Many California cities are understaffed and unprepared to mobilize climate funds: report

While California cities and counties now have an unprecedented chance to harness historic funding to combat climate change, many of them lack the workforce necessary to capitalize on this investment, a new report has found. 

Local governments across California have the opportunity to expedite this fight by accessing millions of dedicated state and federal dollars, including through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Yet only about 6 percent of responding jurisdictions — representing more than a third of cities and counties statewide — said they had more than five employees focused on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. 

Meanwhile, 33 percent of respondents said they had no staff members working on emissions reductions, per the report. 

“Many of California’s local governments currently lack the staff capacity necessary to first access critical funding for climate planning and then implement strategic planning efforts,” report co-author Hanna Payne said in a statement.

Payne is a climate policy research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, which published the report alongside the Institute for Local Government and Next 10 nonprofit organizations.

In addition to uncovering the understaffing issues, the report found only about half of the responding jurisdictions adopted a climate action plan — and that those that did tended to be bigger and wealthier. 

That said, about three-quarters of respondents were at least in the process of developing one, and only 2 percent of the already-adopted plans have not been updated since 2010, according to the survey. 

Local officials were largely aware of the challenges their regions are facing with regard to climate change, but they repeatedly identified a lack of financial resources and sufficient staffing as roadblocks toward implementing stronger policies, the report found. 

And while the increase in available state and federal funds could technically help galvanize these programs, the respondents said securing such resources often is “not easy.”

About 53 percent of respondents categorized state and federal grants as a top need, but 42 percent said they needed help in finding and applying for available funding.

“The desire to advance climate action and sustainability goals is there, but the capacity and resources are not,” Erica Manuel, CEO and executive director of the Institute for Local Government, said in a statement. 

“Additional investments in technical assistance, flexible funding and workforce development will go a long way toward achieving our shared climate goals,” Manuel added. 

The authors did address some potential limiting factors in their report, particularly with regard to the survey sample composition.

A total of 142 cities and 33 counties responded to the survey, meaning each category had about a 30 percent and 58 percent response rate, respectively. 

Because larger jurisdictions were more likely to complete the survey, the results represent about 54 percent of the state’s population, according to the report. 

But because certain areas — such as smaller, rural communities — were underrepresented in the response sample, the authors said that the results are more suited to identifying trends, rather than reflecting the state as a whole. 

“As the state faces worsening impacts from climate change, local governments are the front-line defense for our communities,” F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, said in a statement. 

“We need to identify the barriers cities and counties face so we can take full advantage of the historic federal and state funding available to better protect ourselves now and in the future,” Perry added.