Gavin Newsom wildfire plan faces revolt over warning it will spike insurance rates across California

Gov.Gavin Newsom’s latest proposal that could help private utility companies dodge liability for wildfires sparked by their own equipment is facing heat from survivor groups.A coalition of insurers, local governments, fire survivors, attorneys and consumer advocates urged state lawmakers to reject the plan in a fact sheet titled “Wildfire Recovery Reform: Survivors First” — warning it would drive up insurance costs statewide while capping what fire victims and insurers can claw back from utilities.“Wildfire survivors should not be asked to subsidize utility shareholders.

Families who have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, and livelihoods because of utility-caused fires deserve full compensation and a clear path toward recovery,” the coalition wrote in an Aug.11 letter to the legislature.Newsom’s utility bailout push comes as California’s wildfire liability fund nears depletion after being drained by Southern California Edison’s payouts to victims of last year’s Eaton Fire, which has been blamed on sparks from a decades-idle Edison transmission line.Utility equipment has caused seven of the world’s 20 most expensive wildfires, every one of them in California, the coalition said.Existing liability rules put utilities on the hook for the disasters their equipment causes.“The Legislature is now being asked to consider proposals that would instead transfer those costs to homeowners’ insurers, local governments, state taxpayers, and the very communities devastated by these disasters,” the groups added.Californians would still foot the bill for utility-caused fires under Newsom’s plan, the coalition warned — through “higher insurance costs, higher taxes, diminished public services, or reduced compensation for wildfire losses.”In his own fact sheet, Newsom blasts a “broken system that is not working for survivors, taxpayers, or ratepayers” — and blames insurance companies and hedge funds for making survivors fight for “money t...