Fire levy plan sparks criticism

As hillside and canyon development accelerates along the edges of urban centers, the cost of protecting homes from wildfires continues to grow -- along with the debate over who should pay.

Nearly 1 million houses statewide have been built on land so distant from urban centers that local fire departments are not responsible for them. The cost of protecting those homes falls to the state, where the bill for running the fire department is nearly $1 billion per year -- up 83% from a decade ago.

This week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed tacking a fee onto all property insurance policies sold in the state and using the proceeds to fight blazes in areas served by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The 1.25% levy would raise $125 million a year in badly needed funds.

Some fire officials hailed the move as a first step toward recognizing the immense danger and cost of living on the edge of the wild lands, noting that the state needs to spend hundreds of millions more on fire protection, according to reports completed after the devastating 2003 fires.

But others argue that it’s unfair to tax all homeowners and renters who take out insurance policies -- many of whom already pay special taxes for local firefighting -- just to help those who choose to live in picturesque but fire-prone areas.

“It costs the rest of us for them to live there,” said Roger Kennedy, a former director of the National Park Service who has written extensively on wildfires. “The beneficiaries of living in those places should pay more for the privilege of living there.”

The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst has recommended that local governments that approve development in high-risk fire zones be required to pay for the cost of firefighting. Homeowners should also pay an extra firefighting fee if they choose to move to such areas, the report recommended.

People who live in fire-prone areas already pay more for insurance. But Kennedy and other experts on fire and urban planning said that fees for fire protection in such regions should be weighted for risk, putting potential residents on notice that they are moving into a place where the toll from fire could be high.

The state spent $291 million fighting the 2007 autumn wildfires, a figure that does not reflect the amount spent by municipal fire departments or the losses to consumers and businesses. About $153 million of the state total was spent by the fire agency and the rest by such agencies as the California Highway Patrol and the California National Guard.

“Every year we see more and more people moving out of urban areas, moving into the urban wild-lands interface,” said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the fire agency. “Human-caused fires are our No. 1 source -- and then of course our fires go up and our cost of fighting fires goes up.”

Carroll Wills, spokesman for the California Professional Firefighters, said Schwarzenegger’s plan is a welcome move that will help to fund improvements such as 100 additional fire trucks proposed by the governor’s office for next year.

“The reality is that the wildfire danger is a statewide issue,” Wills said. “It’s a statewide issue because the economic impact on the state budget, the economic impact on the state economy doesn’t necessarily discriminate by location. It affects the entire state.”

But loud objections already have come from officials in counties that have voted to tax themselves extra to help pay for fire protection.

L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called the governor’s new plan a form of “double taxation” that unfairly hits residents who already have agreed to pay for better fire protection in their communities.

Los Angeles residents in 2000 approved a $32-a-year property tax for improved fire service. More than 50 communities served by the L.A. County Fire Department approved a $50 annual levy for fire service a few years earlier.

“I think L.A. County should not bear the burden for the rest of the state,” Antonovich said, noting that the county now has far more air resources -- including SuperScooperplanes -- than many other counties. “L.A. County has the resources, we have the assessment tax and we use it to protect life and property, so we ought not to be penalized.”

Historian Mike Davis, who has written extensively about development in Southern California, said the fee as currently proposed would mean that poor Californians living in mobile homes would have to pay to subsidize fire protection for people living in rural McMansions with million-dollar views.

Davis called the governor’s plan a “gimmick” that would not address the underlying problems caused by people moving farther and farther out into fire zones.

By contrast with Los Angeles, residents of some areas have resisted taxing themselves for fire services. Last year’s fires were the most devastating in San Diego County, where fires in 2003 also caused massive damage. But San Diego residents have twice rejected measures that would have increased taxes to pay for improved citywide firefighting.

Efforts to increase taxes elsewhere in that county have also been challenging. San Diego County does not have a unified fire department, and local fire officials say many residents simply don’t want to pay additional taxes to create one.

“It has been historically pretty difficult,” said David Nissen, division chief of the San Diego Rural Fire Protection District, whose territory east of the city lost 250 to 300 homes in the October fires.

The conflict between Californians’ well-known aversion to property taxes and the need for money to fight wildfires is nowhere more obvious than in the Lake Tahoe area, where neighboring communities have made very different choices about how much to pay for fire protection.

Last fall, just months after Lake Tahoe’s largest recorded wild-lands fire, residents of the North Tahoe Fire Protection District approved a $48-a-year property levy in addition to a $178 annual special fire tax already on the books.

North Tahoe Fire Chief Duane Whitelaw said the new revenue would help fight blazes such as the Angora fire, which ravaged a neighboring community last year but did not come into his district, and he encouraged nearby districts to take similar action.

“There’s obviously no promise this is going to make our community fireproof,” Whitelaw said. “But if we’re smart about it, we can invest these dollars where they can do the most good.”

Just down the road, however, in the communities where the 3,100-acre Angora fire hit the hardest, Lake Valley Fire District Chief Jeff Michael said it had historically been difficult to persuade residents to tax themselves to pay for better protection.

Despite the loss of 254 homes in June’s fire, public officials have yet to broach the idea of a new tax, Michael said. The district had to dip into its reserves to balance its $4-million budget last year.

Additional resources, he said, would have made it easier to fight the Angora fire.

“In the first hour of the fire, we had probably a total of 10 engines and we lost a large portion of those 254 homes,” Michael said. “We didn’t have enough resources.”

Even if the governor’s proposal is approved, many areas could still remain short of resources. That’s because even though policyholders would provide $125 million for firefighting, Schwarzenegger is proposing a 10% cut in money from the state’s general fund for the fire agency -- a reduction similar to those expected to be announced today by the governor.

Even so, Schwarzenegger finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said Wednesday, enough money would be raised by the insurance fee to give the department a net gain in revenue.

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger’s press secretary, said that everyone in the state would benefit from the increased equipment and personnel that would be paid for with the new revenue.

“This equipment will be used for all disasters,” McLear said. “You might say there are no fires in downtown L.A. But it goes to earthquakes, floods, mudslides and things like that.

“If there’s a problem in L.A. and there’s not a problem in Sacramento, we will deploy the resources from that part of the state to L.A.”

[email protected]

[email protected]