Pacific Palisades home destroyed by wildfire. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Gov. Gavin Newsom Vetoed Wildfire Mitigation Bill in 2020 Over ‘Housing Needs’
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill in 2016
By Katy Grimes, February 12, 2025 2:54 am
As Pacific Palisades and Altadena begin recovery from the January wildfires which burned thousands of homes and businesses to the ground, remember that California Governor Gavin Newsom defensively said it was not the time to assign blame.
Also remember that while the fires were still burning, Gov. Newsom said Jan 13th, on rebuilding Pacific Palisades, he has a team “looking at reimagining L.A. 2.0. We’re just starting to lay out. I mean, we’re still fighting these fires, so we’re already talking to city leaders. We’re already talking to civic leaders. We’re already talking to business leaders, with nonprofits. We’re talking to labor leaders.”
Today, Gov. Newsom held another press gaggle in Pacific Palisades talking again and reimagining the region, as opposed to the “Mayberry RFD” Palisades neighborhoods I mentioned in my tweet:
(what is with the gray Chairman Mao blazer?)
And when asked the same day on Meet the Press back in January, “does the buck stop with you?” Newsom did not say “yes” as he should have. “We’re all in this together” he claimed.
Except Gavin Newsom had his thumb on the scale.
In 2020, Gov. Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 182, a fire mitigation bill for local governments, passed by both houses of the California Legislature. The governor said, “Wildfire resilience must become a more consistent part of land use and development decisions…” “HOWEVER it must be done while meeting our housing needs.” (Governor’s veto message embedded below)
The bottom line is that the bill would have hamstrung his plans to facilitate developers to build his mandated high density housing “in vulnerable communities.” Pacific Palisades in now considered a “vulnerable community.”
SB 182 Bill analysis explained:
Requires landowners in the State Responsibility Area (SRA) and VHFHSZs to follow specified fire prevention practices and meet standards developed by theState Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (Board) (AB 337, Bates, 1992).These practices and standards include maintaining defensible space of 100 feet around structures, performing certain activities to reduce the amount of flammable material near and on structures, and meeting specific building standards developed by CALFIRE and the Department of Housing andCommunity Development (HCD) that help a structure withstand ignition and reduce fire risk.
In his veto message, Gov. Newsom said in no-uncertain terms that efforts to fireproof California cities would never take precedence over his plan to replace existing single family housing with “affordable housing.”
No amount of affordable housing (concrete high rise apartments with tiny windows) can offset California’s median home price of $$909,400, according to the California Association of Realtors, who said, “The California median home price is forecast to rise 4.6 percent to $909,400 in 2025, following a projected 6.8 percent increase to $869,500 in 2024 from $814,000 in 2023.”
Holy cow. Nearly $1 million to buy a home in California.
Neighboring state Nevada’s Median Sale Price is $457,800, a +5.1% increase from 2024.
Neighboring state Arizona’s Median Sale Price is $449,900, a +4.3% increase from 2024.
These increases in Nevada and Arizona are likely to Californians moving to those states and driving home costs up.
How many more California residents will flee the state to Nevada or Arizona to rebuild? Or to just escape?
Newsom has been making all kinds of wrong moves to save his flailing career, especially since the Los Angeles fires. He idiotically launched a misinformation “fact-checking” website in January to control the narrative. Should you want to contribute to the recovery, Newsom had a link which sends people to the corrupt ActBlue to contribute. He really tried to politically capitalize on these fires.
And we still don’t know why the 117 million gallon Santa Ynez reservoir was empty for months before the fires, and why fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades lost pressure and eventually ran completely dry.
Now is the time to assign blame, while the wounds are still open.
There is so much political history in California’s wildfire predicament.
California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill in 2016, despite unanimous passage by the Legislature, 75-0 in the Assembly and 39-0 in the Senate. SB 1463 would have given local governments more say in fire-prevention efforts through the Public Utilities Commission proceeding making maps of fire hazard areas around utility lines. In a gross display of politics, this is especially pertinent given that Cal Fire and the state’s media blamed the largest utility in the state for the latest wildfires. While hindsight is always 20-20, California was on fire when this bill made its way through the Legislature to Jerry Brown’s desk. The 129 million dead trees throughout California’s state and national forests back then served as matchsticks and kindling. How many dead trees are there today?
Megan Barth and I wrote in The Daily Wire, specifically addressing why forest management has been put on the back burner. We explained how Obama-Era and Clinton-Era radical eco-terrorism thrived, made possible through drastic environmental regulations, and those “ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations” Rep. Tom McClintock spoke of, which prevent any significant and important forest clearing, brush clearing, and dead tree removal, leaving all public forests vulnerable to wildfires.
Today, only privately managed forests are maintained through the traditional forest management practices: thinning, cutting, clearing, prescribed burns, and the disposal of the resulting woody waste. And notably, privately managed lands are not on fire.
As a regular Globe reader commented, “Newsom has revealed his agenda for the fires. Turn LA into a ‘smart city”’ hell hole where you have no freedom, have total surveillance and you are confined to a small area no more than a 15 minute walk away from your home.”
“I suspect ‘green’ regulations for rebuilding are part of the package. Tiny homes?”
Is this Gavin’s “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
So many questions. So much government grift, graft, malfeasance. And there is more to come with the exposure of USAID and money sent to California.
Here is Gov. Newsom’s veto message of SB 182:
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I live in Amador County on 10 acres. I’m currently thinning trees. We have removed 4 log truck loads so far. After paying the trucking fees and what the mill pays it’s been about $300-$700 a load. Feel free to ask me anything. Your work is really appreciated!
@Thomas J RIckard. To be clear, is that $300 to $700 per load that goes into or out of your pocket? What type of trees; Pine? At one time I looked into purchasing timber land on the Klamath River. My friend took me down river past a lumber mill to Happy Camp (which was burned to the ground recently). He said that if I bought the land and made a deal with the mill, I could have the mill cut enough lumber to build a home on the land, in exchange for the timber.
Newsom is attempting to shape the narrative to make himself the hero who rebuilt LA. Imagine him making a “preening” welcoming speech at the opening ceremony at the Olympics. Ugghhh. To play this role he needs you to forget the past- that he never prioritized housing over fire protection, he didn’t veto bills to clean up the forests, he never cut the CalFire budget, he didn’t destroy four dams, he never followed an extreme environmental agenda that prioritized a smelt over people, and never cut off water to farmers. He also needs to hide his real agenda to rebuild LA in his image. This can only be done with a cooperative media and out of the spotlight.
For these reasons, Gov. Nomex should step down to finally establish his own salon, fading the scalps of inspired Antifa slumberjacks.
This is really indefensible.
We’re fortunate to have Katy Grimes and California Globe to document the political history of California’s wildfire predicament along with the government grift, graft, and intentional malfeasance of former Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, Gov. Gavin “Hair-gel Hitler” Newsom, and the rest of the criminal Democrat mafia that has a stranglehold of power over Californians. The mainstream propaganda news media is just a worthless mouthpiece for them parroting whatever they say without question.
I’m with you TJ —— really glad there is a record of the Worst Governor Ever, Gavin Newsom, here at The Globe. It has come in handy and has been effective in the past to help shoot down his stupid presidential ambitions and it will be useful again to counter this guy’s endless bald-faced lies and manipulations.
His record contains nothing good in it but only the countless ways he has continually and purposefully HARMED and even DESTROYED the lives of the people of California.
Enough already
>> And we still don’t know why the 117 million gallon Santa Ynez reservoir was empty for months before the
>> fires, and why fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades lost pressure and eventually ran completely dry
There was a story in the LA Times (of all places) a few weeks ago that explained exactly why the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty.
The EPA (Clean Water Act) made the DWP put a cover on the reservoir. Even though it had been supplying safe drinking water for almost 40 years. The cover tore after only 15 years. It was a six week project to repair the tear but due to permits / inspections etc by state agencies it was a 12 to 18 month project from start to finish.
The reservoir was over 20% full and the DWP requested that they could keep using the reservoir for water storage while the repair project was ongoing. It was going to take well over a year. A bureaucrat at the State Water Resources Control Board told the DWP that they had to empty the reservoir until the repair on the tear was finished. To conform to state water regulations. So the reservoir was emptied sometime in early 2024.
So its idiot state bureaucrats and regulations all the way down. And thats why they only had 3 million gallons of water available to fight the fire in the Palisades. And not almost 30 million gallons. Gravity fed. Under high pressure.
@Tfourier, Thank you for clarifying what happened with regards to the reservoir. It’s more proof that California is run by completely incompetent people.
Yes thank you Tfourier for this.
Sit quietly and THINK of what this meant, what happened as a result!
Mind-boggling and horrific to think of the vast destruction and displacement, the unnecessary deaths, the lives that will never be the same.
Infuriating. The LA Times article should have named the State Water Resources Control Board bureaucrats who made this decision? Were these bureaucrats getting their direction from the Newsom administration?
(https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-22/why-has-a-reservoir-in-palisades-stood-empty-for-a-year)
From the LA Times article:
“An engineer with the state Water Resources Control Board said his team was “not supportive” of allowing the Santa Ynez Reservoir to go back in service in late January 2024, according to an email by a DWP regulatory affairs official summarizing the call. “Their decision is apparently not based on the sampling results provided earlier today, which demonstrated that samples collected yesterday did not contain bacteria,” the DWP official wrote. However, the tear in the reservoir’s cover posed an “ongoing threat of contamination,” even after tests, because debris, feces or other materials could pollute the water, a spokesperson for the state Water Resources Control Board told The Times recently.”
So, that’s what happened, thanks!
These bureaucrats need to be ordered into treatment, before they accidentally kill off the normal population.
Message to Newsom, we are NOT in this together. I am not the governor of California. I did not veto a fire prevention bill in 2020. I am not in charge of making sure brush clearance was done that was never done. I did not cut the Cal Fire budget by $101 million last year.
Looks like Chairman Mao Newsom is following his World Economic Forum playbook mandates…>
Watch the zoning in the Palisades get changed so that “stand-n-pack” apartments are required to be built as replacements for currently zoned single-family houses….
Follow the money…. just like Newsom’s BYD electric vehicle mandates by 2035…..
This guy is corrupt to his core (which is inky black, evil and narcissistic) – so is his Weinstein-trollop “First Partner” wife…. (barf)
I still don’t understand why there is a housing shortage in CA. A lot more American citizens moving out than moving in. A death rate higher than the birth rate. Hundreds of thousands on new housing units being built every year. There should be a surplus of housing and prices should be going down. Remember, Mayorkas says that he has total control over the border.
Something doesn’t calculate. A lot more Americans moving out than moving in. A mortality rate higher than the birth rate. Hundreds of thousands on new housing units being built every year. There should be a surplus of housing and prices should be going down. Remember, Mayorkas says that he has total control over the border.
This is the second image captured of Newsom presenting with a marked bilateral hand clenching. So, after watching Biden’s central deterioration, it really makes me begin to think, this may be a sign of something deeper. Often during interviews there is also mild agitation marching around right under the surface which is interesting to me. At the time it appeared to be some sort of exaggerated political hip-hop body language, I don’t know but anymore…
@SkunkedinD7, Good catch! His fist clenching is very strange indeed. It is not unheard of that a person the age of Newsom has dementia. I know someone who died of dementia who was younger than Newsom. When Newsom understated the amount of acreage cleared of fire prone brush by a factor of 7, did he lie or is he mentally incompetent?
Correction: Should read overstated not understated.
Log it when apparent, I guess. If the governor has something to talk about then better now than later.
Let’s go back to the original building permits, plans and specs, and final approvals. Good luck finding them. Old newspapers? Good luck with that, too.
Someone approved building on a fire prone hill. Did the county carry out fire mitigation as a regular chore, or did they just roll the dice?
We cannot pretend this recent catastrophe “just happened”. That hill has been burning since before Jesus was in diapers.