Sufficient staffing, adequate funding, and effective park policies are critical to ensuring a thriving state park system. We work to achieve park excellence by fighting for a fully funded California state park system and by creating thriving partnership programs so that state parks can benefit from all the work of nonprofit partners.
PARK ADVOCACY DAY
At Park Advocacy Day in May 2023, we brought together 70+ park supporters to speak with their legislators on key parks issues for the 2023 legislative session, including our two sponsored bills, both of which were signed into law later in the year! Assembly Bill 1150 (Committee on Parks, Water, and Wildlife) will remove barriers to access by allowing state parks to waive the fees and paperwork for chosen nonprofit partners that run important programs like environmental education and nature-based learning in state parks. Our second sponsored bill, Senate Bill 668 (Dodd), will allow California State Parks to continue to work with the nonprofit partners that operate some state parks in perpetuity. We also advocated for increased funding for state parks both in the state budget and in potential upcoming climate bonds Assembly Bill 1567 (E. Garcia) and Senate Bill 867 (Allen). This funding advocacy was focused on addressing the backlog of deferred maintenance at state parks, which only continues with each year of wear and tear. Stay tuned to see how a climate bond progresses through 2024!
FOLLOWING THROUGH ON PARK EXCELLENCE IN THE 2022 LEGISLATIVE SESSION
Each year, our team reads thousands of bills proposed for the legislative session, keeping an eye out for the ones that could make a real difference for state parks. The bills that most closely align with our goals and values become our legislative priorities for the year, and we work to champion them throughout their long journey to becoming law by meeting with legislators, submitting letters of support, gaining public support through petitions, and testifying and providing insight and knowledge at committee meetings. We are committed to advocating for park excellence in the Legislature and to seeing each bill through the legislative process.
It's not uncommon for policy ideas to be introduced multiple times before becoming law. We carry ideas over to the next year, learning from every legislative session what to do next time. In the 2022 session, we followed many bills — prioritizing 10 of them in our legislative agenda — and we’ve highlighted a few below.
