The California Assembly is scheduled to vote on a bill next week coauthored by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D-North Coast) to repeal the $150 State Responsibility Area (SRA) fire fee, which Chesbro has long maintained is unfair to property owners throughout his district.
“The only solution to fix the injustice of this SRA fee is to completely repeal it,” said Chesbro, who is a coauthor of the repeal legislation, SB 1040. “Assessing it as a flat fee of $150 and charging someone who lives in a mobile home or cabin on the foggy, rainy North Coast the same amount as someone who owns a multimillion dollar estate in the tinder try hills of Southern California is egregiously inequitable. The SRA fee has been rendered unworkable and the only solution is to get rid of it.”
Chesbro has been working with a bipartisan coalition of legislators this year in an effort to make the SRA fee more equitable.
As part of this effort, earlier in this legislative session Chesbro authored a bill to address the fee’s inequities. But AB 2474 died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Chesbro also supported an earlier attempt to repeal the fee, a bill by Assemblymember Kevin Jeffries (R-Lake Elsinore), AB 1506, which also died in committee.
SB 1040, authored by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino), would repeal the SRA fee. This provision was added to the bill on Friday during the Assembly’s floor session.
SB 1040 is an urgency bill, written to take effect immediately if signed by the governor, and will require approval of two-thirds of the Assembly, 54 votes.
If it passes the Assembly, the bill will be immediately transmitted to the Senate for consideration.
“Repealing this fee would also remove a financial threat to local fire districts, which face an uphill battle persuading property owners to fund their agencies if they are forced to pay a $150 fee to the state,” Chesbro added. “It is these local fire agencies that are the first responders to structure fires in most rural communities.”