Residential property insurance: wildfires: consolidated debris removal.

Existing federal law directs the federal government to provide various forms of assistance to state and local governments that have jurisdiction over a designated area that has been declared a major disaster area, as specified, including the removal of debris from the affected area. Existing federal law generally prohibits providing direct assistance to an individual or private organization for the cost of removing debris from their own property, except as specified. Existing law, the California Emergency Services Act, confers upon the Governor and upon the chief executives and governing bodies of political subdivisions of this state specified emergency powers and provides for state assistance in the organization and maintenance of the emergency programs of those political subdivisions. A "state of emergency," for purposes of the act, includes the duly proclaimed existence of conditions of disaster caused by various conditions, including fire, which, by reason of their magnitude, are or are likely to be beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of any single county, city and county, or city and require the combined forces of a mutual aid region or regions to combat. Existing law generally governs the business of insurance in the state, including, among other things, residential real property insurance disclosures. This bill would require an insurer for a residential property insurance policy, if a consolidated debris removal program, in which a residential property owner who has insurance in effect at the time of a wildfire that provides coverage for debris removal voluntarily assigns any rights, benefits, and proceeds for that coverage to a county or designated agency and makes any benefits and proceeds directly payable to that county or designated agency, is implemented following a state of emergency, to provide the assignee with relevant policy and claim information and to issue payment directly to the assignee, as specified. The bill would provide that a residential property owner who makes an assignment by executing a right of entry form is not liable for any additional costs of the debris removal in the designated area in which the debris removal program is implemented.