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On social media, President-elect Donald Trump amplified a claim that California Gov. Gavin Newsom slashed the state’s fire budget by $100 million just months before the outbreak of the recent wildfires. Newsom dismissed the claim as “a ridiculous lie,” saying that under his leadership, the state has “nearly doubled” its fire protection budget. Actually, both things are true.
Newsom did approve cuts to several supplemental funding initiatives in the wildfire budget last summer, but overall, the state’s multibillion-dollar firefighting budget and workforce increased.
On Jan. 11, Trump reposted a headline from Breitbart, “Report: Gavin Newsom Cut $100 Million from Fire Prevention Budget in 2024.” Social media posts have also cited the same report.
The claim originates from a Newsweek article published on Jan. 10, which began, “The 2024-25 California state budget, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in June 2024, slashed funding for wildfire and forest resilience by $101 million as part of a series of cutbacks according to an analysis by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.”
That’s the state Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal adviser. The story reflects a February 2024 summary by the Legislative Analyst’s Office of Newsom’s proposed 2024-25 budget. The summary showed that Newsom proposed cutting a total of $101 million from seven “wildfire and forest resilience package” programs. Those were proposed cuts to “a previous budget agreement for a special package of one-time wildfire funding,” according to Rachel Ehlers, the agency’s deputy legislative analyst.
Those cuts ended up being even deeper than what Newsom originally proposed.
Facing a $55 billion budget shortfall and a requirement to pass a balanced budget, the state Legislature and Newsom ultimately agreed upon a $144 million reduction to those wildfire-related funds. Of that, the largest cut was $46 million from money slated for a pilot project to create hydrogen from biomass. Another $35 million was cut from wildfire resilience projects on state-owned land and $28 million from projects undertaken by various state conservancies.
“To underscore: these were reductions to one-time augmentations, not reductions to CalFire’s ongoing base programs and funding,” Ehlers told us via email, referring to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Newsom responded via X that the claim about him cutting the fire budget is “a ridiculous lie.”
“We have doubled the size of our firefighting army, built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet, and increased the forest management ten-fold since taking office,” Newsom wrote. “Time to serve these folks the facts.”
A webpage launched by Newsom’s office to combat misinformation about the wildfires added, “The number of CalFIRE personnel has nearly doubled since 2019 (from 5,829 to 10,741) … CalFIRE’s budget has nearly doubled since 2019 ($2 Billion to $3.8 Billion).”
The figures in the state’s official budget act documents are a little different, but they back up the trendline Newsom cited.
According to those documents, the 2018-19 budgeted amount for CAL FIRE was $2.5 billion and included 7,182 personnel. That was the fiscal year before Newsom took office in January 2019. The 2024-25 budget approved in June 2024 included $4.2 billion (a 68% increase from 2018-19) and 12,511 personnel (a 74% increase). The budget and number of fire personnel has increased under Newsom, including between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 budgets. In California state government, the fiscal year runs from July 1 to the following June 30.
Estimates provided to us by the Legislative Analyst’s Office also show that the total CAL FIRE expenditures have risen every year of Newsom’s tenure as governor — from $2.74 billion in fiscal year 2019-2020 to $4.43 billion in 2023-24. Total expenditures for 2024-25 are $4.59 billion, according to the agency. However, Ehlers noted, the 2024-25 amount “does not yet reflect additional costs being incurred for the LA fires; I expect that total will increase when updated data are available.”
In addition, Ehlers said, the 2024-25 budget agreement that Newsom signed also included “a multiyear plan to phase in significant increases in the number of new firefighters at CalFire.” (See Figure 5.)
So facing a large budget deficit, Newsom proposed cuts to one-time supplemental funding for some wildfire-related programs, but the overall wildfire budget — and the number of personnel it supports — has increased under Newsom’s watch.
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