SB492 - Wildfire.

Amended IN Assembly August 29, 2026 Amended IN Senate January 22, 2026 Amended IN Senate January 08, 2026 CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION Senate Bill No. 492 Introduced by Senator Menjivar Becker and Assembly Member Petrie-Norris February 19, 2025 An act to add Part 14.4 (commencing with Section 53700) to Division 31 of the Health and Safety Code, relating to the Youth Housing Bond Act of 2026, by providing the funds necessary therefor through an election for the issuance and sale of bonds of the State of California and for the handling and disposition of those funds, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately. An act to add Sections 6150 and 6152.55 to the Business and Professions Code, to amend Section 11126 of, and to add Section 7928.725 to, the Government Code, to add Section 929.4 to the Insurance Code, to amend Section 4124.5 of, to add Sections 4209.6, 4209.8, and 4209.9 to, and to repeal and add Section 4137 of, the Public Resources Code, to amend Sections 850, 3280, 3283, 3292, 3298, 3298.1, 3299.3, 8385, and 8389 of, to add Sections 719.7 and 8389.1 to, to add Chapter 7 (commencing with Section 3299.200) to Part 6 of Division 1 of, the Public Utilities Code, and to amend Sections 80524, 80540, 80542, 80544, 80544.5, and 80550 of the Water Code, relating to wildfire, making an appropriation therefor, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST SB 492, as amended, Menjivar Becker. Youth Housing Bond Act of 2026. Wildfire. (1) Existing law establishes the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in the Natural Resources Agency and requires the department to coordinate programs of fire protection, fire prevention, pest control, and forest and range maintenance and enhancement. This bill would require the department, on or before July 1, 2029, in consultation with the Department of Insurance, the Natural Resources Agency, the Office of Emergency Services, and other relevant departments, to develop standards for state and local agencies to aggregate and make available data related to parcel-, neighborhood-, and community-level wildfire risk for the purpose of enabling a wildfire data sharing platform, as provided. The bill would require the department to incorporate those data standards into community wildfire risk reduction metrics. (2) Existing law creates the Department of Insurance, headed by the Insurance Commissioner, and prescribes their powers and duties. Existing law requires, on or before April 1, 2026, and every 2 years thereafter, an admitted insurer with written California premiums totaling $12,000,000 or more to submit a report to the Insurance Commissioner on its residential property experience data for the previous 2 years for policies written in California, as specified. Existing law requires this information submitted to the commissioner to be confidential, exempt from the California Public Records Act, and not subject to subpoena, as provided. This bill would authorize the Department of Insurance to provide information submitted to the department, including, among other things, the property experience data described above, to researchers and government agencies for the purpose of evaluating California wildfire risk, insurance protection gaps, or wildfire risk mitigation, as provided. The bill would require any published data product collected pursuant to the above-described authority that is provided to a researcher or government agency to be anonymized and aggregated sufficiently to avoid identification of individual company losses, claims data, or information on confidential business practices, as specified, and would prohibit subsequent reports from identifying an individual respondent or insurer. (3) Existing law requires the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to annually provide to the Legislature a report detailing the department’s fire prevention efforts and annually post on its internet website information regarding hazardous fuel reduction and vegetation management projects funded or conducted by the department, as provided. Existing law requires the department to develop a standardized protocol for monitoring implementation and evaluating the positive and negative ecological and fire behavior impacts from vegetation management projects undertaken by the state, as provided. This bill would repeal those requirements and would instead require the department, on or before March 1 of each year, to prepare and submit a report to the Legislature on the detailed efforts made in California towards wildfire prevention and community preparedness, as provided. Existing law requires the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, including the Natural Resources Agency and the department, among others, in coordination with certain public agencies, to develop a comprehensive implementation strategy to track and ensure the achievement of the goals and key actions identified in California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, as provided. This bill would require, on or before July 1, 2027, and every 5 years thereafter, the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, in consultation with the State Fire Marshal, the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, the Wildfire County Coordinator Program, and the State Hazard Mitigation Officer to prepare a comprehensive statewide community wildfire preparedness strategy, as provided. The bill would require the State Fire Marshal to support communities in the development of optional county-level community wildfire protection plans that align with the community wildfire preparedness strategy, as provided. The bill would require a local entity, in order to receive state funding to implement its community wildfire protection plan, to provide annual updates and progress on its efforts to meet the goals of its plan. (4) Existing law establishes the Continuation Account in the Wildfire Fund, to be administered by the Wildfire Fund Administrator, and continuously appropriates moneys in the Continuation Account for purposes of payment of eligible claims arising from wildfires ignited on or after September 19, 2025, as provided. Existing law requires each large electrical corporation to provide to the Public Utilities Commission a written notification of its election to participate, or not to participate, in the Continuation Account, and requires the commission, if all participating electrical corporations have provided their election to participate in the Continuation Account, to provide the administrator and other entities notification of their elections. Existing law authorizes the administrator, on or after the date the commission provides that notification, but not later than December 31, 2028, to determine if annual contributions from large electrical corporations are needed to enable the Continuation Account to fund the timely payment of eligible claims, as provided. Existing law requires the commission, within 15 days of receiving notification from the administrator that additional annual contributions are required, to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to consider using its authority to require the large electrical corporations to collect a nonbypassable charge from ratepayers to support the Continuation Account, including the payment of any bond issued for the support of the Continuation Account, as provided. Existing law authorizes the Department of Water Resources to issue bonds, in an aggregate amount up to $9,000,000,000, as provided, to support the Continuation Account. If the commission imposes the nonbypassable charge to support the Continuation Account, existing law requires the large electrical corporations, from calendar years 2029 to 2045, inclusive, to provide to the administrator their annual contributions, as specified, for deposit into the Continuation Account. This bill would, if the administrator provides that notification, additionally authorize the administrator to incur indebtedness and issue bonds solely for purposes of supporting the Continuation Account and other related expenses incurred by the administrator, provided that bonds authorized under this provision are payable solely from annual contributions and additional contributions, as provided. The bill would authorize bonds issued by the department, at the discretion of the administrator, to be secured solely by ratepayer contributions, as specified. The bill would prohibit the Wildfire Fund or Continuation Account from being terminated while bonds issued by the department remain outstanding, unless an amount sufficient to pay remaining debt service on those bonds has been irrevocably set aside for those purposes, as specified. Upon the determination of the administrator that the Wildfire Fund should be terminated, the bill would require any remaining Wildfire Fund assets to be transferred to the Continuation Account, and upon the determination of the administrator that the Continuation Account should be terminated, the bill would require any remaining funds to be transferred to the General Fund. By transferring those moneys into a continuously appropriated account, the bill would make an appropriation. The bill would make additional technical and conforming changes. Existing law requires revenues and bond proceeds received by the department to be deposited in the Department of Water Resources Charge Fund and continuously appropriates the moneys in the Department of Water Resources Charge Fund to the department for specified purposes, including transfers to the Wildfire Fund and payment of the bonds. This bill would require revenues and bond proceeds received by the department pursuant to the provisions related to the Continuation Account to be deposited into an account or subaccount within the Department of Water Resources Charge Fund, and to be held separate and apart from amounts held in the Department of Water Resources Charge Fund pursuant to provisions related to the Wildfire Fund, as specified. (5) This bill would create the California Wildfire Relief Fast-Pay Program and would require the California Catastrophe Response Council to appoint a fast-pay administrator to administer the fast-pay program. The bill would require the fast-pay administrator to establish and approve procedures for the review, approval, and timely payment of claims by individual claimants for damages as a result of an activating wildfire, as defined. If the eligible entity, defined as an electric utility or public agency that has a wildfire mitigation plan approved by the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (office), is a participating electrical corporation, as defined, the bill would require settlements pursuant to the fast-pay program to count as settlements of eligible claims and to be paid from the account, as specified. If the eligible entity is not a participating electrical corporation, the bill would require the eligible entity to be solely responsible for directly paying amounts to satisfy settlement offers pursuant to the fast-pay program. This bill would, among other things, prohibit an individual, business corporation, or other entity from selling, assigning, or transferring any wildfire claim, or any right of recovery on a wildfire claim, to a private equity group, and would prohibit an individual, wildfire attorney, corporation, or other entity from selling, assigning, or transferring, in whole or in part, any contingency fee on an interest in a contingency fee, except as provided. This bill would prohibit a private equity group from paying any wildfire expenses with respect to a wildfire claim and from funding wildfire advertising costs with respect to any applicable wildfire that damages or destroys (1) more than 100 structures, or (2) more than 10,0000 acres of land, and would authorize the Attorney General or any district attorney to bring a civil action to enforce that prohibition, as specified. (6) Existing law regulates, among other things, fee agreements, legal advertising and referral services, the sale of financial products to a client, and unlawful solicitation. This bill would require an attorney who contracts to represent a client involving a claim against an electric utility involving an applicable wildfire shall provide a disclosure to the client the options and requirements involving the fast-pay program, as provided. The bill would prohibit a person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation from making an unsolicited targeted communication to solicit any business for any attorneys concerning a potential action for wrongful death, personal injury, or property damage within 30 days of an event, defined as an incident resulting in the proclamation of a state of emergency, as specified. The bill would prohibit, for any claim based on inverse condemnation against an electrical corporation arising from a covered wildfire caused by an electrical corporation, the fee for an attorney representing an insurer involving a subrogated claim from exceeding 10% of the settlement or judgment. (7) Existing law, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, requires, with specified exceptions, that all meetings of a state body be open and public and all persons be permitted to attend. Existing law authorizes certain state bodies to hold closed session meetings for certain purposes, including authorizing the governing board or advisory panel of the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) to hold closed sessions when addressing the development of rates, reinsurance, and strategy when discussion in open session concerning those matters would prejudice the position of the CEA. This bill would additionally authorize the California Catastrophe Response Council to hold closed sessions when addressing either the administration or evaluation of individual claims submitted for reimbursement from the Wildfire Fund or the Continuation Account, or the development of strategy related to reinsurance or other mechanisms to extend the durability of the Wildfire Fund or Continuation Account, as specified. The California Public Records Act requires a public agency, defined to mean a state or local agency, to make its public records available for public inspection and to make copies available upon request and the payment of a fee, unless the public records are exempt from disclosure. This bill would exempt records held by the California Catastrophe Response Council, or the California Earthquake Authority as the Wildfire Fund Administrator, that relate to the administration or evaluation of claims submitted for reimbursement from the Wildfire Fund or Continuation Account from the California Public Records Act, as specified. (8) Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that int [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]