Betty Yee: A Holistic Approach to Rebuilding

“Pasadena and Altadena are tremendous communities, and I look forward to them being stronger,” said Democratic-declared gubernatorial candidate Betty Yee in a recent LNP interview after the devastating Eaton Fire. Yee is one of a growing number of candidates posturing for Governor Gavin Newsom’s termed-out seat in 2026.

“There will be some lessons here. People obviously want to rebuild. They want to be back in their homes. At the same time, we want to be sure that people are safe because nature is going to continue to be unrelenting.”

We asked Yee about the role of the Governor’s office in wildfires and emergencies in general.

“What we’re witnessing in California is not something unanticipated. We’re a desert state, and it’s been so dry in Southern California. The Santa Ana winds were forecasted to be quite damaging, but I don’t think anyone anticipated this degree of devastation.

“One of the things that I have witnessed in the last couple of decades,” she continued, “is that we haven’t invested in building our capacity to deal with economic vulnerabilities. We’re learning as we go along. How do we harden our structures for this new era of climate crisis? It’s expensive to do it, particularly in California. There are many climate impacts, whether you live on the coast and are subject to rising sea levels or in inland parts of the state that have been so dry and are subjected to disasters like the one that we’re witnessing now.”

“Certainly, I love Governor Newsom for always being at the forefront, being present, and being the leader who guides us,” she continued, “especially with respect to our relationship with a changing federal government and federal administration. What that will mean in terms of assistance from this new incoming administration remains to be seen. There’s been a lot of back and forth. I’m trying not to have that noise take over.”

Yee stated that we need to look at how we’re going to take care of California, how it’s been affected, and how we can start the rebuilding process as soon as possible. 

“Our legislature has kicked into full gear,” she said. “They’re introducing bills right and left, but the Governor’s executive order to expedite the rebuilding process is important. Local permitting processes are notoriously slow. We can look at modernizing those processes and bring in the tools of AI and data analytics so that we know where we’re building and with what risks. We cannot  repeat what we’ve experienced, but he’s looking at fire standards and asking his experts to look at the code changes as well.”

She stated, however, that expediency shouldn’t take the place of hardening our communities.

“Recent wildfires are in areas that are near national monument lands. We have a housing crisis, so the question is, why do we keep building and rebuilding near fire-prone areas? We might have to do things differently and certainly for those communities that are already in place. We fireproof and harden these communities through sound land use policies and climate policies. How can we continue to expose ourselves to risk by building in high-fire zone areas?”

We asked Yee how this hardening might affect the California insurance industry and its ability to plan for risk.

“Insurers assess and evaluate risk, but they also are investors, and they look to make a return on their investment. You would think that they would be at the forefront of helping communities to reduce risk. I hope this is the conversation we can have now. Damage estimates in the Greater Los Angeles area are obviously in the billions, and whether people have been adequately or underinsured remains to be seen.”

“We ought to be looking at how we can use risk as an incentive for how or where people rebuild,” she continued.

“The Oakland Hills Fire in Northern California was quite damaging, and while we allowed rebuilding, people actually rebuilt bigger. In that rebuild, I’m not so sure we did a whole lot better with respect to access roads. I hope the insurance companies are part of this conversation because, at the end of the day, they have to be part of  bearing  some of that risk.”

Continuing the discussion about how insurance companies can be proactive, she said, “Sometimes we don’t have the right people speaking to one another about what needs to be done. Obviously, our frontline firefighters are doing their job, but there’s so much we could be doing with respect to how we manage the land, the permitting process, and preventative work. The insurance companies can be involved in that. We’re going to need to bring all kinds of different people to the table. There’s no one expert in all of this. It’s interdisciplinary. As a government, we have to be sure that we’re tapping the right people. Government by itself is not the answer.”

Yee welcomed President Biden’s FEMA disaster assistance announcement, issued on January 9, 2025, which provided federal funding to affected individuals in Los Angeles County.

“The incoming administration and some of the lawmakers in Washington want to put some strings on any kind of federal relief,” she said. “We need a lot of help, and I don’t mean just from a financial perspective. We are going to need a very strong relationship with our federal government, making sure those dollars have the broadest impact on those who have been affected. But again, are we going to keep building in fire-prone areas?”

She also commented on how the County will compensate for the lost property, business and sales tax revenues.

“Communities won’t look like what they were before the fires,” she answered. “The business community has been affected. We have to ask ourselves, what do we want our communities to look like? I have a lot of knowledge from a business perspective, having served on the State Board of Equalization. I had CEO’s of several companies who wanted to attract the best talent and felt it incumbent upon themselves to have their own housing incentive programs. So we have to ask, where does housing need to be built, and what tax incentives exist that can help? We can use the tax system in a way that provides some good incentives.”

Yee’s political platform includes advocacy for higher wages, universal healthcare,  mental health care, elder care issues, and helping address domestic violence and health disparities among low-income women.

“My platform has to do with accountability,” she said, “and making sure we understand how we are deploying our financial resources and what we’re getting in return. I have almost three decades in public service. Accountability and transparency were our friends; who was served, and what were the outcomes? When we felt that dollars weren’t getting the job done, we’d look at what we could do to get the outcomes we wanted. I don’t see much of that happening now. Because we’ve had some very robust years of budget surpluses, the tendency was that strict accountability went by the wayside. We saw this during COVID-19. When we looked at all the COVID-19 relief we were getting from the federal government, we had a state budget surplus. We would push money out the door for this or that or any other reason instead of going back and looking at programs that were already in place that could be updated to meet the same needs. We created new programs, new bureaucracies, creating more costs.”  

We have a lot of money for housing and homelessness, but what do we have to show for it? We’re not going to know unless we have some accountability over how the dollars have been spent. However, we also have to realize that how we treat people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco will be very different from how we treat it in a rural area. It’s a statewide problem, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. We have not done everything that we should be doing in terms of how to stave off those who are housing insecure and spiral into homelessness.

We asked Yee to speak about mental health issues and the many programs in place, some more effective than others.

“These fires and the trauma associated with them are going to be long-lasting, some trauma that has existed going back to COVID-19,” she said. “We have a shortage of mental health professionals in California. That is a crisis; actually, it’s a national crisis.

“Many of our young people do quite well with telehealth. They don’t need to see a professional in person. Geographically, we’ve always had disparities with respect to the healthcare workforce in general. We need to make sure our public universities are doing their part in terms of training the next generation of professionals in this field. So many of our communities lack culturally appropriate and equity-appropriate care.”  

“I believe in the concept of ‘proximate leadership,’ which is those who are closest to the issue probably are the best architects of the solutions,” she stated. “We build capacity within these communities. It’s a complex issue, but it’s not so complex that we can’t involve the affected communities to help us build a system that could be lasting. When I was on the CalPERS Board, we found there was a problem getting that initial contact with patients in a timely manner, and the follow-up was even worse. It would be months for any follow-up. The patient loads were huge. There were geographic challenges, especially in our rural areas.”

Yee also commented on the impact of the immigrant population on the California healthcare system.  

“Immigrants have been a vital part of our economy,” she said. “To the extent that they are here, I definitely don’t want to have any public health issues. From a health perspective, we have to cover them. Regardless of their immigration status, they add a lot to our economy. This mass deportation program has not been well thought out. It may not make a distinction between those who are here legally and those who are undocumented or a distinction between those immigrants who have committed crimes who are here illegally and should possibly be considered for deportation.”

“So let’s go back to where we started this conversation,” she said. “How are we going to rebuild our communities? Let’s look at our small businesses, our construction workers, hospitality, agriculture, and caregivers. So many of those doing the work are immigrants, some undocumented, and they’re doing the work because, frankly, there are a lot of people who don’t want to do that work. If we don’t acknowledge that our immigrant populations have been doing the bulk of this work, I don’t know what rebuilding will look like. I hope that we don’t get into a situation where we don’t understand the economic consequences of our immigrant presence. Obviously, for those who are here illegally and who have committed a crime, I have no sympathy for them. But for those who are here and are actually contributing to the economy, paying taxes because they are consumers, then I do think that there is a role for them. We have to look at it holistically.”