Around the PIA Western Alliance States – Week of February 9, 2026

California — Work from Home Bill in the Legislature: A proposal is now in the California Legislature and is pushed by the public employee union, Professional Engineers in California Government (PEGC). The union wants the Legislature to force state agencies to allow telework “to the fullest extent possible.”

The union says the state will save money.

The push is contrary to a different idea of how work should go in California by Governor Gavin Newsom. He’s ordered all individuals to work at the office at least four days a week. Employees have until July 1st to comply.

Ted Toppin is the executive director of the union. He said, “The intent is absolutely to establish a state policy that flexible telework can and should be provided to state employees, because it serves state government, it serves taxpayers, and it certainly serves state employees.”

Source link: CalMatters —  https://bit.ly/3ZNUzsx

Oregon — The 2026 legislative session began last Monday as lawmakers convened to address a number of significant and complex issues within a condensed 35-day timeframe.

During the short session, legislators are limited to introducing two priority bills each. Committees may introduce up to three committee bills, while the Senate President, House Speaker, Rules Committee, and Ways and Means Committee retain broader bill introduction authority.

Within these constraints, approximately 260 bills were introduced, covering topics such as transportation, education, federal law enforcement, agriculture, and, as in prior sessions, insurance proposals that could increase premiums and expose the industry to heightened litigation risk.

Here is an analysis by PIA Oregon Lobbyist, United Strategies & Consulting —  https://bit.ly/4qwIP8G

Washington — Legislature Report: The session’s first cutoff deadline for policy committees came on Wednesday of last week. Here’s a report from PIA Washington lobbyist Christine Brewer, Brewer Public Affairs — https://bit.ly/4apf9UW

Washington — Open Letter on Wildfire Risk: The following is an open letter to Washington consumers from Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer, Medical Lake Mayor Terri Cooper, and Steve Brooks, Executive Director of Washington Fire Chiefs, on the importance of bringing transparency to homeowners about their wildfire risk and giving them additional resources to protect their property.

Washington state and much of the west is experiencing a snow drought, and that does not bode well for our wildfire season. No one understands the impact of this better than fire chiefs whose teams battle these fires and mayors who have had to rebuild their communities afterwards. Everyone, including insurance companies, recognizes the growing risk to homeowners. It’s up to all of us to help our communities improve their resiliency, and this starts with supporting the property owners who are at greatest risk.

The number of homeowners who have been nonrenewed or canceled by their insurance company has doubled since 2021, growing from 11,763 to 24,106. Some of these include cancellations due to a wildfire risk score.

We believe that people deserve to know more about this score and the options they have for doing something about it, especially if it could keep them insured.

Those two messages resonated the most after the Wildfire Mitigation and Resiliency Standards Work Group — a group project between the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR)— delivered its report to the Legislature (PDF 1.02MB) in December. They’re the impetus for two bills we’re supporting this legislative session — Senate Bill 5928 (Concerning wildfire risk models and score disclosure) and Senate Bill 6079 (Reducing nonrenewals & cancellations of insurance policies due to wildfire risk). We’re grateful to Senators Warnick, Short, Riccelli, and Representatives Ramel, Engell, Hall, and Abell for their support.

Wildfires and the risks they pose have increased over the last decade. At the same time, people living in dry, fire-prone areas are having trouble both maintaining insurance coverage and finding answers when their insurance company non-renews them.

Marvin Lindberg shared his experience in an insurance town hall in Spokane in September.  He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mitigation work for his rural Spokane property.

As he said during the town hall, and then expanded on in an interview with the Spokesman-Review, the work included thinning trees and installing a 7,000-gallon tank in his yard, while his neighbor installed compatible hookups on their 80,000-gallon swimming pool.

“All of a sudden, I get a love note in the mail saying my homeowners insurance is canceled because of the ZIP code of it,” Lindberg said.

The basis of the cancellation was his wildfire risk score, which deemed his property too risky. But any specifics about that score were unavailable, and asking insurance companies to take that mitigation work into consideration was a non-starter.

People deserve to know how wildfire risk impacts their home insurance and what they can do to change it, and SB 5928 addresses this by requiring insurers to share wildfire risk scores with consumers, including a clear explanation for those scores, if those scores are used to determine eligibility or pricing.

The grant program helps mitigate that risk and build resiliency, which is where SB 6079 comes in. This program would help homeowners retrofit their homes to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety’s (IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home standards. This is similar to Alabama’s Strengthen Alabama Homes grant program, which has fortified more than 50,000 roofs since 2016 to better withstand hurricane-force winds.

Washington’s program would apply to existing structures, not new construction, and prioritize projects in areas with high wildfire risk, limited insurance access, and historically underserved populations; and balances scientific rigor, cost-effectiveness, and equitable access. Most importantly, homeowners who go through the program could not be canceled or nonrenewed based on their wildfire risk. The bill creates a pilot program that would initially be funded by the OIC’s regulatory accounts. It also works in tandem with the DNR’s Ready Neighbors program that engages with communities to reduce vegetation that fuels these fires — the first step to reducing ember intrusion into your home.

With the Legislature’s help, we can keep Washington’s home insurance market strong and make resiliency upgrades financially available for the people who need them most. Wildfire mitigation starts at home, and these two bills give people the knowledge to start that work and the means to fund it. We encourage you to follow along to see their progress.

Washington — Patty’s Takes: Why it’s time to modernize Washington’s insurance fraud laws: The state law that created my office’s Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU) passed in 2006.

The basic rules that established how we combat insurance fraud by recommending charges under RCWs not specific to insurance haven’t changed in 20 years, but the capabilities of the criminals committing that fraud certainly have. Those schemes cost insurance companies more than $300 billion a year — $300 billion that gets passed on to consumers in the form of rate increases.

That’s why my office requested House Bill 2394 (and its companion bill, Senate Bill 6031) this year. The bill categorizes insurance fraud as a Class B felony and strengthens our ability to catch and prosecute the people committing these crimes.

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of fraud cases referred to our CIU over the past three years, from 3,246 in 2022 to 4,252 in 2025. Along with that, we’ve had an increase in the same type of fraud schemes going on across the country: identity-based and technology-assisted schemes, with increasingly sophisticated, colluding actors.

Fraudsters are increasingly targeting insurance consumers as well as insurance companies. The bill also expands the definition of “victims of insurance fraud” to include insurance consumers and insurance beneficiaries, which makes them eligible for criminal restitution, and authorizes CIU to investigate ancillary crimes that impact the insurance industry, insurance consumers, or claim beneficiaries.

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Defining the most serious acts that defraud insurance companies and consumers as the crime of insurance fraud helps us hold the most egregious actors accountable and shift away from simple scams — like crashing a car and then buying a policy — to more complicated schemes.

Bad actors working in certain fields — like auto repair, contractors, the medical field or insurance agents — might file a lot of claims-related paperwork and can exploit loopholes that make prosecuting fraud they commit a challenge. Under current law, it’s more likely that someone who engages in a one-time fraudulent transaction of more than $5,000 will be successfully prosecuted than someone who schemes to steal thousands, or even millions, of dollars through multiple smaller increments in a tech-based scam.

While certain felony theft has a six-year statute of limitations (SOL), many lower level crimes have SOLs of three years or less. That can easily run out before an insurer detects a scheme, investigates it internally, and makes a criminal referral. By including a 10-year SOL for insurance fraud, our investigators can recommend charges for the entire pattern of criminality that the most outrageous schemes entail.

The updated definition would include billing a company or policyholder for services not provided, impersonating someone else in an insurance-related claim or transaction, and stealing premium payments or premium financing loans.

It’s important to note that the increased classification carries more stringent burdens of proof. Charging someone under this legislation would only be appropriate with evidence to prove they committed an act knowingly and with intent to defraud; typos, good faith estimates, or unintentional errors wouldn’t meet this standard.

For example, if a medical biller was incorrectly billing a carrier, the carrier would send an overpayment notice with detailed explanations about proper billing. That education letter would be strong evidence of the intent to defraud if they try the same scheme with other carriers after receiving instruction about the proper coding.

House Bill 2394 won’t put any additional strain on taxpayer funds and opens the door for strong enforcement of our state laws so that Washington’s insurance consumers don’t pay higher premiums to subsidize crime. It’s the right change, at the right time, to fight insurance fraud.

Washington — Implementation of ESSB 5291, supplemental long-term care insurance

Thanks for your interest in rulemaking from the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner: We adopted the supplemental long-term care insurance rule (R 2025-06) on February 4, 2026. The rule takes effect on March 7, 2026. The rule implements ESSB 5291, which created a new chapter under Title 48 RCW concerning supplemental long-term care insurance. Supplemental long-term care insurance is a new product designed to provide coverage once WA Cares benefits under chapter 50B.04 RCW have been exhausted. The Commissioner added a new chapter to Title 284 WAC to implement the new law and to ensure all affected parties understand their rights and obligations. This rulemaking also amends chapter 284-16 WAC, chapter 284-17 WAC, chapter 284-23 WAC, chapter 284-30 WAC, chapter 284-30A WAC, chapter 284-43 WAC, chapter 284-66 WAC, chapter 284-83 WAC, and chapter 284-170 WAC which are necessary to implement the new law.

For more information, including the adopted rule (CR-103) and the concise explanatory statement, please visit the rule's webpage.

Washington — Income Tax Bill: Senate Bill 6346 wants a 9.9% tax on income over $1 million. It has passed out of the Senate Ways and Means Committee with some minor changes. They involve how to spend the $3.5 billion to $5 billion it is expected to collect.

Republicans generally oppose the bill. Sen. Chris Gildon, R-Puyallup said the bill is going to be null and void unless the state constitution is amended.

“It would codify the rate at 9.9% as well as the income threshold at $1 million,” Gildon said. “This has to do with trust. We’ve seen just in the committee hearing recently that over 61,000 people signed in against this bill. These are people who understand that this is just the first step towards creating a universal income tax that’s going to apply to everyone in our state.”

Another Republican, Sen. Keith Wagoner said wealthier Washingtonians will continue to leave the state to avoid such a tax.

“They're already leaving, so the number of people not paying tax is going to include some of the same millionaires that we're counting on to pay,” Wagoner said. “I have a few friends in that category. They're not here anymore. They've reincorporated in other states and through LLCs, and that's just a way to kill the golden goose. This is the law of diminishing returns. The more you try to get, the less you're going to get.”

Sen. John Braun — another Republican — spoke against the bill in the Ways and Means Committee.

“This bill is bad for the state of Washington. It ignores the constitutional limits and the precedents the State Supreme Court has put in place. It ignores the will of the people, and it ignores the economic impact it’s going to have on our state,” Braun noted. “All this is, is another bit of the apple, taking more money out of our economy while doing nothing to balance the scales in any meaningful way.”

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson supports the income tax on millionaires.

Source link: The Reflector — https://bit.ly/4aqMiPU

Washington — Assignment of benefits bill unanimously passes Washington state Senate: A bill prohibiting post-loss assignment of benefits agreements passed the Washington state Senate on Thursday, Feb. 5, by a unanimous vote (48-0-0-1).

Senate Bill 6178, requested by Washington state Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer, increases protections for insurance consumers. A post-loss assignment of benefits (AOB) is an agreement that allows a third party, like a contractor, to receive insurance payments directly from the consumer’s insurance company. 

These agreements are presented as a convenience for policyholders, but the practice has been abused in other states after natural disasters. When a consumer signs the agreement, their right to negotiate with the insurance company shifts to the repair professional and they lose control over their claim. This can lead to delays in the repair work as these disagreements are resolved, as well as inflated claim costs, unnecessary litigation, and higher premiums.

Kuderer called the bill a common-sense piece of consumer protection legislation.

“It’s become an issue in states with frequent natural disasters,” she said. “Disreputable contractors have shown up in storm-ravaged towns and pressure consumers to sign AOBs, and then take control of their claims with a focus on maximizing costs with no priority on making repairs and making the original policyholder whole.”

The bill, prime sponsored by Sen. Victoria Hunt (D – Issaquah) now moves to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Source link: Washington Department of Insurance — https://bit.ly/3M6fp33