Audit report suggests changing wildfire protection fee structure

Yahoo

11-06-2025

The Big Knife Fire outside of Arlee, Montana, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 30, 2023. (Photo by Nicole Girten, Daily Montanan)
Landowners in Montana are not paying their fair share of wildfire costs to the tune of at least $30 million, according to a new report from the Legislative Audit Division.
An audit of the state's Wildfire Assessment Program found problems with the funding structure for fighting wildfires and made suggestions to the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the Legislature to overhaul the system.
The Wildfire Assessment Program is overseen by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Fees are assessed to some property owners in high-risk fire areas, but the report noted the state gives an 'estimated annual subsidy of over $30 million' to private landowners.
It said the payment split in Montana is more than six decades old, and not at all even, with landowners are paying just 10% of fire costs. Best practices, which the report based on extensive interviews and document review, would have them paying more than 90%. Montana spent more than a half billion dollars on fire suppression from 2002 to 2023.
Suppression is one of three wildfire activities in which the state partakes — mitigation and readiness are also places where it spends money on fires.
In 2023, for example, the state spent $41 million on fires — $4.5 million on attempts to mitigate risk and damage from fires, $13.5 million on capacity and ability to dispatch firefighters and then $23.1 million on actual suppression efforts. Landowners do not pay the state for suppression efforts.
The report suggested some fixes, including shifting the burden of wildland fire protection to those who live in the most dangerous areas.
Statewide, landowners paid just $4.3 million on wildfire protection fees in 2023. Their cost is also calculated out of the 'readiness' portion of money spent on fires, not mitigation or suppression. This categorization leads to issues, the report noted.
'Applying the proportions to the readiness budget instead of total wildfire protection decreases the amount landowners are responsible for paying and increases economic inefficiency,' the report stated.
The DNRC said it has 'historically excluded' response and suppression efforts from its definition of 'wildland fire protection,' whereas the report's findings look to combine preventative measures with active firefighting where funding is concerned.
DNRC director Amanda Kaster said in a letter in response to the audit that it 'proposes a significant philosophical shift' in the state fire program's funding structure. The report also suggested the agency isn't always following statute, while the DNRC said it interprets the laws differently.
'The Montana Legislature and stakeholders have confirmed and reinforced this distinction since the creation of the fire suppression fund in 2007, which is designated primarily for wildland fire suppression activities,' Kaster wrote in response to the audit. 'In contrast, the program base budget for wildland fire protection work has been widely understood to be intended for conducting work related to preparedness. The audit report fails to recognize this distinction and risks misrepresenting the DNRC's efforts to comply with statute.'
This matters for landowners, because the report makes a case they should be paying for more than preemptive mitigation.
The report said best practice would be for private landowners to pay 92% of wildfire suppression, readiness and mitigation costs. That number is currently about 10% and does not include suppression. According to the report, applying state law as written would ask landowners to completely cover mitigation efforts, which would increase landowner contribution to 33% of wildfire cost.
Kaster asked for clarification from the legislature on several terms, including 'annual operation assessment plan,' 'fire protection costs,' and 'state's portion of the cost.'
She also said it was the Legislature's job to make decisions about what people are paying, not the DNRC.
'The DNRC does not believe it is our responsibility, nor do we have the appropriate standing, to make recommendations on how or why the cost burden of the program is shared amongst Montanans,' Kaster wrote. 'Ultimately, it is the legislature that chooses how to fund this work, and it is our obligation to respond to wildfires on behalf of the State of Montana.'
Kaster also noted an upcoming wildland firefighting study, passed as House Bill 70 this session, will lead to 'further clarification' and funding expectations.
Fees collected from property owners come mainly from fire protection districts, where residents who contribute get a more direct response. Some property owners within these districts are required to pay — according to the report, it's a $50 per-owner, per-district charge, and then a $0.30 per-acre charge for each acre owned in a district more than 20 acres.
However, Gov. Greg Gianforte recently signed HB 421. That legislation increased fire protection fees for land classified as forest from $50 to $58.70 for each landowner; for those with more than 20 acres of land, there's an additional fee per acre that increased from $0.30 to $0.49.
The process for deciding who has to pay is complex and is maintained by one full-time staffer with assistance from two other DNRC employees and a seasonal intern, the audit report noted.
It went on to say the Fire Assessment Programs manual is also outdated, employees don't understand technical aspects of the fee program software code, and if the department lost employees who work in the program, they would be difficult to replace.
'Department staff spend significant time manually reviewing and updating information as part of the fee assignment process,' the audit noted. 'Department staff stated they cannot determine if a fee should be assigned to over 2,000 properties each year due to a lack of time to review the properties and a lack of updated property data.'
The current split for fire protection costs is based on a 1958 national study by the Battelle Memorial Institute. Beyond being six decades old, it did not account for individual states, meaning what Montana is using to calculate the share isn't even based on data unique to the state.
'Recommendations include recalculating the public and private funding share, clarifying statute, and establishing a fee structure informed by cost and wildfire risk data, and improving data practices to help determine efficient funding and areas of elevated wildfire response,' the audit report stated.
According to an Oct. 2024 presentation from the Legislative Fiscal Division, about 63% of all homes in Montana are in the wildland urban interface, a term used to describe high fire danger areas where natural land and housing meet. About 1.5% of Montana falls within the area considered the wildland urban interface. The presentation noted this was not the best way to assess fire risk in Montana, but did not specify why.
The DNRC has the direct responsibility of protecting about 5 million acres of land in Montana. Additionally, the state also shares responsibility — primarily with local governments — for an additional 55 million acres, while the federal government is the primary responder for 33 million acres.
Montana is slightly more than 94 million acres in total.
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