California governor's budget proposes investments in rural workforce development

This is from Sofia Bollag's story in today's Sacramento Bee--a rare mention of a California investment in the state's rural reaches and their residents:

Newsom’s plan also funds programs to train workers in new industries in rural California as part of the state’s response to climate change. One program would put $44 million into developing a modern-day logging industry in California. Instead of old growth trees, the state wants to promote businesses that would clear and haul smaller trees and shrubs that fuel fires. That lower-value timber could be made into composite products, such as the kind used in IKEA furniture, an administration official said, which would give private industry a financial incentive to help the state prevent forest fires. 

This reminds me of Tweets I saw in the wake of the Dixie Fire, which destroyed the Plumas County town of Greenville in August, about the revival of a mill in nearby Crescent Mills to process the timber detritus of that fire.

Here's a December, 2021 story from the Bee about the struggle to process the burned trees from the Dixie Fire, that one featuring a mill in Chester, at the Plumas-Lassen County line.   

The story about the California budget continues:  

California’s lumber industry has been in decline for decades, largely because of environmental restrictions. Now, California doesn’t have nearly enough lumber mills to process the millions of trees that threaten to fuel megafires, forestry experts say. 

Another program would put $50 million into the state’s four California State University farms to research ways farms can adapt to climate change, such as by testing drought resilient grasses and finding more efficient ways to feed livestock, said administration officials who agreed to speak only on background to candidly discuss the governor’s budget plans.

Newsom’s budget also proposes giving $83 million to California State University Bakersfield to research how to help oil and gas workers transition into new careers as the state decreases its use of planet-warming fossil fuels. The budget would add another $250 million to help those workers train for and find new jobs.

The Bakersfield campus sits in Kern County, home to much of California’s oil and gas industry, where workers will be displaced by Newsom’s policies to restrict drilling and ban sales of new gas-powered cars.

Wow.  I wonder when a California state budget has attended to so many rural and rural adjacent issues.  See the full story for more on how the budget would tackle California wildfires.