(Bloomberg) -- California utilities probably won’t get much of a break from lawmakers who are evaluating liability laws that expose the companies to billions in potential damages from last year’s wildfires.

“The odds are dwindling” that the state will change the law, Kit Konolige, a utility analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a report Friday.

PG&E Corp., the state’s biggest utility owner, has been lobbying lawmakers to change a state rule known as “inverse condemnation.” It currently says that property owners can collect compensation from utilities linked to fires, even if the companies weren’t negligent. Governor Jerry Brown has been sympathetic, proposing a bill that would require the courts to consider whether a utility acted “reasonably” when deciding whether to impose damages. PG&E could face as much as $17 billion in liabilities for the 2017 fires, according to JPMorgan Chase.

A conference committee is weighing Brown’s proposal as part of an effort to produce legislation addressing the growing threat of wildfires, which officials say are getting worse due to climate change.

To address the financial threat to PG&E, the committee may let the utility issue bonds backed by customer bills to cover damages from wildfires last year that destroyed thousands of homes in Northern California wine country, according to research notes issued Friday by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Height Securities.

Such a proposal is expected to be received positively by investors, according to Julien Dumoulin-Smith, an analyst for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. PG&E didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Ryan at jryan173@bloomberg.net, Will Wade, Catherine Traywick

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