Suppose you’re looking to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, the world’s leading cause of death. You might opt for a healthier diet, exercise, or a prescription drug to lower your cholesterol levels. Your first impulse is likely not to think about how much you’ll have to pay the hospital after you suffer a heart attack.
Yet in meeting the rising threat of wildfire, Washington’s Legislature seems to be heading into a problem akin to the above analogy. Lawmakers gutted funding earlier this year from a landmark law to help prevent catastrophic wildfire. And now, legislators are discussing establishing a wildfire victims fund for blazes caused by power utilities’ infrastructure — for use after wildfires have destroyed neighborhoods.
Lawmakers have it backward. Their highest priority in the upcoming legislative session should be to restore full funding to prevent blazes and better safeguard the state from fire risks.
That’s not to say a wildfire victims compensation fund isn’t a worthwhile option to explore. But the utility-funded proposal, floated by former Gov. Jay Inslee in a recent Spokesman-Review op-ed, warrants skepticism for at least three reasons.
First, Inslee isn’t working alone. He has been retained by Singleton Schreiber, a firm renowned for winning billions of dollars in wildfire lawsuits for clients. They advocated for and the California Assembly created a $21 billion safety net for fires determined to be caused by utility lines or infrastructure. Damages from a single firestorm in Southern California this January will likely extinguish the entirety of the fund, which prompted California lawmakers to call for an $18 billion replenishment.
Second, to create the backstop, the fund will likely be paid by hiking utility ratepayers’ bills and those of the utility’s shareholders. Already, Puget Sound Energy is raising electricity rates by 18.6%, mainly to meet clean energy transition goals. Tacking on another $3 to residents’ bills, as happened in California, is another spike in the high cost of living Washingtonians face.
Finally, the state’s patchwork of utilities is very different from California’s, where just two investor-owned utilities cover vast swaths of the state. Washington’s investor-owned utilities — the only ones required under Inslee’s proposal to pay into the fund — serve only about a third of all Washingtonians, while the other two-thirds are served by community-owned utilities like Seattle City Light.
A bolder and more appropriate backstop solution should come at the federal level. From North Carolina to Hawaiʻi, wildfire has become a major national problem. The goal should be widening a coalition of congressional members whose districts have been devastated by wildfire.
There’s no debate that climate change is fueling hotter, drier conditions that increase wildfire danger, and risk for utilities whose infrastructure crisscrosses the state. To meet the challenge, the Legislature this year also passed a bill to mandate that investor-owned utilities report to the state how they’re mitigating that risk. Puget Sound Energy said this week the utility is spending nearly $140 million in 2025 and 2026 to clear brush near lines, upgrade infrastructure and more to meet the challenge.
Here’s the best thing state lawmakers can do now: Ensure the state’s Department of Natural Resources can do the vital work that helps keep Washingtonians and their communities safer from wildfire. That includes snuffing fires before they grow out of control; restoring forest health by thinning smaller conifers and burning underbrush that prevents the worst fires; and helping vulnerable communities “harden” neighborhoods by removing landscaping and other burnable materials from around homes.
The primary goal of the short legislative session should be shoring up fire-safe communities first — not creating a piggy bank in the aftermath of the destruction.
