Capitol to Courthouse Florida Insurance Report: Thursday, October 10
Oct 10, 2013
To go directly to the section of your choice, click on a hyperlink below. Other hyperlinks to meeting information, bills and news are noted in bold type.
Daily Florida Insurance-Related Events
9:00 a.m.–Florida Cabinet meeting. To view the complete agenda, click here.
- OIR agenda
- Approval for the OIR to contract (to be selected by October 7) to conduct the Workers’ Compensation Peer Review
- Citizens’ proposed amendments to its Plan of Operation
- Citizens’ updated Assessment Awareness Survey results
9:00 a.m.–FSLSO Board of Governors meeting. Tallahassee, Florida. To view the meeting notice, click here.
Daily Florida Insurance-Related News
Florida consumer advocate on State Farm proposed rate hikes: “This is going to be a shocker”
Florida Insurance Consumer Advocate Robin Westcott said thousands of State Farm customers are going to be shocked by their premium increases on rental properties if the company gets its requested rate hikes, Dave Heller reports for WTLV-TV and FirstCoastNews.com.
Blog: State regulators say they’re developing “simple guidelines” to lure flood insurers to Florida
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said Wednesday that his office in the process of developing a “set of simple guidelines” for insurance companies to request approval to write primary flood insurance in Florida as an alternative to the Federal Floods Insurance Program, Mary Ellen Klas reports for the Miami Herald’s “Naked Politics” blog.
Bill cutting $240 million in motorists’ fees advances
Four years after balancing the state budget partly on the backs of motorists, Florida lawmakers are trying to roll back the clock, Aaron Deslatte reports for the Orlando Sentinel.
Florida homeowner faces thousands in damage after pool rises from ground
Groundwater under a Florida homeowner’s backyard forced an in-ground pool to partially raise about three feet out of the dirt, prompting fears of another sinkhole, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.
Bill Young’s Retirement Puts a Congressional Seat in Play
With Bill Young leaving Congress, Florida has a new political battleground in 2014 as Republicans and Democrats alike look at an open congressional seat which had been filled for more than four decades, Jeff Henderson reports for SunshineStateNews.com.
House panel looks at gambling study, finds few conclusions
Members of the House Select Committee on Gaming free associated with a draft study of gambling in Florida on Wednesday, with one member calling it a “Rorschach test” where everyone could reach the conclusions they wanted before the study was done, The Florida Current’s Gray Rohrer reports.
Lawmakers to protest settlement with Duke over nuclear costs
Two Pinellas County lawmakers are calling for the defeat of a proposed settlement between state regulators and Duke Energy that would force customers to pay $3.2 billion for nuclear power they’ll never get, Tampa Bay Times’ Ivan Penn reports.
Virtual school out at least $20 million
A change in the funding formula for public schools initiated by lawmakers in the spring has cost the Florida Virtual School $20 million and may be a factor in a 10-to 15-percent drop in enrollment, The Florida Current’s James Call reports.
Many questions, few answers on state’s voter purge plan
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s mea culpa tour to tout the state’s revamped noncitizen voter purge led to a tense exchange Wednesday with an election supervisor miffed about the state’s botched efforts last year, the Miami Herald’s Amy Sherman reports.
Gus Bilirakis Will Co-Chair the Congressional Travel and Tourism Caucus
With tourism ranking as one of the foundations of Florida’s economy, it’s only fitting that a congressman from the Sunshine State was named as the co-chairman of the Congressional Travel and Tourism Caucus this week, Kevin Derby reports for SunshineStateNews.com.
Seven50: It’s Agenda 21’s Baby Cousin in Florida
For many people in this country, sustainable development is code for “cluster of low-income, HUD-inspired, stack-and-pack housing units with demographic quotas, built without garages, adjacent to mass transit — with personal use of automobiles out of the question,” explains Nancy Smith for SunshineStateNews.com.
IAIS Regulators Map Out First Capital Blueprint for Large Insurers
New insurance rules are being written by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), which represents nearly 140 countries, and will apply to roughly 50 top companies from the start of 2019, Reuters’ Huw Jones reports via Insurance Journal.
Sovereign Immunity Bars Insureds’ Claims Against FEMA
A federal district court in Mississippi has ruled that sovereign immunity required that it dismiss litigation brought by a number of insureds against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency, writes Steven A. Meyerowitz for National Underwriter’s PropertyCasualty360.com.
Louisiana Researchers Studying Coastal Land Values
It’s no surprise that some coastal wetlands are more valuable than others, but the question several researchers at LSU are trying to answer is how much more valuable, Insurance Journal reports.
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