The move comes nearly two years after the devastating Los Angeles County fires left thousands of residents in limbo. While their houses may still be standing, many survivors have been unable to move back in, citing lingering smoke contamination and prolonged disputes with insurance companies over who is responsible for testing and remediation costs. According to the California Department of Insurance, the January 2025 fires generated more than 13,000 smoke-damage claims alone.

Newsom traveled to Altadena to sign the legislation, meeting with Eaton Fire survivors who have been pushing for clearer rules on how insurers must handle these claims. “These new protections will make insurer obligations clearer and give homeowners more financial flexibility when they need it most,” the governor said. The new laws take effect Jan. 1.

One of the centerpiece measures, Assembly Bill 1642, was authored by Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Pasadena-area Democrat. It orders the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control to develop formal standards for testing, repairing and removing lead and asbestos contamination by the end of 2028, with similar rules for other toxic substances to follow by the end of 2029. Until those standards are finalized, existing federal and state guidelines on lead and asbestos exposure will remain in effect.

A companion measure, AB 1795, establishes a legal presumption that smoke damage found within a designated fire zone was caused by that fire — shifting the burden of proof away from homeowners. The law also requires insurers to cover testing and cleanup costs in line with the forthcoming state standards.

“For homeowners who have already lost so much in a fire, the last thing a family should have to do is fight for a clear answer about whether it is safe to return home,” said Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Carson Democrat who authored AB 1795.

The legislation arrives amid mounting legal pressure on insurers. The state Department of Insurance, Los Angeles County and individual fire survivors have all taken legal action against State Farm and the state’s insurer-of-last-resort, the FAIR Plan, accusing them of mishandling smoke-damage claims. Just last week, Los Angeles County opened a separate investigation into Farmers Insurance over similar allegations.

Newsom also signed two additional bills authored by Harabedian addressing the financial strain faced by displaced homeowners. AB 1842 creates a statewide mortgage forbearance program for residents whose homes are declared uninhabitable following a major disaster, barring lenders from imposing late fees or penalties while payments are paused.

AB 1847 goes further for survivors of the Los Angeles County fires specifically, extending mortgage forbearance eligibility to 24 months and pushing back the deadline for homeowners to request forbearance to Jan. 7, 2029.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Becomes First State to Set Standards for Smoke Damage in Homes appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Two companion bills now sitting on the governor’s desk aim to answer a question that has plagued thousands of Southern California households since January 2025: When is it actually safe to move back home?

The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and burned for nearly a month, sending up a toxic haze of burning trees, brush, plastics, metals and other manufactured materials. According to the state Insurance Department, more than 13,000 of the roughly 40,000 claims filed after the fires involved smoke damage rather than total loss.

Nearly two years later, many residents whose homes survived the flames still haven’t moved back in. They describe walking into houses that reek of smoke, coated in ash, soot and char, while they wait — often for months — on test results for lead, asbestos and other contaminants. Getting insurers to pay for cleanup and repairs has, for many, become its own ordeal. Survivors, remediation experts and even insurance representatives have all pointed to the same root problem: there simply are no statewide rules spelling out what constitutes safe, adequate smoke-damage remediation.

Assembly Bill 1642, authored by Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Pasadena Democrat, is designed to close that gap. Harabedian said the measure would establish “a first-in-the-nation standard for testing and remediation” — essentially, clear rules for identifying contamination and fixing it.

The bill works hand-in-hand with Assembly Bill 1795, written by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, which would require insurance companies to actually follow those new standards once they’re in place. Neither bill can become law without the other, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of the month to decide on both.

“We were hearing from survivors that they weren’t getting a fair shake from their insurance companies,” Harabedian said. “Kudos to survivor groups that worked with us on this. We hope others don’t have to go through what they went through.”

The two measures are part of a broader package of post-fire legislation aimed at insurance companies, whose handling of smoke-damage claims has drawn scrutiny from regulators and become the subject of lawsuits. State Farm, which covers roughly one-fifth of California’s property insurance market, and the state’s insurer-of-last-resort, the FAIR Plan, have both been accused by the Insurance Department of delaying and denying legitimate smoke-damage claims.

Last week, Los Angeles County sued State Farm, alleging unfair business practices in how it processed claims stemming from the 2025 fires. The lawsuit leaned heavily on findings from the Insurance Department’s own investigation, which found the company had denied or discouraged customers from seeking environmental testing and refused to reimburse policyholders who paid for testing themselves. The county also alleged that for homes still standing, State Farm often sent contractors who used cleaning methods that were inadequate — and in some cases unsafe.

State Farm spokesperson Sevag Sarkissian said the company “strongly disagrees” with the county’s characterization of its claims handling.

Kareem Ali’s home in Altadena is one of the few left standing on his cul-de-sac. But he and his wife still haven’t been able to live there. Since August, they’ve been staying in a donated RV parked on their property.

State Farm covered temporary housing for the couple from January 2025 through this past April, when the insurer stopped reimbursing them for an $8,000-a-month one-bedroom rental — one the company itself had recommended. Ali stopped paying rent after that, and three months’ worth is now overdue.

When it came to testing their smoke-damaged home, State Farm denied Ali’s request for environmental testing, so he and his wife paid $3,000 for it themselves. The insurer wouldn’t reimburse them and has since delayed or denied several cleanup claims — a process complicated, Ali said, by the fact that at least six or seven different adjusters have been assigned to their case over time.

“Every time we got some sort of momentum on our claim, they’d randomly switch,” he said.

Ali said the couple eventually spent through the money State Farm had provided for personal belongings, hiring contractors on their own to clean the home, remove insulation and replace carpeting. When they told the insurer more work was needed but they had run out of funds, the company denied the claim, he said. All the while, they’ve kept paying their monthly premiums. Ali said he’s asked their adjuster directly: “What are we paying for if we’re not going to get coverage?”

Elisa Jacobs Nixon and her family are in a similar bind. Months of disputes with State Farm over smoke-damage testing and cleanup have kept them out of their Altadena home as well.

Nixon paid $6,000 out of pocket for environmental testing in May 2025, results the insurer initially ignored. Her public adjuster — a private professional hired to advocate for policyholders during claims — suggested getting a contractor’s estimate based on those findings. That approach worked: within days, State Farm sent its own industrial hygienist to inspect the property, Nixon said.

Both her original report and the insurer’s follow-up testing turned up similar results, including elevated levels of several contaminants. The more recent test also detected asbestos.

Though her family remains displaced, Nixon said things finally appear to be moving in the right direction.

“This has completely hijacked my life, my kids’ lives, it’s just taken over everything,” she said. “That’s why these parameters (in the bills) are so important. My hope is this will spread across the U.S. and help disaster survivors everywhere.”

Under Harabedian’s bill, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control would be required to develop testing, repair and removal standards for lead and asbestos by the end of 2028, followed by standards for other contaminants — including heavy metals, cyanide and lithium — by the end of 2029.

Gipson’s bill would create a legal presumption that ash, soot, char or other combustion byproducts found in a standing home after a wildfire count as wildfire-related smoke damage for insurance purposes. It would also require insurers to inspect affected properties within 30 days of a claim, cover the cost of testing needed to restore homes to their pre-fire condition, and continue paying for temporary housing until repairs are complete.

Not everyone is on board. Karen Collins, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association who also sits on the state’s smoke claims and remediation task force, said the industry remains “technically opposed to the bills.” While she acknowledged the legislation lays out a framework, she argued that any resulting regulations should “remain grounded in science.”

Public adjuster Brian Haden shares some of that skepticism, saying the bills are short on specifics and could end up being used as leverage by both survivors and insurers alike. He predicts litigation will remain the primary way disputes get resolved and questions whether the Insurance Department will have the teeth to enforce the new rules.

Jane Lawton Potelle, founder and executive director of Eaton Fire Residents United — whose data helped shape Harabedian’s bill — agrees the legislation won’t resolve every enforcement question. She also noted the new standards won’t take effect soon enough to help her or many current survivors directly. Still, she believes the mere fact that standards are coming could influence ongoing lawsuits and settlement negotiations.

“Insurers are relying on people not to know information,” she said. “I want people to know how to protect themselves and stop being afraid. Living in a contaminated home can make you sick. And it can devalue your property.”

Lawmakers also passed several other bills this session targeting insurer conduct more broadly, addressing complaints about payment delays and the practice of cycling multiple adjusters through a single claim.

Senate Bill 876 would require insurers to assign policyholders a single point of contact within 30 days of filing a claim, and to provide written notice any time a third adjuster is brought onto a case within a six-month span. It also mandates that insurers submit detailed disaster response plans to the Insurance Department by April 1, 2028, updated every two years or whenever the insurance commissioner requests it.

Senate Bill 877 would require insurers to include all preliminary and final calculations of loss amounts, covered damages and repair costs in claims documents provided to policyholders within 15 days of a request.

Senate Bill 878 would require insurers to pay out the cash value of a destroyed property within 30 days of it being declared a total loss, followed by the remaining replacement cost within 30 days of receiving the necessary documentation. Insurers that miss those deadlines would owe accrued interest on the amount owed.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California May Become First State to Set Smoke Damage Standards for Homes appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The agreement, announced Saturday, represents a retreat from the governor’s original vision. Rather than reducing what utilities owe insurance companies, local governments and fire victims after their equipment ignites a wildfire, the final package focuses on more targeted reforms — barring private equity firms from investing in wildfire claims and stripping bonuses from utility executives in years when their companies’ equipment causes a fatal fire.

For Inland Empire and Southern California residents who have watched wildfire costs and insurance premiums climb in recent years, the outcome marks a win for legislators who refused to soften penalties for utilities or cap what fire victims can recover. Opposition to Newsom’s original plan came from a coalition that included insurance companies, consumer watchdogs and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which killed 19 people in Altadena after being traced to Southern California Edison equipment.

Under the new agreement, formalized in Senate Bill 492, the state will establish a “fast-pay” system to speed compensation for property losses and pain and suffering following utility-caused fires. Insurance claims would need to be evaluated within 60 days, with settlement offers following within 30 days after that — though survivors would still retain the option of pursuing lawsuits against utilities through the courts. The bill also directs the state to strengthen local wildfire prevention efforts and improve transparency around insurance availability in high-risk fire zones.

The deal caps weeks of tense, closed-door negotiations between the governor’s office and legislative leaders over how much financial responsibility utility companies should bear when their equipment sparks a fire. Newsom had sought to reduce what utilities pay to insurers, local governments, businesses and some wildfire survivors, arguing that ballooning costs threaten investor confidence in California’s three major investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Higher borrowing costs for those companies, his administration warned, could ultimately translate into higher electric bills for ratepayers across the state.

The governor also framed his proposal as a way to ensure homeowners who lost everything get paid first, pointing to past wildfire cases in which investors funded lawsuits or bought up claims, injecting third parties into the payout process.

But SB 492 leaves most of those cost-shifting provisions out entirely. The state’s $18 billion wildfire fund — financed equally by utility customers and shareholders, and the same fund that would back the new fast-pay program — remains unchanged in structure. Supporters of Newsom’s original approach warn that another catastrophic fire season could drain the fund, leaving utilities exposed to massive costs and the risk of bankruptcy. Nine of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires on record have been linked to power lines or electrical equipment.

“This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday. He called on lawmakers to revisit the issue next year to shore up the wildfire fund, stabilize electricity rates and prevent fire victims from becoming “unsecured creditors” in the event of a utility bankruptcy.

Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat central to the talks, said he expects the debate over utility liability to resurface under a future governor. “What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders, was that they’re willing to do that,” Becker said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

Sen. Ben Allen, who represents constituents affected by the Palisades Fire, said lawmakers stood firmly behind fire survivors even as the broader issue of electricity affordability remains unresolved. “Challenges with affordability of electricity remain,” Allen said. “That’s not going away.”

Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric declined to comment directly, instead referring inquiries to Wildfire Victims First, a utility-backed advocacy campaign whose goals mirrored the governor’s original wish list. Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs urgent structural changes “to ensure a fair recovery system.” A PG&E spokesperson said the company is reviewing the legislation and remains focused on speeding survivor recovery, improving safety and protecting customer rates. PG&E’s stock dropped Friday after reports surfaced that a deal without utility cost relief was likely.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus resisted Newsom’s original proposals, said the final agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.” Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris of Irvine, who led Assembly negotiations, called the deal “an important step forward,” adding, “We held the line to protect the people who needed it most.”

One of the fiercest fights centered on subrogation — the legal mechanism allowing insurance companies to sue utilities to recover wildfire claim payouts. Newsom wanted to eliminate it, but lawmakers rejected that idea, fearing it would destabilize California’s already fragile insurance market, drive up premiums and push more insurers out of the state.

“This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

Even so, Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, who represents Eaton Fire survivors, said insurers shouldn’t escape scrutiny altogether. “We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” Pérez said. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

Lawmakers also blocked Newsom’s proposal to cap non-economic damages for survivors — pain and suffering claims that Eaton Fire victims fought hard to protect throughout the negotiations.

Fire survivors and consumer advocates praised the Senate, and Limón in particular, for standing firm against the governor’s proposals. “In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network. Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court described the negotiations as “an exercise in the democratic process,” noting that legislators refused to cave during private talks with the governor’s office.

Pérez credited the survivors themselves with steering the outcome. “The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” she said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

Lawmakers are expected to vote on SB 492 next week.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Lawmakers Reach Wildfire Deal That Sidelines Most of Newsom’s Key Proposals appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

At Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the Pacific Ocean and its near-constant fog blanket the western edge of the coastal bluffs. But just to the east, the Irish Hills rise sharply, their steep slopes thick with brush and oak trees — a combination that makes the site both hard to access and heavy with fuel for wildfire.

“Any fire within the Diablo power plant area could be catastrophic,” said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with Cal Fire’s San Luis Obispo unit. The property sits in a very-high fire hazard zone, he explained, “so we take precautions.”

It’s one of many places where California is now stepping in to fill gaps left by decades of underfunded federal wildfire management, deeper cuts under the Trump administration, and firefighting crews stretched thin battling blazes across the West.

A locally based, state-funded group — the San Luis Obispo County Fire Safe Council — began clearing fuel breaks along the ridgelines surrounding the plant. Erickson then put his crews to work closing the remaining gaps, creating a critical anchor point firefighters could use to hold a line against approaching flames.

In years past, the tangle of landowners surrounding the power plant — including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — might have slowed or blocked that kind of project.

But a 2023 agreement between Cal Fire and the bureau allowed Erickson to use state resources on federal land, letting crews finish the fuel break earlier this year. The bureau handled key environmental reviews, planning and approvals.

“The project was designed from the outset as an interagency effort,” said Philip Oviatt, a spokesperson for the California office of the Bureau of Land Management. “No single agency could have achieved this result alone.”

The stakes are high in California, where wildfires have burned through millions of acres over the past decade, killed more than 220 people, contributed to tens of thousands of additional deaths and caused tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

But the price tag for prevention work is steep too. California has spent nearly $500 million on grants for wildfire resilience and forest health projects on federal land since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office, according to the California Natural Resources Agency.

Jonathan Fitch, who manages Cal Fire’s vegetation management program, helped negotiate three new agreements the agency struck last year with the U.S. Forest Service. Those deals let California clear brush, collect pine cones for seed banks, replant burned areas, manage timber and more inside the state’s national forests, Fitch said.

The Forest Service contributed $4 million toward those statewide agreements, some of which will go toward fuel-reduction projects, Fitch said. Still, the overall need dwarfs the available federal funding.

“The real value is unlocking the state’s potential and resources on the federal side,” Fitch said.

Fitch said he often hears the same question: Why should California spend its money, staff and equipment on land the federal government is supposed to manage?

“My answer is that wildfires don’t know boundaries,” Fitch said. “We can’t ignore what’s happening on the federal side, because we’re one state. We’re one landscape.”

A finite number of firefighters

Since President Donald Trump accused California of failing to properly clear its forests — more than half of which are federally managed — Sacramento and Washington have repeatedly clashed over fuel management and federal funding.

Newsom needled Trump last year with a mock executive order titled “Make America Rake Again,” and has since criticized the administration for withholding roughly $1.5 billion in federal aid following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025.

Despite the political friction, California routinely crosses federal boundaries to manage land — and fires.

When the Timber Fire broke out in Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur, tearing through nearly 6,000 acres of rugged terrain and forcing the closure of Highway 1, federal incident management teams were already stretched thin.

Some crews were tied up fighting other fires near Hoopa and across the Pacific Northwest. Others were on mandatory rest, according to Adrienne Freeman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service.

“So we were going to have to look at hiring a team from anywhere in the country, and even those are in short supply,” Freeman said.

Instead, the federal agency asked a Cal Fire incident management team to step in, coordinating the response and handling logistics — everything from meals and planning to finances, equipment repairs, showers and medical support.

Freeman, Cal Fire officials and others say the shrinking pool of federal incident teams reflects the sheer volume of wildfire activity across the West this year.

But Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter and vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said staffing cuts under the Trump administration have made long-standing shortages worse.

“When DOGE let everybody go, we lost people off the teams,” Scopa said, referring to Elon Musk’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency initiative. “We’ve had trouble filling out teams for the last 10 years.”

Freeman said having Cal Fire take the lead on the Timber Fire freed up federal resources to respond elsewhere.

“It’s not the first time we’ve done this, but it’s fairly unique to California,” Freeman said. “There are a finite number of firefighters, but California is in a better position than some states — than most states — because of this relationship.”

A federal blind spot

In other areas, California has found it far harder to compensate for federal shortfalls.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Forest Service lost at least 20% of its workforce last year amid cuts pushed by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

A federal reorganization — along with proposed closures of research facilities — has destabilized the agency and damaged morale. Two former Forest Service employees told CalMatters that key California scientists left the agency after Trump returned to office.

Alan Talhelm, deputy assistant director of climate and energy for Cal Fire, said the loss of federal staff and shifting job assignments have drained the expertise he and his colleagues rely on to fold federal data into the fuel-treatment dashboard maintained by the Governor’s Forest Management Task Force.

“That data still exists… but we don’t have anyone to help us interpret it,” Talhelm said. “If we see something that looks unusual, it’s harder to verify that it’s correct and that it’s accurate information.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said that because the agency tracks fuel treatments differently than state and local agencies, merging the datasets is “complicated.”

That data, which typically lags a couple of years behind, is essential for tracking California’s progress toward state and federal fuel-management goals.

The dashboard gives a statewide snapshot of where thinning or controlled burns are happening — information state agencies rely on when deciding where to direct funding and crews, and information that can shape decisions about where to send firefighters during an active blaze, Talhelm said.

“They can look at this database and say, ‘Oh, there was a prescribed burn here. Oh, there was a fuel break here,’” he said. “That’s a consequence. If we don’t have the right information, the data loses its usefulness.”

Talhelm said federal cuts are also slowing the surveys the Forest Service needs to complete to update the Forest Inventory and Analysis, essentially a census of the nation’s forests.

That data helps scientists and land managers understand how climate change, drought, wildfire, disease and pests are reshaping forests — and what that means for fuel loads, fire risk and even timber supplies in California.

“It’s literally the foundational information that then gets applied to everything from where factories are sited to what the carbon effects are and the benefits of wildfire mitigation measures,” said John Battles, a forest ecology professor at UC Berkeley.

But the data is slow to come out. California is tied with Alaska for having survey information that dates back to 2021.

Cal Fire has tried to speed things along by sending contractors to survey California’s forests. Still, Talhelm said, the federal government isn’t keeping pace with expectations.

“We’re still not there. And we’re not there in part because of the downsizing at the Forest Service,” Talhelm said. “I don’t know if they’ve scaled back their ambitions, but they’ve definitely scaled back their capacity to carry out that mission.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency is conducting a final review of forest inventory data collected between 2022 and 2024 and expects to release it in the coming weeks.

“We share CAL FIRE’s interest in more plots being measured and more frequent updates,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that several unspecified factors stretched California’s review cycle to seven years instead of the expected five.

That pace is a real problem, Battles said. “Think about how many fires there have been since 2021 that still aren’t reflected in the dataset,” he said.

“There’s always a lag in the data, because it takes time to update. But now we’re five years out… Decisions are being made using outdated, inaccurate information.”

Funding the fight against fire

California has managed to bridge many of these federal gaps thanks to its massive wildfire budget, which has climbed to roughly $4 billion a year. But money dedicated specifically to forest health and fuel management has always represented a relatively small slice of that spending — and now it’s under strain.

Changes the Newsom administration made to a key climate program have already reduced a major funding stream drawn from polluting industries that historically provided up to $200 million a year for wildfire prevention projects.

That figure is shrinking fast — down to $38 million, according to the latest Department of Finance numbers, though those figures won’t be finalized until next year. The Legislative Analyst’s Office warned this spring that the administration’s climate program overhaul risks eliminating that funding source altogether.

Talhelm said this fund has financed many of the grants Cal Fire has awarded for projects on federal land.

One July morning, Fitch hiked up to the ridge to see, for the first time, the fuel break made possible by his work brokering state and federal land agreements. Sunlight burned off the last wisps of fog clinging to the brush on either side of the cleared line.

Fitch called it proof of how strong these partnerships can be.

“The landscape is fragmented,” he said, the fuel break stretching along the ridge behind him. “For Cal Fire to succeed, we can’t do it alone.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Wildfire Crews Stretched Thin, California Steps In to Help appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The plan, introduced with only weeks left in the legislative session, would cap payouts to wildfire survivors, restrict insurance companies from recovering wildfire-related costs from utilities, and limit how much cities and counties could recoup for destroyed roads, water systems and other public infrastructure.

Newsom’s office defends the proposal as a way to speed up compensation for fire victims while easing the financial exposure utilities face after major wildfires — exposure that officials warn could otherwise translate into higher electricity bills for ratepayers.

But the response from Sacramento has been anything but warm. Local governments, wildfire survivors, consumer watchdogs and insurance representatives have all voiced strong objections, arguing the governor is rushing through sweeping changes without public bill language or adequate legislative debate.

Tensions boiled over after a report surfaced that utility executives were hinting at unspecified retaliatory steps to protect shareholder interests if lawmakers don’t act to shrink their wildfire liability. State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Pasadena Democrat, didn’t mince words in response, saying the Legislature has no intention of “negotiating with companies that want to act like terrorists.”

“My job is not to ensure that we’re increasing profits for shareholders for these companies,” Pérez said.

Despite the friction, there is some common ground. Lawmakers and the governor’s office agree on curbing bonuses for utility executives following destructive fires, increasing penalties for safety violations, and capping legal fees for attorneys representing wildfire victims.

Still, with the legislative session winding down, the broader fight over who bears the financial burden of California’s wildfire crisis — ratepayers, utility shareholders, insurers or taxpayers — remains far from settled.

In other Sacramento news this week, state lawmakers are racing against the clock to protect health coverage for transgender youth on Medi-Cal. Beginning Oct. 13, roughly 1,500 transgender and gender-nonconforming children could lose access to puberty blockers, hormone therapy and related care after the Trump administration barred federal reimbursement for gender-affirming treatment for minors.

To bridge the gap, legislators are pushing for $10 million in emergency funding intended to buy time while the state develops a new funding mechanism outside of federal Medicaid dollars. But LGBTQ advocacy groups say they feel blindsided — many believed the state budget passed in June already included protections for this population, only to discover it did not.

“It’s been very frustrating to see California say in many words that it’s supportive of trans people, and be so unprepared for something we all knew was about to happen,” said Arne Johnson, an organizer with Rainbow Families Action.

Meanwhile, CalMatters continues its ongoing investigation into California’s DUI laws, which reporters have found to be among the weakest in the nation, often allowing repeat offenders to remain behind the wheel with minimal consequences. The news organization is now gathering accounts from residents affected by crashes involving drivers who were not prosecuted, as part of a broader look at what happens after serious collisions.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom’s Eleventh-Hour Wildfire Proposal Runs Into Resistance at Capitol appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Members of the Assembly and Senate have balked at several of the governor’s proposed changes, including limits on compensation for pain and suffering, restrictions on how much insurance companies can recover after paying out claims tied to utility-caused fires, and caps on what local governments can collect for destroyed public infrastructure. That’s according to internal legislative memos and sources familiar with the closed-door talks, which CalMatters obtained.

The proposals are part of a broader wildfire liability package Newsom has been quietly hammering out as he nears the end of his final term. Neither his office nor legislative leaders have made the actual bill language public, raising concerns that a sweeping and consequential set of policies could be rushed through with little opportunity for public input before the session ends Aug. 31.

If no deal is reached by Friday — the deadline for publishing bill text ahead of a vote — the contentious issue of utility liability could be left for the next governor to sort out.

Speaking to reporters last week, Newsom acknowledged he’s willing to adjust his plan but said the state can’t afford to wait.

“I feel very strongly that we need to move on this,” he said.

According to his staff, Newsom’s goal is twofold: speed up payouts to wildfire victims while protecting utilities from lawsuits that could rattle investors and potentially drive up customer rates. But critics — including local governments, insurers, consumer groups and wildfire survivors — say the plan lets utilities off the hook too easily.

Although any resulting changes would only apply to future fires, the negotiations have angered a group of Eaton Fire survivors who traveled to Sacramento this week to voice their opposition. Earlier this month, investigators determined that Southern California Edison equipment sparked the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 structures in the Altadena area.

“My job is not to ensure that we’re increasing profits for shareholders for these companies,” state Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, a Democrat representing Altadena, told a crowd of protesters Tuesday. “And we certainly, as a Legislature, are not going to negotiate with companies that want to act like terrorists.”

Points of Disagreement

Perez’s comments referenced recent reporting that executives from Pacific Gas & Electric and Edison have signaled to Wall Street that they may take unspecified steps to protect shareholders if the Legislature doesn’t act this year to reduce their wildfire liability exposure.

There is some common ground. Newsom and legislative Democrats agree on curbing executive bonuses at utilities following major fires and increasing penalties for safety violations. Senate negotiators, according to sources, want to go further by pushing regulators to more closely scrutinize utility spending and potentially tie rate hikes to inflation.

Lawmakers and the governor also generally agree on funding wildfire mitigation efforts and using future insurance-related tax revenue to help homeowners fireproof their properties. There’s also broad support for limiting attorney fees for those representing fire victims in litigation, though the Senate version would extend that cap to utility attorneys as well.

Where the sides split sharply is on Newsom’s proposal to eliminate subrogation — the legal mechanism that allows insurance companies to seek reimbursement from utilities after paying out fire-related claims. Neither Assembly nor Senate leaders support scrapping that right, according to internal counterproposals and Senate sources.

Insurance industry representatives have warned that eliminating subrogation would drive up their costs and, in turn, homeowners’ premiums.

Insurance Concerns Loom Large

State Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat running for insurance commissioner whose district includes the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades, warned that solving the utility rate problem by gutting subrogation could backfire by making insurance even less affordable.

“I fear we will create a massive new strain on the insurance system that could break basic questions of affordability for Californians,” Allen said, adding that it could worsen an already fragile insurance market statewide.

Lawmakers do appear aligned with Newsom on restricting the number of financial intermediaries — such as hedge funds — that can profit from wildfire claims. Both chambers want to prevent insurers from selling subrogation rights to outside investors, though the Senate’s version would allow exceptions with approval from the state insurance commissioner, a provision that could help smaller insurers needing quick cash after a major fire.

Assembly leaders are also resisting Newsom’s push to limit how much local governments can recover for destroyed infrastructure by tying reimbursement to depreciated value rather than full rebuilding costs. That proposal drew sharp criticism from the California State Association of Counties, the League of California Cities, and school district advocacy groups.

Facing pressure from the California Professional Firefighters union, Newsom appears to be softening his stance. In a letter sent Monday, the union thanked the governor for what it described as adjustments meant to protect local governments from the proposal’s impact, while still voicing overall support for his broader wildfire package. A Newsom spokesperson did not respond to questions about the change.

Who Counts as a Survivor?

Perhaps the most emotionally charged part of the debate centers on how to determine which wildfire survivors deserve compensation for pain and suffering — and how much.

Newsom’s original plan would limit noneconomic damages to those who lost a family member or suffered physical injury. Others could qualify only if they were within the fire’s burn perimeter and forced to evacuate, with payouts capped at $150,000 per person to protect the state’s wildfire fund, which draws money from both utility shareholders and ratepayers.

In response to backlash, the Assembly has proposed expanding who qualifies for those damages and removing the cap altogether, while the Senate’s version would keep eligibility broad but require survivors outside the burn zone to provide stronger proof that the fire caused their trauma.

Even so, weeks of protests by Eaton Fire survivors suggest there’s no easy way to satisfy everyone. Members of the Every Fire Survivors Network argue that any effort to rank or categorize victims is fundamentally unfair.

“We are the real wildfire survivors,” several dozen protesters chanted outside the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento on Monday night, timed to coincide with an end-of-session reception Newsom was hosting for lawmakers.

Among them was Gayle Nicholls-Ali, whose Altadena home burned to the ground in the fire and who is now in the process of rebuilding. Her son’s house nearby survived structurally but suffered extensive smoke damage. He and his wife have been living in a donated RV parked on the property while they wait for insurance approval to begin repairs.

Under Newsom’s plan, it’s unclear whether her son would even qualify for noneconomic damages, since he evacuated but didn’t lose his home or suffer physical injury.

“The mental stress alone” has taken a heavy toll on the family, Nicholls-Ali said. A retired public school teacher, she and her husband have called Altadena home for more than three decades. Her son, she said, had always dreamed of settling down in the same community.

“He wanted to live near home,” she said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Lawmakers Reject Core Elements of Newsom’s Wildfire Plan as Deadline Nears appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Fog rolls in off the ocean along the western edge of the property, while the Irish Hills climb steeply to the east — steep, brush-choked terrain that’s difficult to reach and loaded with fuel for a fast-moving fire.

“Any fire within the Diablo power plant area could be catastrophic,” said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with Cal Fire’s San Luis Obispo unit. The surrounding land sits in a very high fire severity zone, he said, which is why crews have worked to get ahead of the danger.

Diablo Canyon is one of many places across California where the state has quietly stepped in to cover gaps left by chronic federal underfunding of vegetation management, deeper cuts under the Trump administration, and a wildland firefighting workforce spread thin by blazes burning across the West.

A local nonprofit, the San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council, began building a fuel break along the ridgelines surrounding the plant using state money. Erickson’s crews then finished the job, closing gaps in the line to give firefighters a fighting chance to stop flames before they reach the facility.

In years past, the mix of landowners around the plant — including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — might have slowed or blocked that kind of work. But a 2023 agreement between Cal Fire and the bureau allowed state crews to operate on federal land, while the bureau handled environmental reviews and permitting. The fuel break was completed earlier this year.

“The project was designed from the beginning as an interagency effort,” said Philip Oviatt, a Bureau of Land Management California spokesperson. “No single agency could have achieved this outcome independently.”

The urgency behind that kind of cooperation is easy to understand. Wildfires have scorched millions of acres across California over the past decade, killing more than 220 people directly, contributing to tens of thousands of additional deaths tied to smoke exposure, and causing tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

The cost of prevention isn’t cheap either. Since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office, California has spent nearly half a billion dollars on grants for wildfire resilience and forest health work on federal land, according to the California Natural Resources Agency.

Jonathan Fitch, who manages Cal Fire’s vegetation management program, helped negotiate three new agreements last year with the U.S. Forest Service that allow the state to clear brush, gather pine cones for seed banks, replant burned areas and manage timber on national forest land within California. The Forest Service contributed $4 million toward those efforts statewide — a fraction of what’s actually needed.

“The true value is unlocking the state’s potential and resources on the federal landscape,” Fitch said.

He said he’s often asked why California should spend its own money and staff time working on land the federal government is supposed to manage.

“My response is, well, wildfires don’t stop at boundaries,” Fitch said. “We cannot disregard what happens in the federal space, because we’re one state. We’re one landscape.”

A shrinking pool of firefighters

Tension between Sacramento and Washington over forest management and wildfire funding has simmered since President Donald Trump first accused California of failing to properly manage its forests — more than half of which are actually under federal control.

Newsom mocked Trump last year with a mock “Make America Rake Again” executive order, and more recently criticized the administration for withholding roughly $1.5 billion in aid promised after the devastating Los Angeles firestorm in January 2025.

Yet despite the political sparring, California routinely crosses jurisdictional lines to help manage fires on federal land.

When the Timber Fire broke out in Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur — eventually burning nearly 6,000 acres and forcing the closure of Highway 1 — federal incident management teams were tied up elsewhere, fighting fires in Hoopa and the Pacific Northwest, or resting under mandatory time-off rules, according to U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman.

“So we were going to be looking at ordering a team from across the country, and even those are few and far between,” Freeman said.

Instead, the Forest Service brought in a Cal Fire incident management team to run the response — handling logistics, food, planning, finances, equipment repairs and medical care for firefighters on the line.

Freeman and others say the shortage of federal incident teams reflects the sheer volume of fire activity burning across the West this year. But Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter and vice president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, argues that Trump administration staffing cuts have made a long-standing problem worse.

“When we DOGED everybody, we lost people from the teams,” Scopa said, referring to Elon Musk’s short-lived government efficiency initiative. “We’ve been having a hard time staffing the teams for the last 10 years.”

Freeman said turning to Cal Fire for the Timber Fire freed up federal resources to respond elsewhere.

“This is not the first time we’ve done this, but it’s something fairly unique to California,” she said. “There are a finite number of firefighters, but California is in a better position than some states — than most states — because of this relationship.”

Data gaps and disappearing expertise

In other areas, the state has had a harder time compensating for federal shortfalls.

As the Department of Government Efficiency slashed federal payrolls, the Forest Service lost at least 20% of its workforce last year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Reorganization efforts and proposed closures of research facilities have further destabilized the agency, and morale has suffered. Two former Forest Service employees told CalMatters that several key California scientists left the agency after Trump took office.

Alan Talhelm, assistant deputy director for climate and energy at Cal Fire, said the loss of federal staff and expertise has made it harder to keep the state’s fuels-treatment tracking system, used by the governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, accurate and up to date.

“Those data still exist… But we have nobody to help us interpret those data,” Talhelm said. “If we see something that looks unusual, it’s harder for us to verify that it is what it should be and that it’s accurate information.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency tracks fuels treatments differently than the state does, which makes merging the two datasets “challenging.”

The tracking dashboard, which already runs a couple of years behind, gives state officials a broad view of where thinning and controlled burns have taken place — information that helps guide where to send grant money, crews and firefighting resources when a blaze breaks out.

“They can look at this database and say, ‘Oh, there was a prescribed burn here. Oh, there was a fuel break here,'” Talhelm said. “That’s a consequence right there. If we don’t have the correct information, it makes the data less useful.”

Federal staffing cuts have also slowed the Forest Service’s contribution to California’s Forest Inventory and Analysis, a nationwide census of forest conditions that helps scientists track how climate change, drought, disease and fire are reshaping the landscape.

“It’s literally the foundational information that then goes into everything from where you site your mills, to what carbon is doing, to the benefits of wildfire mitigations,” said John Battles, a forest ecology professor at UC Berkeley.

California’s survey data now lags as far back as 2021 — tied with Alaska for the oldest in the country. Cal Fire has hired contractors to speed up the surveys, but Talhelm said the federal side of the work hasn’t kept pace.

“We’re not there yet. And we’re not there in part because of the reduction in forest service staffing,” he said. “I don’t know that they have scaled back their ambition, but they’ve scaled back their ability to implement that mission.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency is finishing a review of inventory data collected between 2022 and 2024 and expects to release it publicly within the next few weeks. “We share CAL FIRE’s interest in seeing more plots measured and more frequent update(s),” the spokesperson said, adding that unspecified factors had stretched California’s review cycle from a planned five years to seven.

Battles said the delay carries real consequences. “Think about how many fires there have been since 2021 that don’t show up yet in the dataset,” he said. “There’s always a lag in the data, because it takes awhile. But now it’s just getting to be five years … You’re making decisions with wrong, not up-to-date information.”

Money troubles ahead

California’s ability to step into federal gaps has been made possible in part by its heavy spending on wildfire, which now totals roughly $4 billion a year. But the share dedicated specifically to forest health and fuels reduction has always been comparatively small — and that funding stream is now shrinking further.

Changes the Newsom administration made to a major climate program have drained a fund fed by polluter fees that historically provided up to $200 million annually for wildfire resilience projects. That figure has already dropped to $38 million, according to preliminary Department of Finance estimates, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has warned the fund could be zeroed out entirely.

That money has historically supported many of the Cal Fire grants used for projects on federal land, Talhelm said.

On a recent July morning, Fitch hiked up to see, for the first time, the completed fuel break near Diablo Canyon — the product of the state-federal partnerships he helped broker. Morning fog was just beginning to burn off, revealing coyote brush and scrub lining either side of the cleared ridge.

Fitch called it proof of what strong partnerships can accomplish.

“Land is fragmented,” he said, gesturing to the fuel break stretching along the ridgeline behind him. “For Cal Fire to be successful, we can’t do it alone.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Wildfire Crews Stretched Thin, California Steps In to Fill the Gaps appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins formally filed a proposal to rescind the federal “roadless rule,” a 2001 regulation that bars road building and most logging in undeveloped national forest land. The rollback would affect more than 4 million acres of federally managed forest in California alone, potentially opening pristine backcountry to new roads, timber harvests and other development.

Rollins, who first floated the idea last year, said the change is meant to clear the way for more aggressive fuel management on public lands.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a statement announcing the move.

But the Forest Service’s own data complicates that argument. Agency researchers who studied roughly 850 miles of roads running through the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland national forests — all of which include roadless sections — found that nearly two-thirds of human-caused wildfires over a 26-year period ignited near roadsides. Those are the places where people, sparks and dry, invasive grasses most often collide.

It’s a familiar problem for anyone who has followed California’s fire season: blazes rarely start from nowhere. A hiker burning toilet paper in the backcountry, a poorly wired hot tub, or a tow chain dragging sparks across dry grass — human activity, not lightning, sparks the vast majority of California’s wildfires, and roads make that activity possible in areas that would otherwise see little foot or vehicle traffic.

California officials have pushed back hard against the administration’s reasoning. In a letter sent to Rollins last September, state Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot argued that the roadless rule has not stood in the way of forest thinning or prescribed burns. He pointed out that more than 240,000 acres of roadless land in California have already undergone vegetation treatments to lower fire risk, including work in the Caples Creek area south of Lake Tahoe that helped protect nearby communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire.

Crowfoot warned that allowing construction, logging and mining in these areas “may put rural communities at increased risk of fire and significantly increase firefighting costs” for the state.

The concerns aren’t limited to California. A peer-reviewed study published earlier this year by researchers with The Wilderness Society found that, nationwide, wildfires are roughly four times more likely to ignite near roads than in roadless or wilderness areas. Ignition rates were lowest in designated wilderness, slightly higher in roadless zones, and highest within about 50 meters of a road.

“Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is also not a wildfire solution, and never will be,” said Josh Hicks, director of conservation campaigns for The Wilderness Society.

Administration officials insist the rule change won’t automatically trigger new logging or road projects. Instead, they say, individual national forest managers will decide how to proceed based on local conditions, with input from states, tribes and nearby communities.

Still, skepticism runs deep among conservationists, particularly given a 2025 executive order from the administration calling for an “immediate expansion of American timber production.” Critics also note that the existing roadless rule already permits limited road construction when necessary to protect public safety from wildfire threats — raising questions about what additional flexibility the rollback would actually provide.

A group of former U.S. Forest Service chiefs, including one who served during Trump’s first term, wrote in an opinion piece last year that eliminating the rule would put critical watersheds and wildlife habitat at risk. They also questioned the practical logic behind the move.

“Why build more roads when the agency, strapped for resources, can’t even maintain the ones that already exist?” they wrote, adding that the reason many backcountry areas remain roadless in the first place is that their most valuable timber was harvested long ago, leaving behind resources that are costly and difficult to reach.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, condemned the timing of the announcement, coming as it does amid a brutal fire season and following deep staffing cuts at the Forest Service under the Trump administration. Huffman said he intends to fight the rule change in Congress.

“The Trump administration is at it again, selling out our public lands to corporate polluters, ignoring the overwhelming objections of the American people,” Huffman said. “It’s reckless.”

Members of the public have until midnight on September 21 to submit formal comments on the proposal through the federal government’s regulations portal.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Trump Administration’s Road-Building Push Raises Wildfire Concerns appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

With just weeks left before lawmakers adjourn, Newsom’s administration has been quietly shopping a broad but still largely undefined set of proposals aimed at reducing how much money utility companies must pay out when their equipment sparks a wildfire. The effort has managed to unsettle nearly everyone with a stake in the issue.

Insurance companies have launched a statewide ad campaign warning that the plan amounts to a “utility bailout” that would strip them of their ability to recover costs from power companies after paying out policyholders’ claims. Attorneys who represent wildfire victims are bracing for cuts to their fees. Survivors fear they won’t be fully compensated for their losses and trauma. And local governments are pressing to ensure they still receive full reimbursement to rebuild roads, water systems and other infrastructure destroyed by fire.

On the other side of the debate are the state’s three major utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — which together serve roughly three-quarters of California and have faced intense criticism for sparking some of the state’s deadliest and most destructive fires.

None of the three companies appears to be in immediate financial distress; all reported rising profits last year. But wildfire-related costs have helped push California’s electricity rates to the second-highest in the nation, and officials in Newsom’s office and the Legislature worry that continued financial strain on utilities could drive prices even higher — or trigger a bankruptcy that would leave fire victims waiting even longer for compensation.

Newsom and his allies argue that utilities are currently held responsible for too much after a fire, creating an opening for hedge funds and other investors to profit by purchasing victims’ claims.

“The status quo doesn’t work,” Newsom said at a press conference last week when asked whether his proposal serves fire survivors’ interests. “We’re trying to balance all of those needs in a very familiar process that will unfold over the course of the next few months.”

When CalMatters asked the governor’s office to clarify that timeline — given that the legislative session ends in just three weeks — a spokesperson said Newsom meant the remaining weeks of this year’s session, but did not say whether he might call a special session to keep the effort alive beyond that deadline.

As Newsom weighs a potential run for president, he has political incentive to strike a deal. Critics on the right have used California’s disaster costs and affordability struggles as talking points, and further rate increases — or another utility bankruptcy — would only fuel that narrative. But aligning with the utilities carries its own risks. Anger toward the companies remains raw: just last week, Cal Fire and the Los Angeles County Fire Department determined that Edison equipment was responsible for igniting the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which killed 19 people in Altadena.

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who chairs a key Assembly committee, has expressed general support for Newsom’s direction. Senate leaders appear more cautious. Wildfire survivors are urging lawmakers to slow down and hold the debate in public rather than behind closed doors.

“You cannot be ‘there are some bad actors’ and therefore we will have a secret bill,” said Joy Chen, who leads a coalition of Los Angeles-area fire survivors. “Then your bill is the bad actor.”

A familiar fight

This isn’t the first time Newsom has waded into this territory. He took office not long after devastating wildfires tore through Northern California in 2017 and 2018 — fires that investigators later linked to PG&E equipment.

At the time, PG&E faced a legal and financial crisis. Under California’s strict liability standard, utilities are responsible for wildfire damage tied to their equipment even when they weren’t found negligent, and regulators had stopped allowing companies to pass those costs onto ratepayers in cases involving carelessness. Facing a wave of lawsuits, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

Newsom quickly signed legislation intended to shield utilities from future financial collapse, prompting accusations that the state was bailing out the industry. That law created a $21 billion wildfire fund — financed equally by utility shareholders and a $2.50 monthly surcharge on customers’ bills — meant to compensate victims, provided utilities meet stricter safety standards.

Then came the Eaton Fire in January 2025. During a powerful windstorm, electrical arcing from an aging, decommissioned Edison transmission tower ignited dry brush in Eaton Canyon. The fire, burning simultaneously with the deadly Palisades Fire, killed 19 people and destroyed nearly 9,500 homes and other structures. UCLA researchers estimated total losses between $24 billion and $45 billion.

The state’s wildfire fund is expected to be exhausted once insurance claims, Edison’s voluntary settlements and pending lawsuits are all accounted for. Lawmakers extended the fund last year, stretching the ratepayer surcharge through 2045 to help cover future disasters. Meanwhile, some hedge funds have moved to buy up insurance claims tied to the fires, hoping to profit from settlements.

Newsom’s plan seeks to narrow who can file claims against the fund and how much they can receive. According to a policy outline released Tuesday and private briefings held last week, his proposal would pair those liability limits with measures to expand home-hardening programs, help homeowners exit the state’s insurer-of-last-resort program, tie utility executive compensation to safety performance, and require utility shareholders to cover rate relief for customers during two upcoming summers.

Specific legislative language has not yet been released.

CalMatters reached out to all three major utilities for comment. San Diego Gas & Electric did not respond. PG&E and Edison directed questions to Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the utility-backed campaign Wildfire Victims First, which has flooded the state with advertising urging residents to pressure lawmakers to act. Click, who also does political work for Newsom, declined to answer specific questions — including whether utility representatives are negotiating directly with legislators — and instead provided statements from business groups and a major electrical workers’ union supporting the liability changes.

The chief executives of PG&E and Edison have also warned that they may take unspecified action to protect shareholders if lawmakers fail to reduce their wildfire liability exposure.

Over the past four years, the three utilities have spent a combined $5.2 million on political campaigns, lawmaker travel and charitable donations tied to elected officials, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. PG&E ranked among the top lobbying spenders in Sacramento during the current legislative session, and the three companies together spent nearly $7 million in the first half of this year lobbying the Legislature, the governor’s office and utility regulators.

Limiting damages

Newsom’s proposal seeks to reduce utility liability in several ways: capping attorneys’ fees, limiting how much local governments can recover for rebuilding public infrastructure, and restricting damages for certain categories of victims.

The plan includes a state-run “fast pay” system that would prioritize payouts to survivors who lost loved ones, suffered injuries or had their homes destroyed. But to use that system, claimants would likely have to forfeit their right to sue the utility — trading the possibility of a larger settlement through litigation for a quicker payment.

For other affected residents, the proposal floats a cap of $150,000 in damages.

Petrie-Norris, who supports the broader framework, said she does not want to restrict emotional distress claims for survivors she considers legitimate victims, but believes those claims should be limited for people who weren’t directly affected.

“If you were part of a disaster no one’s going to say you can’t make a claim,” she said. “If you did not actually experience a disaster, what non-economic damages should you be entitled to?”

Newsom and Petrie-Norris say they’re especially concerned about attorneys who solicit clients through advertising to sue utilities, noting that legal fees can consume 30% to 40% of a victim’s payout, according to one academic study. But advocates for survivors argue that determining who qualifies as a “real” victim isn’t so simple — someone who didn’t lose a home but suffered smoke inhalation from miles away, for instance, could still have been seriously harmed.

Chen said she was taken aback during a briefing with the governor’s office, when officials indicated that only people who evacuated and lost their homes would qualify for non-economic damages.

“Let’s say someone was out of town, but their house burned down so they didn’t evacuate,” she said. “But they lost everything, so they have to rebuild. So you won’t compensate them for pain and suffering?”

Newsom’s office has also said it wants to prevent investors from purchasing wildfire claims and prioritize small businesses over large corporations, though it hasn’t detailed how that would work in practice.

Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California Association of Counties, said he’s skeptical of the framing that some claimants are gaming the system.

“The utilities are finding a lot of creative ways to avoid responsibility. That’s it,” Knaus said. “We should not be opening the door for them to escape accountability.”

Shifting costs

Another element of the proposal could ripple across the state’s insurance market. Newsom is considering limiting — or eliminating — insurers’ ability to recover costs from utilities after paying out claims tied to utility-caused wildfires, a legal process known as subrogation.

Utilities and insurers have clashed over this issue for years. In 2018, utilities unsuccessfully pushed legislation to weaken California’s strict liability standard, which holds power companies responsible for wildfire damage near their equipment regardless of fault.

“We’re a well-resourced industry, but not like [the utilities],” said Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California. “Their lobbying spend was just crazy.”

Denni Ritter, vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, warned that eliminating subrogation could undercut progress made under insurance reforms California adopted last year to stabilize the market. Those reforms allowed insurers to factor catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs into their pricing, prompting some companies to resume writing new policies statewide and slowing growth in the state’s FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort.

Ritter and Frazier warned that if insurers can’t recoup wildfire-related claim costs from utilities, they’ll likely raise premiums broadly — even in areas with minimal fire risk.

“We don’t understand how they’re not embarrassed to suggest that the answer to their problem is to shift their costs over to other people,” Frazier said. “Why should a homeowners insurance customer in a dense urban environment have to pay considerably more?”

Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica-area Democrat who chairs the Senate’s utilities committee and is running for state insurance commissioner, said he’s wary of that tradeoff unless the broader package includes clear benefits for consumers and taxpayers.

Petrie-Norris, however, said the exchange might ultimately be worthwhile.

“If I can save you $2 on your utility bill and your insurance bill goes up by $1, that seems like a smart thing for us all to do,” she said. “But we’ve got to make sure that’s true and whether there are unintended consequences.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Pushes Last-Minute Plan to Shield California Utilities From Wildfire Costs appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

I write as someone who knows firsthand what it means to lose normalcy to fire. More than a year after I fled my home during the Palisades Fire, I still haven’t been able to move back in. My house didn’t burn, but it became unlivable after fire retardant containing toxic heavy metals rained down on our neighborhood. That experience left me deeply committed to reducing wildfire risk — but it also taught me that rushing these efforts without proper safeguards can create new dangers just as serious as the fires themselves.

That’s why I’m concerned about Senate Bill 1370, introduced by state Sens. Henry Stern and Josh Becker. The bill would exempt many wildfire prevention projects from a wide range of state environmental laws, including regulations covering water and air quality, endangered species protections and the California Environmental Quality Act. Projects involving herbicide spraying, removal of trees or native vegetation, and land clearing on parcels up to 3,000 acres would no longer need to comply with these existing rules.

In effect, SB 1370 would make permanent what Gov. Gavin Newsom authorized temporarily through an emergency proclamation this past June, which fast-tracked hundreds of wildfire prevention projects by suspending many of the same environmental requirements.

A look at the state’s public dashboard tracking these fast-tracked projects raises real red flags. Many projects run by Southern California Edison, the utility serving much of the region, rely heavily on herbicide application to clear vegetation. Chemicals like Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are commonly used but have been linked in multiple studies to cancer, respiratory illness and neurological damage. These are not fringe concerns — they’re documented risks that current state law is specifically designed to guard against, including rules that restrict spraying near drinking water sources and sensitive tree stands.

If SB 1370 becomes law, those safeguards would no longer apply to a broad swath of projects. Consider the Blodgett Forest Fuel Reduction Project in El Dorado Forest, which calls for herbicide treatment across up to 471 acres to reduce shrub cover. This forest is home to more than 400 plant species and 150 animal species, and it sits near waterways that feed into a county where roughly 42% of residents rely on private wells — wells drawing from shallow groundwater that could easily be compromised by nearby chemical spraying.

What troubles me most is how little oversight actually accompanies these expedited projects. There’s no requirement that they prove cost-effectiveness or measurable wildfire risk reduction — even though that reduction was the entire justification for loosening the rules in the first place. The state’s tracking dashboard offers scant detail on what protective measures, if any, were applied to each project, leaving communities with almost no way to voice concerns or hold anyone accountable. Compounding the problem, the state’s own Statewide Fuels Reduction Environmental Protection Plan — meant to guide these projects — is vague and, in many cases, purely voluntary.

This comes at a moment when federal protections are also eroding. The U.S. Forest Service and timber industry are preparing to spray unprecedented amounts of glyphosate across California’s forests, while the Trump administration has finalized changes gutting the national Endangered Species Act, clearing the way for expanded mining and logging nationwide.

Given that backdrop, California should be reinforcing its own environmental protections, not dismantling them. Instead, SB 1370 would strip away safeguards for projects that could damage fragile ecosystems and expose nearby residents to cancer-linked chemicals — all without any guarantee that these efforts will actually make our communities safer from fire.

There are better paths forward. The state should be putting resources into hardening homes against fire and encouraging smarter development that avoids high-risk areas. SB 1370, as written, doesn’t get us closer to a truly wildfire-resilient California — it just trades one danger for another.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Can Reduce Wildfire Risk Without Sacrificing Safety or Environmental Safeguards appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.