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Florida Officials, Media Ignore Insurance Solution

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By DONALD R. CRANE JR. Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 9, 2008

There is absolutely nothing creative about the Tribune's editorial, "Creative Windstorm Coverage," (Our Opinion, May 31.) It has been discussed for years.

You have taken a few pages from an old playbook that sends the runner "up the middle" only to be tackled in the backfield. Your uncreative solution to hurricane insurance relief fails to address Florida's first level of coverage, which is what Floridians will be paying in premiums before a regional or federal catastrophe program is triggered. Don't bet your printing press that Congress is going to create a National Catastrophe Fund; it is not in the cards.

A serious 34-page booklet, "Solving the Florida Hurricane Insurance Crisis," was given to the Tribune well before your editorial was written. How can the Tribune be so un-inquisitive as to ignore a solution that was 18 months in the making by nine St. Petersburg business professionals?

The first question the St. Petersburg Group asked the state insurance commissioner was, "How much do Floridians pay for hurricane insurance?" Three requests and never a response. The Tribune should have been asking the same question.

Our perseverance paid off when the Office of Insurance Advocate calculated that Floridians pay more than $10 billion annually for hurricane insurance. Does the Tribune not grasp that $200 billion over 20 years would have paid for all the hurricane losses (not flood or rising waters) that have struck the Southeast in the past 20 years?

What troubles the St. Petersburg Group is that nine committed concerned citizens spent several thousand hours studying the hurricane insurance crisis and, with the help of state officials and other experts, put our solution on the table, and the Tribune asked not one question of the group. All we have asked is that the governor or chief financial officer seek an opinion from unbiased actuaries.

Our solution will save Floridians premium dollars, downsize Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, stabilize the property insurance market, bring back competition in the insurance marketplace, and then be the foundation whereby Congress can loan funds to Florida in the event we have insufficient funds to pay for losses from a major hurricane. See our Web site, www.floridareinsurance.com.

We bent our backs to the task, and so far our proposal has been well received by all except the reinsurance markets and the small insurance companies that have been created in the hope that they know how to insure hurricanes. Fat chance.

It is demoralizing to "donate" so much time to the state's highest priority, come to a common-sense solution and then read an editorial that suggests a solution that has been removed from the playbook by informed coaches. Unless hurricane-prone states have their own financially sound solution in place Congress will not create a National Hurricane Catastrophe Fund.

Donald F. Crane Jr. is a former state lawmaker who has served on the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the state road boards.

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