If you live in California, you've probably seen the ads: "Home insurance rates skyrocket." "The FAIR Plan is broken." They urge you to call your legislator and demand a fix. What they don't mention is who paid for them — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric shareholders, through a campaign called Wildfire Victims First.

Despite the name, not one wildfire survivors group supports it.

Meanwhile, the Governor’s staff has been quietly negotiating a wildfire package with lawmakers' staff. No bill text has been released. The Legislature returned from recess on August 3 and adjourns at the end of the month — the exact window for a "gut-and-amend," where lawmakers strip an existing bill, drop in new language, and fast-track it to get something done.

Eaton Fire survivors and Consumer Watchdog say the package would cap payments for pain and suffering, block insurers from recovering costs from utilities, and limit attorneys' fees, making it harder for survivors to find lawyers. Insurance companies agree — and when insurers and fire victims end up on the same side, that's worth noticing. 

Here's the part almost nobody in this fight is discussing: none of it addresses why the fires get so big, and the answer is not just “climate change”. That is a cop out for years of systematic mismanagement. 

Roughly 46% of California is federally owned — national forests, BLM land, parks, refuges. Much of the state's highest-risk landscape sits on those federal acres. A century of aggressive fire suppression and reduced logging let fuel pile up. Many California forests are far denser today than they were historically, which turns ordinary ignitions into fast-moving infernos. Scientists point to fire exclusion, drought, insect die-off, and a warming climate working together — with excess vegetation driving how these fires behave. Remember, even as our forests burn down, we are importing timber from foreign countries. Bad policy in action.

Fuel loads are measured in tons per acre and vary by forest type. But in overstocked Sierra Nevada forests, they run well above historic levels; they remain a “tinder box”. That's why mechanical thinning and prescribed burns are so widely recommended. On another note, properly managed forests also get more water in the streams; more on that in a future column.

The problem is pace and political will power. Fuels accumulate faster than crews can treat them; the idea that logging is a bad thing just won’t go away. Tree lovers are loving the forests to death. The Native people actively managed the forests much better than the Federal Government does. Congressional research finds millions of acres still at high hazard, with treatment backlogs growing because new growth outruns current work.

So CA lawmakers continue to argue over who writes the check. Until forests get thinned and maintained, the answer stays the same: you do, every month, on your power bill.