If extreme fire risk fell upon a forest, but no one saw the color-coded map, is it any more likely to burn down? A map long-hidden from public view has some wondering.

For five years, San Marcos, California, has kept two maps showing resident’s risk of fire—one for city planners that displays a color-coded spectrum of danger ranging from low to extreme, and another less colorful display (and without the inflammatory labels) for the public.

News of the double map standard Saturday sparked debate about whether the city—which claims to have withheld the full map detail to save residents from higher insurance rates—did them a disservice instead.

“There is a clear conflict of interest here,” wrote UCLA economist Matthew Kahn in a Christian Science Monitor editorial. “An adaptation economist such as myself wants "new news" of risks to be discovered and disseminated. The City was clearly trying to protect the pocketbook of existing homeowners by not having them pay higher insurance rates. Given that property tax revenue is a fixed % of the total value of local land, the city may have worried that its total tax revenue would fall with the new news.”

That’s not the case, according to San Marcos City Manager Paul Malone. The city was acting altruistically and residents were aware of their fire risk status, he told the local North County News.

“Until you've spent time on the phone with desperate homeowners wondering what they'll do about insurance problems, you probably can't appreciate why we feel as strongly as we do,” Malone said. "We develop specific fire threat assessments on a parcel-by-parcel basis…The people that live in that area absolutely do know that they live in a wildfire threat zone.”

Still, Kahn points out without pausing, the missing insurance piece messes with the balance of things.

“Intuitively, if climate change raises the risk of fires in a specific area, then profit maximization and insurance industry competition will lead to insurance rates rising in those fire zones and this will lead fewer households to live there and those that live there will build their homes out of materials that are more likely to withstand fires (so they can be quoted a lower insurance rate).”

There’s some evidence from the San Marcos’ Coronado Hills neighborhood to bear Kahn’s theory out.

Coronado Hills was one of two neighborhoods listed as an extreme fire danger area on the original map, which was compiled by fire consultants Anchorpoint Group using a number of fire-contributing factors such as type of vegetation and access to transportation and water. Coronado Hills was deemed especially vulnerable because, in addition to dense brush in the area, it only has one worn and rutted access road.

“They're in that 90th percentile,” Chris White, Anchorpoint Group CEO told the North County News. “Simply being in a high-fire zone wouldn't be enough. There would have to be poor access, none of the safety zones, and construction types that are less than ideal. It may not have water to the level that's needed.”

Despite those dangers and a 2007 fire that grazed the neighborhood before being controlled, residents still decided against building a secondary access road into the community. The road, which would have cost about $145 per month per parcel, might have been more palatable if it were sure to bring lower insurance rates.

Ironically, the entire brouhaha is likely moot—the original study is outdated and there’s no indication the insurance industry would have used it to structure rates anyway, according to the North County News article. Yet it’s a slippery slope when municipalities begin sequestering information for the public “good.” If nothing else, according to White, the map acts as a visual for future fretting.

“What the map should tell people is the gradient of concern they should have,” he said. “And frankly, if there's anything high and above, I would be very worried, given the fire history of that area.”