Sponsors
The bill increases public transparency and the potential quality of hazardous fuels-reduction work—helping communities and enabling oversight—but does so by imposing new data-collection burdens without added funding and carries risks of inconsistent reporting, misleading comparisons, and sensitive disclosures.
Communities near treated lands (especially rural wildland-urban interface [WUI] communities) get clearer, timely information about where fuels-reduction work occurs and how it affects wildfire risk.
Federal land managers and taxpayers gain greater transparency and accountability because agencies must track and publicly post acres treated, costs per acre, and effectiveness metrics, enabling GAO and public oversight.
Agencies are required to use tracking procedures, verification, and effectiveness analysis, which can improve the quality and long-term effectiveness of hazardous fuels reduction work affecting infrastructure and utility resilience.
Federal agencies and employees must carry new administrative and data-tracking burdens to meet reporting requirements, but the bill does not provide additional funding for that work.
If agencies lack capacity or funding, reports may be delayed, incomplete, or inconsistent, reducing the usefulness of the data for communities and policymakers.
Standardizing cost-per-acre and effectiveness metrics across diverse ecosystems is difficult, so published comparisons could be misleading or misinterpreted.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior to add a standardized annual report to the President’s budget that counts acres of hazardous fuels reduction on federal lands. The report must count each acre once, show where work occurred (including whether in the wildland-urban interface), list activity types, costs per acre, measures of effectiveness, and be posted publicly. Agencies must adopt tracking procedures within 90 days, notify Congress after implementation, and the GAO will review progress within two years. No new funding is authorized.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by Thomas P. TIFFANY · Last progress March 4, 2026