{"id":264094,"date":"2026-04-12T15:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264094\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T15:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:28:18","slug":"senate-bill-982-chooses-scapegoating-over-serious-legislating-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264094\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Bill 982 chooses scapegoating over serious legislating \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

SACRAMENTO \u2014 This Editorial Board once interviewed Sen. Scott Wiener about his bill<\/a> to decriminalize the use of some psychedelics. We questioned the obvious inconsistency between his anti-prohibition stance on mushrooms and his prohibitionist stance on flavored-tobacco products. He reminded us that he\u2019s a San Francisco progressive and not a libertarian. Fair point.<\/p>\n

I recall that encounter as I mulled Wiener\u2019s Senate Bill 982<\/a>, which mainly encourages the state attorney general to sue oil companies \u201cfor climate-attributable damage to recover\u00a0costs and\u00a0losses suffered by the California FAIR Plan.\u201d The Fair Access to Insurance Requirement Plan is the state-created, insurance-industry-funded, barebones insurer of last resort. It has been teetering on the fiscal brink<\/a> since property insurers began exiting the state or reducing their underwriting, thus overloading the plan with customers.<\/p>\n

This legislation wants Big Oil to pay for an insurance crisis caused by the state\u2019s price controls. This is non-serious lawmaking \u2014 a transparent virtue-signal rather than an effort at problem-solving. Wiener is a thoughtful lawmaker who championed groundbreaking housing-deregulation<\/a> laws, but in this case that San Francisco progressive won out.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong with drilling oil companies? For starters, it\u2019s wrong to pin the state\u2019s wildfire-related troubles on companies that sell a legal, highly taxed and regulated product to consumers. Climate change likely has contributed to severe wildfire seasons, but that\u2019s a multi-faceted public-policy failure. SB 982 is just a blame game<\/a> and an effort to get \u201cfree\u201d money from a deep-pocketed third party. It\u2019s a fancy way to engage in a financial taking.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s supporters rely on conspiratorial hyperbole that would make a MAGA podcaster proud. This is from the accompanying op-ed from Wiener and Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson<\/a>, D-San Diego: \u201cLarge multinational oil and gas corporations spent decades\u00a0lying to the public<\/a>\u00a0about their products\u2019 contribution to climate change and working to undermine the transition to cleaner energy sources. They\u2019re uniquely responsible for the mess we\u2019re in; it\u2019s only fair they share the financial consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oil companies, and opponents of a government-forced transition to windmills and solar panels, have every right to express views that are contrary to the green-energy mantra. There\u2019s substantial academic disagreement and new thinking on many aspects<\/a> of climate change \u2014 and numerous places to assess blame for what\u2019s ultimately a global challenge.<\/p>\n

For instance, California\u2019s government has only conducted a tiny portion of the land-clearance work<\/a> its own CalFIRE says is necessary to reduce wildfire risk. A University of Chicago report<\/a> found a single year of California\u2019s \u201cwildfire emissions is close to double emissions reductions achieved over 16 years.\u201d In other words, the state\u2019s own wildfire failures are obliterating its climate goals. Maybe the AG should start by suing the state government.<\/p>\n

State officials are now concerned about the exodus of refiners<\/a>, which is driving up gas prices. If you don\u2019t like the oil industry, fine \u2014 but good luck powering the world\u2019s fourth-largest economy<\/a> without it. We already have the nation\u2019s steepest prices because of our highest-in-the-nation gas taxes, stringent environmental regulations and special-fuels mandate that limits our ability to buy gasoline from other states. This could be the last straw for refiners foolish enough to remain here.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, this legislation gives short shrift to the real cause of California\u2019s insurance crisis: voters and regulators. Californians in 1988 approved Proposition 103<\/a>, which created a system of price controls. The insurance commissioner gained power to approve and roll back rates. And the state has failed to implement those regulations in a way that allows insurers to deftly adjust their underwriting and pricing to reflect risk from a changing climate.<\/p>\n

After some ferocious wildfire years<\/a>, insurers faced massive losses. Their risk soared, but the Department of Insurance capped their rates. Inflation also played a role, as it became more costly to rebuild damaged properties. So insurers started exiting the market or stopped writing new policies, thus reducing competition. This is how price controls always backfire. Meanwhile, the best way to keep rates low is to have a vibrant market filled with competitors.<\/p>\n

Until recently, California wouldn\u2019t even let insurers use catastrophe models<\/a> to help determine rates. If the climate is warming, then why would insurers have to base rates on past losses rather than forward-looking models?<\/p>\n

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara created the Sustainable Insurance Strategy, which addressed some of the major issues<\/a>. It sped up the rate-review process, allowed insurers to factor the rising cost of reinsurance policies in their rates and bolstered the FAIR Plan. Lara also granted painful but necessary rate hikes. There\u2019s much more to be done, but several companies have announced their plans to jumpstart California underwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be priced out of their homes because they can\u2019t afford insurance,\u201d the senators wrote. Agreed<\/a>, but this bill substitutes the long, painstaking and complex work of fixing California\u2019s troubled insurance market with finger-pointing and posturing. One needn\u2019t be a libertarian to recognize that reality.<\/p>\n

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO \u2014 This Editorial Board once interviewed Sen. Scott Wiener about his bill to decriminalize the use of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,975,2082],"class_list":{"0":"post-264094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-opinion","12":"tag-opinion-columnists"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}