Introduced January 8, 2026 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress January 8, 2026
This bill directs sustained federal funding and clearer planning tools to bolster wildfire resilience—improving grants, planning, mapping, insurance signals, and responder communications—while shifting tougher tradeoffs onto local budgets, potentially excluding some rural communities, and risking diversion of limited dollars toward private property work over landscape-scale mitigation.
State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments get sustained federal funding (authorizes $1 billion/year FY2025–2029) to support wildfire resilience projects across multiple communities.
High-risk communities can receive implementation grants (up to $10 million) to carry out on-the-ground wildfire resilience projects, increasing protection and reducing future fire damages.
Communities without plans can access planning support (up to $250,000, no Federal match required) and may use existing qualifying plans to speed grant access, making planning feasible for low-resource areas.
Local, Tribal, and state governments face a default 25% non‑Federal match requirement for implementation grants, which can strain cash‑constrained budgets and delay or block projects.
A narrower statutory definition of 'at‑risk' (focused on groups of homes with basic infrastructure) risks excluding many rural or sparsely populated communities that were previously eligible for hazardous-fuel projects.
Expanding eligibility to private critical infrastructure and structure-level work (e.g., homeowner hardening) could shift limited grant funds away from landscape-scale fuels reduction and publicly owned priorities, diluting the impact of federal mitigation dollars.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a FEMA grant program for wildfire resilience (planning grants to $250K; implementation grants to $10M), requires mapping/reports, and allows structure hardening under CWDG.
Creates a new FEMA grant program to help communities plan for and carry out wildfire resilience projects and allows grants for planning or implementation (planning grants up to $250,000; implementation grants up to $10 million). It requires FEMA to map and update at‑risk communities, commissions GAO studies on federal wildfire programs and insurer certification/metrics, directs a FEMA report on radio communications for wildland firefighting, and expands eligible activities under an existing Community Wildfire Defense Grant program to include structure hardening. The bill authorizes $1 billion per year for FY2025–2029 to run the new grant program and sets default cost‑share rules with waiver authority.