Lake County supervisor: federal mitigation funding freezes and BRIC cuts leave wildfire-hit communities 'dead in the water'

Jessica Paiske, supervisor for Lake County, California, told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that her county has faced repeated catastrophic wildfires and that federal mitigation grants and BRIC funding have been essential to recovery and resilience efforts — and that recent freezes and proposed cuts are halting projects now ready to implement.

Why it matters: Local officials said federal mitigation grants fund workforce, forest-health projects, defensible space work and home-hardening programs that lower long-term risk and help preserve local housing markets and property-tax bases.

Paiske described long-term local effects from the 2015 Valley Fire: "The Valley Fire burned 76,000 acres, nearly 2,000 structures and claimed 4 lives. I lost my home in most of my community that day," she said in testimony. She added that 70 percent of Lake County has burned since then and the county has lost 5.5 percent of its housing stock.

Paiske said federal grants have financed a range of mitigation actions — fuels management, fire breaks, defensible space, home hardening, evacuation-route improvements and watershed restoration — but that some grants are currently inaccessible. "We have $14,000,000 that was awarded under CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) that was awarded last fall that is currently frozen," Paiske said, adding that the freeze prevents planned mitigation from moving forward and wastes critical time ahead of fire season.

Paiske described a county pilot to "cluster-harden" older housing in Kelseyville Riviera: the county proposes investing about $55,000 per home for roughly 350 homes so that science-based home hardening raises survivability for the whole community and improves insurability for surrounding properties.

She and other witnesses warned committee members that small, rural counties face grant-match and administrative barriers that make it hard to access some FEMA and state mitigation programs. Several senators and witnesses said federal programs such as BRIC and CDBG are indispensable for small counties because they cover planning and match requirements that local governments cannot easily fund.

Officials and witnesses urged improvements including simpler application paths for smaller counties, sustained federal funding for BRIC and CDBG disaster-relief grants, and targeted federal support to scale neighborhood-level retrofits so insurers can underwrite improved risk.

Paiske added that her county has a high proportion of seniors and households in poverty and that vacant homes and landlord exits driven by rising insurance costs threaten property-tax revenue and local services. "Landlords are leaving the rental market because they cannot absorb skyrocketing insurance costs," she testified.

The committee heard Paiske’s account alongside testimony from industry and mitigation experts who advocated verified retrofit standards and incentives. Paiske and other local leaders asked senators to preserve and expand federal mitigation funding to keep communities from slipping into long-term decline after repeated disasters.