Washington lands commissioner Franz favors fund to fight wildfires

Feb. 7—Washington State Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz is championing a proposed bill that would establish a dedicated funding stream to prevent and fight wildfires.

"The status quo isn't working for us. Last year we had another horrific fire season," Franz said.

Currently, the state's Department of Natural Resources relies on the emergency fund to pay for expenses incurred while fighting wildfires. The system amounts to "just throwing money at the fire, versus investing up front," Franz said.

It keeps the department from being able to proactively assign resources to mitigate disaster, she said. It's reactionary, and it's also not saving the state any money.

"The way we are currently funding wildfires, we get a base budget of about $45 million a year," Franz said. "On average, we spend about $153 million a year."

The bill would set aside $125 million each biennium. The largest chunk, $75 million, would go toward wildfire response, including hiring 100 more firefighters, buying two new airplanes and upgrading outdated helicopters.

Another $37 million would be set aside for forest restoration — under the DNR's existing 20-year plan, the agency has pledged to restore 1.25 million acres of forestland — and $13 million would be dedicated to community resilience, helping high-risk towns develop strategies for mitigating fire damage.

The legislation, House Bill 1168, was introduced in the Rural Development, Agriculture & Natural Resources on Jan. 13.

Franz had pushed unsuccessfully last year for a similar fund that would have relied on a surtax on home insurance premiums. The new legislation doesn't identify a specific funding source.

"Everyone agrees on the 'what,'" Franz said, "The disagreement is on the 'how'."

Several bad years

Wildfires in Washington over the last few years caused more destruction than in past decades. Last September, more than 1,600 fires burned more than 800,000 acres. The fires all but leveled the Whitman County town of Malden, and a 1-year-old boy died in Okanogan County.

In Clark County, the air was so smoky it surpassed the maximum "hazardous" metric used by the Air Quality Index. Evacuees from rural Oregon — where the fire threat was even more immediate — relied on services from Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency to find temporary accommodations.

"We were making pleas for resources at the federal level," Franz said. "We couldn't get anything — they were already fully deployed in California and Oregon."

"We had 10 helicopters in the air fighting those fires. Nine of them were (surplus) from the Vietnam War," she added.

If the bill passes, the DNR should be able to start accessing the funding as early as next spring, Franz said. She added that she's "cautiously optimistic" that the legislation will earn support from the Democratic majority.

"My No. 1 goal here is to come out of the Legislature with the critical funding that our state (needs) to ensure we will not continue to see loss of life, loss of our natural resources, loss to our economy, and communities, and home, and property," Franz said.

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