Forestry and Fire Amendments

Updated definitions of 'Compensation' and 'Final average salary' to clarify what counts toward retirement benefits and how cost-of-living adjustments are calculated.

Expanded the definition of 'Firefighter service' to explicitly include dispatchers and emergency medical service personnel performing hazardous duties.

Added eligibility for state-employed dispatchers and emergency medical service personnel to participate in the Firefighters' Retirement System starting July 1, 2026.

Created the 'Utah Wildfire Fund' to collect and distribute money for wildfire suppression, prevention, and rehabilitation costs.

Clarified enforcement responsibilities by explicitly including the Division of Law Enforcement itself alongside sheriffs and other officers.

Set specific effective dates for new eligibility rules (July 1, 2026) and reporting requirements (fiscal year ending June 30, 2026).

Corrected formatting and removed redundant brackets and placeholder text (e.g., 'pursuant to') from the Utah Wildfire Fund section to improve legal clarity.

Removed unnecessary brackets and words like 'make' or 'and' from the fund's expenditure list to align with standard legislative drafting.

Added a bullet point in the long title about heritage trees, but no corresponding text changes were made to the heritage tree statutes in this version.

Reordered and relabeled definitions in the Utah Wildfire Fund section to fix numbering errors (e.g., changing duplicate (b) labels to (c) and (d)).

Updated the definition of 'Cooperative agreement for forest management' to streamline the list of included activities.