YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK
OUTSIDE THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION WITH EYES FIRM ON THE FUTURE by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur Ranchers calling into the CCA office in the fall often ask if the Association’s government affairs work slows down after the legislative session comes to a close. The answer is that it doesn’t slow down, it just looks different. The 2021-22 Legislative Session came to a true end on Sept. 30, the date by which Governor Gavin Newsom was required to sign or veto any legislation advanced to his desk by the Legislature by the end of the prior month. The 202324 Legislative Session will begin in earnest on Jan. 4, 2023 (though there will be a Special Session beginning Dec. 5 to consider a windfall tax on oil and gas companies). There’s no less work to do from October through December, the work is just different – and to some extent a little more focused and less hectic than the legislative year. Those three months provide lobbyists and other government affairs advocates opportunities to follow-up on legislative mandates, tackle long-gestating regulatory issues and to gear up for the legislative session to come. This November, for instance, your CCA government affairs team worked tirelessly to advance the ball on a wide variety of policy priorities outside of the Legislature (in addition to monitoring the 2022 General Election and how it will shape the upcoming Legislative Session). In the first days of the month, CCA joined a two-day meeting of the Wildfire Resilience Working Group in Sacramento to identify forest health and fire prevention policies that could enjoy widespread support and to gameplan how those policies might be effectuated in 2023 via legislation, the State Budget or regulatory reforms. CCA has been active in the Wildfire Resilience Working Group since its inception in 2020. The Working Group is a “big tent,” including advocacy organizations representing tribal interests, land trusts, environmental groups, public health advocates, laborers and other interests. Given the diversity of the group, there are a great many issues upon which we disagree. Where these disparate interests can find common ground on wildfire resilience policy, though, our shared priorities carry extra weight with state policymakers. In the past couple years, the Working Group has come together to successfully advocate for significant State Budget
8 California Cattleman December 2022
allocations for forest health and wildfire resilience and to promote the use of prescribed fire and cultural burns, among other priorities. The Wildfire Resilience Working Group has aligned with CCA’s efforts to reform liability laws that have historically disincentivized controlled burns, including 2021’s CCAsponsored SB 332 (Dodd) – which shields prescribed burners and landowners from liability for funds expended by CalFire in extinguishing an escaped burn under certain circumstances – and efforts to stand up a Prescribed Fire Claims Fund via the 2021 Budget and this year’s SB 926 (Dodd). During the early-November meeting in Sacramento, the Working Group outlined several potential priorities for the 2023 legislative year, including continued funding for forest resilience and the Prescribed Fire Claims Fund, potential improvements to the Air Resources Board’s Smoke Management Guidelines to improve deployment of prescribed fire and exploring potential reforms to California Environmental Quality Act and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permitting requirements. The Wildfire Resilience Working Group will continue to meet monthly over the coming year, and the priorities identified in early November will help form the foundation of our collective lobbying efforts over that time. Challenges presented by NEPA took center stage the following week, when CCA, other agricultural trade associations, ranchers and representatives of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5) met in Sacramento for a Region 5 Grazing Committee meeting organized by University of California Cooperative Extension. The meeting’s purpose was for attendees to understand the scope of vacant grazing allotments within ...CONTINUED ON PAGE 10