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California lawmakers have voted to shift a state forest system away from commercial logging and pave the way for tribal co-management, delivering a win to a movement rooted in the historic timber wars.

Managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, the state’s 14 demonstration forests are currently required to produce and sell timber to show — or “demonstrate” — sustainable practices, while considering factors like recreation and wildlife.

AB 2494 eliminates what’s often cast as a logging mandate, instead prioritizing values such as carbon storage, wildfire resilience and biodiversity conservation. There could still be logging, but it would need to support those principles.

It also directs state officials to seek agreements with Native American tribes to integrate their traditional knowledge into managing the land. The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

“We don’t need more demonstrations of what clear cutting does to a forest — we have plenty of those,” said Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa), who authored the bill. If the forests are being used to show how to boost commercial logging gains, “then that is not how we want to use our public assets.”

At the center of the discussion is Jackson Demonstration State Forest, spanning nearly 50,000 acres in Mendocino County. For decades, loggers and environmentalists have clashed over the fate of its stately redwoods.

About five years ago, tensions reignited when community members caught wind of plans to cut towering trees near the coastal town of Caspar.

Tribes whose historic homelands fall within the forest became leading voices in the effort to halt logging, with the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ Priscilla Hunter emerging as a major force. She has since passed away but her legacy looms large in the movement.

While running for his assembly seat representing the North Coast, Rogers heard from constituents and local politicians who wanted to see the forest run differently. The bill grew in part out of those discussions.

Polly Girvin, Hunter’s former partner and a retired lawyer focused on Native American issues, called AB 2494’s passage by the Legislature “nearly miraculous.”

“We’re at a time right now where scientists are going to have to reach across the table to the Indian voice,” she said. “They feel they have a sacred obligation to manage their forest, not for commercial logging per se. So I think it’s really a meeting of science and the sacred.”

Some backers say the bill offers a new economic path forward for communities behind the so-called redwood curtain. With the decline of logging and cannabis as livelihoods, they see income from tourists attracted by ultramarathons, mushroom foraging and other outdoor activities as a financial savior.

But the push to reshape forest management is fiercely opposed by loggers and mill owners, who say their work is sustainable and provides blue-collar jobs in a region where they’ve dwindled. Already California imports most of its wood from Oregon, Washington and Canada.

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has supported the bill, but it’s opposed by the Rural County Representatives of California, an advocacy group representing 40 counties.

Staci Heaton, senior policy advocate for the organization, said they’re concerned that the new management goals are so vague they would expose forest projects — including wildfire research — to costly lawsuits.

“We’ve experienced the majority of the largest wildfires across the state over the last decade, and it is paramount that research and forest management knowledge be fostered in these demonstration state forests so that it can be used statewide,” Heaton said.

Currently, money from logging — roughly $8.5 million a year — pays for management of the demonstration forests. Under the latest iteration of AB 2494, it will remain one source of funding but not the only one, Rogers said.

Cal Fire’s Kevin Conway believes that if the bill becomes law, it will, in practice, limit funding. So they’d likely look to bring in money by charging day-use and other new recreation fees.

Conway, who is the agency’s chief for resource protection and improvement, added that some aspects of their mission wouldn’t change; the land would remain “actively managed.” For instance, he called wood products “a big part of our climate strategy in the built environment” and suggested it would still be prudent to understand how they’re produced in California.

“We don’t think that just locking up your forest and making a tree museum longterm will deliver biodiversity, carbon, recreation — all these things,” he said. Cal Fire has not taken a position on the legislation.

Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.

The California Legislature just passed two bills that advocates say will greatly improve access to small-scale solar for renters, people in condos and others who don’t have access to their roofs or can’t afford a full rooftop array.

On Sunday night, lawmakers approved Assembly Bill 1813, a third-time effort to force the California Public Utilities Commission to develop a more robust community solar program, in which residents sign up to participate in a small solar array near where they live and pay monthly at a discount on their electrical bills.

“California’s clean energy transition should benefit everyone, not just those who can afford rooftop solar,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), the bill’s author.

Last week, with Senate Bill 868, California’s Legislature also became the latest to legalize plug-in solar. Also known as “balcony solar,” these systems allow anyone — renter or owner — to set small panels on their patios or fences and plug them directly into wall outlets to lower bills without having to navigate utility permissions.

“It’s an idea whose time has come,” said bill author Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who noted the devices can bring down bills by hundreds of dollars a year. “It’ll be very beneficial for people who are looking to lower their cost of living.”

The votes come after some difficult years for rooftop solar in California thanks to strong pushback from utility companies. The state had been a leader nationally on solar energy in the 2000s. But installation rates plummeted in 2022 after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Public Utilities Commission sharply cut back incentives for customers.

Utilities that lobbied for the change argued that compensating rooftop solar at a higher rate meant that people without solar panels were disproportionately paying the costs of maintaining the overhead lines that everyone uses.

This year, utilities made similar arguments against both the community solar and balcony solar bills.

Pacific Gas & Electric was successful in inserting an end date for Wiener’s SB 868 balcony solar bill, so, if it is signed into law, the Legislature will have to reauthorize it before 2030.

“While the bill establishes additional guardrails, it also creates a period through 2030 during which plug-in solar devices not meeting key safety and certification requirements could be purchased and used in California,” PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said. “We believe customers and emergency personnel deserve the protections that come from clear safety standards and established interconnection processes from the outset.”

Both bills now go to the governor’s desk.

If signed, the balcony solar bill will go into effect once systems have been certified as safe for use in the U.S. by a nationally recognized testing laboratory like UL Solutions. Balcony panels are already certified in Germany, where plug-in solar is popular. Advocates say U.S. certifications will come through soon.

Community solar reform could have a harder time clearing Newsom’s desk, as the Public Utilities Commission, appointed by the governor, has previously opposed this type of program.

All the state’s big investor-owned utilities lobbied against the community solar bill, AB 1813, which would require them to compensate community solar developers and customers at higher rates than those established under the Public Utilities Commission’s current program.

That program, finalized this year, relies on canceled federal funding and incentives that developers say are too low for them to launch new projects.

“We remain opposed to AB 1813 because it would shift significant costs to customers who do not participate in the program,” PG&E’s Paulo said. “This legislation is about profits for solar companies, not customer affordability.”

The Public Advocates Office, the independent consumer advocate at the Public Utilities Commission, said recent amendments to the bill did not address its concerns about shifting costs from one group of ratepayers to another.

“We support expanding community solar so renters and other Californians who cannot install rooftop solar can benefit from clean energy. But the savings for participants should not be financed by raising bills for everyone else,” said Mary Flannelly, a spokesperson for the Public Advocates Office. “Our analysis of AB 1813 estimates that it could shift about $1.5 billion a year onto customers who cannot participate — roughly $12 more per month on average — a sizeable cost.”

Southern California Edison also has opposed the bill. SCE spokesperson David Eisenhauer said it would “expose customers to higher rates and unreasonable costs compared to more cost-effective clean energy sources.”

But Ward disputes that any costs will be shifted to people who don’t have solar. He cited two recent studies that indicate all consumers will benefit from reduced costs when community solar is more available. One found if the state added 5.4 gigawatts of community solar and energy storage, all ratepayers could save $6.5 billion by reducing costs for gas generation, electricity imports and transmission.

Ward and a coalition of environmental groups, solar developers and the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, have tried for years to get the Public Utilities Commission to adopt their vision for a community solar program that would serve people who don’t own or don’t have access to their roofs. Several other states have them.

The bill would compensate community solar developers and customers at a rate that advocates say more accurately accounts for the savings solar brings to the grid, especially on hot days when the system is stressed.

Wiener said both bills are important for helping individuals and communities “to not be trapped in the monopoly utility model that is so expensive.”

“We should empower people to generate their own electricity and to lower their electric bills,” he said.

The Legislature also passed Senate Bill 913, which would allow batteries, electric vehicles, smart thermostats and other consumer-owned devices to be bundled together and counted as a reliable source of electricity for the state’s grid.

Brandon Garcia, California director for Advanced Energy United, an association representing clean energy businesses, said it would help reduce strain on the grid and keep electricity costs in check while “giving customer-owned resources a fair opportunity to compete and deliver reliable energy at an affordable price.”

California lawmakers have approved a bill that seeks to throw a lifeline to the state’s struggling journalism organizations.

Assembly Bill 2222, which would create refundable tax credits for California local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ, joins a litany of bills on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The state Senate passed the bill on Sunday and the Assembly narrowly approved its amendments on Monday to send the bill to the governor’s desk, with some Republican lawmakers pulling their previous “yes” votes.

The approval comes just as the Legislature is set to adjourn its two-year session early this week.

The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego) would work by assigning a “job retention credit” of $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions, and after that $15,000 for every additional journalist. Part-time positions would be awarded half-credits. It also stacks an additional $15,000 credit for each new hire, to incentivize expanding journalist head counts.

“This measure is a safety net for news outlets on the verge of closure,” said former state Sen. Steve Glazer, who is a proponent of the bill and during his Senate term pushed similar legislation.

Proponents may face an uphill battle persuading Newsom to sign the bill, which creates a unique revenue stream to pay for the program. Newsom typically spurns laws that make changes to the state budget after those fiscal discussions conclude in the first half of the calendar year.

AB 2222 represents the latest attempt by California lawmakers to bolster the news business, with governments globally discussing similar efforts. Canada implemented newsroom payroll tax credits in 2019 amounting to about $13,750 per journalist in an eligible newsroom.

AB 2222 would create the largest relief plan in the U.S. to date, with the state tax board estimating it would make more than $40 million available to the state’s newsrooms annually.

The California Taxpayers Assn. and groups representing business interests such as the California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill because it raises taxes on employers.

The governor’s finance office issued an analysis opposing the bill for failing to outline a cap on tax credits and for seeking to subsidize existing jobs rather than encouraging the creation of more journalism jobs.

The bill is supported by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member.

Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto bills.