Over a year before Los Angeles’s uncontrollable wildfires burned through neighborhoods once considered safe, the office of California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara quietly shared a potential regulatory plan with insurance company lobbyists. It was a draft of reforms that would allow insurers to raise rates and pass costs on to consumers, among other industry-friendly changes, in exchange for little more than the companies’ word that they would cover homes in wildfire-prone areas.

“What do you think of the language below,” one lobbyist responded, according to records obtained by the Lever, along with a detailed edit. “I am really trying to get them to a happy place,” she wrote, referring to her insurance-industry client.

The changes the lobbyist suggested appeared to be included in legislation floated in September 2023, although the potential bill was dropped after an advocacy group leaked a recording of industry lobbyists loudly bragging about their role in the bill’s development. Several weeks later, Lara announced a package of executive actions that covered similar ground.