Declarations

Bad Faith Blues

“It is good for consumers … it will help them get what they paid for, which is our goal. But it also recognizes the industry’s needs. It gives them some ability to have some understanding and some predictability of what their costs will be in the future.”

—Senator Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, comments on the action of the Minnesota Legislature when it approved a compromise bill giving consumers more clout in court when they disagree with their home and auto insurance companies. The legislation passed the Senate 47-15 and the House 93-39. A House-Senate conference committee came up with a plan to limit insurance policyholders to recovering $250,000 in damages and $100,000 in attorneys’ fees if they could show that their claim was denied unreasonably. Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the legislation on April 21, 2008.

Optional Federal Charter Opposed

“Ohio enjoys a healthy insurance market that provides insurance consumers with the 13th lowest average auto insurance rates and the 6th lowest homeowners insurance rates in the nation … it’s important for us to send a strong message to Congress that Optional Federal Charter legislation is the wrong move for the industry and the wrong move for consumers.”

—The Professional Insurance Agents Association of Ohio (PIA) recently testified before the Ohio House Insurance Committee in support of a resolution for Ohio to formally oppose any “new layers of needless federal bureaucracy to insurance regulation.” Representing the PIA, John Koetz testified that state insurance regulation best serves consumers and the industry with policy and regulatory decisions made at the state level. Koetz also testified that the Optional Federal Charter ultimately would cause problems for consumers.

Earthquake Information

“We don’t have as many opportunities as in California. We cannot even borrow on the knowledge they learn on the West Coast because quakes that happen in California, where tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s surface collide, are so different from Midwestern quakes that happen far away from the edges of the nearest plates.

—Genda Chen, associate professor of engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which sits near the New Madrid fault comments on the lack of knowledge about earthquakes in the Midwest. Scientists say they know far too little about Midwestern seismic zones like the one that rumbled to life under southern Illinois on April 18, but some of what they do know is unnerving.

The fault zones beneath the Mississippi River Valley have produced some of the largest modern U.S. quakes east of the Rockies, a region covered with old buildings not built to withstand seismic activity. And, when quakes happen, they’re felt far and wide, their vibrations propagated over hundreds of miles of bedrock. The April 18 earthquake shook things up from Nebraska to Atlanta, rattling nerves but doing little damage and seriously hurting no one. It was a magnitude 5.2 temblor centered just outside West Salem in southeastern Illinois, a largely rural region of small towns that sit over the Wabash fault zone. The area has produced moderately strong quakes as recently as 2002.

Topics Legislation Ohio