The Oregon Legislature failed to take action during its short session this winter on two issues, both related to the state’s increasing wildfire danger and the cost it imposes on Oregonians.

The legislature’s Emergency Board might be able to help by allocating state dollars later this year.

Other changes might be delayed until the full legislature convenes in early 2025.

The most pressing need, and one that the Emergency Board could potentially help to alleviate, is controlling the rates that private landowners pay to the Oregon Department of Forestry for fire protection.

Last year, due to the legislature’s failure to include for the second straight year $15 million in the state budget, fire protection rates rose by 52% for grazing land in Northeast Oregon, and 32% for timber ground. Increases were even larger in Central Oregon.

Lawmakers have discussed various ways to prevent similar increases, including a yearly fee on all of Oregon’s 2 million property owners, and boosting the tax when trees are logged on private land. Two bills in the short 2024 session would have referred measures to voters, one to increase property taxes and another to reinstate a severance tax on logging in corporate-owned forests.

All of these stalled in Salem.

The simplest solution, though, and one the state can afford, is to divert general fund dollars, as lawmakers did in 2022. The $15 million “offset” that year kept fire protection rate increases to 14% for grazing land in 2022, and to 9% for timber property.

Forcing landowners to pick up most of the tab — and particularly corporations that own large swathes of forest that the forestry department protects — might seem attractive to some lawmakers.

But allocating more money from the general fund is reasonable, because the benefits from fire protection are not limited to the owners of property that might otherwise have burned. The forestry department’s firefighting efforts reduce the amount of toxic smoke that affects everyone — including the majority of Oregonians who don’t pay wildfire protection fees to the state.

A related bill that also failed to make it to a vote in the Capitol this winter would have allocated $5 million to set up a grant program in which communities or neighborhoods could apply for financial help to trim trees and take other steps to reduce wildfire risk.

People who own property in those areas that meet state requirements could potentially qualify for a reduction in their homeowner’s insurance premiums. This is particularly attractive considering that, since the catastrophic wildfires in Oregon during the Labor Day weekend in 2020, some landowners have reported paying much more for insurance, or losing their coverage altogether, due to wildfire risk.

Money for that grant program could come from the Emergency Board or through legislation during the 2025 session.