CPC experts weigh in on the policies driving disaster

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SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT WILL SWAIM

Before we get to our regularly scheduled programming — in which we discuss the myriad policy failures that led to this week’s devastating wildfires — we want to tell you how you can help.


As we write, nearly 10,000 structures — homes, businesses, churches and schools — have been destroyed, and at least 10 Californians have lost their lives. The worst part may be that it’s not over.

We've received calls from several donors asking where their dollars can make the most impact. They’re looking for private, philosophically-aligned organizations engaged in disaster relief rather than government agencies.

Along with our partners, we have vetted a handful of trustworthy organizations providing direct aid to those in need. We’re moving donations to these groups through the California Wildfire Relief Fund at DonorsTrust, the oldest and largest donor-advised fund committed to the principles of liberty.

If you’d like to join this relief effort, please download contribution instructions here.
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** A Firestorm of Failures
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The devastating fires that have swept through Los Angeles have left Californians reeling from the shocking failures of government leadership. Outraged Californians are searching for answers to hard questions: How did we get here and what must be done to address these problems and safeguard Californians from future disasters?

We asked California Policy Center’s staff and fellows for their insights on the critical factors fueling California’s fire crisis — from neglected fire prevention strategies and policies that have driven insurance providers out of the state to government officials who seem to have forgotten that their fundamental responsibility is to protect the lives and property of the people they serve.

Breakdown in Government Leadership

by Will Swaim, President, California Policy Center

When wind-driven fires erupted in Los Angeles this week, Governor Gavin Newsom drew outrage for posting a photo of himself near Pacific Palisades. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass got the treatment, too — because she was nowhere near the fire: she was in Ghana attending the inauguration of John Dramani Mahama. By the time she returned to L.A. on Wednesday, more than 1,000 homes had burned, two people were dead, and 100,000 residents had been evacuated. Today, the fires have burned 10,000 homes, killed a total of 10 and forced nearly 200,000 evacuations.

You might say politicians can’t win — that they’re damned if they’re close to a fire or too far from one. But there is indeed something powerfully symbolic about Bass’s Ghanaian adventure: this week’s fires have functioned like spotlights, illuminating the extent to which California’s political class engages in political theater rather than the real work of running a city.

In the months leading up to California’s worst wildfire disaster, Bass was busy looking good. She took the time to order that the Pride flag be flown at City Hall for the entire month of June, endorsed her council’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and cheered a council plan released to fund reparations for black Californians who were never slaves with money from people who never owned slaves. After November’s election, she signed off on the city council’s vote to (as CNN put it) “establish the city as a sanctuary for immigrants and LGBTQ youth in advance of Trump’s return to the White House.”

We could go on with examples like these. But nowhere would we identify any attempt to make Los Angeles safe from fire. Indeed, when fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades ran dry, Bass said it was unreasonable to expect that the city’s water system be built to support wildfire suppression. In a region with limited rainfall, and a city that stretches into dry canyons and foothills, the mayor has said the real challenge confronting the city’s Department of Water and Power is (wait for it) equity and conservation. As the fires burn, “conservation” has become scarcity, and “equity” means that rich and poor suffer alike.

But talking about equity is thrilling for the mayor and her allies. Thanks to Bass, the city’s appointed fire commission is now staffed by teacher union activists and DEI specialists. And last summer, Bass actually cut the fire department’s $800 million annual budget by $17 million. In a December memo to Bass, the city’s fire chief said the mayor’s budget cuts undermined her department’s “ability to maintain core operations,” including its “ability to mitigate wildland fires and other hazards effectively.” Her memo itself may have been theater as well as the impulse of any bureaucrat anywhere to fight against all fiscal restraint: in a footnote, the chief said that she recommended no real action — just that Bass, the council and the feckless commissioners “receive and file” the memo. That job is complete.

Bass’s city council has shown tremendous interest in housing and homelessness. Now at last the city’s political performers have a stage worthy of their talents — a stage suddenly cleared of thousands of homes, businesses and schools. For a mayor and council obsessed with helping the homeless, this may be the best of all possible worlds: they now govern a city in which there were already an estimated 45,000 homeless. They can now claim tens of thousands more.

Wildfire Prevention and Forest Mismanagement

by Edward Ring, Director of Water and Energy Policy, California Policy Center

California has been plagued with superfires for many years but nothing so far approaches the scale of the ongoing disaster that has befallen the people of Los Angeles. And while nothing can prevent fire from spreading when the Santa Ana winds periodically blow gusts of hot desert air through the mountains and canyons and into the Los Angeles Basin, there are many things we could have done to prevent those fires from turning into the cataclysm we’re currently experiencing.

Steps to mitigate fire risk are well known, but for years were ignored. Instead of addressing the true causes and hazards, California’s political leadership blamed every big fire on the “climate crisis” and took steps that did nothing to solve the problem. The flawed policies these politicians enacted were supported by special interests who benefited from the subsidies and mandates that were showered on them after every big fire.

For example, after the devastating wildfires of 2020, Governor Newsom issued, with great fanfare, an executive order banning by 2035 any sales of new cars that weren’t EVs. This edict did absolutely nothing to curb wildfires.

While wildfires can’t be eliminated completely, there are basic policy changes that will reduce their severity. Implementation of these reforms is complex, but they can be summarized in a few words: Deregulate the process whereby public and private land managers can do controlled burns, thin vegetation, graze goats, cattle, and other herbivores, and harvest marketable timber.

At the same time, increase State Water Project allocations to California’s urban areas and invest in a more robust system of water delivery so surges of water can be sustained during firefighting efforts. Finally, invest more aggressively in pruning and clearing foliage around power lines, and, better yet, move power lines underground in fire prone neighborhoods.

The next time an official government representative, whether they’re an elected politician or someone managing an agency, claims that these fires are the result of the “climate crisis,” they need to be exposed as charlatans. For far too many years, the “climate crisis” has been the rhetorical bludgeon used to justify legislation and regulations that have increasingly been harmful to the environment. Mismanagement of our forests and wildlands is a tragic example of this.

Edward Ring is the co-author, along with Steve Hilton, of Modern Forest Management ([link removed]) (March 15, 2024), a report that is essential reading on the mismanagement of California’s forests that includes specific recommendations for state and federal reforms that should be enacted to advance effective wildfire prevention.

The Financial Toll of California’s Wildfire Crisis

by Marc Joffe, California Policy Center Visiting Fellow

This week’s swarm of Southern California wildfires promises to be the most expensive natural disaster in the state’s history. While most of the cost will be due to the destruction of many very expensive properties, California’s union-dictated fire staffing policies will ensure that there will be a large human resource cost as well.

As of Thursday, the latest available total loss estimate from AccuWeather was in the range of $52 billion to $57 billion. In terms of insured losses, estimates range from $6 billion to $13 billion. Property owners may also expect to see further escalation of insurance premiums, as providers grapple with the fact that the City was inadequately prepared for the combination of high winds and low humidity that had been predicted several days in advance.

While these costs will be incurred locally, taxpayers in Los Angeles and beyond can expect to pay dearly for the personnel needed to put out the fire. California’s public pay database shows that 61 LA Fire Department employees received over $400,000 in cash compensation in 2023; that’s not including benefits, employer pension contributions, and retiree health care costs.

Large fire events require “mutual aid”, which involves sending firefighters to the affected area from elsewhere across the state and beyond. Governor Newsom’s office announced deployment of over 5700 state, federal, and local firefighters from outside Los Angeles to the zone. But mutual aid is not free: costs must be picked up by the state and federal government or the receiving agency must reimburse the fire departments that contribute fire personnel.

This compensation covers not only the employee’s salary, overtime, and benefit costs but also includes the cost of hotel accommodations (at $191 nightly in Los Angeles) plus meals and incidentals (at $86 per day). State employees participating in this week’s firefighting will benefit from a recent work-week reduction their union negotiated, likely translating into significantly more overtime pay for them. The Legislative Analyst had recommended deferring the reduction until California stabilized its finances, but the legislature did not heed this suggestion.

The total personnel costs for this incident will take a long time to calculate and may never be made public but we can be sure that it will be substantial.

California’s Broken Insurance Market

by Sheridan Karras, Research Manager, California Policy Center

There have been disruptions in the home insurance market throughout the U.S. in recent years, but the situation in California is uniquely notorious — and the tragedy unfolding in Los Angeles underscores that this problem is not going away soon. Just search for “California fire insurance crisis” in your web browser and you’ll be overwhelmed with a new wave of tragic stories, and renewed frustration over an avoidable policy problem that adds insult to injury in the wake of this catastrophic loss.

Last month, California’s Department of Insurance issued a newregulation ([link removed]) allowing insurance companies to pass the cost of reinsurance (insurance for insurance companies, should they owe massive payouts) to consumers. In turn, the companies who remain in California must “increase coverage in high-risk areas,” according to Insurance Journal. The move is an attempt to ease a struggling insurance market in California. But to the degree that this would have eased insurance companies’ anxieties, the benefit is bound to be undone by failing state and local leadership. Why would an insurance company ever want to do business in an area where fire hydrants run dry ([link removed]) , and in other parts of the state, California’s “environmentalist” timber regulations turn wildlands into tinder boxes
([link removed]) ?

Karras is the author of The Disastrous Insurance Landscape in California (2023) ([link removed]) , which outlines the “trifecta of policy failures” by Gov. Newsom and state leadership that drove insurers out of the market in California.

Missed Opportunities to Underground Power Lines

CPC Senior Fellow Lance Christensen on X (formerly Twitter), replying to former Assemblyman Mike Gatto, who represented California’s 43rd Assembly District

I've been seeing a lot of sparks from downed power lines & remembered SB 1463 (2016) ([link removed]) to underground electrical lines that you coauthored with Sen. Moorlach. It didn't receive a single NO vote but Gov. Brown vetoed it for some bogus reason.

8 years later, this bill could have had an impact.

… We tried in 2016 then kept working on it until SB 584 (Moorlach) ([link removed]) when Los Angeles Senator chair of the Appropriations Committee, Anthony Portantino, killed the bill on the suspense file for being too expensive.

Editor’s Note: Sen. Anthony Portantino represented the 25th Senate District from 2016 to 2024, which includes most of the San Gabriel Mountains and San Gabriel Valley communities like Altadena and Pasadena, now at the epicenter of the Eaton Fire.


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** Radio Free California #371: L.A. is Burning
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On this week's podcast: CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen dig into the real causes of California’s latest calamity. Fact-checking the fact checkers at Meta. How Medal of Freedom winner George Soros damaged California. And more. Listen now. ([link removed])

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Registration is now open for CPC’s fourth annual Parents, Not Partisans Summit 2025: California at the Crossroads of Education in Sacramento March 18-19, 2025! Join us for this transformative two-day event designed to equip parent group leaders, education reform advocates and school board members with the tools and strategies to meet the opportunities — and challenges — of 2025 head-on.

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Register today to join us Tuesday, March 18 - Wednesday, March 19, 2025 in Sacramento. Use the promo code "PARENTUNION" at checkout to receive complimentary conference registration.

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After a period of municipal financial stability, California local governments are once again facing fiscal distress. A robust system of municipal financial reporting and monitoring can provide early warnings of fiscal trouble and allow policymakers at the state and local level to proactively address them.

Join California Policy Center and XBRL US for a half-day conference, Modernizing Municipal Reporting, featuring keynote speaker California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, CPA on January 30, 2025 from 8:45 AM - 1:30 PM in Costa Mesa, CA.

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— Find out how standardized, machine-readable financials can be a game-changer to track and identify financial health for cities, counties and special districts. Get insights into practical aspects of the FDTA rollout from public sector accountants and analysts.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn about the potential impact of the FDTA on California governments, and participate in the discussion about how to implement this program efficiently and effectively!

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