Deadlock Over Bill Dries Up Funds for State Fire Agency

SACRAMENTO — With an unseasonably early wildfire season already underway, a legislative deadlock over state employee pay raises is leaving the state’s premier firefighting agency unable to pay its bills.

Already, a gasoline supplier has said that it will stop selling fuel to the forestry department until it is guaranteed payment.

At issue is a $69-million emergency funding bill sponsored by Gov. Pete Wilson to pay suppliers of the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection for purchases made during the 1996 fire season. Department employees continue to be paid.

Since early last month, Democrats in the Senate, led by President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer of Hayward, have tied approval of the bill to passage of separate legislation that would grant all state employees a 3% pay raise for April, May and June of this year.

Wilson and Republicans oppose the pay hike bill, contending that raises for state employees should be part of the state budget and negotiations with employee unions.

Senate Democrats took the firefighting bill captive last month when Republicans refused to agree to the proposed three-month state employee pay raise plan. Neither side has enough votes to pass its bill without help from the other.

As a result, a deadlock has developed, which showed no signs of easing Monday.

Meanwhile, the forestry department reported that New West Petroleum has said it will no longer provide gasoline until it receives a “guarantee of payment.”

Department spokeswoman Karen Terrill said fire stations in Northern California are starting to run short on fuel and that in three weeks they will “be completely out of gasoline.”

In Southern California, she said only the department’s firefighting unit at San Luis Obispo reported a threatened supply of gasoline. “It estimates it has only a one-week supply,” Terrill said.

Because of an extremely dry spring, the fire season started about three weeks early this year.

In Southern California, state fire crews in San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego already are on a full alert status usually reached later in the season, Terrill said.

The forestry department buys fuel from suppliers in bulk and receives a discount rate, Terrill said. If firefighters were forced to buy fuel with credit cards or cash, she said that costs would soar.

Typically, firefighting costs exceed budget estimates and the 1996 season was no exception. The practice is that in the following year, governors ask the Legislature for appropriations to make up the deficiency. Traditionally, lawmakers readily oblige.

But Wilson’s bill got tangled up in the Senate when public employee unions and Democrats saw a chance to piggyback a pay raise on it.

Lockyer noted that state employees have gone without a pay raise for three years and said their “deficiency” was as important as that of the Fire Department’s.

He said Monday that the firefighting bill would be approved swiftly and sent to Wilson if Republicans in both houses would provide the votes to also pass the pay bill, which Wilson probably would veto.

“Until that occurs, I will not blink,” Lockyer told reporters.