Declarations

21st Century
“The financial world has changed and we must change with it to retain our leadership position. This panel will help the state bring its regulatory structure into the 21st Century, encouraging the use of cutting edge technology and techniques to provide capital, insurance and other services to companies.”

— New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in launching a commission to modernize the state’s regulatory scheme.

Extreme…ly grateful
“I was overwhelmed with gratitude. My children and I have received so much in the last two months, and then, on top of it all, Harleysville was so generous in giving us a year’s worth of free insurance. It was just such a blessing.”

— Debbie Oatman-Gaitan of Schenectady, N.Y., to whom Harleysville Insurance is providing a free one-year policy for the family’s new home through Nicoll & MacChesney Inc., an independent insurance agency in Troy, N.Y. Oatman-Gaitan and her four sons recently had their home rebuilt for the ABC-TV program “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” The Oatman-Gaitan family was the fifth Harleysville has helped since establishing a connection with the TV show last year.

Non-economic benefits
“It is unfortunate that the legislature spent so much time considering bills that only would have set the state’s economy back — just the fact that the bills made it so far in the legislative process sends a decidedly wrong message to the state’s business community.”

— The Connecticut Business and Industry Association and a coalition of more than 100 business groups responding to the state Senate’s approval of a bill that would have increased workers’ compensation benefits. The measure eventually died in the legislature.

Maine reality
“It’s unrealistic, it’s science fiction. I can’t say enough bad things about it.”

— Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap urging Gov. John Baldacci to sign a bill prohibiting Maine from implementing Real ID, the national identity card system that’s been vilified by critics as unworkable and too expensive. Dunlap said Real ID could cost Maine taxpayers $185 million over its first five years.

Supreme credit
“Today’s ruling reverses the appeals court decision that said the defendant insurance companies had acted in ‘willful disregard’ of the law for failing to send adverse action notices. We contended in our amicus that the 9th Circuit Court used a very low standard for determining whether insurers acted in willful disregard for the law.”

— Kathleen Jensen, senior legal counsel for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, hailing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that sided with two insurance companies in a case involving alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.