How do you distinguish between the two Democrats running for insurance commissioner? Well, one of them wants state-backed public insurance. We have more on that, as well as details on a move campaigns are using to dodge spending limits this fall.
But we have more than election news in your inbox today. California employers scored a big win in federal court against a new state law that would limit anti-union messaging in workplaces. More on that below.
Insurance commissioner candidates Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen have attacked each other over their main plans to improve California’s property insurance market: A public option and broad wildfire mitigation, respectively.
Their latest back-and-forth is around what Kim’s plan to create a public wildfire insurer — a proposal that critics say would shift big risks to the state — might cost homeowners.
Kim recently released a policy brief that lays out how such a plan could work. Funding the program would involve having a two-part wildfire premium, collected by private insurers and diverted to the state, which would be based on each home’s wildfire risk, plus a “small, capped share that every home in the state contributes to cover the bad wildfire seasons.”
Her brief cited a proposal included in a California Earthquake Authority report that could serve as a model. It estimated that such a program would need about $25 billion for a very bad wildfire year. The program would buy reinsurance for that risk, which would cost $2 billion to $3 billion a year, or about $150 to $230 a policy. Without reinsurance, a “once-in-a-century fire” would mean a charge of $1,900 to $2,000 per policy over several years, the report said.
On social media and elsewhere, Allen’s campaign is using Kim’s brief to say her plan would cost policyholders “$230 a year added to every homeowner’s policy” and “$2,000 or more in assessments on every policyholder.”
That’s not the case, Kim told reporters this week.
Kim: “Either he is being intellectually disingenuous, or he doesn’t know how to read a policy brief … we were referring to a study that if we do not buy reinsurance that it would cost homeowners, on average, $2,000 more.”
CalMatters contacted Allen’s campaign about Kim’s pushback. Allen spokesperson Joe Arellano repeated his campaign’s claim.
The two Democratic candidates have also tussled over campaign finance, including their promises not to take money from the insurance industry.
For the record: The Oct. 8 WhatMatters newsletter contained an error about what the Public Interest Legal Foundation agreed to in a confidential 2019 settlement of a lawsuit by plaintiffs who claimed they were falsely accused of voting improprieties.
The foundation’s president, J. Christian Adams, says the foundation did not admit to falsely accusing thousands of Virginia voters of being noncitizens, as an earlier version of this newsletter stated. The foundation apologized to the three plaintiffs for relying on what he said were inaccurate government records, when the foundation falsely labeled them as noncitizens in its reports.
The newsletter and article have been updated to provide corrected and additional details about the settlement.