Expediting homeowner insurance claims. Fast-tracking rebuilds. Ensuring fire aid for undocumented immigrants. Boosting penalties for arsonists.

As wildfires continue to blaze through Los Angeles County, state lawmakers are quick to announce ideas to provide disaster aid and prevent future wildfires, touting their plans in press conferences, news releases and social media posts.

But how exactly would these work? What’s the price tag? And could the state afford all this?

Few, if any, know. Yet the answer to those questions is particularly important now as the state braces for economic uncertainties, partly due to a hostile incoming presidential administration, tax return delays and the unknown wildfire-associated costs to the state.

The Los Angeles fires have claimed at least 25 lives and torched more than 40,000 acres in the past week, with damage estimated at more than $250 billion. While outgoing President Joe Biden declared it a major disaster and promised 100% federal reimbursement of wildfire spending for 180 days, the state still must front the bill and may shoulder further costs.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom projected a “modest surplus” in the upcoming fiscal year — albeit one achieved by drawing $7 billion from the state’s rainy day fund — but cautioned that uncertainties could drastically alter that proposal in just a few months. “The bottom could completely fall out,” Newsom warned.

Still, many legislators have rushed to propose measures with an unknown price tag in response to the LA fires. And the proposals — most of which lack details – largely mirror party ideologies: Republicans want to see a less-regulated insurance market and fewer environmental restrictions in the name of fireproofing and rebuilding, while Democrats hope to increase oversight of insurers and prevent or punish price-gouging.

The scramble could reflect legislators’ desire to quickly respond to a natural disaster, but it also represents a political benefit because “voters are looking to their elected official to do something,” said Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California.

It is also more tangible for voters to see a politician react to a disaster rather than prepare for one, he said.

“Voters do reward parties and incumbents who spend money after disasters to help clean things up and fix things, so there’s a real benefit to literally spending more money, no matter where it comes from,” Grose said. “Spending after a disaster has really big electoral dividends.”

‘Governing by press release’

But Mike Madrid, a longtime GOP consultant in California, called the legislative ideas “tinkering around the edges” — arguing that state lawmakers are “governing by press release” without fully assessing Los Angeles fires’ damage.

“Keeping a politician away from a TV camera is like trying to keep a gnat away from a porch light,” Madrid said. “They believe that any action is better than no action, so they’d rather say something and get into the discourse and also…presumably show their constituents that they are doing something about it.”

On Monday, Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders proposed a $2.5 billion spending plan on wildfire response and recovery, expanding the scope of the ongoing special session to “Trump-proof” California. The move came after Republican lawmakers chided them for not devoting the special session to “fireproofing” the state.

Dubbed California’s “Marshall Plan” by Newsom, the proposal would allocate $1 billion in “emergency response” funding — costs Newsom said would be eligible for full federal reimbursement under the major disaster declaration, which would cover wildfire response, cleanup and recovery expenses. It would also include $1 million from the state’s general fund to support school rebuilding and repairs in Los Angeles, said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the state Finance Department.

The proposal also includes $1.5 billion — part of the $10 billion climate bond voters approved in November — to pay for disaster preparedness efforts. The governor originally proposed it in next year’s budget but now hopes to “accelerate” the spending in light of the wildfires, according to his office.

But the public has yet to see a spending breakdown. The Senate and the Assembly will hold budget hearings on the proposal on Jan. 22 and schedule a floor vote for the week of Jan. 27, according to legislative leaders.

Newsom’s office also issued several executive orders in the past week to allow displaced students to attend school outside their districts, expedite debris cleanups and suspend environmental permitting requirements to speed up rebuilding. One order extended the tax return filing deadline for fire victims in Los Angeles County until Oct. 15, aligning with the federal extension.

How that extension will impact state finances is unclear, Palmer told CalMatters. But he noted that the delay is only for one county, unlike the extension issued in 2023 for winter storm victims in 55 of the state’s 58 counties, which significantly affected the state’s ability to forecast its tax revenue that year.

Dems: Bonds to prop up FAIR? Catastrophe savings accounts?

Legislators thus far have introduced seven other wildfire-inspired bills, with unknown price tags.

Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, a City of Industry Democrat who chairs the Assembly Insurance Committee, re-introduced a pair of bills that failed last year to amp up oversight of the state’s FAIR Plan — an insurer-run last resort for homeowners living in high-risk areas to obtain fire insurance policies.

This time, there’s a new component: One of the bills, Assembly Bill 226, would authorize the FAIR Plan Association to ask the state-run California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank to issue bonds if it is at risk of running out of money to pay insurance claims. Calderon has said it would “alleviate some of the uncertainty” for LA fire victims with FAIR policies.

She is also carrying Assembly Bill 232, which would, for five years, allow homeowners to establish a “catastrophe savings account,” exempt from state income tax, to cover insurance deductibles and costs of uninsured losses.

Assemblymembers John Harabedian of Pasadena and Jacqui Irwin of Thousand Oaks, both Democrats, introduced Assembly Bill 238 to require mortgage servicers to halt or reduce mortgage payments for fire victims for up to 180 days, with the option of extending it for another 180 days. They are also championing Assembly Bill 239 to establish a state-led task force to coordinate the rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles.

Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, authored Assembly Bill 245 to “state the intent” of the Legislature to offer “meaningful and automatic” property tax relief for disaster victims. Lawmakers frequently use such intent bills as placeholders early in the legislative session, allowing them to meet the bill introduction deadline and adding substantive amendments later. For example, 40% of the bills introduced by the 2023 deadline were nonsubstantive bills, according to veteran lobbyist Chris Micheli.

More Democrats have floated ideas but have yet to provide specifics. Sen. María Elena Durazo of Los Angeles, for example, told Politico she wants to ensure undocumented immigrants who are fire victims and ineligible for federal relief can receive state aid.

Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Santa Rosa Democrat, mentioned to reporters on Monday several policy ideas he supports, such as enhancing protections against price-gouging, making seasonal firefighters full-time positions, improving the state’s drinking water and utility infrastructure, and establishing a new commission to set rules for insurers to make it easier for homeowners who’ve made their homes more fire-resistant to secure insurance policies.

Assemblymember James Gallagher addresses the media during a press conference on the Los Angeles wildfires, at the state Capitol in Sacramento, on Jan 13, 2024. Photo by Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters

Whereas Democrats primarily blame the wildfires on climate change, Republicans have pointed fingers at the state’s Democratic leaders, insisting they did not do enough to help wildfire victims or to prevent wildfires from spreading.

“We’ve known this insurance issue is looming, and what have you seen out of the supermajority? And what have you seen out of the governor? There’s been no action taken,” Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher of Chico said at a Monday press conference.

GOP: Tax donation checkoffs? Steeper penalties for arsonists?

In a letter to Newsom last week, legislative Republicans laid out their priorities, including sweeping aside environmental safeguards that they say will otherwise slow wildfire prevention projects such as prescribed burns, post-fire rebuilding and burying power lines underground. Philosophically, the party has long railed against the government permitting process and environmental reviews required by the iconic but controversial California Environmental Quality Act.

They also touted the idea of giving financial incentives to owners who upgrade their homes to make them fire-resistant, and endorsed increased state spending for wildfire prevention and steeper penalties for arsonists. And they said they wanted to stabilize the insurance market, although they’ve yet to explain how they would accomplish that.

“We have our solutions that we want to work on, but again, we need a special session and we need to focus on it,” Gallagher said Monday when asked about the lack of details.

During the press conference, Assemblymember Leticia Castillo of Corona called in Spanish for Newsom to resign if he did not call for a special session on wildfires, even though lawmakers did not need a special session to introduce bills. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego said he’d sent a letter to Trump seeking a federal investigation into “a number of failures by state and local politicians” during the wildfires.

Assemblymember David Tangipa, a Fresno Republican and the vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Insurance, said the state needs to “mitigate risks” and cut red tape but did not offer specifics.

Tangipa is the only Republican thus far to introduce a bill in response to the wildfires, and it’s in keeping with the Republican penchant to avoid raising taxes: His Assembly Bill 241 would allow taxpayers to contribute to a “Wildfire and Vegetation Management Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund” on their tax returns, with the money designated for “resource conservation districts.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.