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Leaders of the California Assembly are rejecting elements of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to change the way California handles the financial aftermath of utility-caused wildfires. But lawmakers appear committed to reaching a deal on the issue in the final week of the legislative session.
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Assembly leaders are rejecting any proposed limits on the claims wildfire survivors can bring against electrical utility companies, according to an outline of their proposal obtained by The Sacramento Bee. They are also rejecting Newsom’s call to block insurance companies from suing the utilities to recoup their own losses after paying out claims in a utility-caused wildfire.
Those positions remain in flux and negotiations between Assembly members, state senators and Newsom are ongoing, Assembly Natural Resources Committee Chair Isaac Bryan, D-Jefferson Park, said. Bryan has been part of a group of Assembly lawmakers working out that chamber’s stance on the complex series of issues that could affect not just the extent to which people can recover their losses when such blazes burn through their homes and communities, but also all Californians’ home insurance prices and electrical bills.
“We wanted to make sure it was very clear by the way we postured and positioned ourselves that survivors, wildfire victims, access to justice, but also meeting the very real challenges of insulating a grid that is in high demand and absolutely critical for California’s infrastructure, all of these things don’t have to be seen as competing priorities,” Bryan said. “In fact, they’re all necessary.”
Assembly members felt they still didn’t know all the possible consequences, particularly for home insurance coverage and rates, of ending insurance companies’ option to recoup losses from utilities, a process called subrogation, Bryan said. That “is a very large decision to make,” he said. “It’s a lot to consider in the final weeks of the legislature.”
The Assembly leaders also describe their plan as calling for “stronger utility accountability, including broader executive compensation consequences and earlier intervention when utilities fail on safety,” according to the outline. Newsom had proposed upping the penalties the California Public Utilities Commission can level against utilities for wildfire prevention violations and requiring utility CEOs to forfeit the executive bonuses in years when their company starts a catastrophic, and fatal, wildfire.
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Some parties, including wildfire survivors and some lawmakers that represent fire-scarred districts, had criticized his accountability measures as too loose. The Assembly proposal includes docking the bonus packages of not just the CEO, but other top executives, and extending the bonus suspension from one to two years, Bryan said.
Another significant piece of the Assembly’s plan is a call to create “tiered limits” on fees attorneys can collect when representing cases of people affected by wildfires. The Governor’s Office had proposed replacing a system where lawyers get fees when they win or settle a case with a formula to determine how much they are compensated.
Public details on both Newsom and the Assembly’s proposal remain scant. And the Senate’s own working group is still deliberating on its potential proposals, said state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park. That makes it difficult to assess how often utility executives would actually face the loss of their bonuses, which would depend on how lawmakers structure the criteria for which fires count.
Assemblymember Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, said he is eager to see specific language in a bill, but said in general, said he finds the proposals coming from his chamber “much better” than those put forward by the Governor’s Office. Rogers, who served on Santa Rosa’s city council when the 2017 North Bay fires killed 40 people and devastated that community, said Newsom’s proposal appeared too lenient on utility companies and also would have made it hard for cities like his to recover losses to cash-strapped municipal budgets.
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This story was originally published August 24, 2026 at 6:31 PM.