Dahle is a third-generation farmer, business owner, and father. Before running for the State Legislature, Dahle was a Lassen County Supervisor and a full-time farmer in rural Northern California who raises cereal crops for seed.
Supervisor
Elected to the Lassen County Board of Supervisors in 1996, Brian helped ensure that the Lassen County budget was balanced. While he served as a supervisor, he helped them become completely debt free.
Dahle was first elected to the State Assembly in November 2012 with 65.6% of the vote. He was reelected in 2014 with 70.2% of the vote, and again in 2016 with 73.76%. He was appointed Vice Chair of the Assembly Environmental and Toxic Materials Committee, the Revenue and Taxation Committee, and the Natural Resources Committee. He has also served as a member of the following Committees: Agriculture, Water, Parks and Wildlife, Privacy and Consumer Protection, Utilities and Commerce, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Insurance, and Business and Professions. ` Dahle was appointed in 2018 by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to serve on the Subcommittee on Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response, which is working to improve services for staff in the Capitol. Dahle was elected by his Assembly Republican colleagues to serve as their Leader on August 24, 2017. He served in this leadership role from September 15, 2017 to November 8, 2018. Dahle took office as a State Senator on June 12, 2019.
Legislative Accomplishments
Dahle has introduced several bills while he was in the State Assembly, which have been signed into law.
Assembly Bill 354, required local initiatives to disclose how the measure qualified for the ballot -- whether that was by voter petitions or by being placed by the local government.
Assembly Bill 744 addressed the need for forest fuel reduction in response to catastrophic fires in California by establishing a fuel reduction pilot program, establishing a three-year pilot project to increase the diameter of tree, increasing the size of trees that can be removed, and directing state agencies to work together to develop regionally appropriate forest restoration processes.
Assembly Bill 2363 directed the California Public Utilities Commission to calculate the integration cost of different sources of “green” power to ensure ratepayers get the best deal for their renewable electricity dollar.
Assembly Bill 2082 authorized the Board of Forestry to set stocking standards based on the specific landscape and species needs, and to take into account the vastly improved survival rates of today's seedlings.
Assembly Bill 2112. The law fixes the Public Resources Code to allow landowners more time to extend Timber Harvest Plans. The law previously allowed no more than a 30-day window for filing notice to extend Timber Harvest Plans, leaving landowners at great risk of having their plans – which can easily cost $30,000 to $40,000 to complete – expire and need to be rewritten simply because of trivial paperwork oversights. The law now allows a 140-day window to ask for an extension.
Assembly Bill 2029 reduces some of the regulation and red tape on landowners working to thin the timber on their property to reduce fire danger.
Assembly Bill 1665 sets a goal of providing broadband access to 98 percent of California households. Assembly Bill 1665 will strengthen the California Advanced Services Fund, which supports modern communications infrastructure in underserved areas.
In June 2019, after winning his seat in the California State Senate, Dahle held a "Faith and Values Town Hall" at a church in Redding. While elected officials are expected to reach out to their constituents, Dahle's former opponent, Silke Pflueger, criticised him, saying it was inappropriate for an elected official to invite a selected group to a town hall meeting and to then hold that meeting on that group's site. While Dahle's office pushed back that the invitation was open to the public, it included the text, "Christians from local churches are invited." Redding's demographic is 73% non-religious, where two-thirds of the religious population are adherents to Protestantism. In response to a request for comment, a co-speaker at the event, Redding Mayor Winter responded, "I want to say, for the record, that I wholeheartedly agree with the principle of the separation of church and state." Adding, "That does not mean that people of faith should not be involved in government."
Personal life
The son and grandson of a farmer, Dahle grew up in rural Northern California, in Lassen County. His family history dates back to their original homestead farm in the 1930s in the Tulelake area of Siskiyou County. Their present Lassen County farm, in Bieber, California, was purchased in the 1940s by Brian's grandparents and has remained as the family farm since that time. He married his wife Megan in 1999. When his parents retired, Dahle and his wife purchased the farm. He and his wife have three children.
