Legislature to return to Tallahassee in December to debate insurance fixes

Legislature to return to Tallahassee in December to debate insurance fixes

Leaders of the Florida House and Senate have scheduled their promised special legislative session to address skyrocketing property insurance costs for the week of Dec. 12, when lawmakers are due in Tallahassee to conduct committee hearings in advance of the 2023 regular session.

House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo made the announcement via a memorandum on Tuesday, as they wrapped their organizational session (a routine post-election gathering to swear in members and elect new leaders).

“We anticipate issuing a formal proclamation following the Thanksgiving holiday,” Renner and Passidomo wrote.

Specifics of the legislation to be debated are yet to come.

gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been working with the Legislature on an agenda for the special session, has called for fixes to Florida’s insurance system, which has been experiencing wild increases in rates; rebating property taxes for people who suffered hurricane damage this year; and perhaps other matters.

Multiple insurers have been canceling policies in Florida or applying for, and being granted, rate hikes from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. They’ve cited higher losses due to worsening weather, widespread litigation, rising costs of construction and repairs, and rising property values.

During a separate special session in May, the Legislature made an initial pass at responding to insurance market disruptions which were further stoked by hurricanes Ian and Nicole. That legislation attacks costs of litigating claims disputes; forbids insurers from refusing to cover homes solely for the reason that the roofs are more than 15 years old; and boosts condominium safety following the deadly collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside in June 2021.

Additionally, that special session produced a $2 billion infusion of taxpayer money into reinsurance coverage to help companies that cannot obtain it in the private marketplace.

Meanwhile, the auto insurance market has also been deteriorating. As the Phoenix reported on Wednesday, Florida ranks as the most expensive state in the nation for auto insurance, with the average premium at $2,560 a year, or $213 a month — a 23% increase in rates from 2021.

The post Legislature to return to Tallahassee in December to debate insurance fixes first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Committee week in Florida’s Capitol: Welcome to the festival of ignorance

Image
Legislators came to town for the autumn ritual of political harlotry they call “committee week.” Tallahassee’s collective IQ dropped by a good 60 points. That’s bad, but what they propose doing to Florida is worse. Seems Sen. Joe Gruters, R-$ara$ota, who also is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was intimately involved with a plot to quash the Democratic vote. Remember that “ voting reform ” bill the governor signed on “Fox and Friends” last May? The one that restricts access to ballot drop-boxes, limits vote-by-mail applications, forbids giving people standing in long lines a bottle of water, and lets partisan poll watchers police canvassing boards? Even though Florida ran an immaculate election in 2020, Republicans goose-stepped in time with the Madman of Mar-a-Lago and claimed with straight faces they merely wanted to prevent election “fraud” — which is about as common as polar bears in Miami. (What fraud there was, was courtesy of the GOP .) Joe Gruters ...
Read more

U.S. House GOP would make it easier for feds to give public lands away to states

Image
U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands. The provision is a fairly technical piece of the 55-page  rules package . It affects internal House accounting and requires that anytime Congress were to give any federal lands to a state, municipality or tribe, it would not be counted as a loss to the federal budget. House Republicans had an identical rule when they controlled the chamber from 2017 to 2019. Advocates and critics agree the measure would be helpful to any effort by the House to transfer federal lands to states. But they disagree about the wisdom of such giveaways. Republicans and conservative groups see states as preferable stewards of most public lands. Those closest to the land are in a better position to make decisions on how to manage them than those in Washington bureaucracies, they say. Environmental groups and Democrats see federal divest...
Read more

Democratic governors press U.S. Senate to act on voting rights legislation

Image
WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 16 other Democratic governors are urging the U.S. Senate to pass two bills that aim to protect voting rights. Both measures need 60 votes to advance under Senate rules but have been stalled by Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate. “Without decisive action by the federal government this year to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure the integrity and transparency of our elections, the voices of Americans across the country, especially Americans of color, will be suppressed,” the governors wrote in a Monday  letter  to U.S. Senate leadership. Governors who signed the letter include Jared Polis of Colorado, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Kate Brown of Oregon, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, among others. One bill, known as the  John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2...
Read more