The insurance commissioner may sound like an obscure regulatory title, but the job carries enormous weight. The commissioner runs the California Department of Insurance, which regulates homeowners, auto, life, health and workers’ compensation coverage, among other lines. It’s the commissioner’s job to make sure policies remain available, premiums stay within reason, and insurance companies actually follow through on what they promise policyholders.

Those responsibilities hit especially close to home for Californians as wildfire risk and other climate-driven disasters intensify. Seven of the state’s 10 most destructive wildfires have struck within the last decade. At the same time, residents are grappling with rising costs across the board, insurance premiums included — and it’s the Department of Insurance that signs off on those rate hikes.

Most states appoint their insurance commissioner, but California is one of 11 where voters elect the position directly. The current commissioner, Democrat and former state legislator Ricardo Lara, has held the office for eight years. State Sen. Ben Allen and former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, both Democrats, are now vying to replace him when his term ends in January.

Whoever wins will have to balance competing interests — consumers, insurance companies, consumer advocacy groups, wildfire survivors and more.

“The job isn’t to be a friend or an enemy to anyone, except to be a friend to the California consumer,” said Lucy Wang, a former special counsel at the Department of Insurance during Lara’s tenure. Wang left the department late last year and now works as a senior attorney at a San Francisco law firm, where she represents insurers on regulatory matters and litigation.

CalMatters spoke with experts including Wang, consumer advocacy groups and Lara’s predecessor about what the commissioner can — and can’t — actually do.

Lara declined to be interviewed for this story. Department of Insurance spokesperson Michael Soller offered this statement instead: “Guided by an unprecedented level of communication with the public across the state, [Lara] used executive power to overcome entrenched opposition from every sector and modernize insurance regulation to confront the climate crisis.”

**Setting Policy and Rules**

The commissioner sets policy and rolls out new regulations, many of which reach directly into consumers’ wallets — either through the rulemaking process or by working alongside state lawmakers to craft legislation.

Several years ago, a string of massive, deadly wildfires drove a wave of costly claims, prompting some insurers to stop writing or renewing policies in California altogether. Companies argued the rates they were allowed to charge didn’t reflect actual risk, and that the Department of Insurance was too slow approving rate increases. State lawmakers tried to pass legislation addressing the problem but failed. Gov. Gavin Newsom then issued an executive order directing Lara to fix it. Last year, Lara put new regulations in place that borrowed from those failed bills — including provisions the insurance industry had been pushing for a long time.

The new rules let insurers factor catastrophe modeling — which accounts for future risk, not just historical data — and reinsurance costs into their rate-setting. In practice, that means most Californians will see their premiums climb, if they haven’t already. The department is also trying to speed up its review of insurers’ rate-increase requests.

Lara’s department and the insurance industry both say the commissioner’s so-called sustainable insurance strategy is beginning to show results. Some companies have resumed writing policies in the state, though the department says it doesn’t yet know how many of those are genuinely new customers, according to Soller.

The FAIR Plan — a last-resort program that pools insurers required to sell fire coverage to homeowners who can’t get it anywhere else — has swelled in recent years as insurers pulled back from the market. That growth has slowed recently, which the department points to as another sign its new rules are working. As of June, the FAIR Plan still had nearly 700,000 active policies, up 8% from September 2025 and 157% from September 2022.

Another new rule that recently took effect concerns the role of “intervenors” in insurance rate reviews. Under Proposition 103, the ballot measure that governs California insurance law, any resident can intervene — hence the term — to challenge an insurer’s request for a rate hike, and get compensated for doing so. The consumer group Consumer Watchdog, founded by the author of Prop 103, has long been the state’s leading intervenor. The group says it saved Californians $6.4 billion between 2002 and 2024.

“The intervention process is an additional check to keep insurance prices from spiraling upward,” said Will Pletcher, an attorney with Consumer Watchdog. He added that insurance companies “will always be able to outspend consumers,” and that the intervention process gives the public a way to scrutinize proposed rates.

Average annual homeowners insurance premiums in California — a state with some of the priciest real estate in the country — rank in the middle nationally but have jumped 23% since 2023, according to an analysis by the comparison site Bankrate.com.

Lara’s new rule requires intervenors to make a substantial, distinct contribution to the department’s work, and that contribution must actually lead to a changed decision or other department action. Thirty-two consumer, labor and public advocacy organizations oppose the change. They argue it will make it harder for intervenors to get paid — Consumer Watchdog’s compensation totaled $14.2 million between 2002 and 2024 — and could discourage challenges to insurer rate requests, potentially leading to higher premiums for Californians.

Lara and the group have a long history of friction; Consumer Watchdog has raised questions about his ties to the insurance industry and pushed him toward greater transparency.

“The current commissioner is trying to punish [founder] Harvey [Rosenfield] and Watchdog, and that’s how we ended up with these absurd rules,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, another advocacy group that occasionally intervenes in rate cases.

Herrell, who previously worked at the Department of Insurance, said relying solely on the department’s internal expertise isn’t ideal. “An outside perspective can bring fresh thinking,” he said.

Lara has also proposed a rule the insurance industry doesn’t love: requiring companies to submit their solvency risk management plans to the department.

Wang, the former department attorney, helped draft it. She said the goal is giving the department as much information as possible to keep the insurance market stable.

Insurers are already required to share financial information with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Industry representatives argued in public comments in July that the new rule would be redundant and burdensome, requiring new expertise and expense.

Some consumer and civil rights groups, including Public Citizen, support Lara’s proposed rule. In its public comments, a Public Citizen representative urged the department to go further — for instance, by setting specific requirements for how insurers report climate-related risks.

In another example of how the commissioner’s authority directly affects consumer costs, a California appeals court ruled in July to uphold Lara’s right to continue allowing insurers to use a driver’s marital status as an optional factor in setting auto insurance rates. That practice dates back to 1996, under regulations added by former Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. Consumer groups have found that single drivers tend to pay more for auto insurance as a result. The case is expected to be appealed and could eventually land before the California Supreme Court.

**Holding Insurers Accountable**

The commissioner has the power to scrutinize how insurance companies behave and demand changes, or to work with the Legislature to write new laws forcing their hand.

After the 1991 Oakland Hills tunnel fire, many homeowners discovered their coverage fell short. Then-Commissioner John Garamendi pressured insurers into providing an additional $300 million in coverage. Now a member of Congress, Garamendi was seen as a fierce consumer advocate who regularly butted heads with the insurance industry — a strategy that worked in some cases and fell flat in others.

Survivors of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, many of whom are still trying to rebuild their lives, called for Lara’s resignation late last year. Frustrated by delays in claims processing, they accused the Department of Insurance of failing to deliver the help they needed in the aftermath.

“Fire survivors are absolutely right that they’re being treated unfairly,” said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders. But she added that the department has limited power over many insurance industry practices, such as assigning multiple adjusters to survivors, and it cannot settle disputes between policyholders and their insurers.

“The reality is [the department] can’t step into the shoes of a private attorney,” Bach said.

Even so, Lara’s predecessor, Dave Jones, said the commissioner should take more aggressive enforcement action against insurers.

“I think it’s important to have a commissioner who’s willing to exercise the authority the law gives them, and who is independent — not just from the influence of the insurance industry, but from the governor and the Legislature as well,” Jones said.

Lara’s department investigated how State Farm handled claims from last year’s Los Angeles County wildfires. In May, the department found that State Farm had broken the law — among other things, by delaying payments and underpaying claims — and recommended multimillion-dollar fines along with a possible one-year suspension. Yet the department still hasn’t scheduled a hearing on the matter, and late last month, fire survivors filed a lawsuit against Lara and the department, asking for a judge to be assigned to the case and seeking to participate as intervenors.

The Department of Insurance also took legal action against the FAIR Plan, accusing it of denying smoke-damage claims following the Eaton and Palisades fires. Smoke damage can be harder to detect, and there are no established assessment standards — though two bills recently passed by the Legislature aim to set standards that would be the first of their kind nationally.

The department reported that survivors of last year’s fires filed roughly 13,000 smoke-damage claims. Lara ordered the creation of a task force to study those claims, and the group released its recommendations earlier this year. Some of those recommendations made their way into the bills now sitting on the governor’s desk, including a requirement for testing to detect toxic materials, which would affect what insurance is required to cover. Lara backed Assembly Bill 1795; the other measure is AB 1642.

Wildfires represent the biggest challenge facing the commissioner right now, but the job touches on many other insurance issues as well. Earlier in his tenure, Lara dealt heavily with health insurance, as Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, was still getting off the ground.

The commissioner can review health insurance policies and proposed rate changes but cannot block rate increases outright — despite Jones’ earlier push to expand the office’s authority to do exactly that.

Still, Jones worked to exclude certain insurers from the small-business health insurance marketplace, arguing they showed patterns of excessive rate hikes. He and other consumer groups also succeeded in capping what Covered California beneficiaries had to pay out of pocket for specialty drugs, a move that put him at odds with then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration.

“That made a lot of people angry with me, but it was the right thing to do,” Jones said. “We need a commissioner willing to do that.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post What California’s Insurance Commissioner Does — and How It Affects Your Wallet appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision comes as another punishing heat wave grips much of the state, underscoring the real-world stakes of the debate. In rural areas, losing electricity can also mean losing access to water, since many wells rely on electric pumps. In cities, going without air conditioning or fans during a prolonged hot spell can pose serious health risks, and in extreme cases, prove fatal.

More than a year ago, the California Public Utilities Commission determined that existing safeguards against shutoffs during extreme heat were inadequate and directed the state’s largest utilities to come up with stronger rules. But when those companies submitted their proposal in December, regulators found it did little to change the status quo.

In a unanimous 4-0 vote Thursday, commissioners rejected the utilities’ plan, saying it failed to provide “sufficient health protections for customers.” The panel had originally set May 1 as the deadline for new rules to take effect. When utilities missed that deadline, consumer advocates filed emergency motions demanding action.

With the latest heat wave bearing down on California, the commission responded by lowering the temperature threshold at which utilities must halt shutoffs for unpaid bills, from 100 degrees to 90 degrees. Regulators also ordered utilities to adopt a more precise, region-specific heat standard within six months.

The fight over how to define dangerous heat dates back two years, to what was recorded as California’s hottest July on record. During that scorching stretch, the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network asked the commission to reconsider its definition of extreme heat, arguing in an emergency petition that heat kills more people directly than any other weather-related hazard.

Existing rules already barred utilities from shutting off residential power over nonpayment when forecasts called for temperatures above 100 degrees within a 72-hour window. But advocates argued that a single statewide threshold ignored how differently Californians experience heat depending on where they live.

Regulators declined to treat the request as an emergency at the time, but did direct utilities to develop a revised threshold in coordination with consumer advocates and other stakeholders.

Utilities responded by proposing to use CalHeatScore, a newly developed state tool that rates heat risk by ZIP code on a scale of 0 to 4, drawing on local health data and historical impacts, along with factors such as proximity to cooling centers and the presence of children and older residents, who tend to be more vulnerable to extreme heat.

The sticking point: utilities wanted the shutoff protection to kick in only at Level 3 on that scale, a higher bar than advocates sought, and wanted to keep the 100-degree threshold as a backup whenever the index data wasn’t available. Consumer groups pushed back, calling for protections to begin at the lower Level 2 and for a backup threshold of 90 degrees instead.

Utilities said they couldn’t meet the original deadline because the CalHeatScore data system, managed by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, wasn’t yet ready to support their compliance. Advocates countered that utilities offered little justification for insisting on keeping the higher 100-degree cutoff.

By May, with utilities still lagging, The Utility Reform Network joined forces with the San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Accessible Technology to formally ask the commission to step in.

This week, regulators sided decisively with consumer advocates, rejecting the utilities’ approach as essentially unchanged from prior practice. The commission’s resolution noted that the extreme-heat threshold already sits below 100 degrees in 41 of California’s 58 counties.

A 90-degree day might be unremarkable in dry inland cities such as Bakersfield or Fresno, but that same temperature can pose unusual danger in coastal or mountain communities, where fewer homes have air conditioning and residents are less acclimated to heat. In San Francisco, for instance, extreme heat is defined as anything above 85 degrees. In Del Norte County, in the state’s far northwest corner, the threshold is any temperature above 76.8 degrees, according to the commission.

“A single temperature threshold is needed to better protect residents in areas of the state that are not accustomed to high temperatures,” the commission wrote in its ruling.

Although utilities had pushed for narrower protections, company representatives now say they intend to comply fully with the stricter standard. Last December, the state’s major private electric providers jointly argued that expanding protections to cover lower heat-index levels would trigger shutoffs too frequently, increase unpaid customer debt and add costs without a corresponding health benefit. In a January filing, according to a PG&E spokesperson, the companies described the 90-degree threshold as overly broad.

These protections apply only to shutoffs triggered by nonpayment. They do not prevent outages caused by equipment failures, wildfire prevention shutoffs or other emergencies. Still, advocates say the safeguards matter enormously for vulnerable households.

“When a home loses power, it can set off a cascade of problems for tenants,” said Jason Zeller, an attorney with the Utility Consumers’ Action Network. “Without electricity, tenants can face eviction, and if they have children, they can even risk losing custody.”

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, all three major utilities said they were prepared to fall in line with the commission’s new standards. Southern California Edison said the resolution would strengthen protections during extreme heat events and that it was ready to revise its disconnection policies. San Diego Gas & Electric said it supported the added safety measures and would implement whatever final requirements the commission adopted.

“At PG&E, service disconnection is always a last resort, used only after multiple attempts to reach customers and offer payment plans and assistance programs,” said company spokesperson Adrienne Moore. Region-specific rules are expected to be finalized within six months.

The commission’s independent Public Advocates Office had pushed for stronger protections throughout the process, formally opposing the utilities’ original plan. Office director Linda Serizawa said the vote would give consumers protection “that kicks in when they need it most.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Limits Utility Shutoffs as Dangerous Heat Wave Grips the State appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted 4-0 on Thursday to lower the temperature threshold at which utilities are barred from cutting off power to customers behind on their bills, dropping it from 100 degrees to 90 degrees. The commission also directed utilities to develop a more tailored, region-by-region heat standard within six months, rejecting a utility-backed proposal that regulators said would have changed almost nothing for consumers.

The decision matters across the Inland Empire and Southern California, where triple-digit heat is common in desert and valley communities but can pose serious health risks even at lower temperatures in areas unaccustomed to sustained warmth. Losing electricity during a heat wave isn’t just an inconvenience — it can shut off air conditioning, refrigeration and, in some rural areas, even water service, turning a billing dispute into a genuine safety emergency.

The fight over how to define “extreme heat” dates back two years, to the record-breaking July of 2023 that state climatologists called the hottest month in California history. In the aftermath, The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group, petitioned the commission to revisit its heat rules, arguing that heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard Californians face. At the time, state rules prohibited electric utilities from shutting off residential service over unpaid bills only when forecasts called for temperatures above 100 degrees within a 72-hour window.

Advocates argued that a single statewide number failed to reflect how differently heat affects communities. Regulators agreed the rule needed updating and ordered utilities — including Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — to craft an improved framework in consultation with consumer groups.

The utilities’ response, filed in December, leaned on a new state tool called CalHeatScore, which rates heat risk by ZIP code on a scale of zero to four using factors such as local health outcomes, availability of cooling centers, and the share of children and elderly residents nearby. But the utilities proposed setting the disconnection threshold at the tool’s higher Level 3 rating, and wanted to keep 100 degrees as a fallback whenever CalHeatScore data wasn’t available.

Consumer advocates said that approach didn’t go far enough and pushed for a lower Level 2 threshold paired with a 90-degree backup standard. Utilities said the delay was due to CalHeatScore’s data system, managed by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, not being fully operational — an explanation advocates found unconvincing.

By May, with utilities missing the commission’s original deadline, The Utility Reform Network was joined by the San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Accessible Technology in filing an emergency motion asking regulators to step in directly.

This week, the commission did just that, siding firmly with consumer advocates. In its written resolution, the commission noted that 41 of California’s 58 counties already use an extreme-heat threshold below 100 degrees, undercutting the utilities’ position. Regulators pointed out that a 90-degree day is unremarkable in inland communities like Bakersfield or Fresno, but can pose serious health risks in coastal or mountain towns where air conditioning is less common and residents are less acclimated to sustained heat.

As an example, the commission noted that San Francisco defines extreme heat as anything above 85 degrees, while in rural Del Norte County near the Oregon border, the threshold is just 76.8 degrees. “A single threshold temperature level needs to be more protective of residents in areas of the state that are not accustomed to high temperatures,” the commission wrote.

Despite having pushed back on the stricter rules for months — warning in earlier filings that a 90-degree standard was “overbroad” and would increase unpaid balances without a clear health benefit — all three major utilities said this week they intend to comply.

A PG&E spokesperson said the company treats disconnection as a last resort, used only after repeated attempts to reach customers with payment plans and assistance programs, and that it expects to roll out the new regional standard within the commission’s six-month window. Southern California Edison said the resolution strengthens safeguards during extreme heat and that it is prepared to update its disconnection policies accordingly. SDG&E likewise said it supports the additional protections and will implement whatever final requirements the commission adopts.

It’s worth noting that the new rules apply specifically to shutoffs tied to unpaid bills — they won’t stop outages caused by equipment failures, wildfire-prevention power shutoffs, or other emergencies.

Still, advocates say the change carries real weight for vulnerable households. “When electricity is shut off to a home, it can have a sort of a cascading effect of problems on tenants,” said Jason Zeller, an attorney with the Utility Consumers Action Network, noting that families without power can face eviction proceedings or, in some cases, child custody complications.

The commission’s independent Public Advocates Office had also pushed for the stronger standard throughout the review process, formally opposing the utilities’ original plan. Director Linda Serizawa said the vote ensures Californians get protection “that takes effect when they need it most.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Limits Power Shutoffs as Dangerous Heat Wave Grips State appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Assembly Bill 1776 would broaden the state’s antitrust framework, giving individuals and businesses that claim they were harmed by a single company’s efforts to squeeze out competition the ability to sue in state court. Under current California law, these kinds of cases typically require evidence that two or more parties conspired to stifle competition. Federal law already allows enforcement against a single dominant company, but supporters of what’s being called the California COMPETE Act argue that federal courts have chipped away at antitrust protections so much that the state needs its own legal standard.

The fight has created an unusual alignment of interests, pitting labor unions and trial attorneys against California’s influential business and technology lobbies. Combined, groups on both sides of the debate have poured at least $106 million into legislative campaigns since 2000, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

Backers of the bill say it would give shoppers a legal tool to help keep independent grocery stores and pharmacies from being squeezed out, prevent single companies from dominating farm and restaurant supply chains, and expand health care choices for patients.

Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, the Democratic majority leader who represents the Davis area and is carrying the bill, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that more than 75% of American industries have undergone significant consolidation since the late 1990s.

“When companies gain that much power and abuse it, it translates into higher prices, fewer choices, fewer opportunities for entrepreneurs to start small businesses, and lower wages for working families,” Aguiar-Curry told the committee.

Business groups counter that the bill would open a new avenue for unscrupulous law firms to pressure companies into costly settlements. For years, employers have complained that California’s legal landscape already invites activists and plaintiffs’ attorneys to target businesses with demand letters and lawsuits over issues such as disability access compliance, product warning labels, wage and hour claims, and consumer privacy violations.

The California Chamber of Commerce was concerned enough about the bill that its lobbyists put up billboards near the state Capitol earlier this year calling out Aguiar-Curry by name.

“Cecilia, prices are high enough,” one billboard read. “Don’t make life more expensive for California consumers.” Chamber spokesperson John Myers declined to comment further on the billboard campaign.

Moderate Democrats remain wary

If the chamber’s goal was to pressure lawmakers into killing the bill, the tactic may have backfired. The unusually public attack on a well-regarded, senior Democrat appears to have generated sympathy and support for the legislation, even as several moderate Democrats continue to worry that it could make California a harder place to do business.

At least one legal expert says those concerns have merit. Babette Boliek, a law professor at Pepperdine University and former chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission, argues the bill’s language is so broad that it “would invite judges to pick winners and losers based on subjective sympathies rather than measurable harm.” She compared it to enforcing “a speed limit nobody knows exists.”

Aguiar-Curry’s office has responded to some of the criticism. After early pushback, she added a carve-out meant to shield small, independent California businesses — those with no more than 100 employees and average annual gross revenue under $10 million over the previous three years — from being sued under the new law.

Ben Golombek, executive vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce, said thousands of California companies would still be exposed to expensive litigation, including lawsuits from their own competitors.

“This unprecedented, massive legal liability for businesses of all sizes — small, medium and large — is why we oppose this bill so strongly,” he said.

Mark Ramos, president of the Western States Council of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said the bill would help ensure that industry consolidation doesn’t drive down wages or push up prices for workers. As grocery chains continue to merge, he said, it’s become harder for union members to negotiate the kind of wages that once allowed workers like him to afford housing.

“With that consolidation has come the bigger challenge of not being able to negotiate a contract that allows our members to thrive in their local economy, because these retailers no longer have to compete with each other,” Ramos said.

Some Democrats remain hesitant, particularly state Sen. Tom Umberg, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Historically, Umberg has voted alongside Ramos’ union about 93% of the time, according to Digital Democracy records.

A key sticking point for Umberg is whether private citizens and businesses should be allowed to file lawsuits under what’s known as a “private right of action.” He told the committee he currently wants that authority limited to local district attorneys and the California attorney general.

“We want to make sure we’re not chilling competition through the threat of lawsuits,” Umberg said during the hearing.

Aguiar-Curry said she’s willing to make most of the changes Umberg has requested, but has not committed to restricting enforcement solely to prosecutors. She said she would keep working to make it harder to file frivolous lawsuits in the next version of the bill.

Will the measure actually deter bad behavior?

The bill cleared committee with Republicans casting the only “no” votes, but Umberg abstained when his turn came — a move that functions as a “no” vote without officially opposing the bill. Fifteen other Democrats also declined to vote when the measure narrowly passed the Assembly floor.

Abstaining is a familiar strategy among California lawmakers looking to signal discomfort with a bill without angering powerful interest groups or colleagues by voting no outright.

The COMPETE Act will go before the Senate Appropriations Committee again when lawmakers return from summer recess in early August.

Supporters are hoping the final version of the bill preserves Californians’ ability to sue companies over anti-competitive conduct. Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group focused on fighting monopolistic practices, said it’s critical that ordinary Californians retain the right to bring these legal challenges themselves.

Without that option, he said, large corporations will simply lean on their financial resources and political influence to pressure regulators and lawmakers into looking the other way.

“The private right of action is a critical check against the politicization of antitrust enforcement, which threatens the entire project of policing markets to ensure fairness,” Hepner said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Californians Could Gain New Power to Sue Big Corporations — But Some Democrats Are Wary appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

That pattern played out with social media. Companies like Meta insisted their products were neutral, just tools for connection. But parents, teachers, attorneys general and young users painted a very different picture — one of platforms engineered to capture attention and keep people scrolling. California’s legal system eventually caught up. Attorney General Rob Bonta helped lead a multistate lawsuit accusing Meta of building addictive features into Facebook and Instagram that harmed kids. In March, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and Google liable in a closely watched case over social media addiction.

That history is worth remembering now, as prediction markets work their way into everyday American life.

Platforms like Polymarket aren’t social media apps, and they’re not lawless free-for-alls, either. Polymarket US, for instance, is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a designated contract market, with published rules barring insider trading, fraud and manipulation. Those protections matter — they help keep the marketplace fair.

But fairness in trading is not the same thing as protecting civic life.

Prediction markets let users buy and sell contracts tied to the outcome of future events — elections, Federal Reserve decisions, court rulings, international conflicts, economic data. In theory, they can serve a useful purpose, aggregating public sentiment into a real-time gauge of what people expect to happen. That’s the strongest case in their favor, and it shouldn’t be brushed aside.

The trouble starts when public life itself becomes just another form of entertainment to bet on.

An election isn’t only a price signal — it determines who governs us. An interest-rate announcement isn’t just a contract outcome — it shapes mortgage payments, credit card bills and small-business budgets. A crisis isn’t a trading opportunity — it’s something that touches real families and real communities. When everything gets reduced to a wager, it becomes far too easy to lose sight of what’s actually at stake for real people.

California shouldn’t wait until that kind of detachment becomes the norm. State lawmakers, the attorney general’s office and consumer protection regulators ought to start laying out expectations now for these hybrid products — part financial market, part gambling platform, part civic barometer.

That doesn’t mean shutting down every prediction market or denying that forecasting tools have value. It means asking whether rules against cheating are sufficient when the product itself has the potential to reshape how people engage with democracy and public life.

A reasonable framework for California would start with fundamentals: rigorous age verification, plain-language risk disclosures, deposit caps and mandatory cooling-off periods. Platforms shouldn’t be allowed to market these markets as easy money or as a form of civic engagement. And operators should be required to actively monitor for suspicious trading activity, insider information and manipulation.

Lawmakers should also weigh whether some categories of markets ought to be off-limits entirely — particularly those built around violence, disaster or tragedy. There’s a meaningful difference between wagering on tomorrow’s weather and creating a market out of human suffering.

Elections deserve particular scrutiny. Wagering on political outcomes carries the risk of changing how citizens relate to the democratic process itself. Voters should think of an election as a shared decision about the country’s direction — not primarily as an opportunity to cash in on volatility. If political betting markets keep expanding without meaningful oversight, public confidence in elections could become yet another casualty.

The aim should be a prediction-market industry that’s transparent enough to serve a real purpose, limited enough to avoid serious harm, and regulated enough to earn the public’s trust.

Supporting sensible guardrails doesn’t make California anti-innovation. The state can welcome new technology while still asking the essential question: are these tools helping people understand the world around them, or are they training people to gamble on it?

We’ve watched this story unfold before with other platforms. This time, California doesn’t need to wait for the lawsuits to pile up before acting. Lawmakers should write the rules now, while this industry is still young enough to be shaped for the better.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Prediction Markets Let Californians Bet on Life’s Big Moments — But at What Cost? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After an intense lobbying push this year from automobile companies, dealers and consumer groups, more legislative battles over California vehicle purchases could follow in 2026. Sky-high car prices show no signs of falling, and a Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have sought to thwart Newsom’s goal of having 100% of new cars sold in California be zero-emission by 2035. 

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat representing the El Segundo area, said he expects California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature will likely push back against national Republicans’ attack on California’s vehicle policies in some form next year, though he said it wasn’t yet clear how.

“We’re very committed to this path, so stay tuned, but clean air is a priority for our state,” said Allen, who chairs the Senate’s Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emission Energy Future. 

In the meantime, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Allen’s Senate Bill 766, creating a first-in-the-nation policy that allows a buyer to return a used vehicle for a full refund within three days if the purchase price was less than $50,000. Dealers can charge a restocking fee. 

The law, which takes effect in October, also contains other protections for buyers intended to prevent them from getting suckered.

Car dealers will have to tell a potential buyer — including in advertisements and initial written communications — the actual price of a vehicle instead of an unrealistic advertised price. Potential buyers will also have to be informed of the full financing costs and lease terms. 

The law also prohibits dealers from charging for add-ons that have no benefit to the buyer, such as free oil changes for electric vehicles — which don’t need oil changes.

“That is a huge deal,” said Rosemary Shahan of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, which championed the bill. “It’s historic. It’s going to make cars more affordable.”

Allen said he came up with the idea for the bill after shopping for a used car in 2024. He said he wanted to see what it was like trying to buy a used car in California and didn’t tell the various dealerships he visited that he was a state senator.

“I was kind of shocked by the hustle and the extent to which prices were quoted online and that ended up not really being truthful,” he said.

He ended up buying a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, an electric vehicle.

Newsom blocked document fee increase

Most bills take effect immediately the year after they are signed, but lawmakers delayed the implementation of Allen’s bill until October to give dealers time to change their paperwork, amend their contracts and change their signs to meet the new law’s requirements.

Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, said the law should make buying a used car more transparent and easier for consumers.

“The bill certainly is a net positive in terms of more transparency about the total price and advertising,” he said. 

But he said the new law “clearly imposed more responsibility on dealers,” which is why Maas said his group was extremely frustrated Newsom vetoed its bill that would have allowed dealers to raise document-processing fees by $175.  

Senate Bill 791 would have raised the fees dealers can charge to process Department of Motor Vehicles and other paperwork from the current cap of $85 to up to 1% of the purchase price, capped at $260.

Maas said dealers were frustrated by Newsom’s veto message which said the fee increase wasn’t necessary because the state had imposed “no new state requirements” on car dealers. 

Maas said it was “especially frustrating that the veto message somewhat cavalierly said there are no new state requirements when the governor signed just such requirements a week earlier.”

Before the veto, SB 791 passed the Legislature overwhelmingly and with bipartisan support. The California New Car Dealers Association has donated at least $3 million to legislators since 2015, according to the Digital Democracy database. 

Maas said there are so many forms car buyers must fill out, almost all of them stemming from a law the Legislature passed, they’re getting to be like click-through agreements on websites that everyone just agrees to without actually reading.

“You shove form after form after form in front of consumers,” he said. “Consumers just tune it out, turn it off, and say, ‘You know what? I just want to know what my monthly payment is, what’s the interest rate, what the total price of the car is. And then let’s go. Why do I have to sit in here for a half hour or an hour and fill out all these forms?’ ”

Consumers face a watered-down lemon law

Newsom also signed Senate Bill 26, a bill that allows car manufacturers to opt out of changes to the state’s lemon law that gives consumers a right to get their money back if they buy a defective vehicle — sometimes referred to as a “lemon.” 

The result is that California car buyers have different legal protections under the state’s lemon law depending on which brand they buy.

The bill Newsom signed was in response to a law lawmakers hastily passed at the end of the 2024 legislative session, watering down the state’s 55-year-old landmark lemon law. Some 

auto companies, namely GM and Ford, were being sued so often for allegedly selling so many lemons that state courts were clogged with lawsuits. 

The companies and some attorney groups persuaded lawmakers and Newsom to pass legislation in 2024 that shrank the length of time a car buyer could sue under the lemon law to just six years instead of the entire life of a vehicle’s warranty

Last year’s legislation also puts more onus on car owners to initiate claims, not auto companies.

But other companies that don’t get sued as often for selling defective vehicles, such as Toyota and Honda, opposed the rule change. Those companies said the new law didn’t give them time to prepare their best defense

Newsom ended up reluctantly signing the 2024 bill, but he urged the Legislature to come back with a new bill in 2025 that would allow companies to opt out of the changes. SB 26 passed overwhelmingly and Newsom signed it.

Meanwhile, several car companies, including Ford and GM and dozens of RV and motorcycle manufacturers, opted in to the 2024 law this year.

Toyota and Honda, as expected, did not.

The post New California laws rewrite car-buying rules with return policy and pricing reforms appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

A recent survey of more than 9,000 U.S. adults by the Pew Research Center found that approximately 73% experienced at least one or more online scams or attacks.

The most common virtual cons were credit card fraud, online shopping scams and ransomware attacks — a type of malicious software that prevents you from accessing your computer files or system until a ransom is paid.

About 24% of those surveyed said they had received a scam email, text message or call that tricked them into giving away personal information.

An estimated 32% of respondents said they were victims of a scam within the last year.

It’s often said that older adults are more vulnerable to online fraudsters. However, in 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that Gen Z adults, millennials and Gen Xers, collectively between the ages of 18 and 59, were 34% more likely than adults who are 60 and older to report losing money to fraud.

These generational groups are getting tricked by online schemes that originate from a social media ad, an investment scam or fake job opportunities.

The latest phishing attacks, or attempts to acquire sensitive data, are happening through your online calendar, (Google or Outlook calendar), multi-factor authentication app and HTML attachments.

Evading online scams is proving to be a challenge, but cybersecurity experts say there are steps you can take to protect yourself.

Unsolicited calendar invites

Scammers are constantly finding new ways to lure you into unknowingly giving up your personal information and the calendar connected to your email account is one of them, said Iskander Sanchez-Rola, director of artificial intelligence and innovation for Norton.

Unlike traditional phishing scams such as an unwanted text or call that requires your engagement, this invitation automatically appears on your calendar without you approving or denying it.

Anyone can easily be fooled by this because it can confuse you into thinking you accepted the invitation at some point, Sanchez-Rola said.

The scam happens when you click on the invite to get more information.

A link in the invitation can lead you to a phishing webpage that is masquerading as a Zoom link, or it can prompt you to download malware that is disguised as a software update.

This con often targets work-related email accounts and corresponding calendar apps.

The warning signs of this scam include:

• The calendar invite is unsolicited.
• There are misspellings in the link or sender address associated with the calendar appointment.
• The invite is associated with work, but you’re the only person to receive it.

What you can do: Change the settings in your online calendar to prohibit automatic updates. Microsoft Outlook users can follow these online instructions to change their calendar settings; Google users can limit which invitations appear on their schedule by following these online instructions.

If you have any suspicions, don’t reply directly to the invite, said Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global vice president of threat intelligence at Fortinet.

“Instead, send an email to your trusted contact from that organization asking if they have confirmed the meeting and request further details,” Manky said.

Multi-factor authentication scam

A multi-factor authentication app, also known as a “two-step verification,” is an application on your phone that provides you with a code or a “yes or no” prompt to verify that you’re accessing an account that’s linked to the authenticator.

“Multi-factor authentication attacks have been happening for well over a decade,” Manky said. “They just frequently take on new forms, or target new platforms such as the authenticator app.”

A scam occurs when you’re receiving multiple notifications from the authentication app even though you didn’t request verification.

“This scam is all about wearing you down to the point of clicking an unknown notification and accidentally providing your personal information,” Sanchez-Rola said.

The warning signs of this scam include:

• The authentication app is requesting verification or providing you with a verification code you did not request.
• The authentication app is sending you several notifications in a row even though you did not prompt the app.

What you can do: If you’re getting a string of authentication app notifications, pause before you click.

“Approving a login you didn’t request is like handing your keys to a stranger,” Sanchez-Rola said. “You just don’t do it.”

A safer way to use an authentication app — such as 2FAS, Aegis Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Stratum or Google Authenticator — is to use one that provides you with a verification code. Don’t use an app that sends a notification because that’s how a scammer can pressure you into providing your login information.

Another step in protecting yourself is changing your passwords frequently, as it reduces the shelf-life for the ones that are stolen and sold, Manky said.

Emails with unknown HTML attachments

An email with an unknown HTML attachment can redirect you to a phishing webpage or prompt you to download malware.

It’s the oldest technique in the book but it’s still commonly used today, Manky said.

“HTM/HTML files contain code that can be used in a variety of ways, including executing malicious scripts, for example Javascript, that could drop an information stealer on the system,” he said. “Likewise, they could be used to launch a phishing page to harvest credentials.”

Fraudsters will try to use trusted names or services that are of daily use to you.

“If an email is unsolicited, the end user should always question the identity of the emails being sent,” Manky said.

The warning signs of this scam include:

• The sender of the email is an unknown contact.
• The attachment within the email is unsolicited and looks suspicious.

What can you do: Always exercise caution before opening any attachments in an email, Manky said.

Look for typosquatting in the URL of the attachment. Typosquatting is when domain names on the URL have a small variation from the legitimate one, Manky said.

The post At least 73% of U.S. adults have fallen for online scams. How you can avoid the latest con appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Now, California lawmakers are scrambling to repair recent changes they made to the law to satisfy the very car companies accused of making so many lemon vehicles that their lawsuits have been clogging the state’s courts.

But the “fixes” lawmakers are considering have angered consumer groups, frustrated legislators and seemingly divided the car makers between ones that face a lot of lemon lawsuits and the ones that don’t. 

“I think what we have is a messy and frankly — all due respect — illogical resulting situation,” Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican whose family owns several car dealerships in the Sacramento area, said at a hearing last week. “I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland, quite frankly. What’s up is down and what’s down is up.”

With hope of granting relief to the courts, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation last year intended to speed up the process, in part, by cutting years off the time consumers can exercise their rights to get their defective vehicles fixed or replaced. The law also puts more responsibilities on car owners to initiate claims instead of on the car companies.

But that law divided car makers because those that face fewer lawsuits wanted more time to prepare their best defense, and they felt it was too friendly to lemon law attorneys. So when he signed the bill, Newsom told lawmakers to act quickly this year to allow car makers to opt out of the new process and continue to work under the old rules.

Now, legislators are racing to pass the changes before the new law takes effect April 1. And they need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to make the bill effective immediately. 

Meanwhile, they’re hearing concerns about a confusing two-tier lemon law with fewer consumer protections that is primarily intended to help the companies facing the most lawsuits. Just four companies are responsible for more than 70% of California’s lemon law cases: GM, Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), Nissan and Ford, according to consumer groups. 

It makes Susan Giesberg furious.

She spent almost a decade working on lemon law issues at the California Department of Justice. Now retired, she says she and her husband had to invoke their rights under the state’s lemon law under the old rules when their Chevy Volt broke down last summer.

“This lemon law has gone through Republican and Democratic (attorneys general) and governors with support over the years,” she said in an interview. “It’s just so shocking that under Democratic leadership that this would have gotten through.”

So how did it?

To answer that you have to go back to August, in the final chaotic days of the legislative session. 

How lawmakers jammed through new lemon law

As lawmakers were rushing through hundreds of pending bills – most of which had been under discussion for months – two Democrats, Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana and Assemblymember Ash Kalra of San Jose, changed a stalled child-support bill into new, never-vetted legislation that sought to reform how lemon law disputes are resolved. Stripping out stalled legislation, replacing it with a completely different bill and jamming it through at the last minute is disparagingly known in the Capitol as a “gut-and-amend.” 

The lawmakers acknowledged that the bill, Assembly 1755, was the product of months of secret negotiations between U.S. car companies – primarily General Motors – consumer attorneys and judges who were frustrated that their courtrooms have become clogged with lemon law cases. 

Between 2018 and 2021, GM’s 9,800 lemon law suits accounted for nearly one in three lemon law suits filed in California, according to the most recent stats from consumer groups. A company spokesperson in a written statement to CalMatters defended its record and the new California law.

“General Motors is continuously recognized by top consumer intelligence groups for vehicle reliability, quality, and customer loyalty,” GM spokesperson Colleen Oberc said in an email. She called the legislation “a pro-consumer bill that will help drivers get back on the road sooner, while also helping clear court backlogs, benefitting both customers and the auto industry.”

Suits against car companies under California’s lemon law 2018-2021 

Source: CARS FoundationEmbed Download image

California defines a “lemon” vehicle as one that has serious warranty defects that the manufacturer can’t fix, even after multiple attempts. The lemon law applies only to disputes involving the manufacturer’s new vehicle warranty. 

If the manufacturer or dealer is unable to repair a serious warranty defect in a vehicle after what the law says is a “reasonable” number of attempts, the manufacturer must either replace it or refund its purchase price, whichever the customer prefers, according to the California Department of Consumer Affairs.

Disputes can be resolved through arbitration or in court if a buyer sues.

The number of lemon law cases in California courts climbed dramatically since 2021. There were nearly 15,000 filings in 2022 and more than 22,000 in 2023. In Los Angeles County, nearly 10% of all civil filings are now lemon law cases. 

Kalra and Umberg pitched their legislation last year as a way for auto companies and car buyers to settle their disputes quicker and without needing as much time in court. 

But Tesla and several foreign auto companies including Volkswagen and Toyota that aren’t sued nearly as much said they were cut out of negotiations. They opposed the legislation.

Consumer groups, meanwhile, called the legislation a blatant and shameless attempt at weakening the lemon law by the very companies that get sued the most because they sell the most defective vehicles. 

There was a lot more in the bill, which was about 4,200 words long (the equivalent of a 16-page double-spaced term paper). What’s more, the bill’s legislative analysis, intended to explain the context and impact of a bill in non-legal language for lawmakers, was more than 10,000 words.

The bill passed easily even though some lawmakers complained they were uncomfortable with having to decide such a complicated, confusing piece of legislation so quickly. 

“There wasn’t a single person who represents the people of California who knew about this and was a part of those conversations – for months,” Democratic San Ramon Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan told her colleagues on the Assembly Judiciary Committee in the final days of the 2024 legislative session. “They dropped this in our lap, and they expect us to buy an argument related to the urgency that feels, to be honest, not real. And we’re supposed to move this in a week’s time.”

Newsom signed the bill in September, with an accompanying letter to lawmakers demanding they fix the law.

Meanwhile, just a few weeks after Newsom signed the bill, the California Supreme Court weakened California’s lemon law even more. The court ruled that the state’s lemon law doesn’t require manufacturers to honor a car’s warranty when it’s re-sold as a used vehicle.

Before the Supreme Court’s ruling, courts had interpreted the lemon law to require manufacturers to replace or repair a defective used car or truck if the clunker was sold within the window of its original new-vehicle warranty. 

Uncomfortable lawmakers pass bill anyway

Fast forward to last week and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s first hearing of the new two-year session. There was one bill on the agenda: Senate Bill 26, the legislation that Newsom requested. The new bill does not address the state Supreme Court ruling. 

And again the clock is ticking toward a new deadline. 

The bill frustrated Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic senator from Fremont. She told her colleagues she was worried the two-track legal system for different car companies would make an already confusing scenario for desperate car owners more difficult to understand.

“I’m very concerned about those first-time buyers, those immigrant communities, those people that don’t have the privilege to understand half of the stuff that was mentioned here,” she said. “It makes it too hard to begin with.”

Umberg, the bill’s author, suggested that after lawmakers pass this bill to meet the April deadline, they might need to pass other legislation to address lawmakers’ concerns as well as the Supreme Court’s used-vehicle ruling. 

That didn’t sit well either. 

“It’s unfortunate that protections for the consumers have gotten so complicated that we can’t more easily explain this law or the previous law, and I thought this was a clean-up (bill),” said Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles. “Now it seems like there may be a clean-up to the clean-up, maybe another clean-up, you know, after that.”

Nonetheless, the bill ended up easily passing the 13-member committee. Wahab declined to vote, and Democratic Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento cast the only “no” vote. Ashby was one of the lawmakers who opposed last summer’s bill as well. 

“I still believe that it does not do enough to remove unsafe vehicles from our communities,” she said of this latest bill. “In fact, I argue that this might have more unsafe vehicles in our communities, and I think I would not be alone in that assessment. I don’t think it holds manufacturers accountable.”

Sen. Niello said he had to reluctantly vote for Umberg’s bill since it would help negate – at least for some auto companies – the legislation he also opposed last summer.

He said he wished lawmakers would just scrap the bill Newsom signed last year “and bring all of the interested parties together” to re-negotiate reforms to the lemon law, which he said probably could use some after five decades. 

Instead, he had to hold his nose and vote for another rushed bill.

“This is a perfect example of why we should not be approving legislation that is a gut and amend at the last minute of the end of session,” Niello said.

The post California lawmakers scramble to fix ‘lemon’ vehicle law — again appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The text arrived midday, saying a delivery to me was on hold. To fix the problem, all I had to do was click on a web link and enter my ZIP Code.

“Have a great day from the USPS team!” the text said.

The awkwardly worded message (with bad punctuation and an international phone number) was clearly not from the Postal Service. And if I can hazard a wild guess, I don’t think the senders really wanted me to have a great day.

They wanted to rip me off and, so, a word to the wise this holiday season:

Watch your wallet.

Fraud is a year-round, multibillion-dollar international enterprise. But for thieves, the season of joy is a wide-open window of opportunity, as AARP warned Nov. 18:

“With scammers looking to take advantage of consumers from all angles, new AARP survey research reveals that people need to be vigilant this holiday season as they buy gifts, book their travel arrangements, and donate to charities.”

Many of the scams are run by sophisticated international syndicates, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. Those crooks are working every channel, fishing for victims by email, phone calls, texts, fliers and regular mail.

Unwitting people are forking over money via gift cards, cryptocurrency, credit cards, cash and wire transfers. Losses often are virtually impossible to recover because the money is on foreign soil before the victims know they’ve been robbed.

Stokes said that in one common ripoff, thieves are going after people who own timeshares they’re trying to dump.

“There’s all this paperwork that makes it look legitimate, like you’re paying to get out of the timeshare,” Stokes said. But the crooks are pocketing thousands of dollars while the target is still stuck with the timeshare.

Last week, in a national conference on scams targeting older adults, Deborah Royster of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that consumers are being wiped out in a flash.

“Retirement savings and other resources that people have earned over a lifetime, and depend on,” Royster said, “can be gone in an instant.”

In that same conference, Virginia lawyer Julie M. Strandlie said her 85-year-old mother lost $80,000 between Thanksgiving and Christmas five years ago in a common scam that began with “flashing graphics and pounding voices” on her computer screen, warning of a virus.

“There’s a number to call for help, but it’s not the real Microsoft,” Strandlie said.

Her mother fell for the ruse, giving the criminals remote access to unlock her frozen computer. She was then duped into believing they had deposited money into her account, and she needed to pay it back in cash and gift cards from Best Buy and Target.

Steve McFarland, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau region that runs from Palo Alto to Long Beach, said his office is getting 1,100 consumer complaints of all types each and every day.

He wasn’t kidding and repeated the number.

McFarland and other sources say a greater percentage of millennials report fraud than do older adults, but the latter group suffers greater losses. And across the age spectrum, McFarland said, gift card scams are hot right now.

Bar codes on those cards can be tampered with or photographed by someone before they’re sold, McFarland said. The buyer of the card goes to a checkout stand and puts, let’s say, $100 on the card to be redeemed at Target, Burger King or any number of establishments.

But when the recipient goes to redeem it, the funds are gone. It happened last year to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who bought a $100 VISA gift card for a nephew who found that it wasn’t worth a nickel. Hahn later warned of the scam, along with McFarland, on L.A.’s Eyewitness News.

“It’s called gift card draining and these scammers have found several slick ways to victimize unsuspecting shoppers,” Hahn said.

In addition to outright scams, this is a time of year when solicitations for charitable donations can fill your mailbox.

“A lot of charities are trying to close out strong, and criminals know that and are vying for the same dollars,” Stokes said.

If it’s not an established organization that’s known for its good work, Stokes advised going to the Better Business Bureau’s give.org website, where you can type in the name of the charity to find out whether it’s legit. You can also find out what percentage of donations go to the cause versus overhead costs.

Your best policy, unfortunately, is to be suspicious of everything. I recently got a letter with my mortgage lender’s name in the window and opened it to find a warning that this was my “FINAL NOTICE” to avoid a monthly payment increase.

It looked hinky, and on the back page, in fine print, I learned that the mail was from a lender unaffiliated with my mortgage company.

If you see “final notice,” “urgent” or “benefit disbursement enclosed,” don’t even bother opening the envelope.

A friend shared a tall stack of mail that keeps coming for his mother, who died months ago, and as I sifted through it I found one attempt after another to separate her from her money. “Copy of Final Check Enclosed,” said one, and in the cellophane window was what looked like a check for $437.18 that said “Pay to the order of …”

But it wasn’t a check, of course. It was a solicitation from a lobbying firm claiming it will fight to preserve Social Security funding (and by the way, she had a lot of mail from organizations claiming they were out to do the same).

The fake check was described as an example of what she stood to lose if she didn’t immediately support the cause by pulling out her credit card and making an “urgent donation” to keep Social Security solvent.

And then there were solicitations from organizations representing a Noah’s Ark of endangered animals. Look, I’m an animal lover, but how does one begin to sort through all the pleas?

Save the pigs. The horses. The bees. The lions. The donkeys.

“Sunday, a baby donkey was ripped from his mother and brutalized,” said one envelope.

Lots of appeals for dogs, too. One included the photo of a dog with amazing verbal skills, judging by the quote attributed to the canine: “I wish for no one else to be hurt the way humans have hurt me.”

I feel for the dog, but if he can actually speak, let’s get him an agent and send him out on tour so the pup can raise a fortune for his cause.

Of course, there are plenty of good charities out there that are worthy of your generosity, but be careful.

With solicitations. With email. With texts. With phone calls.

All of it.

Banks should be doing more to prevent repeated, questionable, out-of-the-ordinary withdrawals and wire transfers. The gift card industry ought to be able to rein in rampant fraud with smarter security measures.

And people of all ages need to be more discerning, refuse to provide personal information such as Social Security numbers, and get some advice from a trusted friend or loved one before signing any checks or doing business with strangers.

Last year I wrote about two retired L.A. residents, a former teacher and a former banker, who were swindled out of roughly $80,000 apiece in internet scams. Earlier this year I wrote about a Redwood City woman who was taken for $1.8 million, and an Alhambra woman, Alice Lin, who lost $720,000 in an “investment” scheme introduced to her by a man she met on a chat app.

I reached out to Lin, who had some good advice on all forms of communication from sources you don’t know or trust.

“Do not respond,” Lin said. “Don’t touch it.”

The post Column: It’s the season for scams, so here’s a piece of advice: Never do business with strangers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Aiming to both quell soaring prices and bring back firms that have left the Golden State, regulators are proposing sweeping reforms that they believe could revive a competitive insurance market.

While experts agree that the status quo may no longer be sustainable, opinions remain divided on the merits of the proposed changes — which some fear could drive up prices further.

“The situation is hurting consumers badly,” Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, told The Hill.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s going to resolve on its own,” Bach added.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara last week called for public input on the final phase of his wildfire modeling regulation, which is many months in the making and has sparked significant debate.

Lara’s strategy would update Proposition 103, a 1988 ballot measure that served “to protect consumers from arbitrary insurance rates and practices” and encouraged a competitive and fair marketplace, according to the Insurance Commission. 

Proposition 103 determined that rate changes could only occur with the authorization of the commissioner, while also establishing a public participation process in which so-called “intervenors” could provide technical input and recover associated costs.

Lara’s office said in a press statement that his update aims to close a loophole in Proposition 103: Insurance firms today can request rates at any level to help compensate for an increased risk of losses but are not required to cover all Californians.

The new regulation, in contrast, would require companies to insure properties in distressed regions at a rate equivalent to 85 percent of the firm’s statewide market share. 

In addition, the proposal would incorporate the state’s first use of “catastrophe modeling,” localized simulations of potential risk based on historical analyses and probabilistic calculations that such events will occur in the future.

Whether relying upon such simulations, also known as “cat models,” would end up lowering or raising consumer rates, however, is a matter of contention.

Those in favor of employing these tools argue that other states have long done so and that proactive efforts to adapt California homes to a changing climate could mitigate risk.

“Over the past several years, the state has put billions toward wildfire mitigation efforts and homeowners have made significant investments in home hardening,” Lara said in a statement.

“This is not accounted for by our existing retrospective, past-focused models for ratemaking,” the commissioner continued. “We want consumers to reap the full benefits of these efforts through modern, forward-looking models on how rates are calculated.”

But others are far less certain that the models would account for such improvements — especially because the technology is often proprietary.

Bach cited catastrophe models as a reason for her muted enthusiasm about Lara’s proposal. Yet she expressed willingness “to let the commissioner’s sustainable insurance strategy go into place.”

“If it doesn’t work, then I guess we go back to the drawing board,” Bach said, expressing approval for the mandatory coverage component of the regulation.

Bach stressed that thus far, she has seen no indication that catastrophe models, when applied to wildfire-prone areas, are accounting for active mitigation efforts in price determinations. She also expressed concern that wildfire models are much newer than those for, say, hurricanes.

“We are nervous,” she continued. “The reality is that prices are so high already, and affordability is so low right now.”

Nonetheless, Bach acknowledged that California’s lack of catastrophe models was contributing to the exodus of insurance companies from the state. Beginning in 2022 and 2023, many big firms stopped offering services to new customers, often citing wildfire risk. 

“The writing was on the wall that cat models are going to come to California, just for practical reasons,” she acknowledged.

“We’re glad at least there’s a quid pro quo — that as a condition of insurers getting to use cat models, they also have to pledge to insure more homes in the areas that have been abandoned,” Bach added.

Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog and the author of Proposition 103, decried catastrophe models as “completely unjust, untested and unreliable.”

“Models are cloaked in the guise of technological infallibility, but they are drafted, they’re written, they’re controlled by humans,” Rosenfield told The Hill.

He also argued that their use would violate provisions of the voter-approved Proposition 103, because this would deny consumers their legal right to examine the details of these models.

“Nobody has the power to rewrite Proposition 103 to eliminate its protections,” Rosenfield added.

The applicability of catastrophe models to wildfire risk assessments was one focal point in a June 2024 working paper about the adaptation of insurance markets to a changing climate. Although these models have improved the ability of insurers to gauge wildfire risk, the resultant projections remain “inherently uncertain,” according to the paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“The modern catastrophe models bring a lot of value to insurance pricing and rate setting,” co-author Judson Boomhower, assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego School of Social Sciences, told The Hill.

“They give you a much more nuanced view of risk for a given property or a given area,” added Boomhower, who is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

That more detailed vantage point, he explained, is more sophisticated than the “backward-looking historical rate-setting methods that insurers have been required to use in California.”

Nonetheless, Boomhower also recognized that catastrophe models “are sort of a black box” due to their proprietary nature and resultant questions of transparency.

“Those are legitimate challenges for regulators to think about, but at a high level, this is the best scientific method for assessing catastrophe risk,” he said.

Boomhower described Florida as “a little bit ahead” of California from this perspective, as the state requires companies to give regulators some insight into how their individual models work.

In the working paper, Boomhower and his colleagues reconstructed pricing formulas used in California by six major insurers — combining data from company-provided premiums with proprietary information from about 100,000 households.

The authors found that following the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons, both premiums and the rate of policy cancellations in high-risk areas surged. They also observed increasing reliance on the state’s “quasi-private insurer of last resort” —  called California FAIR —  the basic but expensive property insurance provided when traditional coverage is unavailable.

Among the paper’s key findings was the fact that insurers exhibited “striking variation” in how firms priced wildfire risk, with some only divided the market roughly, at the zip-code-level, and pricing risk at a more granular level — using catastrophe models.

“There’s tons of heterogeneity in wildfire loss risk, even within zip codes or even within neighborhoods,” Boomhower said.

Insurers with less sophisticated models seemed to end up with a slew of higher-risk customers and greater-than-expected costs, which the authors dubbed the “winners’ curse.”

Meanwhile, they found that companies using the more granular models tended to attract lower-risk customers. With that in mind, Boomhower projected that there would be “a lot of competition among insurance companies to find the low-risk homes in these designated high-risk areas.”

“There are parts of the state where wildfire risk has increased really rapidly,” he continued. “Those are places where insurance rates probably do need to go up relative to where they’ve been historically, just to reflect the increasing risk.”

To the extent that Proposition 103 has held rates down, Boomhower acknowledged that the proposed updates could end up raising prices.

“On the other hand, that may be what you need to ensure availability in some of those places,” he said.

While the status quo may not be ideal for anyone, Rosenfield stressed his belief that insurance firms might come back to California without a change in regulation — simply because it will be in their financial interest to do so.

“California is the biggest single insurance market in the planet, and they’re just going to come back in and take advantage of that,” he said.

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