During the hectic final days of its 2002 session, the Colorado Legislature passed legislation extending the sunset of the no-fault auto insurance law to July 2003.
In a flurry of last-minute activity, the Senate wrapped a host of amendments into House Bill 1136, a bill that would have extended the sunset of the state Insurance Division beyond this year. The House received the amended bill at 11:52 p.m., which scarcely left time to give it any consideration before the mandatory midnight adjournment deadline, so the bill died. Among the provisions that died with the amended HB 1136 were ones that reduced the number of mandatory options in the no-fault auto insurance law and which extended the law allowing insurers to offer a low-income auto PIP policy.
“Colorado’s no-fault law obviously is broken, and we believe consumers would be better off to let it die this year and return to the traditional tort system,” National Association of Independent Insurers (NAII) Northwest Regional Manager Michael Harrold commented. “But extending the law just one year, as Senate Bill 90 does (and which the Legislature passed May 7), certainly is much better than the 10-year extension that the trial bar wanted.
“Let’s hope the no-fault law is drastically overhauled next year so the high cost of auto insurance can be reduced, or the law is terminated. To be successful, any effort to that end will require the active participation of Gov. Bill Owens, who has indicated a keen interest in the issue.”
Harrold said consumers would have benefited from the amendment added to HB 1136 to eliminate some of the mandatory personal injury protection (PIP) options in the no-fault law, which would have simplified and likely wrung costs out of the system for consumers and insurers alike.
HB 1461 earlier had become bogged down when trial attorneys succeeded in amending it to include SB 177, allowing the secretary of state to be served in a legal proceeding if an auto accident defendant cannot be located for 120 days. NAII and other insurers had succeeded in killing SB 177 on the House floor only days before, but its provisions were among the amendments the Senate added to HB 1136 last week.
Some of the other controversial amendments that the Senate attached to HB 1136 would have required aggregate reporting of bad faith claims to the Insurance Division, provided that only one violation would invoke the provisions of the Unfair Claims Practices Act, and other insurance rating provisions that insurers opposed.
Although the demise of HB 1136 means the Insurance Division will sunset this year, the division will continue to function for the coming year, giving the Legislature another opportunity in 2003 to preserve its operation.
In other activities during the closing days of the 2002 session:
HB 1135, converting Pinnacol, Colorado’s state workers’ compensation fund, to a quasi-mutual insurance company, was passed after the House and Senate accepted a conference committee report that resolved differences between their versions.
Final legislative action was completed on HB 1189 requiring the state to issue a title clearly stating that a salvaged vehicle was “rebuilt from salvage.” NAII supported amendments to the original bill to delete provisions that would have been costly to implement. The original bill also could have made it easier to counterfeit VIN numbers and thus lead to more auto thefts.
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