war, however, is not helpful. It will not solve the problem.

"We can all agree that people's lives and livelihoods are at stake," they wrote. "There is no higher priority. That is why the president's threat to withhold FEMA funds from California is wholly unacceptable. He made a commitment to the people who have lost everything in these fires, and we expect the federal government to follow through with this promise. So let us work together. ... [We] need cooperation and funding from the federal government to address the huge buildup of fuels on federal land."

That is what Californians have every right to expect. But we should probably expect the worst. In Donald Trump's White House, alas, chaos is far more common than competence.

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