Bipartisan Proposal calls for Elected Commissioner in Fla.

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Florida’s insurance regulator should have to answer directly to voters, several lawmakers said in proposing a constitutional change to return the job to an elected Cabinet post from an appointed one.

While being pushed by Democrats, the idea also has the support of the Republican chairman of the House Insurance Committee, Rep. Dennis Ross. His influential voice could give the proposal some momentum.

Property insurance premiums have ballooned for many after two years in which Florida was battered by eight hurricanes. Opponents of the proposal say that’s simply because Florida is a risky place for insurers, not a function of the insurance commissioner.

But, “the public right now believes the process is skewed against them,” said Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, the main backer of the idea in the Senate.

The state’s insurance commissioner, currently Kevin McCarty, is appointed by and answers to the elected Cabinet.

Ross, R-Lakeland, said he thinks McCarty does a good job. But he said the public wants to feel they can directly vote for or against the person who rules on companies’ requests for rate increases.

“The perception is (the public) seem to have lost some sense of accountability,” Ross said.

McCarty’s chief of staff, David Foy, said the office didn’t have a position on whether the commissioner should continue to be appointed. But, he said, the commissioner is bound by the law to approve certain increases when they’re warranted – and a number of factors have led to higher rates.

Premiums are going up because of billions of dollars in losses, Foy said. And, he said, “future predicted losses are more than they have been in the past,” because of forecasts of busier storm seasons.

In 1998 Florida voters shrunk the Cabinet from six members to three plus the governor, eliminating the elected insurance commissioner. The details of how to assign responsibility for regulating insurance were left up to lawmakers, who decided that an appointed commissioner would take some politics out of the equation.

To deal with that, Klein said that under his proposal, candidates for an elected post would be barred from taking campaign contributions from the insurance industry.

If legislators vote to put the measure on the ballot, it would go before the state’s voters in November. When lawmakers put a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, the governor doesn’t have veto power.

Bush is against the idea, and noted that when the insurance commissioner was elected, he often was overruled by an arbitration panel that’s also part of state law.

“That did us a lot of good,” Bush said. “I mean, that was great for the commissioner that could kind of pound his chest and say ‘Hey, I’m fighting for the consumer,’ but then was totally powerless to do anything about it.

“The simple fact is, when you have eight hurricanes in two years … you’re going to have enormous losses. Enormous losses require increases in premium or these companies go out of business,” he added.

Sam Miller, a spokesman for the state’s insurance industry, said there isn’t a consensus among companies as to whether they should be regulated by an appointed or elected official.

“Whatever the rules are, we’ll do business that way,” said Miller, the executive vice president of the Florida Insurance Council.