A legislative panel that studies wildfire mitigation and prevention on Thursday approved a full slate of bills – including a series of grant programs and a public awareness campaign – after nixing a GOP proposal for a program that would use cameras to boost early detection of remote fires.

 The Wildfire Matters Review Committee narrowed the 10 bill drafts it was allowed to craft down to six proposals. Legislative committees that operate when lawmakers aren’t in session can only approve five bills to forward  to Legislative Council, the panel that vets the legal implications and other factors before bills can be introduced.

Wednesday’s meeting of the Legislative Oversight Committee Concerning Tax Policy saw the panel reject a bill from Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver. On Thursday, it was Republicans’ turn to see a proposal turned away.

The rejected bill from Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, sought to spend $2 million  on a pilot program that would install 20-25 high-tech cameras on mountain peaks that would be able to identify and triangulate  GPS coordinates for wildfires in minutes. Coram noted  a similar program in California showed promising results in terms of lowering the death toll wrought by wildfires.

“This is just another tool in the toolbox,” he said. “$2 million for this pilot program, to see if it does or doesn’t work is not a lot of money when we’re talking about the expansive wildfires we’ve had in the last couple of years and probably those in the future.”

Members of the 10-person committee – which features six Democrats and four Republicans – said they had concerns about the bill, ranging from the worry around dumping funds into technology that may be obsolete soon to questions about the usability of the data the cameras collected.

“I’m very concerned about how that data gets integrated in real time,” said Sen. Bob Rankin, R-Carbondale. “We have space-based assets that come through the National Guard, we have our own multi-mission aircraft … I don’t think we really understand the data that goes behind some of these questions like, ‘How much redundancy of detection do we need?'”

Rankin ultimately voted to back the proposal, along with Coram and the panel’s other two Republicans. The six Democrats were united in voting against it, sinking the bill.

While that bill was voted down, Reps. Perry Will, R-New Castle, and Marc Snyder, D-Colorado Springs, opted voluntarily to withdraw proposals on prescribed burns by private property owners and evacuation and mitigation plans. Both men indicated their legislation required more work with stakeholders and expressed interest in running the bills outside of the Wildfire Matters Review Committee framework during the legislative session.

Sen. Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, also opted to pull a pair of bills: one on firefighter workforce development and another seeking to boost economic vitality in the timber industry. Like Snyder and Will, Ginal indicated more stakeholder work needed to be done but expressed interest in bringing the bills during session.

The five bills that cleared the committee en route to Legislative Council include efforts that would:

• Create a grant program to help counties mitigate and recover from wildfires by funding efforts to clear wood and forest debris that fuels the flames. The original bill also included a provision on upgrades for the Colorado State Forest Service nursery, though Snyder at the meeting ran an amendment removing that provision after he said he intends to run it as a stand-alone bill
• Direct the Forest Service to implement a wildfire mitigation public awareness campaign for 2023 and 2024 for the 53% of the state’s population that lives in the Wildland-Urban Interface areas with grasslands, shrublands and forests
• Broaden the pots of money that local volunteer firefighters can be reimbursed through, a move Ginal said could combat a cycle in which wildfires cut into budgets by depressing property values
• Create a grant program for local governments to fund outreach to property owners on wildfire mitigation strategies. The bill also seeks to end the state income tax deduction for wildfire mitigation expenses two years earlier than scheduled and replace it with a tax credit of 25 percent of the cost incurred for wildfire mitigation
• Create a grant program to match funds local governments raise for wildfire mitigation, an effort Rep. Lisa Cutter said would encourage stable, long-term funding in an area she said was “severely underfunded.” Cutter, who chairs the committee, indicated she wanted to continue to work on the bill to be inclusive of cash-strapped communities that wouldn’t be able to raise funds to meet a state match

Legislative Council is scheduled to meet Nov. 15 to review legislation coming out of interim committees.