If there were any doubts that the pressure would ease up on homeowners' insurers after last year's comprehensive reforms, they have quickly been erased as the industry finds itself practically surrounded because lawmakers, regulators, and Governor Charlie Crist continue to move forward and up the ante. Case in point: Senate President Ken Pruitt's (R-Port St. Lucie) move to create a Senate Select Committee on Property Insurance Accountability that so far has “invited” at least five insurance executives to testify under oath about their companies' rate filings. The invitation even comes with a helpful reminder that the committee has the statutory authority to issue subpoenas to compel the executives to attend.

The latest action by lawmakers and regulators, and supported by Crist, should come as no great surprise, although they don't follow the normal pattern of insurance reform. Typically, a comprehensive reform bill is enacted, and then lawmakers restrain from making any major changes based on the view that it will take the reforms several years to fully influence the market. That position is why lawmakers for the most part have avoided making any major changes to the workers' compensation and medical malpractice laws after successfully rewriting the laws in the early 1990s. The same thinking is expected to hold true with automobile personal injury protection insurance, which lawmakers enacted with few changes last year. Even among those who fought with all their resources to eliminate the law concede the PIP issue is dead for the foreseeable future.

Property insurance, however, is a different issue. Crist and the majority of lawmakers were voted into office on the promise that they would bring rate relief to Floridians. As a result, they felt emboldened to turn Citizens Property Insurance Corporation into a competitive state fund, a proposition that past legislatures and public officials would have viewed as unthinkable. Lawmakers also targeted the industry's rating law, a move that had the effect of handing McCarty wide-ranging authority to confront the industry with all the statutory tools at his discretion.