Editor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.
California has become the “Can’t Have State,” as in can’t have plastic bags, can’t have plastic straws and utensils, can’t have a new gasoline-powered car 10 years from now, can’t have a long of things that would make up a list too long to go into here. The next “can’t have,” if a bill reintroduced in Sacramento becomes law, are private firefighters.
Assembly Bill 1075 would require the Office of Emergency Services “to develop regulations prohibiting privately contracted firefighters from hooking up their equipment to public water sources.”
Politico says the legislation is intended to stick “it to Rick Caruso’s private firefighters.”
That was in the headline in the Feb. 26 article. The first paragraph is laced with even more sharp barbs.
“Los Angeles Democrats and the largest firefighter union in the state have joined forces on a proposal making public fire hydrants off limits to private fire crews, such as the ones billionaire developer Rick Caruso hired when wildfires were devastating the region.”
So better to burn than to upset one of the strongest public employee unions in California. As PRI Free Cities Center director Steven Greenhut says, “how dare anyone protect their own property.”
Or as the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow puts it, “some critics apparently prefer that buildings burn publicly rather than be rescued privately.”
Democratic Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, a cosponsor of the bill along with Democratic Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor, justifies shutting out private firefighters, who often work for insurance companies that sell wildfire coverage, by appealing to a standard that surely sounds high-minded.
“Firefighting is a public good,” Bryan, whose 55th District is centered in Culver City told Politico. “It is a public resource. It is something that we all invest in and we all derive benefits from.”
Hard to argue with that. But by effectively outlawing property owners from protecting themselves with private efforts by barring them from connecting to public water service puts the public at risk. Unionized firefighters can’t be everywhere at all times. Better to have a private fireman than no fireman at all.
“Private fire departments can fill gaps when public fire departments aren’t able to meet the demands of their local communities,” says Frontline Wildfire Defense.
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