Plants over people. Nope, not "climate change." It was California's own policies that led to those devastating fires in Los Angeles.

And even now one year later and no homes have been allowed to be rebuilt in Los Angeles. What a travesty. Great job Mayor Bass and Gavin Newsom.

Shawn Regan lives in Bozeman, Montana and is a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute. You may remember his very insightful research when he worked for PERC in Bozeman. Regan drafted a piece for both the City Journal and FoxNews.com that just published this past week:

City Journal: Firefighters Could Have Prevented the L.A. Wildfires, but California Rules Made Them Save Plants Instead

Fox News: One year after the LA fires, California still hasn’t learned its lesson

Regan joined us on our Montana Talks statewide radio show Monday morning.

It's crazy that no homes have been rebuilt over a year later.

Shawn Regan: "A few months ago, the mayor came out with this press release saying- Hey, we built the first home. Well, turns out it wasn't actually a real home. It was a spec home that was approved before the fire burned, it was slated for demolition, and they were going to rebuild this as a spec home. Well, the fire did the demolition, and then they built the home, and it's not even a real home. And so she's out there sending out this press release saying, Hey, we're making such progress. They now, I think, approved their first official home, but that's it. I mean, we're still so far away from the promises that were made in terms of really being able to rebuild in a timely manner."

Cali policies, not climate change, is to blame.

Shawn Regan: "What we've learned is that the Palisades Fire in particular was not a new fire. This was a re-ignition of an earlier fire that started on New Year's Eve. It was a small eight acre containable brush fire. Firefighters contained it within hours. But what we learned as part of our investigation is that California's environmental policies basically ensured that it was never fully extinguished, never properly monitored, and it was left to smolder for six days on state park land that hadn't burned in half a century. And these Santa Ana winds were forecasted to come through just days later. And as the story goes, you know, that turned it into Los Angeles's worst urban wildfire catastrophe. And as we dug into this, it was really these environmental policies that prevented firefighters from doing the work of putting out this fire and left it to smolder and turn into this catastrophe."

Here's the full audio: