SB 345 amends Health and Safety Code sections 13157 and 13159.8 to restrict when the State Fire Marshal may establish and collect admission, training, and implementation fees for the California Fire Service Training and Education Program and the California Fire and Arson Training Act. Under the bill, fee authority becomes conditional: the Marshal may charge fees only to the extent that state appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient to cover the necessary costs.
The change preserves the Marshal’s existing responsibilities — standards, curricula, examinations, and administration of the California Fire Academy System — while reducing the default reliance on user fees. For practitioners and compliance officers, the practical effect is a statutory push to fund core training and testing from public appropriations rather than recurring fee revenue, creating new budgeting and administrative questions for the Marshal’s office and state fiscal planners.
At a Glance
What It Does
SB 345 conditions the State Fire Marshal’s authority to set and collect admission, training, and implementation fees on a finding that state appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient to cover the costs. It applies this test to courses, seminars, specialized training, examination development and administration, and related activities.
Who It Affects
The change affects the State Fire Marshal’s fee program, California fire academies and training providers, entities that pay for specialized training or promotional exams (including local fire departments), and the state budget unit that may need to appropriate funds to replace fee revenue.
Why It Matters
By making fees a backstop rather than a regular funding mechanism, the bill shifts fiscal responsibility toward the Legislature and the General Fund, reduces direct user charges for trainees and departments when appropriations are available, and creates administrative work to document when fees are legitimately required.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 345 rewrites two statutory provisions that govern how the State Fire Marshal funds and charges for fire training, curricula, and examinations. The core change is simple on its face: the Marshal keeps the authority to set admission and other fees, but may exercise that authority only when state appropriations and other funding sources do not cover the necessary costs.
That conditional language applies to fees for seminars, conferences, specialized training, and the implementation activities under the California Fire and Arson Training Act, including exam development and administration.
The bill preserves an existing prohibition that prevents the Marshal from charging fees for certain training classes — specifically, training provided by the Marshal that relates to state laws and regulations that local fire services are authorized or required to enforce. SB 345 leaves that exemption intact while adding the new funding-first requirement for fee imposition across other program elements.
The Marshal continues to set curricula, validate minimum standards, maintain promotional exams, and promote the California Fire Academy System; SB 345 does not modify those substantive duties.In practice, the conditional fee authority forces a sequence: the Marshal (and the administering agency) must first look to legislative appropriations and any other funding streams before turning to fees. That raises operational questions the statute does not resolve — how the Marshal documents insufficiency, how “other funding sources” are defined, whether grants or gifts count before fees, and when a determination to charge fees is made relative to course scheduling and registration.
Those are implementation choices the Marshal or the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (which houses the Marshal) will have to address administratively.
The Five Things You Need to Know
SB 345 amends Health and Safety Code §13157 to limit the State Fire Marshal’s ability to set and collect admission and other fees for seminars, conferences, and specialized training.
The bill amends §13159.8 to require that any fees necessary to implement the California Fire and Arson Training Act be established only to the extent state appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient.
SB 345 keeps the existing statutory prohibition against charging fees for Marshals’ training on state laws and regulations that local fire services are authorized or required to enforce.
The conditional fee authority covers exams and promotional testing: the Marshal may not rely on exam fees if appropriations and other funding sources adequately cover development and maintenance costs.
§13157(e) is revised to explicitly cross-reference fee collection under §13159.8(e), aligning administrative fee authority between the program and the Fire and Arson Training Act implementation.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Make fee authority conditional for program admissions and trainings
Section 13157 previously authorized the State Fire Marshal to establish and collect admission and other fees for seminars, conferences, and specialized training. SB 345 inserts a clear condition: the Marshal may only collect those fees when state appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient to cover the necessary costs. The section also cross-references fee collection under §13159.8, aligning procedural authority across the training program and the Fire and Arson Training Act. Operationally, this requires the Marshal to treat fees as a backstop rather than a primary funding source.
Limit fees for implementing the Fire and Arson Training Act and retain training exemptions
Section 13159.8 gives the Marshal responsibility for minimum standards, curricula, exam development and promotional testing, and administration of the California Fire Academy System. SB 345 revises subdivision (e) so any fees ‘‘necessary to implement this section’’ may be established only when appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient. The bill preserves the existing rule that the Marshal shall not charge fees for training classes that cover state laws and regulations local fire services enforce, leaving that exemption intact while narrowing fee authority for all other implementation activities.
Administrative and fiscal practices required to operationalize the new test
The statute does not specify how the Marshal must determine ‘‘insufficient’’ funding or which ‘‘other funding sources’’ must be exhausted first. That gap creates an administrative assignment: the Marshal must adopt internal procedures or regulations to document funding insufficiency, decide whether grants, gifts, or interagency transfers count as alternate funding, and set timelines for making fee determinations relative to course scheduling. These procedural choices will determine whether the conditional fee authority is effectively limiting fee use or merely adding a paper trail to existing practices.
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Who Benefits
- Local fire departments and low‑resource volunteer departments — reduced likelihood of being charged admission or exam fees when the Legislature provides funding, lowering training costs for small or rural agencies.
- Individual firefighters, trainees, and recruits — a greater chance that core training and promotional testing will be publicly funded, improving access for personnel with limited training budgets.
- Colleges, academies, and public training providers — more predictable enrollment if fees are less frequently applied and the state prioritizes appropriations for program costs.
Who Bears the Cost
- California General Fund (and ultimately the Legislature) — the statutory change pushes the financial burden for program delivery onto appropriations when fee revenue is curtailed.
- State Fire Marshal’s fee‑funded programs — reduced flexibility and less discretionary revenue if appropriations are not provided, which could force cuts or reconfiguration of services.
- Private or third‑party training vendors and contractors — if the Marshal reduces paid offerings in favor of appropriation‑backed programming, vendors that previously supplied fee‑based seminars could see less demand.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits two legitimate goals against one another: protecting local departments and trainees from burdensome user fees, and ensuring a sustainable funding stream to deliver and maintain high‑quality training and examinations. Limiting fees preserves affordability but shifts cost decisions into the legislative budget process and creates ambiguous implementation choices that could delay or shrink program delivery if appropriations do not follow.
SB 345’s central operational ambiguity is procedural: the bill requires fee collection only ‘‘to the extent’’ appropriations and other funding sources are insufficient, but it does not define ‘‘insufficient’’ or list the order in which funding sources must be tapped. Is a shortfall measured against a single fiscal year appropriation, a multiyear budget, or projected course revenues?
Do conditional grants or private gifts count as other funding sources that must be used before fees? Those unanswered questions will drive implementation choices and potential disputes with stakeholders over whether a fee was lawfully imposed.
The statute also implicitly reallocates fiscal pressure. If the Legislature does not provide additional appropriations to replace fee revenue, the Marshal’s office may need to reduce offerings, postpone updates to examinations and curricula, or seek alternative nonfee revenue.
Conversely, if the Legislature steps in, training becomes a budgetary item competing with other priorities — a political, not administrative, decision. Finally, the bill keeps the exemption for training tied to state laws and regulations local services enforce, but it does not expand or clarify what counts as ‘‘training relating to state laws and regulation,’’ leaving room for technical disputes about whether specific courses qualify for the fee prohibition.
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