{"id":354790,"date":"2026-06-10T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T15:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354790\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T15:28:09","slug":"gavin-newsom-broke-his-promise-about-californias-fire-management-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354790\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom Broke His Promise About California\u2019s Fire Management Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, in the aftermath of Los Angeles\u2019s devastating wildfires, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised<\/a> to speed up \u201ccritical<\/a>\u201d wildfire-prevention projects. Newsom issued an emergency proclamation to \u201ccut bureaucratic red tape\u201d and \u201cfast-track critical projects,\u201d including<\/a> brush clearance, forest thinning, prescribed burning, and other forms of fuels reduction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the forest management projects we need to protect our communities most vulnerable to wildfire,\u201d Newsom said<\/a> last spring. \u201c[W]e\u2019re going to get them done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, a reason to check your email.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our free newsletter today.<\/p>\n

We filed a public records request to discover whether Newsom is keeping his word. As of last month, the Newsom administration had fast-tracked fuels-reduction work on roughly 87,000 acres of land. But internal records we obtained\u00a0from state fire authorities\u00a0indicate that state-approved organizations had completed projects totaling about 781 acres\u2014less than 1 percent.<\/p>\n

These numbers are disastrous. The governor\u2019s office insisted that these projects, which are part of the state\u2019s larger wildfire-prevention efforts, were \u201ccritical\u201d and would help \u201cprotect communities from catastrophic wildfire.\u201d The documents we obtained, which concern the fast-tracked projects, reveal that the Newsom administration has failed to protect the state.<\/p>\n

What has put so much of California at risk to burn? In part, the state\u2019s environmental rules. In California, fuels-reduction projects typically require environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Under standard CEQA review<\/a>, a vegetation-management project typically requires an initial study, an Environmental Impact Report, a public comment period, alternatives analysis, and agency certification. That process can take several months for simple projects and a year or more<\/a> for complex ones.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s emergency proclamation provided a way for certain projects to bypass this CEQA process but limited<\/a> the exemption to small projects of no more than 3,000 acres. The application window expired<\/a> last month. Now, despite the governor\u2019s declaration of war against \u201cred tape,\u201d it seems that the red tape won.<\/p>\n

The same story is unfolding around the state. In the San Ramon Valley, east of San Francisco, the local fire district recently\u00a0sought\u00a0to conduct wildfire mitigation work on California State Parks land in areas that the state<\/a> itself classifies<\/a> as \u201cVery High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.\u201d The local district had developed a mitigation plan, secured local funding, and was ready to start working.<\/p>\n

But according<\/a> to the district, California State Parks imposed \u201cregulatory and procedural barriers\u201d that slowed and narrowed the project, including restrictions on treating protected manzanita species, mandatory cultural and habitat monitoring, and oversight fees. As a result, the district says that it was able to complete wildfire mitigation work on only 22 of the 300 acres planned\u2014and wasted about 75 percent\u00a0of the project budget on state-mandated compliance costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Newsom administration suggested<\/a> that the fast-track initiative would avoid such catastrophic failures. Earlier this year, the governor\u2019s office announced<\/a> that California had approved more than 300 expedited wildfire-safety projects in\u00a0300 days. This might sound impressive, but a closer examination reveals the ruse: approved projects<\/a> include a 0.24-acre tree-pruning project near Camp Nelson; a 0.36-acre project that will fell trees near Thousand Oaks; and a six-acre effort to manage vegetation along a transmission line in Sonoma County.<\/p>\n

And as we have seen, approved projects are not the same as completed projects. Despite stacking the list with small projects, only about 13 percent had been completed as of last month.<\/p>\n

\"California<\/p>\n

We sent a comment request to the governor\u2019s office, which directed us to the California Natural Resources Agency. Using updated data, an agency spokesperson told us that the state had \u201cfast-tracked approval of over 400 projects, across nearly 100,000 acres,\u201d and claimed that about half of those projects, \u201cspanning over 35,000 acres,\u201d were either \u201cunderway or completed.\u201d When we pressed CNRA about the acreage total, another official admitted that only \u201c798 footprint acres\u201d had been completed, and that the agency couldn\u2019t \u201canticipate how much progress\u201d had been made on the rest. After we sent our first comment request, Newsom\u2019s office published<\/a> a press release about the emergency declaration and related actions, which didn\u2019t mention how many fast-track acres had been completed.<\/p>\n

The fundamental role of government is to ensure the physical safety of its people. In fire-prone California, that means allocating enough resources to reduce extreme fire risk and making sure approved mitigation work is completed. Under Governor Gavin Newsom, the state budget has increased<\/a> by<\/a> $106 billion. Yet funding for wildfire and forest programs\u2014brush clearing, thinning, prescribed burning\u2014has fallen<\/a>, from a peak of $1.1 billion in 2022 to $620 million in 2026. Newsom\u2019s proposed budget for the coming year, a record<\/a> $349 billion, would reduce<\/a> wildfire and forest funding even further, to $457 million.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s actions are reckless and ideological. The state has funded solar<\/a> panels and sex-change procedures<\/a> for illegal immigrants but cannot be bothered to protect its residents from recurring wildfires. As the summer heats up, California residents should remember: Newsom\u2019s priorities have left them more vulnerable than ever.<\/p>\n

Christopher F. Rufo<\/a>\u00a0is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of\u00a0City Journal, and the author of\u00a0America\u2019s Cultural Revolution. Shawn Regan<\/a>\u00a0is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.\u00a0Kenneth Schrupp<\/a>\u00a0is an investigative reporter at\u00a0City Journal.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, in the aftermath of Los Angeles\u2019s devastating wildfires, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to speed up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-354790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}