There’s a lot of blame to go around when it comes to California wildfires, high energy costs, climbing housing costs, and soaring insurance.

But let’s be brutally honest.

Sacramento, since a PG&E sparked wildfire nearly wiped Paradise off the face of the earth in November of 2018, has done nothing but fiddle around.

The bill for their focus on small fixes that have done little to change the trajectory of things is starting to come due.

State Farm Insurance on Monday asked the state insurance commissioner for an emergency interim rate increase of 22 percent for homeowner polices effective May 1.

It is on top of an average 30 percent rate hike they requested last June.

That means if you are a homeowner insured by State Farm anywhere in California and both hike requests are approved, in the coming 15 months or so when your policy is renewed you are facing a premium increase in the neighborhood of 52 percent.

Don’t blame this one on the insurance companies.

State Farm, so far, has 8,700 claims filed for losses in excess of $1 billion in last month’s Los Angeles wildfires.

State Farm has already cut the number of new policies it issues in California to reduce their exposure thanks to state rules.

Those rules, that were just dropped two months ago, required companies to base rates over a five-year average for losses.

That means State Farm and other insurers have had to “eat” losses in the short to mid-range from big wildfires.

In doing so, it stressed their ability to keep capital reserves high enough to pay out losses.

Denying State Farm’s rate increase — as well as others likely to come from other insurance companies — would force companies to cancel all coverage in California.

Up until State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in December basically told insurance firms that they had to write a set percentage of homeowners policies in high risk areas if they wanted to do business elsewhere in California, wildfire insurance rate fallout was a headache for those that chose to reside in such areas.

Not anymore.

The tradeoff was that insurers would be able to spread their high risk wildfire exposure and losses to everyone they insure in California.

The move was made to get insurers to keep writing policies in high risk wildfire areas.

The collateral damage is every California homeowner will pay through the proverbial nose for insurance regardless if their home is in a location that has minimal wildfire risk exposure.

The bottom line of the move is it assures policies will be written in high risk wildfire areas although the premiums may make coverage unaffordable.

At the same time, premiums paid by others will soar.

What prompted California to abandon its stance as being the only state that required the five-year loss average for rate justification instead of simply reflecting the previous year’s losses?

The alternative that the state cobbled together as last resort insurance that is costly and restricts the amount of claim payouts much more severely than private sector policies is on the path down insolvency.

That is just one financial hit from wildfires Californians are taking.

The massive cost of “hardening” utility lines in areas prone to red flag events consisting of low humidity, drought conditions, and high winds so power doesn’t have to be cut during such incidents is being borne by all utility consumers in the form of higher electric rates.

Then there is the impact rebuilding Los Angeles will have on all of California.

It may take six months or so to hit, but building materials will be skyrocketing, thanks to a massive rebuild competing for construction supplies with new home builders.

The demand-supply issue will spill over into general home improvement prices.

Some, not all, of the pain could have been avoided if the folks who spend millions of dollars to get our votes to get elected to positions in Sacramento had concentrated on the boring basics.

Sacramento, for all practical purposes, has been a one party affair for decades.

State politicians are the ones who on almost a daily basis sound the alarm, overwrought or not, about climate change.

They have drawn the connection to wildfires, floods, and droughts.

However, they have focused on vogue issues of climate change warriors.

They have dumped substantially more money into the effort to reduce the smaller manmade quotient of climate change when compared to nature’s much large role.

By comparison, relatively minuscule amounts have been invested in the grunt work of things such as vegetation management that could be more effective with full-time year-round staffing for Cal Fire.

Nor have they tackled streamlining the permitting process for wildfire land management or taken steps to alter growth patterns in such areas.

As far as PG&E is concerned, Sacramento after talking big when the utility copped to 85 felony counts of manslaughter in the aftermath of the 2018 Paradise fire, passed on a chance to break the company’s electrical system into versions of the Sacramento Utility District where rates are more than 30 percent less.

Why that matters is the built in profit that Sacramento guarantees PG&E and other for-profit utilities.

The first phase of PG&E hardening lines from wildfires will generate over $1 billion in profits for the felony corporation. 

That is $1 billion that a not-for-profit wouldn’t siphon from ratepayers’ pockets.

If you think this is a problem just impacting homeowners, guess again.

State Farm’s emergency interim rate request includes a 15 percent hike for renters.

Combine that with the 52 percent rate hike application in June 2024, that comes to a 67 percent jump in premiums.

You can contribute a good chunk of the rate increases to the non-Herculean effort from the people we send to Sacramento.

They repeatedly warned of such disasters as the LA wildfires as they were pushing for expensive green initiatives while giving short shrift to implementing strategies to blunt the impact of climate change on Californians.