Florida’s Scott Wants Ideas from Citizens by Dec. 6

Gov. Rick Scott wants the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to recommend ways to shore up the troubled insurer.

Scott, who prefers the insurer be sold to a private company, wants answers from the Citizens’ board by a Cabinet meeting Dec. 6.

“I expect them to come back with ideas of things they can do without the Legislature, things that we have to go to the Legislature with,” Scott said recently. “We shouldn’t be sitting here just hoping every hurricane season that we’re not going to have a hurricane. Someday we’re going to have a hurricane.”

Despite going six years without a storm, the state’s property insurance rates have continued to soar and Citizens, designed as the insurer of last resort, has grown dramatically to become the state’s largest property insurer with nearly 1.5 million customers. A one-in-100-year storm or series of destructive hurricanes could leave the company insolvent and put Florida taxpayers on the hook for making up the difference, according to experts.

Scott said most of the state’s insureds are unaware that they’d be assessed on their personal property and vehicle policies in the event Citizens couldn’t pay off. “I don’t think that they have any idea that they are taking that risk of having an assessment,” Scott said. “All consumers should know that.”

Scott grilled Citizens’ President Scott Wallace about details of the company’s business plan and was clearly chagrined at what he learned.

“You would never organize your personal life like this,” Scott said. “We’ve got to fix this.”

Legislators in 2007 tried to protect the so-called insurer of last resort in Florida by clamping down on higher premiums, but that decision didn’t work. They passed another property insurance measure earlier this year designed to give insurers some slack. And the issue never goes away.

Scott said he believes the Legislature would be willing to will work on the issue again in the 2012 session, even in an election year. “They know we can’t keep on doing what we’re doing on Citizens Insurance,” he said. “We’re very vulnerable as a state with Citizens.”

Citizens has more than 900 employees at offices in Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Tampa is run by an eight-person board of governors appointed by the governor.

Topics Florida Hurricane Property