Landmark Legislation Requiring Independent Audits Of Utility Wildfire Mitigation Spending Before More Is Approved Passes Assembly Energy Committee, Says Consumer Watchdog

SACRAMENTO, Calif., April 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Tackling one of the biggest cost drivers of utility rates, the California Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee passed Assembly Bill 1774 (Boerner) 11-0, which requires independent audits of Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP) spending before additional spending is approved.

"The rubberstamping of utilities' wildfire mitigation plans result in a lack of accountability and overspending for little actual prevention," said Assemblymember Boerner. "It's time for utilities to answer for the ratepayer money they are being given. We shouldn't be paying the highest rates and in return getting some of the worst safety and reliability."

Joy Chen, executive director of the Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN), which connects more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades fire survivors and allies, testified about the impact on victims.

"The wildfire survivors I represent paid the ultimate price for the failure of utility wildfire mitigation," said Chen. "We lost our homes, our health, our stability, and in some cases our lives. Today, most of us are still not home. Yet these same families are still paying some of the highest electricity bills in the country to the for-profit utility whose equipment is suspected of starting the Eaton Fire."

"Evidence shows Edison collected hundreds of millions of dollars from Californians for transmission maintenance and upgrades meant to reduce wildfire risk. But that work was never completed," Chen continued. "The LA Times reported that Edison continued billing customers for this work while failing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars authorized for transmission system upgrades before the fires. Californians funded wildfire prevention. We survivors paid the price when that work wasn't done."

Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court discussed the conclusions of the only three audits of utility wildfire spending in modern history, which found the utilities could not show that they spent $2.5 billion of the $6 billion in 2019-2020 WMP spending authorized. The Public Utilities Commission let the utilities keep the money and authorized more for 2021-2023 wildfire spending.  

"California's three investor-owned utilities spend approximately $9 billion annually on wildfire mitigation plan – and that spending is accelerating.  But we don't know how, where, or if it is ever spent," said Court. "That's because there have been only three audits in modern history of wildfire mitigation plan spending. The results are not encouraging from the perspective of utility accountability."

"If utilities know they are being watched, they are more likely to spend wildfire mitigation funds in effective ways rather than holding onto that money in their accounts where they make investment income on the money," Court said. "Had AB 1774 been law, it's possible there may not have been an Eaton fire.

"The Eaton fire appears to have been started by an abandoned transmission line, a ghost line, that sparked when the current from a live line running next to it jumped," Court continued. "An LA Times investigation found that Edison failed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars it has been authorized to spend on wildfire mitigation to maintain and remove old transmission lines. Had Edison known it would be accountable for its wildfire mitigation spending would that ghost line have been removed?"

The following coalition groups support this measure:

Ballona Wetlands Institute, Bay Area-System Change not Climate Change, California Environmental Voters, California Nurses Association, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), Climate Hawks Vote, Coastal Lands Action Network (CLAN), Consumer Attorneys of California, Courage California, Eaton Fire Survivors Network, Environmental Working Group, Extreme Weather Survivors Action Fund, Food & Water Watch, Long Beach Gray Panthers, Public Citizen, Santa Cruz Climate Action Network, Sierra Club California, SoCal 350 Climate Action, Sunflower Alliance, The Protect Our Communities Foundation, Transition Sebastopol, TURN—The Utility Reform Network, & 350 Bay Area Action. 

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog