LA County Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action & Fire Safe Recovery

 BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION ON CLIMATE ACTION AND FIRE SAFE RECOVERY 

Realizing Safer, Fire Hardened Los Angeles County Communities Given The 21st Century Reality of Climate Change 

WHAT WILL THE BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION DO? 

In order to support a more resilient and sustainable recovery from the 2025 LA County Wildfires, Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath is convening an independent Commission made up of leading experts from diverse professional backgrounds who will volunteer their time to inform recommendations for Los Angeles County’s recovery and rebuilding effort. The recommendations will be designed for broad applicability across LA County, ensuring a thoughtful, cohesive, and region-wide approach to rebuilding that prioritizes resiliency to natural hazards. 

The University of California, Los Angeles, will support and be guided by the Commission as a research partner, compiling a diverse set of experts from across the UCLA campus and leading research institutions across the Los Angeles region. UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge and the Luskin Center for Innovation will provide research and administration support to the Commission, draft recommendations, and lead community engagement. 

The Commission will develop recommendations to 1) build back homes, businesses, and infrastructure to be more resilient to fires and other climate shocks; 2) retrofit existing homes, businesses, and infrastructure in at-risk communities, and 3) catalyze regionwide climate resiliency measures and investments. 

WHO WILL SERVE ON THE BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION? 

The Commission is made up of volunteer community and technical experts including national climate resiliency and disaster response leaders; building and urban design professionals; water and power engineers; and housing, insurance, and finance experts. 

Matt Petersen (Chair): CEO, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator; Former Chief Sustainability Officer City of Los Angeles 

Fran Pavley (Vice Chair): State Senator (Ret.), Environmental Policy Director, USC Schwarzenegger Center 

Marty Adams: General Manager (Ret.), Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 

Marissa Aho: Former Chief Resilience Officer for Los Angeles and Houston; Director Executive Climate Office King County, WA. 

Ted Bardacke: CEO, Clean Power Alliance 2 

Ron Frierson: Director of Economic Development, Amazon; Board Chair, LA Economic Development Corporation 

Mark Gold: Former California Deputy Secretary for Oceans and Coastal Policy; Director for Water Scarcity Solutions, NRDC. 

Russell Goldsmith: Former Chairman, City National Bank; Chairman, Forest Management Company 

Laurie Johnson: Former Chief Catastrophe Response and Resiliency Officer, California Earthquake Authority 

Mary Leslie: President, Los Angeles Business Council 

Rudy Ortega: Tribal President, Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians 

Veronica Padilla: CEO, Pacoima Beautiful 

Jonathan Parfrey: CEO, Climate Resolve 

Tracy Quinn: CEO, Heal the Bay 

Laurie Schoeman: Chief Impact Officer, Partners for the Common Good 

Donna Shen Tripp: Partner, Craig Lawson & Co. 

Ben Stapleton: Executive Director, US Green Building Council, California 

Roy Wright: CEO, Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety

UCLA Research Team 

UCLA is the nation’s top-ranked public university and will support the Commission with research, convenings, public engagement, and vetted recommendations. It will be convened by Chancellor Julio Frenk and led by climate change adaptation policy expert and Luskin Center for Innovation Faculty Director Megan Mullin. Institute for the Environment and Sustainability’s Director Alex Hall, a leading atmospheric science and wildfire expert, will support this effort with his staff at the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. Deputy Director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Julia Stein will round out UCLA’s leadership team supporting the Commission. 

The multi-disciplinary team will leverage expertise from world-class UCLA faculty from: 

• Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment: Mary Nichols 
• Luskin School of Public Affairs: Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Evelyn Blumenberg, Greg Pierce, Mike Lens, Paul Ong, Minjee Kim, Liz Koslov 
• School of Architecture and Urban Design: Dana Cuff, Stephanie Landregan 
• Ziman Center for Real Estate: Stuart Gabriel 
• Institute of the Environment and Sustainability: Stephanie Pincetl, Aradhna Tripati 
• UCLA Labor Center: Saba Waheed 
• Fielding School of Public Health: Wendy Slusser 

Additionally, leading experts in engineering, environmental justice, and climate science from area universities including CalTech (Neil Fromer), the University of Southern California (Manuel Pastor, Kelly Sanders), Cal Poly Pomona (Nicole Lambrou), and RAND (Robert Lempert) will be included among the faculty advisors for this project. 3 

WHAT DELIVERABLES WILL THEY PROVIDE? 

Within three months, the Commission will deliver concrete recommendations for policymakers and impacted community members on strategies to advance rebuilding sustainably and resiliently. 

Within six months, the Commission will deliver further recommendations addressing resiliency measures for at-risk communities, including critical infrastructure investments, across LA County. 

Research questions will include the following themes: 

• Resiliency measures and construction practices (e.g. materials, defensible space, plant palette) that are most impactful to keep buildings and critical infrastructure safe. 
• Strategies to reduce cost and fast-track resilient rebuilds of homes and businesses. 
• Opportunities to reduce regulatory barriers to resiliency measures. 
• Urban design, brush management, and landscape considerations to protect properties and infrastructure. 
• Water, power, and communications infrastructure hardening, resiliency, and redundancy. 
• Financing strategies to support private and public reconstruction goals, including support for legacy homeownership, combatting land speculation, and insurance coverage. 
• Approaches to rebuilding that elevate community priorities and advance economic, environmental, and social equity. 
• Effective retrofit measures to existing structures for enhanced resiliency. 

HOW WILL THE COMMUNITY BE INVOLVED? 

The recommendations are urgently needed to support fire-impacted homeowners and businesses, but the lessons will be applicable to many at-risk communities across LA County. 

The Commission will work with UCLA to develop a community engagement process for each phase of this initiative that allows it to incorporate: 

• Priorities and preferences from Palisades and Eaton Fire impacted communities. 
• Opportunities for enhancing resiliency cost-effectively in similarly at-risk communities. 
• Innovative ideas proposed by businesses, residents, and researchers, as well as lessons from other communities impacted by wildfires and other climate disasters. 
• Align with and leverage feedback from other community-driven processes being developed to support fire recovery. 

HOW WILL THE COMMISSION BE FUNDED? 

This effort is supported by a grant from the California Community Foundation and in-kind support from UCLA, including from the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge and Luskin Center for Innovation. Commission members are all volunteers. 

WHAT MAKES THE COMMISSION UNIQUE? 

This Blue Ribbon Commission is unique from other efforts underway in that: 

• It focuses on best practice sustainable and climate resilient strategies to protect and enhance buildings, neighborhoods, and infrastructure. 
• It convenes 18 of the top practitioners on all aspects of climate-resilient development. 
• It will be housed at and supported by UCLA, drawing upon the expertise of nearly two dozen of the world’s top researchers in their fields. 
• It will produce data and cost driven recommendations. 
• It will include community engagement and input of ideas, with an equity lens. 
• While written with policymakers and key stakeholders in mind, it will be an independent report. No government or political office will edit the recommendations. 
• It is supported by the California Community Foundation, the County’s trusted philanthropic partner supporting recovery.