Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs

[Background]

That was just an update. Alright. We're about ready to get started. I'd like to call the to order the select committee on Native American affairs issue rising home costs for tribal communities, California tribes, Friday, 03/13/2026. The agenda will be welcome to Barona from the chairman and a blessing from council member, Then we'll have opening remarks.

Then our first panel will be state emergency response on tribal lands. Our second panel will be tribal perspectives on insurance affordability. And then we'll have state overview of rising costs with insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara and Seren Taylor, vice president, Personal Insurance Federation of California. And after that, we will, be affording public comment to those that wanna offer public comment at that time. Right now, I'd like to, bring up the chairman of the Barona Band of Mission Indians Tribal Government, Chairman Welch.

Okay. And welcome. I'm Raymond Wells, chairman of the Barona Band of Mission Indians. Thank you for gathering in our lands today, and thank you to Chairman Ramos and the assembly select committee members joining us today for the honor of this important discussion. We are here to address the urgent burden of rising home insurance costs.

For our community, these homes represent represent our per permits, and and our future. They are the foundation upon which we continue our traditions and raise next generations. California's environmental challenges require a unified response. We expect this hearing to produce meaningful solution to honor our sovereignty and minimize the financial impact to our communities. Our commitment to this land is unbreakable.

We seek only fairness and security required to thrive upon it. Welcome to our home. Let us begin with a prayer to help move forward with purpose, Councilman Navarro?

Thank you, chairman. If you join me in a prayer, I'd greatly appreciate it. Great father, great spirit. Today, we come together, and family and friends, and guidance to show us a good direction for our people. And all of us that come here safely, we ask that you return safely back to your love ones.

And it's true here before us. We ask that you bless this food and give us strength and sustenance to go on a good path you showed before us. Great father, we pray to you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for welcoming us into your, lands to talk about issues that are drastically important to California's first people. And today, I wanna welcome the select committee members, members of the Native American Caucus that are joining us on the dais today. We'll examine how the current property insurance crisis is affecting tribal communities on tribal lands across the state, as well as its impact on Indian families seeking to insure their homes on tribal lands. This is the second time a state committee hearing has been held on tribal lands in the state of California. We continue to move forward in making sure that we're hearing firsthand from California's first people on the issues that drastically affect them.

This committee remains committed to strengthening the relationship between the state of California and the tribal nations who call California their home. Right now, California is in a severe property insurance crisis. Recent wildfires and other natural disasters have driven cost higher, higher than the statewide average on tribal lands. According to a recent report by the Tenor Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, low insurance coverage remains common in rural communities, making sure that the cost does not outweigh the homes themselves and the people. Many California tribes have seen insurance premiums rise.

And in California's first peoples nations, we've seen that rise higher than the state average. And especially especially when we bring to light that the lands that tribal communities sit on were not chosen. They were forced into the areas where tribal communities are at now. We continue to make sure that the voices of California's first people move forward through this select committee. Historic state and federal policies forced Indian people to live in the most secluded and rural areas of California.

The perceived barren mostly during California's genocide era of the eighteen hundreds, federal Native American Termination Act during the twentieth century, California referred to as the California Rancheria Term Termination Act during the nineteen fifties and sixties, so it wasn't that long ago, and relocation policies during the mission period. Another major topic left out of our insurance disclosures is when tribes on their trust lands and the factors of mitigation that are happening and taking place. With now fire departments on Indian reservations doing a lot of mitigation and fire protection for the residents and the and the housing. Those things need to come to light in the state of California. No longer can we look as a state of California and address issues such as insurance and the cost of insurance and not including the voice of California's first people, and their voices of how they're mitigating that on their own lands.

We continue to move forward in these areas. It is essential to keep in mind that tribal communities tribal communities do not reside in a place of their own choice that have not brought the mitigation factors on their own, but it was forced through the federal and state policies against tribal communities in the history, not only in the state of California, but in The United States. We continue to look at these issues. Today, we're here and joined by members of the select committee, members of the assembly. And now we'll open up the mic to those on the diocese if they would like to say a few words.

Good morning. Good morning.

Cannot go unnoticed, a challenge that we're all experiencing as a state. But because of the sovereignty and independence that tribal nations have within California, we have to ensure that the partnerships that we have with them are suited to fit their needs as well. I'm proud to sit on this select committee and also a member of the insurance select committee. We'll have the body issue. I'm sorry. Awesome. Thank you. And, look forward to the discussion today. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. Assemblymember Valencia now Assemblymember Jackson.

Thank you very much, mister chair, for holding this important conversation. Obviously, it's important for us to be here on the ground to really understand, the, unique impacts, of, California's first people. And most importantly, making sure that we investigate and really ask the questions of what is California's responsibility in helping the nation's first people to to address these large insurance cost. It was California's policies, California's culture that forced people into these lands. And with that, calls for a responsibility, a moral obligation to help to mitigate the issues that they are all facing.

So looking forward to hearing the details about, the challenges that come, and looking forward to ensuring that California steps up its role in making sure they help to solve this problem. Thank you very much, mister chair.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember Jackson. Assemblymember Harbedian.

I'm looking forward to learning along with the rest of you how we can actually address these issues. So thank you, mister chair.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember Harabedian. Assemblymember Schiavo.

Thank you so much, mister chair. Thank you as well to the Barona people and Chairman Welch, and the whole tribal council for hosting us today. And to our chair who, you know, has brought us here on tribal land, which I am shocked to hear that this is only the second hearing that's happened on tribal land. So we got to change that and a number of other things in Sacramento. I represent the 40th Assembly District, which is in North San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, and Castaic, where we had the Hughes Fire, which is actually the biggest and fastest moving fire of the LA fire.

Last year, and fortunately, no people and no homes were were were were injured or harmed. But, were were injured or harmed. But we know that we're surrounded by, like, like here in Verona, by hills and mountains that can burn very quickly. And this is one of the top issues in our community. And while I'm not on the insurance committee, I voluntarily sit in on a regular basis because it's such an important issue for our community and the state.

Really looking forward to learning how this is impacting First Nations and incorporate these conversations and the conversations that are happening in Sacramento, because I think it's really a conversation that's being lost in our discussions about solving the insurance crisis. I'm very happy that the insurance commissioner is going to be here personally today. And I think that shows, you know, a real commitment to make sure that that not only are we hearing directly from first nation communities, but also bringing the information from Sacramento here as well. So very happy, in the leadership and vision to have this hearing today and looking forward to hearing from everyone. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much, Assemblymember. As now, we'll move to our our first panel, state emergency response on tribal lands, Deputy Director Frank Bigelow, Community Wildfire Preparedness Mitigation, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Good morning. Chair Ramos, members of the committee, and chairpersons of the tribes represented here today. My name is Frank Bigelow, and I'm the deputy director of the Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation Division for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CAL FIRE. I would like to thank the Barona Band of Mission Indians for hosting the hearing here today so we can discuss this important issue. We have seen the effects of climate change, overgrown forests, and prolonged drought that have resulted in a significant increase in the number, size, and severity of wildfires in California.

14 of the 20 most destructive fires have occurred in the last decade, and more than 8,500,000 acres have burned in the state between 2020 and 2024. Over 17,000 structures were destroyed during that same time period. These devastating wildfires impact all of California, including its many tribal nations. According to the National Fire Incident Reporting System, over 12,000 acres of tribal lands in California have burned between 2023 and 2025. The department is committed to working in partnership with tribes to help ensure the protection of lives, property, cultural resources, and the natural resources of California.

We continue to strengthen cohesion, communication, and trust with California Native American tribes through sustained executive leadership, regional tribal affairs coordination, and operational integration during emergency incidents. For example, CAL FIRE created an incident management team tribal liaison pilot, integrating a dedicated tribal liaison within the incident command system. CAL FIRE maintains six incident management teams that are responsible for handling the state's most complex emergencies. And tribal the tribal liaison serves as a direct point of contact for tribal governments during these incidents. To ensure tribal inclusion during operation operational meetings and the support and protection of cultural resources.

Additionally, CAL FIRE established their tribal affairs program under its executive leadership, elevating tribal engagement as a core statewide priority and embedding tribal coordination and partnerships across all mission areas. CAL FIRE also created a southern region tribal affairs deputy chief position to provide dedicated leadership, strength, and coordination, with tribal governments, units, and incident management teams to ensure proactive engagement before, during, and after emergencies. The establishment of CAL FIRE's executive tribal leadership program affairs affairs program, the creation of the Southern region tribal affairs deputy chief position, and the implementation of the incident management team tribal liaison pilot program reflects our coordinated statewide strategy to ensure tribal governments are fully integrated partners in wildfire preparedness, response, and recovery. CAL FIRE is also strengthening government to government relations with California Native American tribes through sustained unit level engagement that integrates tribal coordination into wildfire preparedness, fuels management, and emergency response, ensuring tribal governments are informed partners, protecting lives, property, and cultural resources. For example, our San Diego unit maintains a strong working relationship with several tribal governments, including the Barona Band of Mission Indians and the Jamul Indian Village.

Our collaboration with Barona Band of Mission Indians has supported defensible space education, fuels reduction, and cultural burning efforts, improving wildfire resilience and strengthening government to government communication and trust. Through our local agreements, Tahumu Indian Village, CAL FIRE San Diego Fire Protection District provides fire protection, EMS, and fire marshal services while participating in emergency preparedness exercises and drills. These coordinated efforts enhance interagency communication and emergency readiness while reinforcing long print long term partnerships. Under unit leadership, their community risk reduction staff, the San Diego unit, has also expanded tribal outreach and education efforts, helping helping tribal communities better prepare for wildfire incidents and strengthening long term collaborative relationships. Over the last three years, CAL FIRE has awarded over $30,000,000 to 25 California Native American tribes to enhance wildfire resilience, wildfire protection and prevention, as and forest health.

These investments support tribal communities in implementing traditional ecological knowledge, prescribed fire, fuels reduction, and reforestation to improve forest health and wildfire safety. In addition, these investments benefit prescribed fire projects, fuel reduction, and workforce training. In addition to that direct tribal funding, CAL FIRE provided over 12,000,000 in 2024 and $1,200,000 in 2025 to tribal nonprofit organizations and over $47,000,000 in 2023 and 2024 to tribal affiliates, including nonprofit organizations, local districts, and government organizations that partners with tribes or supported tribal land projects. Before I conclude my testimony, I would like to note that CAL FIRE is also working with tribes through Chair Ramos' AB 1284 for co governance and co management opportunities. For example, through ongoing government to government consultation, CAL FIRE's Mendocino unit works with tribal partners on the Jackson Demonstration State Forest Tribal Advisory Council, which is led by five local tribes to support culturally informed forest management, protect culturally significant sites, and explore collaborative co management opportunities that honor tribal sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge.

This engagement reflects a commitment to relationship, respectful partnership, sustainable land stewardship, and the acknowledgment of the historical and ongoing connections between indigenous communities and the lands now managed by the Jackson Demonstration State Forest. The Mendocino Unit also assisted Hopland Band of Pomo Indians with cultural burning in their tribal land last June as it resulted in a successful treatment of three acres of grass near several homes. Additionally, in the 2025, the Mendocino unit staff had the opportunity to harvest fallen redwood trees from the Jackson Demonstration State Forest with guidance from local tribal with local tribes so tribal members could use them to make canoes. Logs have also been provided to the Waiilaki Round Valley Indian tribes and the Coyote Band of Pomo Indians. CAL FIRE is also supporting the nat the California Natural Resources Agency implementing sb 310 which provides a pathway for tribes to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the agency to conduct cultural burning.

Last year, the agency signed memorandums of understanding with the Karuk tribe, and several other tribes have expressed interest as well. In closing, CAL FIRE looks forward to continuing to build partnerships, strengthen cohesion, communication, and trust with California Native American tribes so together, we can better protect the lives, property, cultural resources, and natural resources of California. An extreme thank you and an honor for this opportunity to share this information with you today, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much for your testimonies. Any questions, comments from the dias? Assemblymember Valencia?

Thank you, deputy director Bigelow, for that presentation and overview. It's encouraging to hear the partnership that we've been able to develop with tribal nations across the state of California, and I think we're headed in a much better direction than we were in the past. One of the questions and scenarios that I have is around the continued growth in those partnerships. So grateful to the women and men at Cal Fire for the service to the state, especially in times of crisis. And we've seen you all go to work and get the job done to protect California, so that does not go unnoticed, and thank you for that.

And when those types of crises aren't taking place, a lot of the work that you all do is mitigation efforts. And you all have incredible partnerships with counties across the state of California as well due to the ability to cover more ground with less resources. I represent a district in Central Orange County. The fire authority there has a great partnership with you all and oftentimes do the work on behalf of CAL FIRE in certain areas. And I'm aware of the refund process that exists when it comes to those efforts being done on behalf of CAL FIRE.

I'm curious and interested if anything like that has been considered in partnership with tribal nations due to the fact that they are also doing very similar work on their own accord, at their own expense.

And the the thank you for the the nice comments about the department. We certainly appreciate that and and the recognition of our our continued collaboration. And I think that as a department, we are a 100% invested in, working with our tribal partners. And, those are certainly efforts that we can explore. I'm not aware at this moment of of that taking place, but that is a fantastic idea that I can take back to our executive team, and we can, we can get back to you on what we're what our plan is.

I appreciate that. And the goal is to obviously protect California as a whole. Right? And if we all do a little bit here and there, we can cover more grants. So thank you for that. Absolutely.

Thank you, member of Valencia. Member Jackson.

I wanna thank Assemblyman Valencia for that idea because obviously, those of us who have state lands in our dish, in our districts and, the collaboration between cities, and Cal Fire. Certainly, those reimbursement programs do exist, and I think we should take a a deep look at that. It it seems to me, first of all, I wanna think about first the distinction from those, tribal nations who have their own fire departments and those who do not. And what is the percentage of your work in terms of engaging with those who do not have their own fire departments and departments who can help with some of that mitigation work? How closely are you working with those, tribal nations?

Well, thank you for recognizing our partnership with those that we do. And through administrative contracts, either we provide the the the, personnel, and that the tribe would pay for the personnel to provide that direct, service, as I mentioned in my testimony, in other parts of the state as well. And then in in other areas, the the tribe has looked to that local community to provide fire protection. And then as you mentioned, there are some that have no no direct fire protection. And with the the advance or the creation of the executive level, those engagements and those conversations are starting to happen at a at a more rapid level to ensure that we are engaged with every single tribe and understanding the needs that they have and providing those services where we can and having those conversations. So those are happening as we speak.

You know, there there's not a time that goes by when I'm fortunate enough to be allowed to come on tribal lands and hear the stories of the past where fires have taken place and Cal Fire was nowhere to be seen. And, when calls for help were made and Cal Fire just simply didn't respond. I know this is a different Cal Fire of those than those days. However, that still doesn't mean that there is a moral obligation to atone for that. And it is I'm of the opinion, that we need to be more engaged, with tribes to say how we can make up for that loss loss of resources during those times of need, and how we can make sure that we actually admit that we have a responsibility for helping more fire mitigation that happens.

And so I would like us to see more of a a plan from Cal Fire on how how Cal Fire can number one, atone for the neglect. But then also, you know, how can we provide more assistance and coordination with tribal governments. And I know you've already done done some work on that. Can you, tell me about opportunities where, there might be some additional room of improvement when it comes to Cal Fire and the services they provide?

Well, Doctor Jackson, thank you for those comments. And certainly, there are opportunities in the fire response realm. Cal the the state has it's has the most robust master mutual aid agreement from local government to the state government. So if there's a fire anywhere and it exceeds the capacity of that local jurisdiction, they call for help. Cal Fire is gonna respond and we're gonna come come help most note most notably in January when those weren't directly our areas, but

We were asked to help, and we sent everything to go help. Mhmm. And that that would remain whether it was in that local jurisdiction or or on a tribal nation. And but as far as so that those resources are are going to come to help, and and we have that commitment to you that CAL FIRE will respond to help when asked and when called. And but other additional resources that we have is is through our grant program, as I mentioned in my testimony.

We have a tremendous amount of opportunities. Where where we have been lacking is the outreach to the tribes. And my commitment as overseeing a portion of the grant programs for CAL FIRE is to reach out further into the tribal communities to make them aware of these opportunities and help them through the process to ensure that they get an equitable amount of of the resources that the the legislature has so generously provided us.

Those are some of us sit on the budget committee, and we're aware of a of various ways the administration puts proposals in the budget, trailer bills, budget change proposals of the like. How many of those have Cal Fire submitted, to the legislature to be able to strengthen, tribal support?

I don't have the exact number for that, doctor Jackson. So I'd have to get our team. We're taking notes. So I'd have to get back to you on exact number of BCPs and others that we've submitted directly for that.

I would appreciate it, and I would encourage you to think about, as many of them as you can. Right, to be able to propose into the budget so that we can continue to be supportive. But thank you for being here.

Thank you, mister chair.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, doctor Jackson. Assembly member, Schiavo.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you so much, for being here for your report and really, you know, great to hear about the efforts that are happening at Cal Fire. But in your last comment, it's clear that some of the good news isn't getting out to folks. Is there are you seeing that through a low uptake on grants? Are the grants not all being applied for? You you have money left over? What is the what is kind of the situation right now?

Thank you, Member Schiavo. The reason I mentioned that is because I would like to see the percent of awarded grants for tribal nations higher than what it is. We're we're in the in the single digit range. It ranges from 2% to 8% of the annual appropriation to those tribes through our competitive process. So I'd just like to see that number move higher and be a greater percentage.

So we do award out grants to tribes every year as as I gave in my testimony. But again, to your point, I think that we need to just do more engagement and more awareness. And that's that's not just for tribes. We are oversubscribed every year in our in our wildfire prevention grant program. As an example, in our last solicitation, we had roughly $70,000,000 to give out.

We received 414 applications for well over $387,000,000 for the 62,000,000. So it it's not a problem of of we're oversubscribed, but the the vast majority of those applications are not from tribes. And we need to make that higher.

Do you think in addition to getting the word out and better communicating with tribes, Do you think that there are barriers in terms of the qualifications, or do you think that there are other barriers that need to be looked at specific to tribes?

You know, that's always dependent on from the application that we get on capacity and experience. And and there's a whole range of of criteria that go into managing a grant of of of that side of, you know, anywhere from 200 to, you know, a couple million dollars. So managing that, we would just, want to ensure that they were able to do that. And if not, we have other options of of marrying that group up, whomever it is, with another fiscal sponsor that has the experience in doing grants so that they can learn from that person.

And then the next time, they can do it on their own. So we have we have ways to make it easier for for tribes or anyone else that's applying for a grant that hasn't done one previously.

And, hopefully, the the deputy chiefs in Southern California that you mentioned, specifically, can help California that you mentioned specifically can help be that liaison and do education pieces if there are tribes that are need help navigating it for the first time, you know, that this could be part of. Is it are are you utilizing those positions as part of the outreach and education around the grant opportunities?

That that yes. It's exactly the intent is to for that person to be the the all knowing of of what the tribes need by going out and having those really meaningful conversations to understand their needs. And then being able to provide them all of the resources, the suite of options that CAL FIRE provides from which they can choose that bets fits their situation.

One last question on I don't I'm just curious, you know, a lot of the discussion today is gonna be around insurance. And and, you know, you all, Cal Fire, and in partnership with the tribes in instances as well are working a lot in the fire mitigation space. How much are you kind of in communication with insurers? Or is there, like, is there kind of sharing of information or anything that in that work leads to, we hope, lower insurance rates. Right?

It's not only a benefit to safety and and all of the other reasons that we need to do, you know, fire mitigation, but a lot of folks are taking up mitigation practices to try to lower their insurance rates and, you know, not always seeing the results of that. But but are there any conversations that you're having hearing that some of that work is going to be beneficial in that space or are you not really in those conversations at all?

Yeah. That's it. Thank you for that question because we are, and we are engaged with, some of the the top insurers of the state, meeting with their executive teams and their boards to show them all the work that we're doing in the state and be able to articulate the path that we're going down. And all of those insurance companies, they pay into what's called the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, the for the research arm of the insurance industry, really sets the the guidelines and the standards by which the insurance companies judge mitigations. And that's for all the natural perils.

That's for wind and for hail and for wildfire and flood and others. So they they look at IBHS as the standard, and we've been in partnership with IBHS for years now to develop what the mitigations need to look like, what people need to do, and then being able to put that message out to the public. Like, these are the things that make the difference. What we haven't seen is the actuarial changes that resulted in the end. But the conversations that we're having and we're really looking toward communities like that we just saw in Escondido with the Dixon Trails community and in Amador County in Stony Creek.

These communities were built completely to wildfire resilience standard, a wildfire prepared home standard by IBHS. And the insurance companies are like, we will insure every single one of those homes in that area. One insurer. And they said, we'll do them all. And that's that's that's a sign that they believe in the mitigations, because those are the mitigations.

Right? That's the standard we need to get the built environment too. And they're saying, we we agree with that. And so they're on board with the mitigations and the direction we're going, and those conversations have been happening. Now it's just being able to determine the most risky places across the state and start prioritizing those and going at those with all we have to can put, bringing a wrap around service for fuel break, the defensible space, the home hardening, the development of CWPPs or community wildfire protection plans so they have a path for the future and something to look forward to and a document to reference when they're asking for additional resources that says this is our path and this is the way we're going.

And that's the way we're starting to look at it, and that's how we're gonna get actuarial changes.

Well, thank you so much. Assemblymember Harbedian.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mister Bigelow, for your service. Thank you for being here, for your testimony. Just really just building off of my colleague's questions. So these will be, I think, more straightforward and hopefully quick quick answers.

But going back to brush clearance, some of the things you just mentioned, fuel breaks, defensible space, obviously, a big reason why we're having many of these wildfires that are affecting our communities because of the fuel. And I think fuel management and mitigation is is a huge issue. So how often are we doing Cal Fire fuel mitigation, brush clearance around tribal lands specifically?

Well, I would have to get back to you with the exact number of acres treated. Around that, I don't have that in front of me, but I would love to get that number for you to be able to articulate exactly how many acres have been treated around tribal lands.

Okay. Do you know the last time you did any sort of fire mitigation brush clearance around Barona where we are now?

I don't. I did I'm not from the San Diego area, and I didn't get that information in front of me, so I apologize.

It's okay. How much of our budget CAL FIRE's budget is allocated towards fuel mitigation, defensible space clearance, brush clearance for tribal in and around tribal lands throughout the state?

So we don't, specifically call out any specific area like that where we say a specific amount in our what we our CAL FIRE units do around communities. We're not saying 20% of your budget has to go to tribal communities. We assess the risk in the whole county and then go proactively do fuels mitigation around that. As I mentioned in our grants program, I really wanna get that number, that percent higher, but there is no standard or threshold percentage that we try to achieve every every time we give out money in grants.

How much of CAL FIRE's budget each year is spent on fuels mitigation?

Oh, it it ranges depending on appropriations from the different appropriations that we get, but it ranges anywhere between 500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000.

Do you think you need more? I would say I'm gonna I'm just gonna I think you do need more. I think we need a lot more. And I think rural communities and tribal communities need more especially. So I I guess follow-up on those on those questions.

Would love the information for the committee. And I think that this is a priority. And I think, we've seen through all of us have been affected by these wildfires. And I think the the one thing we can do better is, I think, the fuel mitigation piece. So thank you very much.

Well, thank you, Assemblymember Harbedian. And I I wanna thank you, director Bigelow, and all the, CAL FIRE, men and women who, keep the state of California safe. But I do wanna dive in a little bit more into the tribal component. You mentioned 12,000 acres of tribal lands. Was that that burned in the state of California, or can you elaborate a little more on that?

Yeah. Those were acres that were burned during that time period, that were reported through the National Incident Fire Reporting System or what we call NIFRS. So those are the reported acres burned in that time period.

And there's several dollars from the state of California going through to work with the tribal governments on tribal management teams. Can you, discuss a little more what that consists of?

On the incident management teams themselves? Yeah. So anytime there's a a disaster that happens, irrespective of wildfire or any or flood or anything, And then an incident management team is called to help manage that incident. This tribal liaison, their their role goal and role is to engage with all the tribes that are affected in that area and bring them in to make sure that they're a part of our cooperators meeting. And that those cultural resources and ecological resources that they have identified, we are working in collaboration with them so that during suppression efforts, we are making sure we're not disturbing those and that we're being sensitive to ensure that any tribal land that that they don't want, activity to happen on is not happening or is happening in the manner in which that they, feel is the most appropriate.

And those are reactive measures versus preventative measures?

Those are reactive at the at the time of the incident. So and when an emergency management team is established, those resources come from all over the state. Mhmm. And that that because the the incident has exceeded the local capacity, so they bring in additional resources to help. That local person that in the unit that is established those relationships with the tribes already has that tribal connection and has made those connections and should understand those areas.

But we wanna make sure that we're bringing all of those pieces to the table to ensure that we're not missing anything.

Thank you. And and more on the preventive measures, is that ongoing throughout the year with the now co management agreements that are moving forward to try to make sure that those are agreements that are between the state of California and tribal governments?

Those are yes. Those are happening year round.

What are some of those preventative measures?

Some of the preventative measures that the department is taking is, as I mentioned, meeting with those, tribal leaders to ensure that the the they're hearing what the tribes need in the form of prescribed fire and working collaboratively to define what what resources they need to help, what resources from us they may need. Or if they plan to do it themselves, if if there's any, any guidance that we could provide or if there's an opportunity for them to teach us about what they're doing and they're the the way they approach doing burning. So we have a better understanding of how to approach a fire, and what its intent is. So these it's a constant learning back and forth that this is the goal of this of the proactive measures, but also determining where those most culturally significant areas are to them. So we can take proactive measures during a wildfire to ensure that everyone on that's responding on that wildfire knows that this is a culturally significant area, and these are the protections that we need to put in place.

We're not putting bulldozers through this area. We're gonna wait for the fire to move over here, and then we can put bulldozers in. So the just as two examples, those are some of the proactive measures we're taking. Certainly. And and understand the cultural, preventive measures that

are in place, culturally as far as maintaining the land, maybe control burns or even vegetation clearance. Right? Those things is what's the informational knowledge that it was meant around the co management bill to share that information. I wanna dive a little bit more into your work with IBHS in other parts of the state of California.

You mentioned that working with them, they start to understand the mitigation features or factors that are put in other communities in the state of California that could impact then the premiums that are being cost to the homeowner for insurance for their homes. Is that correct?

Yes. That's exactly the intent.

Can you can you elaborate a little more on on what some of those mitigating factors are that you've worked with IBHS on?

Yeah. So most recently, and one of the things I'm most excited about is this collaborative effort between the National Institute for Standards and Technology or NIST and IBHS through what we called SSE or Structure Separation Experiment. And what we're looking at is what the distance of, structures need to be away from a home. And that's everything from small sheds to large scale utility sheds that might be next to a home, ADUs, and then also house to house. And we've done every configuration of those next to homes, burning them at different wind speeds from 10 miles per hour all the way to 60 miles per hour, taking distances from 10 feet to 20 feet all the way to 40 feet distances.

Building full scale homes in different configurations from combustible siding built before Chapter seven a, which is now part seven of the building code, built before that, which most homes in California are built to that standard, also built to a WUI standard, but then burning those right next to each other in different configurations, how they're turned, how the houses are turned, whether the door to the shed is facing the house or away from the house, the different sightings of the and the windows, whether it's aluminum casing or whether it's vinyl casing, vinyl gutters, open eaves, closed eaves, the vents, every different configuration you can think of to determine what is the most safe for homeowners. And then compiling all that data and measuring the heat flux and the heat energy that's coming off of those to determine those distances. So when we start to do modeling for this, we can start to model conflagration. Before this research, we haven't been able to do that because the the heat energy on homes has been too it's been too difficult to model. But we're getting to a point now through this research, a multiyear, multi phase project, we're now able to determine what that heat energy is that's coming off of it.

So then getting back to the mitigations, we can tell homeowners, if you have these configurations on your home, start here. This is the most vulnerable part of your home. And then work your way down. And we can now, through our home hardening program, our JPA with Cal OES, and we've done these home hardening efforts across the state to the tune of a 134 homes. We now know how much actually it costs to do these things.

So we can assign a cost to that that says, here's the average cost for doing this because homeowners were like, hey. You want me to do this, but how much does it cost? And we were like, well, it def we don't know. Kind of. Maybe this. Now we know. It's gonna cost you this much to do that. So homeowners can prioritize, and they can seek out funding opportunities to help them achieve that goal.

And and putting these, these factors in place, do you know if there's been any work with, tribal governments in the state of California to, go through some of these hardening factors that then could actually, come down and lower some of the rates if homes are built to that standard.

So for the two programs that I mentioned specific those two specifically, we have not. But these are pilot programs, and we chose six communities across the state in six different counties to do this. But the plan is that once the pilot is done is to branch out to many other communities, which will include tribal communities.

And it's a pilot program now that includes different areas, different cities?

Yeah. San Diego, actually, in the community of Del Sura, specifically, is one of those communities that has seen the benefits of the retrofits that we've done on homes.

Thank you. We'd be interested, and I think with my colleagues on the dias also on that pilot program to see how the insurance rates actually did come down by some of those mitigation features that are there. And and I guess the question is, you know, taking back to the legislature is is why not Why haven't we included a tribal government into that pilot program? That's things that will be taken back from this hearing itself. I do wanna also I have another question on the grants.

You mentioned that those that that have been awarded grants basically know how to maneuver through the grant system itself. How do we get tribal governments to be able to not one just apply, but actually get awarded those grants? Is there a need for a grant writing specialty to go after these grants?

I think as I as I I think as I mentioned earlier, that we need to do a better job engaging with the tribes and getting them getting them there. Because there are some tribes that have been successful time and time again. And so learning from them and being able to point other tribes to those to say, hey. They they've done it. They've been successful.

And lean on them as well-to-do this tribe to tribe learning, if you will. But also, again, we we need to do more outreach, and that's our commitment as specifically this year to ensure the climate bond dollars that we plan to roll out at the May for our wildfire prevention grants, that that that engagement happens and that we bring them along with whatever resources we need to provide to them to help them.

Well, thank you so much for that. You may have a follow-up question. Yes. Assemblymember Valencia?

Thank you, mister chairman. As a follow-up to that, just for context of the committee, are there tribes that are applying and what's the number of tribes that are applying that are not receiving the funds? Or are the majority d of the tribes that are applying receiving the funds that two to 8% that you mentioned? I think that'll give some clarity in terms of how that's all unfolding.

I could get that for you in a couple minutes. I have it in a in a spreadsheet where the number of tribes just recently Right.

And if it's an exact just a basic number. If there's 10 tribes that are applying to or securing the grant funds, then we need to figure out why those others aren't. Is it a a procedural challenge? Is it a logistical challenge? Right?

That's exactly what we're trying to determine from from each of those is in some instances, it's a procedural thing where the the they did not include and this is irrespective of tribes, this is across the board for our our grant application process. It could be that they didn't apply supply a budget sheet or and in in the time frame from which we had our solicitation open. It could be any number of things. So we need to dive deeper into what exactly was the impediment for them not being successful or and and help them, get to that get to that point. So and again, that's our commitment.

Thank you, deputy director. I would encourage CAL FIRE to also take into consideration at the forefront of this process, the difference between a sovereign nation and maybe these other applications that are going through the process as well. Right? And

Consider maybe why they're not providing the same type of information to secure and protect their own sovereignty and or maybe a different process to to their cultures and traditions and would appreciate that consideration as well.

Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for your testimony, deputy director Bigelow. And certainly, just taking back and and following up on my colleague's comments. And certainly, there's a boilerplate type of way to apply for the grants.

But when you deal with tribal governments, I think the openness to understand how the how the the government functions itself and being open to some of the criteria that they could present while protecting and honoring the tribal sovereignty that's there. I wanna thank you for your testimonies. Now we'll move to our next panel. Thank you. Our next panel is tribal perspectives on insurance affordability.

Chairman Raymond Welch, Barona Band of Mission Indians. Chairman Isaiah Vivanco, Suboba Band, Luiseno Indians. Chairwoman Erica m Pinto, Jamul Indian Village of California chairman Robert Smith, Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association fire chief Ken Kremensky, Barona Fire Department, fire chief Jason Keeling, Pechanga Fire Department.

Well, thank you so much. Speaking in order, we'll start with Chairman Welch, Barona Band, Mission Indians.

Thank you, Chairman Ramos and committee members. We stand here in the shadow of the 2,003 fires that burned 90% of our reservation, including 39 homes. Our history on this 8,000 acre reservation is one of endurance. But today, that endurance is being tested by an insurance crisis that threatens our financial sovereignty. For those for those of us living in those high risk areas, we now face a fire of different kind, an economic one.

California is faced with an insurance desert. Major carriers like State Farm and Allstate are retreating from high risk zones like ours, leaving many of us with no choice but the expensive California Fair Plan. Our tribal members are seeing premiums double or triple even when they have done everything right to protect their homes. We are seeing a range of from 6,000 to 18,000 per year on homes we track. That's not just a line item in a budget.

It can, it can be a threat to our ability to ensure our homes or worse to stay on our ancestral lands. Insurers use priority algorithms that are often ignore the actual work that's being done by us. Let me be clear, we're not waiting for others to save us. The Barona Band is leading the way in showing what real mitigation is like. Since 1998, our own dedicated Barona fire department has been our first line of defense. In 2024, we joined the California Fire Rescue Mutual Aid System, receiving new equipment like a type three engine.

In late 2024, we received a, we received, we successfully completed a 160 acre prescribed burn just outside the doors here. Building or proving that good fire reduces catastrophic risk. CAL FIRE is cleaning brush throughout the reservation as we speak. We have partnered with our neighbors on the Ramona-Barona Climate Adaptation Resilience Plan to ensure our community is hardened against wildfire, flooding, and drought.

Should we as tribal governments form our own departments of insurance? For our own communities due to to the lack of support from the state. We call on the California Department of Insurance to recognize tribal sovereignty and the risk assessments. Insurers must give Barona homeowners discounts for community wide fuel reduction, strategically placed fire hydrants, and home hardening measures. Moreover, insurers must take into account that the Barona Fire Department is prepared to respond immediately in case a fire breaks out on a reservation.

We should not be penalized for the conditions of our neighboring lands when we are actively managing our own at highest standards. We are aware that we live in a high risk area. But we didn't have the luxury at picking oceanfront property. This land is our past and our future. We can continue to use our traditional knowledge and modern technology to keep Barona safe. And we will fight to ensure that insurance cost never force a single member to leave their home. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony and bringing to light those issues. And now we'll we'll move to Chairman Isaiah Vivanco, Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians,

Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Ramos, and thank you select committee members for being here today and listening to such an important issue within our communities. My name is Isaiah Vivanco. I have the honor of serving as chairman for the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians. We reside on just about 8,000 acres of land held in trust for us in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains located in Riverside County, just north of here.

We have about 1,700 members with about 260 homes on our reservation. About eight years ago, we established a housing housing program where over the that time frame, we've built about 60 new homes within our community. In about 2014, we established our own fire department to help mitigate the risk of fire in that community, in our community.

We've since established a new station in 2019, state of the art station housed with 55 trucks, including a ladder truck, brush truck, created a partnership with Riverside County and CAL FIRE. What do you call it?

I'm free to name. We also are very proud of the efforts our fire department has taken recently. And the public protection classification, we've gone from a three to a two, which helps your insurance, not only should mitigate the cost of insurance, but helps protection of fire in your areas. We've worked with Edison. We've worked with other agencies to come into our homelands and really mitigate the the risk of fire.

You look at some of the foothills that we live in, we we've created barriers on our own. We've gone out and our tribe has been fortunate enough to purchase a bulldozer. We've created our own fire breaks. We go out yearly and and take on that that task with our fire department and our WUI crew. WUI crew, a grant that we, applied for and did receive.

We talked about grants earlier in the program. And I think some of the issue with when you obtain the grants are really you have the environmental issues and some things. Some of those issues with those grants that really prohibit some of the mitigation that can be done on tribal lands.

So those are those are obstacles that we we face. We look to this committee and the state for support and helping our endeavor and and and achieving an affordable home insurance so we can continue to build new homes on the lands that we are, I would say, forced to live on.

We embrace those lands because they are our communities, but it is it is rather burdensome when we have fires of the nature that we've had in the state of California ravished through some of our, our areas. And we know that, you know, insurance providers are having to face that, that, I guess, those disasters, and it's costing tens and billions of dollars. But we have done the work at home. We have done the work to create and maintain a safe environment, to make sure that our communities are safe from fire.

To make sure that our homeowners are able to go out and look and hopefully achieve an affordable insurance to protect their their home and their resources and yet we are still not seeing that. Just recently my son went through the process of trying to obtain homeowners insurance for a mobile home and it came back around $8,000 a year which the payments were gonna be on a yearly basis about a third of what his mortgage was.

Very, very disturbing when when we see all the work that we've done. Some of the thoughts I've had is, you know, a lot of these insurance companies, sometimes they're sitting behind a desk looking at paperwork that is presented to them in the locations of our homelands and maybe making decisions based on what they see on Google Earth or topography. A picture online that says, well, it looks to be in the mountain area. They're classified as x, y, or z. Come out.

You know, I wish the insurance companies would actually come out to our homelands and and talk to our fire departments and our chief and and our public works department and see the efforts that we've gone through to to mitigate the risk of fire. I mentioned Edison. Edison has come out and worked with us and installed a high density line to combat fires when when we have wind events.

We are prone to PSPS events even though we have that high density line, but they have been minimized. Now recently, I've met with the CEO of Edison and he's informed me that if it starts whistling, more than likely your power is gonna be shut off.

That's rather burdensome to us because we have, I mentioned, 260 homes. A number of those homes belong to our elders who sometimes require power for, for medical devices. So, you know, I think it's important that insurance companies come out, really look at our communities and the efforts that we've taken, you know, taking pride in mitigating these efforts to reduce the risk of fire so we don't have to pay these high premiums. Yeah. It's very difficult.

I'm glad that the insurance commissioner and his team are here today to hear some of these requests and some of these ideas. I had a great discussion just prior to the start of this meeting, but I would look forward to the discussions today and look forward to questions.

And hopefully, we can come to some type of resolution where the state, the tribes can all be on the same page working with insurance companies to ensure that we have the ability to obtain insurance as it was meant to be. So thank you for having me, and thank you for the time today.

Thank you so much, Chairman, for your testimony. As now, we'll move to chairwoman Erica Pinto, Jamul Indian Village of California.

Morning, Chairman Ramos and also the members of the California Assembly Select Committee. My name is Erica Pinto, and I have the honor to serve as a tribal chairwoman for the Jamul Indian Village of California , part of the Kumeyaay Nation, whose stewardship of the lands of present day San Diego stretches back to time immemorial. I appreciate the invitation with you, to speak with you today on the matter of significant consequence for tribal nations across California.

The rising costs and decreasing availability of homeowners insurance and the profound impacts this crisis has on tribal sovereignty and housing security cannot be overstated. I'm here today to share not only my tribe's perspective, but also to represent the concerns of many tribal nations across California who are experiencing an insurance market that threatens public safety, community resilience, and tribal economic development.

California's homeowners insurance market is undergoing a structural crisis escalating wildfire risk, climate driven disasters, retreating insurers, and rising costs have converged in a way that has resulted in high premium rates and coverage scarcities across the state.

In many regions, premiums have more than doubled in recent years and major carriers continue to seek substantial increases. Major insurers that were once a primary source of coverage for many Californians have substantially raised rates, paused renewals or exited markets altogether due to the wildfire exposure and escalating costs.

Meanwhile, the California unfair plan, oops, the California Fair Plan designed an insurer of last resort for property coverage has seen its roles expand in its premiums adjusted sharply upward with coverage that is often in scope. Coincidentally, I received from my California Fair Plan a list of tasks to do to decrease the price for the cost of my rising insurance that I plan to do.

Well, I have already done it. These trends magnified statewide inevitably affect tribal governments and tribal members whether living on the reservation lands, ancestral homelands, or in off reservation communities by driving up the cost of basic protection against loss and stifling housing security for families and tribal enterprises alike. For decades, the Jamul Indian Village of California faced an unprecedented constraint.

Our reservation consisted of only six acres, among the smallest in The United States, which limited our tribal government's ability to develop housing, to reestablish community cohesion, and serve tribal families on our lands. In December 2024, the United States Congress passed legislation that took 172 acres of land into federal trust status for the Jamul Indian Village.

This legislation greatly expanded the tribe's trust land base and transformed our prospects for providing tribal housing oversight overnight. This milestone empowers the Jamul Indian Village to finally plan for essential housing, cultural preservation, health resources, economic development, and tribal government infrastructure in ways that previously were not possible.

However, the timing of this land expansion amid a severe homeowners insurance crisis presents a new and urgent set of challenges that jeopardize the sustainability and affordability of future housing and community projects. Importantly, the lands that the tribe presently occupies are our ancestral homelands, which hold deep cultural, historical, and spiritual significance for our people. Relocating to another area to mitigate wildfire risk and avoid increased insurance costs simply is not an option for my people.

Our connection to our ancestral homelands is inseparable from who we are as a tribal nation. Insurance protection is fundamental to safe housing, economic investment, and building resilience in the face of disasters. For tribal communities seeking to construct homes and essential facilities on trust lands, the current insurance landscape poses several barriers, including higher premiums that threaten affordability, reduced market participation by major carriers, and compounding climate risks.

As homeowners insurance costs rise, often doubling or more in wildfire prone regions, the financial burden of insuring tribal homes and community buildings grows. High premiums can inflate housing costs, strain tribal budgets, and deter investment in critical infrastructure.

With insurers scaling back in high risk regions or withdrawing entirely, tribal communities may find fewer options for comprehensive coverage at reasonable rates. This can force reliance on the California Fair Plan, which historically offers limited policy options at higher costs, undermining full financial protection. I'm with you, Chairman. I think the tribes need to get together and and, create our own insurance for the state of California. Tribal lands in California, like surrounding regions, face increasing wildfire, drought, and extreme weather exposure.

These escalating risks not only raise insurance costs but also increase the financial stakes of insufficient coverage especially for tribal communities seeking to preserve cultural property, heritage sites, and sacred landscapes. Together, these conditions make it more difficult for tribes to execute housing development plans with confidence and challenge long term community stability by threatening to erode the economic feasibility of self determined growth.

Insurance insecurity also translates into broader social and cultural consequences. Home ownership and tribal community housing are essential to tribal sovereignty, as tribal housing can anchor cultural continuity, ensure intergenerational knowledge transfer, and engender a stable family life. When insurance becomes prohibitively expensive or unavailable, tribal members may be forced to seek housing outside our communities, undermining efforts to revitalize tribal homelands and traditions.

Tribal cultural sites, ceremonial spaces, and ancestral landscapes require protection that extends beyond simple rebuilding costs. Inadequate insurance can leave irreplaceable cultural assets vulnerable or unprotected in the face of disaster. Tribal governments that are seeking to develop affordable housing, community facilities, services must navigate a market where rising insurance expenses increase project risk, raise operating costs, and reduce access to capital, all of which disproportionately affects communities within already limited financial leverage.

The Jamul Indian Village appreciates this committee's focus on the insurance challenges facing tribal nations. In closing, I respectfully suggest that policymakers encourage solutions, expand coverage options, and stabilize costs for vulnerable communities, including tribal lands.

Lawmakers should work to ensure that insurance regulatory frameworks account for tribal lands' unique history, cultural, and geographic context, and do not inadvertently penalize or exclude tribal communities. We ask that assembly members continue to work with tribal leaders, community stakeholders to explore targeted programs or subsidies that enhance insurance affordability for tribal housing and infrastructure project on trust lands.

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify. I'm just a lowly tribal leader in front of assembly people who can make the change for tribal people and tribal nations. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Chairwoman. Now we're going to, fire chief Ken Kremensky, Barona Fire Department.

Good morning, Chairman Ramos and assembly members on the board. Thank you very much for having us here today. I just wanna give a little, I've been in the fire service for fifty years. I've San Diego County grown up, started with the California division of Forestry at the time, which is now CAL FIRE, the career at Lakeside, and I've been have the opportunity to serve as fire chief here for the last seventeen years in Barona. As Chairman Welch had mentioned, our department was formed in 1998 here.

We have 24 members. We staff a type one, type three engine, paramedic ambulance, as well as housing OES type three engine that we provide mutual aid throughout the state. I've served on and serve on incident management team with CAL FIRE and the Forest Service. We have agreements and great partnerships with CAL FIRE, with the forest service, our signers to the state mutual aid, as well as San Diego County auto aid. So we go and help our neighbors, as well as our neighbors come and help us.

We, I also serve as a vice president on the California tribal fire chiefs and, vice president for the San Diego County fire chiefs. So we're very engaged in our communities, our county, and our state. We have a great partnership. We did a controlled burn last year, a 160 acres with CAL FIRE. Currently, we are doing a fuels project here with CAL FIRE, San Diego County.

We're providing personnel as long as our personnel to do some fuel reduction here on the reservation. We have applied for grants. We did apply for the last grant through the tribal for fuel reduction and were rejected due to the fact that I don't think there's enough funds. A lot of tribes put in for that, and the competition's stiff. So, you know, I think more money out for doing more fuel reduction will help.

Our members also, every year annually, we go out and we clear fuels around the houses of our elders up to a 100 feet, and we probably do up to a 100 houses that we do every year for the elders that can't do that. Our firefighters go out. We buy the equipment and go out and serve. So I think the insurance industry needs to come out and personally survey the individual houses that the folks that are clearing around their houses. I think they from my perspective, just block us into one block.

You're in a hazard area. You're gonna pay the high rates, and you can call them. I know because personally, I'm in that vote. They won't come out and look at it, and I think that's unfair. I think that they need to come out and take a look and see that the work that we're doing to try and mitigate the hazards to our, constituents, our personnel, and our tribal members. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your testimony. As now, we'll, move to fire chief Jason Keeling, Pechanga Fire Department.

Good morning, Chairman Ramos and members of the committee. My name is Jason Keeling. I serve as the fire chief of the Pechanga Fire Department. I'm also the current president of the Tribal Fire Chiefs Association and the Tribal Chief's branch representative for the California Fire Chiefs Association.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this informational hearing examining the rising costs of homeowners insurance across California tribal nations. Across our state, tribes are experiencing significant increases in homeowners insurance premiums and in some cases, a complete loss of coverage.

These rising costs place an additional burden on our families who are working hard to protect their homes and communities. For many tribal families, insurance is not simply a financial product. It is a critical safeguard that ensures stability, recovery after disasters, and long term community resilience. From the general safety perspective, this issue is closely tied to wildfire risk and preparedness. Tribal governments are adopting forward looking policies and making significant investments to reduce wildfire risk and strengthen community resilience.

At Pechanga, our fire department provides robust fire protection services to our community, including our class three ISO rating. We also maintain a 11 member full time fuels management program that works year round to reduce hazardous vegetation to improve defensible state space across the reservation.

In addition, we operate a comprehensive fire prevention division that assists residents, businesses, and tribal departments in building or retrofitting homes, commercial buildings, and infrastructure to meet Pechanga's wildland urban interface code and fire code. Despite these proactive efforts, many tribal communities continue to face increasing insurance premiums or the threat of policy cancellations. This rises as an important concern.

When tribal governments adopt and enforce strong building and fire safety standards, and when homeowners voluntarily take steps to harden their homes, those actions should be recognized and incentivized, not overlooked. Instead, tribes are effectively penalized for being located in rural or forest parts of the state.

Insurers should not be permitted to cancel coverage or increase rates for tribal communities that adopt and enforce model wildland urban interface building codes or for families who voluntarily build or retrofit their homes in accordance with those modeled codes. Meaningful governmental investments must be recognized. Communities are actively investing in wildfire mitigation and resilient construction should see those efforts reflected in a fair, stable insurance coverage.

Tribal fire departments and governments possess deep knowledge of our lands and the risks we face. Our communities are taking meaningful steps to reduce those risks, and we stand ready to continue partnering with state leaders, insurers, policy makers to ensure that mitigation efforts are recognized and incorporated into risk assessments. I appreciate the committee's willingness to bring this issue to light, and I hear directly from the tribal leaders who are experiencing these challenges firsthand.

Addressing the rising costs and accessibility of homeowners insurance will require collaboration among state leaders, insurers, tribal governments to ensure solutions are equitable and reflect the proactive investments tribal communities are making protect the lives, property, natural resources, and cultural sensitive sites. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today.

I look forward to participating in discussions and working together to find a meaningful solution that supports the safety and resilience in our communities. Thank you.

And thank you so much from for all of your testimony. Very enlightening education components for myself and I'm pretty sure members on the dais says now we'll open it up for questions or comments. I'm starting with Assembly Member, Schiavo.

Let me get some questions together. Can I mean, what I what I'm hearing from, the fire chiefs and and tribal Chairmans and Chairwoman is that mitigation is happening, but it's not being recognized? And then you're not you're not seeing it reflected in insurance costs. Right? Insurance premiums.

This is something I've been hearing about for years now, since I've been elected probably four years ago. And are you able to share some, like, specific examples of things that have been done? You know, some stories of and examples of that work happening.

And then what happened or has not happened so we can, like, better understand what's what's going on and what's going into the mitigation, what kind of mitigation is happening. What kind of out of pocket costs are people having to pay and then not seeing that come back to them. I think that would be really illustrative of us better understanding the issue.

Thank you. So currently for Verona, we're engaged currently with Cal Fire doing fuel reduction measures around the reservation and on the reservation, mainly ingress and egress for our housing communities here since we're a rural area. We're clearing fuel 10 to 15 feet either side of the roadways currently with CAL FIRE. We also go out every year, like I said, and we clear a 100 feet around our elders' residence where we go and weed whackers and brush hogs and all equipment that we the reservation, the tribal members fund so that we can do that work and that reduces the fuel. We did our first burn last year cultural burn where we reduced fuels 160 acres.

We plan on continuing that as well moving forward. We're very engaged in trying to do that. We serve on committees. We have a WUI plan in place, evacuation routes. We educate our tribal members and the surrounding community on fuel reduction as well as taking measures when a fire does come, what they can and can't do to keep them safe.

So there's some efforts that we do and we're engaged in. We currently continue to seek out grants so we can do more fuel reduction. We'd like to put a fuel break all the way around the reservation, which would protect our community as well as the communities around us. But we need the funding to do that. It's very expensive.

Fuels mitigation isn't a very expensive project to take on. So we just need assistance with that. So I think getting more money available for tribal nations to be able to do that work. We're willing to do that work. A great partnership right now with Cal Fire.

We have a partnership where they provide the water tender and we staff it 247 in San Diego County, responds on our tribal land, but also off the land to help the community. So I think the partnerships are there. I think funding is a big issue for us to be able to do that work.

Residents or the dwellings that you're insuring, it it should be done individually. Each assessment should be independent to that structure, not just blanket. You live in a high fire danger area, so you all just automatically get this insurance rate. I don't believe that's happening. I don't believe that the insurers are coming out and assessing that property and the clearances that are around there.

The home hardening that's maybe been done to that residence. So they're not receiving the benefits of their investment to protect their residents. I will give you a couple examples of of how beneficial a fuel management program is is, you know, fires that maybe occurred fifteen to twenty years ago on Pechanga usually became large fires. You know, 5,10,000 up to we had a 50,000 acre fire in 1999. Those fires now, we have the ability to extinguish those within less than an acre, maybe an acre, because of the fuel reduction efforts that have been done in the community.

So you see the benefits of that work when we do have small fire start for whatever reasons. So that in itself is beneficial to our community members and to us as firefighters. So we will always continue to provide those mitigation efforts. I just think that it would be beneficial if insurers could reward the tribes as well, the tribal nations that are putting those efforts forward to protect their communities.

And I think, you know, that's important because as we oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, no. I just I just wanted to add on on behalf of Suboba. And, you know, I mentioned earlier some of the things that efforts that we take, you know, purchasing the bulldozer and creating our own fire lines. But with the WUI crew, we're able to go out and also maintain fire breaks around homes and stuff like that. So I think one of the most things that I'm you you ask about, you know, as a whole, what are we specifically looking to do?

And you look at this public, public protection classification, PPC program is what insurances look at, to mitigate to to really establish a risk factor of fires. And our fire department, our WUI Crew, and our public works department have gone through great lengths to mitigate the risk of fire to the extent that, you know, the the the company comes in, they look at your your needed fire flows, your your water supplies, your fire department, if you have an emergency communications department. And we have all those established there at Suboba. And we're very proud of our fire department and their efforts to get our classification down from a three to a two. You know, I look at the report that was given to me, and they the report is done with over 40,000 different communities in in the country.

And just taking a look at that, and we're in the top 2,500 of that. 40,000 communities were looked at their risk factors and we're in the top 2,500. So when you look at that as a small tribe, we're a tribe of 8,000 acres, 1,700 members run by a government, we take those matters serious. You know, we look at protect them at all costs. We've always been taught to be good stewards of our lands that we have and that is a part of it.

Making sure that, you know, we can mitigate the risk of fire, protect cultural resources at the same time, as well as now we look at it with the growing need for housing, make sure that we can hopefully use this effort that we put forth to protect our homelands and put it into the insurance's hands to say, you guys have done the work. Now you guys are afforded some quality insurance at a decent rate. I think that's what we're not getting. And it's it's frustrating to some extent because tribes do put in a lot of resources to these efforts, yet only to have their individual members when they reach out to the insurance companies either be one turned down or two be hit with large premiums. So it is a frustrating process, but tribes, trust me, are doing what's right and we always have and will.

And I think it's an important point also because I'd know I'm guessing the insurance commissioner is gonna, talk a little bit about, you know, what's happening at the state level including the modeling that's, going to start happening here. Climate warms, as the impacts of of climate change, you know, bring hotter and stronger fires and all of this, you know, it it gives the impression that there's only one trajectory for it to go in, right? That they're going to be bigger and worse. But I think to your point, they're actually through the mitigation work and the work that's happening, very intentionally in tribal communities. You actually have less fire risk You know, that really I think speaks to how important it is to take consideration.

When we're looking at these insurance rates and and making sure, you know, it's there there's gonna get be a breaking point at a certain point where, investments are happening, and it's and all of these mitigations are happening, and it's it continues to not be reflected in insurance rates. You know, it's not people are gonna be like, why? Why are we doing this? I mean, obviously, there's lots of good reasons for it beyond blurring insurance. But it does cost money, you know, it's very expensive.

Chairman Ivanko, about the grants not necessarily working or applying it in tribal lands in the same way that they may apply to other areas or or not fitting exactly. Can you explain more?

Grants. Obviously, we we've we're able to obtain a WUI grant to that help fund a four man group four man crew that would go out and and mitigate brush and whatnot. But sometimes some of the grants that are out there for tribes or even as a whole in this within the state, there are limitations by way of environmental issues. You you have limitations to some of the things you can and cannot do. Some things that maybe tribes really really look at when it comes to the NEPA process as, you know, culturally sensitive sites, things that you can apply, things you can apply, making sure that the grant works for us.

So maybe sometimes tribes look at that and you get into the to the to the red tape or the the guts of the grant and feel like maybe that's not the best for us. So I think when you guys are allocating I'm sorry. You guys the assembly members are allocating funds for grants and and means for for others to go out and get, we look at that to make sure that, the opportunities are there. Because so many times, like I I mentioned, tribes tribes know their lands and and are good stewards of their lands and can make those decisions, But following some some processes sometimes with environmentalists can get really tricky.

Yeah. And it sounds like there needs to be a better kind of assessment and consideration for the uniqueness of tribal lands and making sure that there's flexibility in these grant dollars to make it work, so that, you know, the important work that you guys have been doing that is clearly making a huge difference in in tribal communities can continue. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your comments. Assemblymember Valencia.

Thank you, mister Chairman. More so just some comments. Very much appreciate the context that the tribal leaders and their respective fire departments are providing for us today. It just adds to the more macro issue that we're having as a state. Goes without saying that the insurance insurance, insurance system is is at a crossing point where it's just not working for Californians because of the recent fires, the liability that it exists, and unfortunately, the lack of keeping up with the premium need over the years.

But this information is extremely helpful for us to ensure that native and indigenous voices are included when these decisions are being made. And I would just like to make my commitment as a member of the insurance committee to lead on that fight in addition to other colleagues here as well.

the future conversations and ensuring that tribal communities have access to quality insurance and also within the system that fits their needs. Thank you.

So I look forward to

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Jackson.

Thank you very much, mister Chair, and thank you all very much for your, testimony. You know, when, I'm trying to solve a problem, I'm always trying to look and find out, well, what are other people or other groups doing to help solve this problem? And just this week, mister Chair, we had a budget sub two committee meeting, and we were talking about foster homes, who have had increased insurance. And, of course, they received state funding and just like most of the time, the rates don't keep up with the cost of operating. And so, last year, we approved an insurance mitigation fund for them where they said, okay.

We're going to you can apply for additional money to be able to close the gap in terms of insurance. And so it seems to me that this could be one of those, things that we might be able to do for, tribal lands, and its members that if there are tribal tribes who need to help fill in the gap, if they have members whose homes are on tribal lands and they need to fill in that gap because of increased insurance due to the fire risk of of the lands that are surrounding it that a fund can be set up for tribes to be able to draw down from, to be able to help their individual members as well as the tribal operations as a whole to help fill in that gap. Would something like that be helpful as a transition as we try to right? There's long term and then there's short term things that we should be doing, but it seems like this could be one of those short term things where we actually have an example of it. It actually being done in other areas of the state's budget.

Do you think this might be helpful at least as a short term solution to to help keep people stable, keep tribal land stable? Your thoughts?

I think at this point, Assembly Jackson, we're willing to, you know, look at any, resolve even if it's a short term fix, you know, something to work towards the long term.

Okay.

I agree with chairwoman. Thank you, mister chair.

And thank you so much. And you brought up, Chairman, well, just as far as having a 160 acre prescribed burn here on the reservation. And do you know if that 160 acre prescribed burn not only benefits the community here within the tribal government lands, but also the surrounding communities around the reservation.

Well, it it happened right here. It's outside this building. It's the field right across across the way right there that was a burn. And, yes, it will help the surrounding community. But, you know, unfortunately, it's not a matter of if a fire is gonna happen is when it's gonna happen.

You know, we live in fire prone area. So a fire is gonna come through with the prescribed burn. It's gonna slow the spread of the fire and allow our fire department to get on top of it quicker.

So by utilizing assets of of the tribal government, to protect homes here on the reservation with a prescribed burn in conjunction with CAL FIRE could also lead to a lower premiums, to housing outside of the reservation potentially. Yes. And and we we see, over in Suboba, 1,700 member, 260 homes on on reservation, with your own fire department that that worked in. You have a brush truck that's used outside of the tribal communities on on different calls that go out 911 system. And the whole point that we're we're trying to establish here within this panel and and the questions that we're alluding to is the assets the tribal governments are using, to protect homes, against fire, natural disasters, also are benefiting the surrounding community.

However, the asset ratio of what's being spent within the tribal government is not equating back to the tribal government, and the outside community actually could be benefiting more because of the assets that you're using on the tribal government, premises, tribal lands. And so, Chairman Vivanco, you mentioned about a relative who's trying to get, insurance for a mobile home. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Calls went out. Did anybody visit to see the the surrounding area?

Yes. It it was just recently my son is in the process of bringing a mobile home to the reservation. And, you know, going out and getting insurance was not the easiest of of things to do. I mean, no one would really actually, there was a lot of calls made to different, providers. A lot of them just flat out said, no.

We're not gonna answer that call. We're not gonna provide a service to you. One only, Amarin, who is Native and because of the relationship we have as a tribe with Amarin as a blanket insurer of our properties, they're able to provide homeowners insurance to our members. Even then, it comes at a cost that is kind of outrageous in my my opinion, until we get down and really do the dirty work and see what is involved within that quote. They actually went out and provided another quote.

I think it's the fair fair plan California fair plan. And it came back a little bit cheaper, but it was just it was bare bones compared to what the insurance provider was willing to to provide. So, it it is rather frustrating that none of none of the other companies would even come out. You know, the big ones, Mercury, Hartford, Safeco, all those big insurers are just they're just kind of leaving the state and and tribes out to dry. And my my biggest thing is, like, you know, we we still last time I checked, we live in California.

And California is known for what? The big one. It's coming. An earthquake. These guys aren't charging extreme premiums on earthquakes. Yeah. And, you know, we can't do nothing to stop an earthquake. Here, we can stop fires. We can stop the threat of our homes burning and mitigate those expenses, yet they're still leaving. They're still providing Us homeowners insurance or homeowners insurance for earthquakes, but for fires, they're they're out of here.

They're not supporting us. So, we are making those efforts. We are mitigating those fact those factors, but still, no one's answering the call.

Well, thank you, for that. But it you also bring up another important component, that fault lines, certainly, our reservation many reservations on fault lines, lands that were not chosen, lands that were, we were forced to, live on with those constraints that are there. However, the resiliency of our people industry I guess we'll ask the question there when the next panel, taken into consideration that tribal governments weren't able to choose the land that they're on, but have to deal with all the components that come with it. Fires, hazards, flooding, potential earthquakes on fault lines, those things. So that's another area that certainly bringing to the attention of the legislators on this dais, the difference between when we talk about these issues.

The tribal communities didn't get to choose where their reservations and trust lands are at Mhmm. But have to deal with it. And someone brought up is the need to create our own insurance company. I believe that we should that we're not at that point yet. I think we need to educate the state of California and the insurance provider certainly with the commissioner here on the issues that are that are facing and the mitigation efforts.

And that was another question that I had for the tribal chairs. When members are are being asked for their insurance policies, is there any, anybody asking about tribal ordinances and and and policies that keep brush clearances around homes 300 feet back, adopting those policies, for fire prevention? And do they even know that those types of, preventative measures are being, addressed at the tribal council?

For for Verona, we provide that information when our members are getting re upped for their insurance. So we provide that information voluntarily to them. That all of the work that, you know, fire department does and all the mitigation that we go through to protect them.

Thank you for that. Any others?

I'm not a 100% sure it's what I have. Our our staff here, I'd had to ask if it is handed to them. But if it's not, I would like to make sure and, again, I mentioned earlier, I would like to make sure that they get this information as well as hopefully get them to come out and physically look at the properties because all so many so many times they're doing it again from a desktop and and Google Earth and looking at classification that you may have on paper as a zone and say this is a high risk zone, but not really coming out and looking at the the factors that went into mitigating the the chance of a fire coming through. So I I I if we don't, we will. That is a great point to bring up to the insurance companies.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for that. The reason some jurisdictions, local jurisdictions do have ordinances on on clearances around homes to move forward, and they take some of that into account. But if the speculation or stereotype is that tribal governments aren't that proficient in their governing. I think it's time that we expose the state of California to how proficient tribal governments truly are at managing their own, lands. And, chairwoman, Pinto, you brought up, certainly, six acre acres, six acre reservation.

We've known you a long time, and there was no room for for homes that were there. But because of the efforts of of your people continuing to get land in the trust, you were awarded a 172 acres for the Hamul people. And so with that, right, joy comes because now you have opportunity to build homes. But yet when you build those homes, the the insurance component comes into play, which then you mentioned that could force tribal members not to even live on tribal lands, that would live away from tribal lands, that then starts to impact the cultural significance and tie to the land itself. And I wanted to see if you could elaborate a little bit more on that and that process of getting the 172 acres because that's another component that I think the legislature, needs to be understanding of.

That the lands, right, and going after lands that were taken, history from tribal people, getting those lands back into trust, opportunity then for the tribe to be able to provide housing for their members. And again, in an area that's not chosen but forest.

Correct. So first, I'll start with in 2005, all of my tribal members were relocated to make way for our economic development to improve our lives. We all relocated throughout San Diego County. We built our economic development. We opened in 2016 and generated some revenue.

With that revenue we were able to purchase a 172 acres of land that we went through the the act of Congress to get it placed into trust it was Congressman ISA and also a senator Padilla who carried the bill for us it took about one year for that to take place as opposed to going to the BIA process and taking years and years because my tribal members wanted to come home and five through COVID until now, because we're still not home yet, but we've seen the effects that not living in a community with each other has had on my tribe. And I'm feeling those effects today. So we are, time is of the essence to bring our people home, and now you have a level of another layer of a barrier obtaining insurance that seems unattainable. And, you know, we want to protect our assets, but will we be able to? I don't know.

One of the topics that came up in one of our general tribal council meetings was historically, my people have not had or any American Indian folks have not been able to enjoy the American dream and have assets, you know. Land is our asset. And we've had no land until now. And so we're it's a it's a race to get our people here, accept that barrier of insurance, which I hope this committee will continue to advocate like you have done so well at assembly member Ramos and make that insurance attainable, affordable, and quality because we did not choose to live here. And we are the closest tribe to Downtown San Diego to any metropolitan to, healthy foods.

But all the other tribes when you take a bird bird's eye view in the state of California are on the fault lines, are in undevelopable lands, not by our choice. And so I hope that we can attain these insurances to protect our assets, to grow and sustain our homes, sustain our assets, sustain our lands because we do partner with Caltrans. We wanna protect our people. And you're right, the benefits go beyond the borders of Hamul. The community benefits when we benefit, and I'm gonna say this and mess it up, a rising tide lifts all ships.

And so when we do that, the community benefits. So that's where we are.

Well, thank you, so much, Chairwoman, for that. And and to the, fire chiefs and fire departments, being represented here today, you you talked about Verona, you talked about a great relationship when fire does happen, and that's more of the reactive component to it. But is there also the proactive, making sure that brush clearances, all these different things are are going on? And then for both, have you worked with IBHS to minimize some of those fire dangers and hardening of the of the structures and those things that if we understood it right in the earlier panel and what we'll ask the insurance and the commissioner on it, that that when you adhere to some of those policies, it it can lower the premium rates, for some of those homes.

Correct. Yeah, we do. The protective, you know, like I said, we respond to fires in and off the reservation. We have been engaged in fuel reduction, working with our partners, CAL FIRE, and reducing the fuels. Like I said, we go out and do that.

The hardening, we educate our tribal members on hardening their houses so that they can resist the fire when it comes through. I haven't personally worked with the agency. The council does that. I report to the council, so they would be the ones who could answer that. Chairman Welch.

Yeah. And for Pechanga, you know, we have done multiple projects partnering with Cal Fire to benefit both Pechanga and the outlying surrounding communities. You brought up a good point. You know, the efforts made by Pechanga and in our ISO rating being a three, we sit on the Riverside County San Diego County border. We have a lot of unincorporated residents that live in those communities.

We are the closest fire department. We are their fire department. Although they are off reservation and not, you know, members of the Pechanga tribe, they received the benefits of that ISO rating from us because it's done geographically for an area. So there are a lot of benefits provided to the outside communities for the work that we're doing to mitigate our lands. And we have provided ordinances.

We have tribal approved ordinances that require certain types of home hardening for different types of structures that are built within within the community. And those are usually done, you know, voluntarily, but we strongly recommend, specifically as we move forward in development and in new development. And we do do a lot of retrofitting and things of that nature. So a lot of proactive education needs to go into the community to help them better understand what these efforts mean for them. Hopefully, with the return in insurance premiums is what we hope.

And we do have a drafted letter that is set to provide hydrant locations, level of fire service protection, and ordinances that we can give to our community members so they can provide to their insurers.

Yeah. And part of that, Verona proactively currently, we have wells that we provide our water, but currently, Verona is in the process of bringing water from the Ramona Municipal Water District. We're gonna bring water lines in here, which will boost our water supply. We put in for a grant for another 1 and a half million dollars storage gallon storage tank on the north end of the reservation, which benefits both Verona and the community members of Ramona and Lakeside. We're very proactive and involved in that.

This year, we have a county wildland drills, probably the one of the best drills in the state. We started in 2003. We're hosting it this year. All the participants, law enforcement, fire, emergency managers, all participate in this drill. It's a three day drill.

We bring the firefighters from all over the county, and we go through training exercises, and that helps as well as introducing firefighters from all over the county to know what our tribal lands are like. So when they respond to fire, they have that familiarity. We work together, and we're very proactive in in trying to make it better for not only our self, but for the others. And back in the day, we provided a lot of funds to help fund this, county helicopter that does firefighting operations, as well as providing funds to buy fire engines for other fire departments to help each other. Definitely, San Diego County has a great working relationship with all of our fire and law enforcement partners and emergency managers, and that'll continue.

Thank you for that. And, to the tribal, fire, chiefs, and as the the president, of that organization, is there, workability, mutual understanding with, state, local, agencies within the fire industry as far as the preparedness preventive measures that is actually happening within Indian country?

Yes. We believe there is. We we share all of our knowledge and our resources and our lessons learned, our wins and losses throughout our organizations. As we all know, all tribal nations are different, and they're different outlining communities and what they're surrounded around and the community surrounding them. But we do assist each other.

We do provide and share information of those lessons learned and the things and successes that we're having moving forward. Our goal is to have, as the tribal fire chiefs in California, is to have one voice when it comes to public safety. Speaking to how we support the mutual aid system as tribal fire departments. How we support incident management teams that you heard of earlier today. Pechanga has members that sit on CAL FIRE Incident management teams in command positions.

So we are very active in the state mutual aid system, and our 26 all risk tribal fire departments, we believe we have right now, are are all trying to get and move in the same direction and provide the same robust services in our communities working together and learning from what we've done in the past and how we can make it better in the future.

And and with the the tribal chiefs, I believe, and you could elaborate a little bit more on this, those responding mutual aids calls on and off tribal lands.

Correct. Majority, probably, our responses from Pechanga specifically would be off reservation. We will support the mutual aid system into our local communities in our operational area, but we also send resources and assets up and down the state of California when there is mitigation needs in other communities throughout the state.

So again go ahead.

And and Barone is the same way. Recently, last year, I was personally on the Eaton Fire with our engine, strike team leader, five engines from here. So I was engaged in the Eaton Fire. Been on fires all over the state, and we're engaged in that. We provide a lot of aid to other communities.

We have received aid. Like I said, we have the Cedar Fire in 2003, the Wych Fire in 2007, as well as just local response initial attack fires that start here and around the community surrounding the reservation. We respond off to Ramona Lakeside that's gonna impact us. It's it's really there's not one fire department in the state that can handle all the possibilities of earthquake, fire, flooding. So we all need to do it together, and that's why state of California has such a great mutual aid program.

I think in the world, we're probably right at the top. A lot of folks from different countries come to study California on how we provide protection for our people. And with yourselves in the legislature backing us up in that, we really appreciate that. So

Well, thank you so much. And I just wanna bring to point that, again, assets that the tribal governments are utilizing in the state of California are not adequately reimbursed with those assets when it comes to protection at home of tribal lands. Yet in light of lands that we're on being forced there, not chosen, still the resiliency and the willingness of of Indian people, California's first people, to share those assets with the outside community. I think it's it's time that state legislature understands that and starts to discuss ways of how we can move forward to addressing this, inequity, I believe, of assets being utilized, to the benefit of the outside community, but not the benefit of California's first people. I wanna thank you for all of your testimony.

And this is now we'll move to our our last, panel.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next panel will consist of state overview of rising insurance cost. Insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara, Department of Insurance, Soren Taylor, vice president, Personal Insurance Federation of California. What's it say?

It's good to see you, Commissioner Lara. And thank you for always being available when California's First People and issues that affect the Indian communities come forward. You've always been a champion of that in the different roles if you had in tribal government within the legislature and and now in the current role. I wanna thank you for coming. This is the only second the second hearing that's been held on tribal lands.

So I wanna thank you for making the time to be here. It it's very important. It shows, the moral aptitude of yourself, of being here to address these issues.

Some of the tribal members and leaders that spoke, if they have any questions, we'll be more than happy to answer those. I know some of them some members that are here might have have already heard some of this testimony and understand some of the the good work that we've been doing. Before I begin, I just wanna thank the the firefighters that are in the room and the first responders who have done God's work during this this last couple years to protect Californians from the mega fires and giga fires that we have been going through since 2019. And so I tailored my remarks really to talk to you about a lot of the the issues that we've been facing in California, but a lot of the solutions that many of the tribal leaders and the the firefighters brought forth today. And to tell you that, a lot of the issues that were brought forth, we actually have a lot of solutions for.

So Chairman Ramos, members of the select committee, and tribal leaders, and our guests, thank you for the invitation to join you today. And thank you to Barona Band of Mission Indians for walking welcoming us to your ancestral lands. It is an honor to be here again in a place where history, culture, and resilience are lived every day. Today, I wanna walk you through three things. The reality tribal nations are facing, the reforms underway, and what relief will look like in the months ahead.

Before I walk, I talk about the solutions, we must acknowledge the simple truth. It is not an accident that tribal nations face heightened climate risk. For generations, federal land use policies, forced relocation, and development patterns push tribal communities into the most climate vulnerable areas of our state, especially the wildland urban interface where wildfire risk is the highest and insurance markets are the most fragile. These decisions created the conditions tribal nations really confront today and that you heard from in the previous panel. The impacts are not abstract.

They show up in soaring premiums, sudden non renewals, and families losing coverage on the very lands their ancestors have steward since time in memorial. Understanding how we got here is really essential, and it allows us to build solutions grounded in truth, partnership, and respect for what is the most important, sovereignty. Across California, tribal nations are experiencing the sharpest edge of our insurance crisis. Tribal environmental studies from the Carib tribe, the Yurok tribe, and the inter intertribal tribal council show that climate change has intensified drought, reduced snow pack, and increased extreme fire weather. These conditions make catastrophe wildfire more likely, and insurers are reacting by raising premiums and withdrawing entirely.

Tribal leaders have shared stories as you heard of premiums troubling or tripling, non renewals with no explanation, insurers refusing to recognize tribal mitigation, delays caused by misunderstanding of tribal's jurisdiction. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect really a systematic market failure. And this aligns with what other international experts including the organization for economic cooperation and Development, which I am a member of, the OECD have warned. Climate insurance disruption is really accelerating worldwide, and frontline communities are hit first and the hardest.

And OECD research shows that after major catastrophes, insurance markets typically take three to five years to stabilize. California is in year one of that recovery, and the work we are doing now will determine how quickly we stabilize. One of the few national bodies working directly on these issues is our National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the NAIC, through our American Indian and Alaska Native Liaison Committee. I am a proud member of that as a California Insurance Commissioner. As one of the leaders shaping its priorities, I have worked to ensure that California's tribal nations are not only represented, but centered in a national disc discussions about insurance access, climate resilience, and market fairness.

The committee identifies insurance deserts, documents systematic barriers, elevates try elevates tribal mitigation practices, and ensures tribal leaders have a seat at the table when national reforms are debated. This is not a this is not symbolic work. It is producing research, hosting listening sessions, and informing state and federal policy. We're building on that work. We know that tribal communities have faced several structural challenges that make insurance more expensive and less available.

And one of the biggest issues is the lack of accurate granular data for tribal lands. When insurers lack reliable information, they default to the worst case assumptions even when communities are actively reducing risk as you heard from the previous panel. Another challenge is persistent misunderstanding of tribal sovereignty. Insurers often don't know which building codes apply or how to verify mitigation on sovereign land. We also see consistent under recognition of tribal mitigation and cultural burning.

Again, something you kept hearing on the previous panel. I think I should have gone before the previous panel actually. But, tribal nations have led in cultural burning and forest stewardship for thousands of years. Yet insurers rarely credit these practices even though they reduce risk. Infrastructure gaps add another layer of difficulty.

Remote access, limited fire response resources, and older housing stock are often priced heavily by insurers even when tribes are investing in resilience. And all of this is compounded by the fact that tribal lands are disproportionately located in the wildland urban interface. The very areas where wildfire risk is the highest and insurance markets are retreating the fastest. These challenges are real, but they're not insurmountable. This is why we launched the sustainable insurance strategy.

The most comprehend comprehensive insurance reforms in thirty years to restore a functioning insurance market while protecting consumers and finally finally rewarding mitigation. For tribal communities, the SIS offers several critical benefits. We are modernizing catastrophe modeling so insurers can use forward looking wildfire models, but only if they commit to writing more policies in high fire risk areas. These models must incorporate community level mitigation, including tribal fire management programs. Our public statewide wildfire model, the first of its kind, is a transparent, sign based science based and will be accessible to tribal governments.

It will allow tribes to identify high risk areas, demonstrate the impact of cultural burning, support grant applications, challenge outdated insurer assumptions. This aligns with OECD recommendations that call for transparent forward looking models as an as a foundation for climate resilient insurance markets. And I wanna pause here to share a moment that shaped really my understanding of this work. In the 2023, I visited the Yurok tribe and participated in a culture burning training. I walked the tribal members through the forested hillsides as they use small intentional fires to reduce fuel loads and restore ecological balance.

They spoke about land stewardship, watersheds, wildlife, and the responsibility to protect future generations. This experience made very clear what tribal nations have always known. Fire, when used with intention and cultural expertise, is a tool for renewal, safety, and resilience. California is finally finally beginning to correct a century long imbalance by recognizing this truth. S p 332 by.20201 a b 642 by Friedman 2021, and s p third 310 by Ashby 2023, affirm this legacy of cultural burning and create pathways for tribal leadership and land stewardship.

These laws don't simply allow cultural burning. They actually honor it, remove barriers, and create shared governance models between tribes and state agencies. We are also strengthening the fair plan so it can serve as a true backstop and not a permanent destination. And we are reducing excessive reinsurance cost requiring insurers to justify expenses and modernize rate filing through new templates, tools, and staffing. These reforms accelerate, review, and require insurers to expand coverage in high risk areas including tribal lands.

This year, I'm sponsoring two major legislative efforts that directly support tribal communities. The first is a b 1680 the Make It Fair Act by off, authored by a Sun member Lisa Calderon. For many tribal homeowners, the fair plan has become the only option. Again, as you heard in the previous panel, AB 1680 modernizes the fair plan from top to bottom, strengthening governance, improving financial oversight, requiring long term climate planning, and mandating a more complete homeowners policy. So families are now forced to juggle multiple policies just to get basic coverage.

It also requires a fair plan to operate with greater transparency, adopt modern solvency standards, and prepare a long term climate realities facing tribal communities. As insurers return to high risk areas under the sustainable insurance strategy, a b 1680 creates a more smoother transition for homeowners to move off the fair plan and back into the admitted market. The second is s b 876 the disaster recovery act authored by senator Steve Padilla. Tribal nations have long faced delayed insurance payments, inadequate rebuilding resources, and prolonged displacement after wildfires. SP 876 strengthens claims handling standards, requires accurate replacement cost estimates, ensures timely payments of benefits, including code upgrade coverage, and improves access to additional living expenses.

These protections are essential for rebuilding safely in rural and high risk regions and for supporting tribal governments in their roles as housing providers and recover recovery leaders. And I know the question on everybody's mind is really and everyone and everybody's mind is simple. When will consumers see relief? And here's the bottom line. We are in a transition period, but the direction has changed.

For the first time in years, insurers are not stepping are now stepping forward, and they're not stepping back. Several major companies have already filed new rate request under the sustainable insurance strategy, publicly stating that the SIS is a reason they can stay in California and begin expanding underwriting again. More companies are preparing to file. These filings represent concrete commitments to reenter the market they had exited, including in tribal lands. Relief will come in stages.

First, stability. Fewer nonrenewals. Fewer abrupt withdrawals. Next, more options. Companies beginning to quote again in areas where coverage has been scarce.

And over time, fair pricing as mitigation and home Harding efforts are finally going to be recognized in your insurance bill. You heard me right. Mitigation and home Harding efforts are finally going to be recognized in your insurance bill. California will be the first state under these new rules to require that your mitigation and your home hardening has to be reflected in your insurance bill for wildfire. Florida has been doing this for twenty years for hurricane.

Under the new rules, everything that you heard in the previous panel will be reflected in your insurance bill. This outcome is something that I am particularly proud of and have worked really hard to achieve. This approach reflects what global reinsurers and catastrophe model experts have found. Markets recover faster when governments modernize modeling, strengthen oversight, and actually reward mitigation. Moving forward, our work will be grounded in government to government consultation.

We will ensure tribal mitigation is recognized in modeling and underwriting. We will improve data and transparency. We will develop better risk information with tribal nations. We will hold insurers accountable to returning to tribal communities. Under the sustainable insurance strategy, insurers who want to use modern catastrophe models must demonstrate how they will maintain and expand coverage in higher risk areas, including tribal lands.

Chair Ramos, members of the committee, and tribal leaders, for too long, the smoke was rising and the warnings were clear, but the action was not. California needed a commissioner willing to act, and that is exactly what I did. And many often say, I paid the price for it. The rising cost of homeowners insurance in tribal communities is not inevitable. It is a result of outdated systems, climate driven risks, and decades of decisions that ignored the sovereignty and the knowledge of our tribal nations.

A short period of time. We are building the world's first public wildfire model. We launched the sustainable insurance strategy, and we are advancing a b 1680 and SB 876. And insurers are beginning to reenter the market that they had abandoned. This is real progress, but it is not the finish line.

We will continue modernizing our rules, strengthening our consumer protections, and insisting that insurers serve every single community, including those in the wildland urban interface and our tribal lands. If anyone can teach us what resilience looks like, it is the tribal nations represented in this room. Your resilience is not just a story of survival. It is a road map for future, the future that we build together. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

I look forward to your questions and to continuing the work side by side in the months ahead and as I conclude my tenure in early 2027. Thank you.

Thank you so much, commissioner Lara. As now, we'll move to Seren Taylor, Vice President, Personal Insurance Federation of California.

Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Seren Taylor, on behalf of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, and thank you for the opportunity to discuss the current insurance market challenges. And also thank you for this hearing.

It's been interesting to hear about some of the unique challenges facing the tribal nations, and I do look forward to working with the other panelists in the future as as we continue this discussion. To understand what's driving the cost of insurance, I brought a presentation that I hope will clarify the issues at least somewhat. It's normally a much longer presentation, but I'll try to move quickly. And feel free to stop me if you have questions or want to discuss any slide. So we'll skip the intro.

And so we're gonna examine catastrophic wildfire losses, inflation driven exposure, rate adequacy to support a healthy market, and the sustainable insurance strategy. So with regard to wildfires, of the 10 most costly wildfires in the history of the planet, nine of them occurred in California and eight of those since 2017. And as you can see up here, we don't have the final numbers for the LA wildfires. The estimated result in over $40,000,000,000 of insured losses, and those are some shocking numbers. With regard to inflation, now I think this is really important because people wildly underestimate the impact of inflation on insurance policies.

As the cost of rebuilding homes has increased dramatically since the COVID pandemic, insurance also gets much more expensive. Here you see the inflation increased materials and labor costs by nearly 35% in just two years, And that's even without wildfires, that's a dramatic price spike. And then here is also another look at inflation. Over ten years, reconstruction costs are up 64%. That means that a house that used to cost $500,000 to rebuild, now cost over $800,000 to rebuild.

Okay. So, I jumped ahead. Okay, so, underwriting losses. I think this is one of the most important charts.

And here you can see how the market was stable from 1991 to 2016. Each year, insurers would lose a little or gain a little and then slowly build underwriting gains up to 10 billion by 2016. But then, things change dramatically and the prior 25 years are wiped out in 2017, and one fire in the Tubbs fire. Twenty-five years of gains. Now insurers thought, is that an anomaly or is that the new normal?

Insurers didn't know until the next year, the 2018 Camp Fire, it happened again. And now insurers are more than 10 billion dollars in the hole, and suddenly wildfire became a top tier peril like flood and earthquake. And again, when this chart gets updated for the 2025 LA fires, it's only going to look worse. And then I include this because this is a slide straight off the CDI website, and it shows that insurers in California have done far worse than nationally. It reflects a 13% underwriting loss over ten years.

So again, just confirming, insurers are taking loss after loss here in California. So now and sort of getting what commissioner Lara talked about, the rate suppression. And the reason people are feeling such sticker shock today is because the previous insurance commissioner suppressed insurance rates in the face of mounting risks. California had experienced five years of drought with 200 million dead trees, and you can see here on the left, that commissioner Jones ignored those risks by keeping California insurance rates artificially flat for nearly a decade, while the rest of the nation grew rates to reflect the real risks. This set the stage for the crisis we have today.

Then he left office in 2018 after the massive Tubbs fire, exposed the huge disconnect between rate and risk, and he handed off the problems to Commissioner Lara, who was put in the position of either allowing the insurance market to deteriorate, or approve rate increases that catch up to reality and stabilize the market. Now even with those rate increases, as you can see here, California rates are still considered middle of the pack. Here you see that as of 2022, which is the latest data we have because it always lags about two years, but California average premiums are far below other states with high climate related losses, and also slightly below the US average. And I'm pretty confident you won't find California below average cost on just about anything else. This next slide is about insurance burden, and this chart comes from the Public Policy Institute.

It shows the best way to compare costs across times and places is by comparing insurance burdens, which is insurance cost as a share of all homeownership expenses. California statewide insurance burden at 4.6% is one of the lowest in the country, and I know it doesn't feel that way to a lot of people. And this is one of the the difficulties when talking about insurance. And again, going back to the sticker shock, because people don't feel that California's burden is low, but the facts are that it is. And so how do we restore a healthy market?

And I always like to try to close on an optimistic note. And again, pointing at the sustainable insurance strategy that commissioner Lara has spent the past two years implementing. This sets the stage for insurers to increase insurance availability and reliability. Insurers need confidence that the state's regulatory system can respond to challenges. The SIS helps deliver that.

California now allows insurers to use the same modern rate making tools that every other state does, like the catastrophe models. And in return, insurers must increase the availability in high risk areas. This requirement is unique to California. And talking about mitigation, finally, in the long term, the only way to address insurance cost is to reduce risk and loss. And here's a snapshot of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, Wildfire Prepared Home Program, that is demonstrated to help reduce wildfire risk.

And I think the commissioner alluded to also the CDI Safer from Wildfire regulations require insurers to provide mitigation discounts and tell consumers about the wildfire risk factors on their property. And when you look at this, you can see that insurers are looking for proper attic vent screens, ember resistant zone, what we call zone zero around the house, class a fire rated roof, noncombustible gutters, all the things like that. And in closing, I'll just say reducing insurance costs cannot be solved by insurance policy alone. Premiums ultimately reflect risk and loss. To meaningfully bring down costs, California will need sustained state and local investments in risk reduction, things like vegetation management, wildfire hardening, resilient infrastructure, and smarter land use planning.

When we reduce the underlying risk, we reduce the losses that drive insurance prices. So thank you.

Thank you so much for your your testimony. I wanna thank you for being here and making yourself available to address the questions that will come from the from the dias and hopefully address some of the questions that some of the tribal leaders, posed earlier as now we will open it up up to the dias. Assemblymember Harabedian.

Thank you, Mister Chair. Thank you to the insurance commissioner for being here and your continued work in and outside of the Eaton Fire and everything you've done for my resident residents who are dealing with the outcomes of that. So appreciate seeing you and you being here. And mister Taylor, great to see you. Thank you for being here in the testimony.

Just some questions that actually follow-up from the last panel and just, I think, getting I think the commissioner is right. Maybe your testimony before that would have been interesting because I think would have answered maybe some of these. But, what about this question, and I think it's a good one of, and mister Taylor, of being able to actually assess property by property rather than taking even a community by community, let alone a region by region look. That was a question that was posed by, I think, all of the testifying witness. Can you respond to that, please?

Well, yeah. I'll try. I mean, it's it's I feel there's a little disconnect there, and I heard someone talk about inspect every home. And there's 4,000,000 homes in in the WUI.

Is his microphone working? Sorry.

Sorry. Let me get closer. And I'm not sure there may be a little disconnect there, but I mean, at one point someone talked about inspecting every home. And there are 4 million homes in the WUI. Right?

So, it's not really feasible to go out and do an inspection of 4 million homes. In the IBHS wildfire prepared home program, for example, they'll send you a checklist of what you need to do, and then folks can send in pictures of what their home looks like, and that's what many insurers do. Right? Because it's not feasible to go out and inspect every home, and it is a challenge when you're in these rural communities to get out there and have someone who can go out and drive 90 miles to inspect an individual home. But folks can send in pictures, and that's often what is done to look at the individual characteristics of a home in addition to what the agents do as they take in your information in writing a policy. So that's-

Helpful.

Assembler Harabedian, I think this is a new frontier for us, and this is why I think you're seeing you're seeing the legislature in our department really step in here in terms of how insurance companies are using technology, specifically drones

Mhmm.

To start looking at these properties because Seren is right. They're not using people are not coming into your property anymore to assess it. And that's just the reality. But it's what type of technology are they using? How dated is the mapping systems that they're using?

And this is why we need to step in on behalf of the consumers to make sure that the mapping is up to date, that they're using correct data, that they're not disproportionately using data information, that then it's going to reflect on the insurance bill for that individual. And that's what we're seeing. So, we need some step in here to regulate. And there are several bills now in the legislature trying to start to dictate on how is this data being used? How is it being collected?

When was it collected? And when are you when is the insurance company making these decisions? Right? Is it being based on real time? How are you using this information?

So we're just at the crux of trying to understand how this is being used. And so we're having this discussion in the legislature with a couple bills that we've introduced to try to figure out. Because this is happening nationally and globally as well. And this is also why the public model is really important because you'll hear insurers say, well, what are the algorithms that you're using to determine, you know, how you're justifying the use of this data and then they'll say, well, this is proprietary information. We can't give you this.

So this is why our public wildfire model becomes critical because that's public. And so tribal governments, you know, city of Pasadena can access this data to use it as a benchmark to say, okay, our model says this and your model is saying that. So this is why having a public model that we can use as a benchmark and that the department can verify as well keeps everybody honest. Right? And it'll help us push against this.

And this is all new technology by the way that we are now going to have access to. And it's critical to keep everybody honest in this process. And this is all brand new. And again, this is how insurers are cutting cost, how they're using technology to make these determinations. And so again, you're seeing the legislature, the department, I'm sure, and other regulators trying to catch up to how this technology is being used.

Because we're not going to go back, as much as we want to, to having insurers try to go back to sending somebody to your home. And insurers are also starting to look at, just given the fact of how these catastrophes are reacting, they're also not just looking at your individual property anymore. They're looking at your property, they're looking at what you've done to your surrounding of your dwelling, and they're also looking at the community. And this is why we came up with community wide mitigation standards, right?

And they're sifting you through all these different layers to see if you even qualify to write you a policy. And so, this is what technology is allowing them to use and why we also need to have access to that public technology so that we can again use that as a benchmark. This is the new frontier of where we're at. And so why we need to have this public data sets as well so that we can use it and have local governments, tribal governments have access to that as well because that also is going to be important to where you build, how you build.

And and Chairman Ramos brought something very important. Some of these communities didn't get to determine where they were built or where they're where they're established. Right? But we are not helpless here. I said mitigation is gonna be the key.

And finally now, insurers understand the fire science. And obviously, tribal governments have been doing this for thousands of years. If we do the right mitigation, it's going to bring down the cost of your insurance. So this is something that you brought up that we're tackling real time in the legislature right now.

Appreciate it. And I agree, you know, that that all makes sense. And I think that work is going to be critical. And I think that touches upon the other question I had, which was: the mitigation efforts that you described and Mr. Taylor described, especially the home hardening slide there, I think that there is a disconnect still with folks in communities, special tribal communities who have done all this work, who've done all this community mitigation, individual home mitigation, and they still don't know whether they can see one, situation where they get coverage, and two, whether the coverage is affordable.

So how do we lay it out for tribal communities, consumers everywhere, just clearly what they should be doing. Because obviously, not everyone's going to be able to afford, I don't know how much that cost to Harden a home like that, but a new roof and new vents, not a lot of people are going to be able to afford that potentially. So how do we create something that's user friendly for consumers, so they know the rules of engagement? Like, if I do x, y, and z, I'm going to get insurance, or to the point that the commissioner said, I'm going to get a reduced rate because I've actually put all this investment into my house.

I don't think a lot of people, including a lot of legislators, would know what those rules are. So how do we come up with something where our tribal government partners and residents actually know what they need to do?

Well, I will say, you know, I think that there has been some mixed messages. Right? Because there's all these different pieces. There's, you know, like a low cost retrofit list that got put in place years ago by Cal Fire, which are good things to do. And then there's the Safer from Wildfire regulations that then do largely align with the IBHS wildfire prepared home standard.

And so there's all these different messages going out. There's a lot of conversations right now about the zone zero and what needs to be done there. You know, I understand the board of forestry is considering, you know, letting local governments each make their own zone zero rules. So all these things are gonna create disconnects for people with what they need to do versus there's what insurers are looking for. And I think they're pretty clear about that, and they've always said, you know, there's a suite of mitigations that mitigations can't aren't sort of like a la carte thing.

You can't just do one or two things, because the embers will find the weak spot and then burn down your home. So there's a minimum suite of things reflected in the IBHS wildfire prepared home that that insurers believe as a meaningful level of mitigation. And so having a consistent communication about that, I think, would be a starting point. The other thing that I I think is important to point out in this conversation is that mitigation isn't immunity from wildfire. You know, you know, I would try to use analogy of, like, the polio vaccine wiped out polio.

Right? It's 99.9 percent effective. Mitigation, even with the best science, is more like a flu shot. In any given fire, it could be thirty or fifty percent effective. The data is there when you look at, like, even the Camp Fire.

Even 50 of the homes that were post Chapter 7A highly mitigated homes, 50% of them still burned down. The Fountain Grove community, which was a fire wise community, it all burned down. When you tour around these places, there's a level- with these some of these fires, when the winds get up to 50 miles an hour, they create their own weather. I did a tour with a fire captain in Sonoma. He pointed out it was it was a like an auto shop.

It was concrete blocks with a metal roof. It just got so hot it exploded. Okay? So, there's a certain amount of mitigation that you do, and it's meaningful, and folks need to do it, but it's not immunity. And when insurers are, when you talk about sort of getting guarantees of if you do this, then you get guaranteed coverage, and I understand intuitively why people want to think about it that way, but there's much more that goes into this.

Insurers have solvency standards, you have concentration risk, you can't just write every property in a given area. Insurers have to have a certain amount of claims paying capacity in order to write properties, just like a bank has to have enough money in the bank to write a certain amount of loans. Right? So when you look at, like, State Farm, when they stopped writing, their claims paying capacity had eroded from 4 billion dollars to 1 billion dollars. Right?

75%. So they they couldn't write any more homes. They didn't have the claims paying to back it up. Right? So these things all come into play in this discussion as well.

It's not just simply I did this, so now do that. And I will say the other piece, and people always want to talk about guarantees of coverage, but what is a more uncomfortable conversation is talking about guarantees of rate adequacy for insurers. And what we have under in California, under Prop 103 and a prior approval system, insurers don't control their rates or their prices the way other products do. If your orange juice or eggs or gasoline, you know, your price changes on a day-to-day basis. Right?

Ensure can take 270 to 500-600 days to see their price change. So, if inflation kicks in and the cost of rebuilding a home goes up 30% in two years, and you're having to guarantee coverages, but in the meantime, you're 35% price inadequate. So, from a business perspective, it just doesn't work that way.

One last question, Mr. Chairman, and then I'll move on. I appreciate that. And the last question I had was on the profit slides. It's always been something to me that is a bit confusing or misleading. Your profits are defined how? And do they actually include the float from the premiums that you invest and then get returns on?

So the slides that we're showing here, and I was saying this is underwriting gains and losses. So this is based on the premium that they're taking in and what they're paying out. Now a lot of people I think like to confuse that by saying, well, you have these investment gains, which is-

Just to be clear, why do you think that's confusing? It's not confusing to me because I think the mark- just so I understand how insurance works, you pay premiums upfront. And because you pay premiums upfront, the insurer, as part of their financial adequacy is able to invest the premiums from the travel governments to actually pay for future losses. So I think it's a little confusing to not include that into profit and loss statements when we're talking about these trends.

Well, again, I would say, when you're looking at your business and you're saying, I need to have my underwriting cover my cost. How you invest afterwards, and it does benefit consumers because those investment gains are directly included in the rate discussions with the department, and they will lower rates and actually subsidize those premiums with those investment gains. But just, you know, for an analogy here, since we're in a casino, I would say, if you had slot machines here that were paying out a $1.10 for every dollar they're taking in, you can't sustain that business. And so you're going to reduce the number of slot machines, and you're going to focus on other aspects of the business. And so, and where else does, you know, if you had a bookstore in your community and the bookstore brought in a $100,000 in profits on selling books, and then they invested that money in a S&P 500 fund, and they got a return on that, you wouldn't go back and say, well, now count your investment returns and reduce the prices of your books.

So so what one makes on their investment returns is important, but the core businesses are the premiums, which is what you're charging the consumer, matching what you're paying out, and that still has to add up as well.

Understood. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Valencia.

Mister chairman, I just wanted to get back to the mitigation just because it was an issue that was brought up. You know, our Safer from Wildfires has many layers to it. And just to clarify for Senator Harabedian, and we did try to consolidate that with all the different programs that are out there to make it easy for our consumers to really understand and that we brought insurance companies, we brought firefighters, brought and and try not to reinvent the wheel for the same reason to make it easy for folks. But our people in our department can have our team can review your individual property and your policy, and our team can go to your area and inform your local communities because maybe sometimes your individual property doesn't need a roof. Maybe it just needs to just your vents.

And so we can help you do that assessment and help you get the grant that you need to do that. So our team is here and we'll make sure that they identify themselves. To me, we'll help you with all those things. So it all depends on your property, the type of policy you have. So we can help demystify and clarify and make that clear for you.

Thank you for that, Assemblymember Valencia.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start off by acknowledging the work that our insurance commissioner has put forth these last couple of years to address the insurance crisis. It's been a long-standing issue, that unfortunately had not been addressed. And I would say to the determinant of your political profile to an extent, the reinsurance and catastrophic modeling components are a global incorporation, models that have existed and are doing very well elsewhere. So I'm glad to see California is moving in that direction under your leadership.

Not an easy issue to discuss. An elected official that is mandated to increase the cost of something for its consumers is not a situation that I don't think any of us would ever want to be in as elected officials. So, I do commend the work that you are doing in the most efficient way possible. Just one of my questions. Thank you for all the context that you provided in terms of the services and resources to indigenous tribes and California's first people.

Can you give specific examples as to how you've incorporated their input throughout this process?

Absolutely. So before when I elected in 2019, what was unique, and somebody could maybe say unlucky, previous to 2019, the type of fires that we have seen in California, didn't exist. We entered the era of mega fires and giga fires. Fires that burned over a million acres and more in 2019. Started with the August Complex Fire, that burned over, I think it was seven counties up in Northern California. And that really set, and that was the largest gig of fire in modern US history.

And then it was unstoppable after that. And so when you look at the impacts that not only impacted the insurance industry but really impacted the way our entire regulatory scheme and how we in the Department of Insurance actually became first responders ourselves. Right? And then 2025, again, upended in January the LA Fires, because that wasn't even a wildfire, that was a firestorm with the 90 mile per hour winds.

And, again, tested every aspect of our department. And now we're entering into these smoke claims. Homes that survived the fire but have unprecedented levels of smoke damage that we have never seen. And then how do we ensure that we're allowing folks to come back into a home, and we don't know if it's safe or not. Right?

But this is not a insurance issue. It's a health and safety issue that we don't know, you know, this is not our specialty, but yet there's no statewide standards or national or global standards. Right? So this is all unprecedented, unchartered territory for us. And then you have constituents who rightfully want to move into their house, and want answers quick, but we don't we don't have this.

And so but from 2019, to answer your question, I did something that ensure that no other insurance come insurance commissioner has ever done. It's actually gone out and did insurance town halls. I've been to every county in California. Offices in all 56 counties, we had we went into areas all over the Sierra, all over the state that had lost their insurance. Five hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred people in town halls.

And so where other folks try to say that we somehow just made up the sustainable insurance strategy, the strategy is literally based on stories that we've heard from these individuals, from Sonora, Mariposa, San Diego, you name it, counties, Riverside, that our staff met and sat with. So those are the stories that made up this this strategy. And when COVID hit, we went online. So, we met with hundreds of thousands of people, and that's how we incorporated, Californians. And a lot of those folks were on tribal lands.

And so that's what we did. We went out and talked to folks. And you could imagine the faces of the Department of Insurance staff when I said we're gonna go out and talk to people with no strategy. We had, you know, no plan in place, but we needed to go talk to them that had lot they had just lost their insurance to figure out what we're gonna do. So that's literally how we crafted this strategy and then brought insurers, we brought experts, we brought climate scientists, and that's how we brought the strategy together.

We were in the final stages now of implementing it and went through all the political sausage-making of getting it done when January happened. If we did not have that in place and now in the implementation stages, when the governor and I met with the insurance CEOs as LA, Pasadena were burning, we would have been in a way different situation, unfortunately. But, fortunately, we had that in place, and we still had the commitments from the insurers to continue to stay in California.

Thank you. And just to provide some context on a more macro sense, many of the challenges that the tribal nations have expressed today are very similar to the challenges that California residents are experiencing across the state as well. However, because of their sovereignty and I want to reiterate this point, how it impacts them within their own governments and communities is different. And I think because of that, being more proactive and including a specific connection to them would be helpful in mitigating their challenges that they're experiencing.

Absolutely. That's why the liaison committee becomes so important for us. So it's a group of commissioners that represent the majority of the tribes around the country. We're actually gonna be here in San Diego for our national meeting.

And we already talked to Sheila. We're going to try to get together a group of insurance commissioners with some of the tribal leaders that are here hopefully in the next week and try to see if we can get together. Because we've already done a lot of this work and we realize that the insurers themselves, the insurance companies don't understand the the sovereignty issue. They don't understand tribal governments. There's not enough granular-

And again, it's the same issues that exist within traditional governments. There's not enough data, and there's no granular data. And when you don't have the data, the insurance companies go to the worst-case scenarios, which only increase the cost of premiums. And when you already been pushed into these wild land urban interface areas, they already assume the worst. Right?

And in California that's had that's had such a, you know, devastating history of these fires, it just exacerbates the cost. Right? And so, there's going to be a lot more education. So we're taking the opportunity that since we're going to have our national meeting in San Diego in the next in a week or so, See if we can get insurers, some of our tribal leaders, and the leaders of our Native American, Native Alaskan committee together since we're here in a couple weeks together and maybe start a more of a cohesive working group since we're already going to be here in San Diego.

Appreciate that, commissioner. And just to Mr. Taylor, just want to also, thank, PIFC, the Personal Insurance Federation of California for participating today, and also acknowledge that it is a private entity, insurance as a whole, and they do have the autonomy to not do business in California. And despite the challenges that you've all experienced and left for some time, some insurers, you've all decided to come back to the table which just shows the good faith that you're willing to work not only with the state but also with tribal community. So that's my expectation moving forward and would also, like I mentioned to the insurance commissioner, appreciate a direct line of communication with tribal nations in California to ensure that their specific issues are met. Because, again, you are dealing with governments as opposed to individual residents like you are with the rest of the state.

Certainly. Thank you, assembly member.

Well, thank you so much for that. And to the commissioner, I think the question, you know, that has come up in the previous panels, the use of tribal assets and the equity, return for those tribal assets, to the surrounding communities and to the tribal governments themselves. I think the the premium cost, doesn't show that. So how do we get to a point to where what tribal governments are doing with their tribal assets to minimize the threat of fire to reflect to the premiums than when someone comes and and is called to get an insurance premium on their homes? How does that mitigation factor now get into some of that discussion?

Yeah. That's gonna be reflected a 100% now in not only the premium for the the general community, but in your actual insurance bill. And how that's gonna be done is gonna be done through the modeling and through our wildfire model, our public wildfire modeling. So now they're required under the new, sustainable insurance strategy, which companies already have filed. We have six new companies that already have filed under this new filing that have been approved, and now they're gonna start, you know, writing new policy in the well and urban interface, including tribal lands.

That's already set policy. That is a binding agreement. And by the way, we are the first state to require that. So let me give you an example. Unlike any other state and this is, you know, just as Seren said, critical because they are a biz a private business.

What what happened during the Northridge earthquake is since somebody brought up earthquake insurance. By the way, only 2% of Californians have earthquake insurance. So we talk about earthquake. When the big one hits, we're on our own, not to scare anybody. But when that happened, the legislature came to overregulate the insurance industry, ensure the earthquake the insurers just left.

They stopped providing us with insurance. The last thing we need is for insurers to once again just leave and stop providing welfare insurance. So therein lies the balance of my job, protecting the insurance market and making sure we still have insurance companies riding. Right? And so we entered into a negotiation.

You want to use catastrophe models. You wanna provide you wanna be able to access reinsurance cost. We're gonna limit that and make sure you're transparent. But what do I get for the consumer? I'm gonna get you I want a binding agreement that you're gonna not abandon communities and tribal lands.

How about that? And let's figure that out. And that's why we came together and we agreed to that. So, Anne, I want you to make sure that mitigation and that all the mitigation and home hardening that has happened in tribal lands and in that communities are investing. Because the number one thing that I've heard that you've heard on this panel is I've done everything to protect my my home.

I've invested thousands of dollars on my home, and I still got dropped. Or nothing has happened on my cost. I've heard it thousands of times from Humboldt all the way down to. Right? And now you're gonna be able to see that.

Now we mandated discounts. When I started in 2019, there was only 7% of the companies were offer offering discount discounts. Now by law, every insurance company has to give you a discount for home hardening, and those discounts are growing over the year. So that's also part of the agreement under the new rules. You know what was my biggest fear, chairman?

That I was gonna do these new rules, put them in place, approve these regulations, and companies were not gonna come and play with California. But guess what? They're coming. And now we have six out of the 12 largest insurance companies, in our homeowners market. They wanna do they wanna be in California.

We're the largest market in the country, fourth in the world. And so we have that power market. I'll tell you, and I'll stop I'll get off my soapbox. In other states, like in Colorado, my good friend, he's he's California, by the way, the insurance commissioner. He's from Ventura.

In in Colorado, where they have fires, the insurance companies can submit a rate file, and the only way he can stop that amount is until they've they catch the insurance company doing something wrong. They don't have a review process. And guess what? If the insurance company says we don't want it right there, they don't have to write. We and and they could just abandon that community.

Here, because of the collaboration and the negotiation we did, they cannot do that. We are the first state to require that. And so I know there's a lot of frustration. And just as it's taken us thirty years to modernize these rules, it's gonna take us a little time. And that's why I say we're in we're in the first year of a five year cycle.

So it's gonna get it's gonna take us a couple years. I say in the next two years, you're gonna start seeing this really take into effect.

So with, the the home hardening, initiative that you've instituted, and and thank you for that, How does the tribal communities, tribal governments in the state of California know what those home hardening effects are?

You're gonna call the Department of Insurance. We have staff here who will talk to your tribal leaders, work with your tribal governments. We can do town halls. We can come back and That

would be my next question. You mentioned town halls. How many of those have been held in tribal communities?

I don't know, but we can I I'm sure my staff can

Because Can you get into the point, commissioner, that if these policies are there that will lower the premiums and the tribal governments in the state of California don't fully are aware of those, how are they gonna then start to move forward on on ordinances within the tribal government to make sure those home hardening effects are there to lower the premiums? So I think there there has to be an an outreach, and I get it. The the the job is whole state of California, but we're we're here talking about California's first people that have talked about not being able to choose the land that that we're on, but being forced to be on it. And yet doing so much asset mitigation that in some places, in some cases, the outside community benefits from the work that's being done. So it's great that this program is there, but I think we have to start moving forward.

I get picking up the phone and and calling on those issues, but we're dealing with a government that that should be honored and have the tribal governments. And and this is only the second hearing of of the state legislature on tribal lands. So we, as a state, have a far way to go to make sure that we're bringing what's component, what's important in the state of California, and what's happening in the state of California to the tribal governments in the state of California. So I I would be encouraged if we can identify some town hall dates within tribal communities so that we could start to understand, how tribal governments could then, deal with the mitigation factors that's there that ultimately could bring down the premium cost. It was mentioned by the other panel that is it time that that tribes just walk away from insurance and create their own sales?

I don't think we're at that point. I think we're at a point of education, of understanding, mutual respect, and and understanding. And I think, mister, with the the mister Taylor, with the insurance component, I've seen the data that you put up on the screen, and that's, again, a wide shot of the state of California. But I think what would also could have helped or could help in the future is looking specifically on data to tribal lands. How many insurance providers that you represent are affording insurance to tribal lands?

And are they taking into account the mitigation factors that are there, the ordinances that those tribal governments adopt to bring hope home and brush clearance around the homes, around the reservation perimeters? I think the the the complexities of tribal government, of ordinances that are established, I think getting away from a stereotype that when you get to a reservation land, some of those things don't exist. I do know from past experience from my own tribal government that we shot to exceed different ordinances that the surrounding community did with housing, with safety, with with all these different areas. And so one of the tribal chairmen did bring up, has anybody visited the tribal reservation to see that maybe when you're driving through a community and you get to the reservation, you see so much work that's there, there's a difference to it. Look at the cost of premiums on the reservation itself instead of doing the blanket wide paintbrush of saying this whole area is a hazard.

So everybody needs to, you know, increase. And we've heard testimony from tribal chairs as as much as, triple. And so part of the the whole premise of the hearing was bringing education around, not so much to to point fingers at anybody, but bringing education around what truly is happening in in in Indian country. Mitigation, assets, looking at at those things. And and one other question is the IBHS, how how strong is that in determining insurance and where you're going with the premiums on those areas if a lot of those components are taken into account?

Well, the IPHS standards are taken very seriously. And as commissioner Laura talked about, it's actually built into their regulations now that insurers must recognize those actions and provide those discounts. So it's it's it is the industry standard right now. And so, you know, and and I'll say, I you know, I'd have to go talk with Roy Wright, who is the director of of IBHS. But again, you know, as the commissioner talked about his town halls, Roy Wright is sort of the the the messenger or the apostle of mitigation.

And to the extent, you know, if we were gonna look at trying to do, you know, whether it's a webinar or or or something together, you know, setting something up like that to help connect the dots between, you know, the folks on the at the tribal governments, what they're doing, and talk to IBHS and learn more about those standards. I'm sure we can facilitate something along those lines.

I think so. I think the the IBHS standards and the mitigation home hardening initiative that that the commissioner has moved forward. And I think that we're dealing with with California's first people, and and the commissioner so eloquently described the people and the resiliency over the years. But what the disconnect is when we're dealing with all these different programs, we're dealing with the state of California. When it comes to tribal communities, there seems to be a disconnection.

We're now in 2026. Yurok tribe in 2023 visited those areas, but yet tribal governments, aren't aware of the IBHS standards that could lower the premiums of homes on on tribal government land, but also, the mitigation home hardening initiative that's moving forward that could also, bring down, premiums if we're all in the same, dialogue and understanding of what's happening in the state of California. So it it would be beneficial, to reach out to tribal chairs that spoke here, but even tribal, governments in the state to talk about IBH standards and and what are those standards. And if the the tribal government, adopted those standards, would that relate in lower premiums in the area? I I think that's a wider discussion, but I think the whole reasoning for this hearing is to bring people together to start to talk about the programs that are out there that are available.

Just hearing, frustration, tribal chair, Pinto talked about how they went from six acres to a 172. Members are happy to build homes, but now they're hit with this this this other barrier, to move forward that then pushes members outside of those lands that then could affect the cultural understanding, moving forward. We heard from, chairman, Vivek Suboba, that he's just requesting that when somebody is called to to make a decision on assuring property on the reservation, that they would come out and visit, the tribal government similar to visiting the county, similar visiting the city, see what their ordinances are that are there. And and and and chairman Welch here at Verona talks about a controlled burn that was done with, Cal Fire that minimizes that that threat of fire. And so utilizing those assets, millions of dollars that tribal governments are using, and mutual aid that that goes outside of the reservation boundaries.

I think it's time and and it's a just question. Are we adequately rewarding tribal governments for the amount of assets that they're spending for fire protection in the state of California. I think the discussion needs to continue. I think town halls through the commissioner setting those calendar town halls for the future would be would be great. And then also with tribal governments along with that same vein is IBHS standards and those requirements.

Anything that's gonna start to anything that's being afforded to those in the state of California, let's not lose sight of making sure that California's first people also truly understand and are given the opportunity to bring down those rates also. Commissioner?

Yeah. I'd I'd, 100% agree with you. And and just for the record, I wanted to clarify that we have been. Our staff was presenting have presented at Tassen and did a presentation at Chumash as well.

What's that, commissioner?

We did a presentation at Tassen and have been a we did a and did a presentation as well with the Chumash Chumash.

At the tribal government at Chumash or the organization? So coming out here to Verona, I mean, you you've seen the the the terrain. You've seen the tribal government exist in spite of historical trauma that has come this way, but yet the resiliency of the people still has existed from substandard homes to where we're at now. I think the ability to have insurance, to be able to have insurance on on their homes, so to make sure that people have a comfortable understanding of where they're at is something that that we would venture to say is needed. But also the the communication with one another.

But I do believe, commissioner and and mister Taylor, that coming to the actual Indian reservation and seeing the terrain and understanding the history, that these lands weren't chosen. They were forced, and you have to exist. And then to see another tribe that went from six acres to a 172 trying to move forward. So there is some parameters and mitigation features that I think should be afforded to tribal governments in the state of California, if not The United States, that are unique and different than how we're building mitigation factors for the rest of those outside of Indian country. And I think those should be brought into the equation of when we're dealing with the premiums and the costs that are there.

I do again wanna state that I don't think it's time that that Indian country looks elsewhere for insurance. I think there's time to come together and talk about these issues. But it has to be a mutual understanding, not just a book that talks about hardening features and these things, but it talks about historical historical knowledge of how reservations ended up where they're at, and and where they're still evolving to be. But those are decisions that tribal councils will be making on their own. But I do think by just visiting Verona, you've seen the terrain.

You've heard of control burns. You've you've seen the makeup and the mutual aid with with Cal Fire on some of these things. Tribal council adopts ordinances on housing. Maybe some don't even know that component or that complexities of a tribal government, which again, we've we've had the honor of serving as tribal chair of a tribal government where we always exceeded ordinances above our local jurisdictions. Maybe that's a stereotype that maybe others are pinning on tribal communities by not fully understanding the makeup of the tribal government itself.

So with, with that commissioner, I think being able to put a a a calendar together to visit tribal communities, tribal governments, tribal lands, for the next couple years would be great to put into there and into the industry. I think understanding that everybody works so hard. I mean, we we work on bills and we work in the state legislature. We work hard and and and we make sure that that we try to make sure that everybody understands what we're doing. But I think with these components of IBHS and the mitigation home hardening feature, maybe there is an honoring.

Maybe there is a sense of understanding tribal sovereignty where you do take that extra step to go into the community itself and let them know about these programs. That's something that that we would we would request in moving forward. And the state legislature, again, in creating the Select Community of Native American Affairs, is built on bringing issues forward that drastically affect California's first people. And we've been doing that. Insurance is something that has plagued the state of California, and as legislators, we see things come our way.

But we also have to make sure that when we think we're addressing everybody in the state of California, we take that extra step to make sure that California's first people are included in the equation.

Agree.

Any final comments from the dais? Thank you, mister commissioner. And it'd be great to see that next two year calendar come out. Thank you though so much for coming because it's very important that that your presence is here, both of you individuals, to show the tribal communities that we're in this together.

That's right.

And that there is programs to minimize the cost. Let's work together to get those into the tribal government structure. Thank you so much. As now, we'll move to public comment.

Hi, mister Chairman.

Go ahead. Public comment. State your name, organization.

Chris Lindstrom, Executive Officer of the California Tribal Business Alliance. Thank you for allowing me to say a few words. Chairman Smith was on a panel earlier. He had a minor medical. He had a bloody nose. He couldn't stop, so he wanted me to, make a few comments. And if I may, I'd like to submit this for the record. This was his written testimony. Definitely. And then, so not to there was a lot of really important things that were said, and I don't want to be redundant.

So just hit on a couple. There was a company that, was formed that to kind of plug a gap to offer insurance to tribal governments when other traditional insurers weren't doing that. And they've been doing that for a few decades. And it was really beneficial because tribes couldn't get insurance, get coverage any other way. But they changed their underwriting policies that, and perhaps because of the disasters in California that requires tribes to maintain commercial coverage.

Homeowner policies and other insurance to renters insurance. So that was something that, Chairman Smith wanted to bring up. He also wanted to talk about relationships and the recognition of tribes as government. Bill that was passed by the legislature in '21, SB 816 by Geo Committee. And it allowed tribes to be signatories to the state's master mutual aid agreement.

It was the first time that that document that was signed by Earl Warren, like seventy years earlier was ever amended. And that change led to Paul signing the first agreement and many other tribes signed the agreement since but allowed for the deep deployment, the pre disaster deployment of fire apparatus. And it was like a type three. I don't even know what it is. It's a type three fire insurance, but I think it's for wildfires in particular.

So the thought of pre deployment of assets working with the state, Cal OES, and maybe the Federal Government, I think that could be very beneficial to help, you know, speed up response and and work in partnership. As you had mentioned. There's one that will allow for a tank, for helicopters. You deploy those early. Helicopters could dip into it and help put out fires in, you know, high hazard areas.

So that's kind of tribal state relationships. Under federal and state, there's a seven party agreement, and perhaps some of the firefighters and chiefs could talk about it. But it's among, like, US Forestry, FEMA, Department of Interior, BIA, Cal OES CalFire and so in '21, they had changed this agreement. There was an amendment. Oh.

So they, they fixed the amendment. It was like inadvertent. But what it highlighted most importantly is that tribes were voices were being heard through BIA, and they didn't necessarily have the same professional firefighters at the table to talk about that. They probably would have caught that amendment. And then said, you know, tribes either don't participate or they do at their own cost, which, you know, seemed unfair.

But just tribal governments need to be recognized as tribal governments and at the table. You know, that was the highlighted app. Different responsibility areas. The Federal Government has a big responsibility area, right? So table as well or at these hearings.

And tribal governments are located in pretty far flung areas and surrounded by federal responsibility areas. So, you might want to have them in a future meeting. Gio, and the responsibility was emergency response. And after some fires roared through these areas, and I know Barone and I came out here, their fence was melted to their casino, and Sam passed ball. They had smoke coming under their tent.

Their casino was a tent. The players were still playing. They wouldn't leave. But anyway, what the important thing to think about there is that, you know, as, you know, you you have to work with the Federal Government in kind of taking care of tribes and having them at the table because, you know, tribal governments actually have, I think, invest more in some of their fire departments. The counties can because of limited budgets, what have you.

And when a a fire a tribal fire department responds, they're not just responding to disasters or fires on Indian lands. Service, they're essentially offsetting or defraying the cost of local government. And, you know, so I think that's something to recognize when you look at tribes, that they are not just taking care of their own people. They're, like, providing tremendous assets and, you know, help for the local communities. They're vital.

And, this was the last point, but I'm going to add another one, if I may. You know, when you when you talk about tribal governments or excuse me, when you talk about government response to communities and public policy concerns, you know, there's just a thought that government responses federal, state, and local, but I think it's time to recognize tribes. And the response should be federal tribal, state, and local. That's government response. Tribes are, you know, part and parcel of the situation.

Business to customer, you know, and I heard from the gentleman from the insurance commissioning insurance commission, but, not the insurance commission, but representing insurance companies. Mhmm. And he talked about, like, there's 4,000,000 policies in the state. That's a lot. I'm not sure how many are urban, how many are rural, how many are high, so very You know, I they get issued one at a time.

A you know, it seems like an insurmountable problem. We're talking about 4,000,000 policies, but if they're issued one at a time, there's probably a way to really break it down. Each even individual policy holder might be doing to help Harden or, you know, make more resilient their risk. So, you know, I would I would encourage, you know, the use of technology and all those things. But you know, each person.

It could be, you know, a change from three a few thousand to, like, you know, tripling, and that could really impact, folks who are, you know, just trying to get by. So thank you for this.

Thank you so much for your comments. Any other public comment? Oh, yeah. You can bring it up here. I'll give it to them. Any other public comment? Well, thank you so much and to the hospitality of the Verona tribal government to allow us to have this hearing here. I think we expose a lot of issues that there's disparities between what tribal governments understand and what the state of California is moving forward in. Now I would encourage that collaboration to continue. We heard about two programs.

Right? The one that that's talking about basically regulations that that would strengthen homes that then could lower premiums. Another one on hardening homes from the insurance commissioner. And I think making sure that Indian country is part of that dialogue to understand that those programs are out there. And and certainly, rising to the level in education around the dias and through this hearing, the tribal governments are utilizing far more assets, for fire prevention and for the local community that many don't truly understand.

So I think it it it's time that we we do go back, that we talk about these issues on our individual committees. When these issues come forward, we ask the question, how does this affect the tribal communities in the state of California? And that's understanding, these issues. Certainly, I think visiting, the tribal community in their own homelands is important for the legislature to get a firsthand glimpse of of how the structure truly moves forward. So we will take the information that we've accumulated through this hearing back into the state legislature and make sure that those truly understand the issue that's here.

And it isn't lost. You know, certainly, chairman Smith, knowing that the insurance, not only on the homes that you're building, but renter insurance on on Indian reservations is something that we need to look at. So, hopefully, we we addressed a lot of the issues and and brought issues to the forefront. And we did request that a two year, plan move forward on town halls in Indian country. So we'll see how that translates, and and it's up to my colleagues to make sure that that voice keeps getting resonated.

So I just wanna thank my colleagues and, again, the Verona tribal government and all the tribal leaders, that spoke and that were here in the room, on these important issues as now we adjourn the Select Committee of Native American Affairs.