There’s one thing about wildfires that Oregon lawmakers seem to agree on: The state needs to find new ways to cover its increasingly expensive wildfire costs.
Yet halfway through this year’s legislative session, lawmakers’ momentum toward a funding solution seems to be petering out, and the proposals they’ve put forward so far are barely breathing.
House Bill 3940 — a mashup of multiple funding proposals, including one that would add a surcharge to bottles purchased in the state — sits in a revenue committee. So does Senate Bill 1177, which would pull some money from Oregonians’ tax rebate known as “the kicker” and invest it into a trust. Then there’s a joint resolution that would redirect some lottery revenues.
There’s a chance these funding proposals will move forward through the remaining months of this long legislative session. But there’s also a strong possibility that the session ends without new funding for wildfire prevention and firefighting costs — leaving Oregon’s fire agencies once again vulnerable to falling into financial deficit, and unable to pay their bills.
“Where things stand now, it feels very, very uncertain,” said Casey Kulla, policy coordinator at the environmental nonprofit Oregon Wild.
Kulla is part of the so-called “Fire 35” — a 35-member legislative workgroup that convened last summer to come up with new wildfire funding sources. Oregon was hit with its most expensive fire season on record that year, with costs so high that fire agencies ran out of cash before they could pay contractors. The Legislature had to convene a special session in December to rush money out the door.
At that point, lawmakers seemed driven to pass wildfire funding legislation. But a lot has changed in the first few months of the session, particularly with regard to federal policy.
Federal uncertainty stalls wildfire funding momentum
It’s a tough budget year in many ways, as Oregon policymakers aim to tackle multiple crises before them: aging roads and bridges, an ongoing housing crunch, a desperate need for more public defenders. State lawmakers are used to juggling multiple financial demands in a budget year. But this time, they also need to account for an unpredictable federal administration threatening to slash spending on public services across the board.
Oregon relies on the federal government for about 32% of its budget, according to a budget committee report published last week. The state could lose up to 30% of that as Congress considers drastic cuts. The best course of action, the report says, is “prudent budget planning” focused on preserving core services.
Fighting active wildfires, especially ones threatening residential areas, could be considered a core service, but that’s only one part of limiting the damage and costs associated with wildfires. Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat from Ashland, worries that lawmakers’ focus on fighting fires — as opposed to preventing or mitigating them through projects like prescribed burns — will make the state less prepared.
“We’re going to keep fighting fires, but we’re going to go deeper and deeper and deeper in the hole if we don’t fund wildfire prevention and risk reduction,” Golden said.
Finding money for those projects has been especially difficult this year, as the Trump administration has held funds for wildfire prevention projects in Oregon and across the country.
Lawmakers weigh bottle surcharge and kicker rebate
Golden is also in the Fire 35 group. He’s sponsoring SB 1177, which would seed a trust fund through a one-time investment from Oregonians’ kicker rebate. It’s one of the few wildfire funding proposals that offers a new revenue stream, rather than dipping into other parts of the state budget.
HB 3940, for instance, suggests moving money from state reserves, drawing from existing taxes on out-of-state insurance companies, and moving money from taxes on timber harvests. The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Reps. John Lively, D-Springfield, and Bobby Levy, R-Echo, also proposes adding a non-redeemable surcharge on bottles purchased within the state. During legislative meetings, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle made it clear they didn’t support that portion of HB 3940, fearing it would harm Oregon’s bottle redemption program.
When people purchase certain beverage containers in Oregon, they’re charged a 10-cent fee that they can get back by returning containers to recycling facilities — through a system that started in the 1970s with Oregon’s bottle bill. HB 3940 would add another 5 cents to that charge, except instead of being redeemable at recycling facilities, the extra nickel would go toward wildfire funding.
“Breaking a system we have right now, which is working really well, in order to pay for another environmental problem we have is really bad policy,” Rep. Mark Gamba of Milwaukie said ahead of a committee vote on HB 3940. “And there’s no nexus between the bottle bill and wildfire.”
Gamba is sponsoring SB 1177 along with fellow Democrats Golden and Sen. Khanh Pham of Portland. Their proposal of redirecting some money from the kicker rebate, even just one year, needs to overcome the political hurdle of getting a two-thirds supermajority vote.
“I know that the kicker is always a tough conversation, but it is taxes that have been paid,” Gamba said during a public hearing on SB 1177. “The option on the table, otherwise, is to basically create a sales tax on beverages. And I think that would be a mistake.”
These bills could advance through the legislative session, but the odds of that happening get slimmer every week.
“The longer we go in the session, the more trouble we’re going to have agreeing to something,” Lively told OPB. “But it’s what it is, it’s the political process. It’s the way it works.”
Aside from funding measures, the legislature did advance one major wildfire bill. Senate Bill 83 would get rid of a statewide wildfire risk map. It now sits with the Ways and Means Committee.
