P&C Legislative Round-Up: February 2020
Here are the latest insurance-related legislative updates from Florida, Washington, Oklahoma and more.
Editor’s Note: At the start of each month, we publish insurance legislative and regulatory news and updates from around the nation.
National updates
The White House has proposed artificial intelligence (AI) regulatory principles to govern its development and use aimed at limiting authorities’ “overreach,” Reuters reported. A notice from the White House said federal agencies should “conduct risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses prior to any regulatory action on AI, with a focus on establishing flexible frameworks rather than one-size-fits-all regulation.”
Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) introduced the Offshore Accountability Act of 2020 to the U.S. House of Representatives on the anniversary of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. The bipartisan legislation would require operators of offshore oil and gas facilities to report failures of critical systems to the Secretary of Interior.
State updates
Senate Bill 451 and 418 were introduced in New Hampshire. The SB 451 proposes to establish administrative hearing proceedings and penalties for employers who fail to secure workers’ compensation coverage for their employees. Additionally, an employer would be fined and subjected to an immediate stop-work order if found without workers’ comp insurance. SB 418 would penalize employers refusing to cooperate with auditing requirements of their workers’ compensation policies by forcing them to pay penalties for noncooperation of up to three times the estimated workers’ compensation premium.
Florida introduced House Bill 1049, which will provide an additional $1.5 million in salary adjustments to its judges of workers’ compensation claims.
Florida State Senator Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg) introduced a new bill that would allow fast electric bicycles and e-bikes to access the same sidewalks and bike paths as traditional bicycles and pedal-assist electric versions.
SB 914 passed in the Florida Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance. The bill will prevent attorneys from applying fee multipliers in property cases except in “rare or exceptional cases based on evidence showing that competent counsel could not have otherwise been retained in a reasonable manner.” Fee multipliers are meant to act as an incentive for attorneys to take on challenging, high-risk litigation.
The Florida Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senate Bill 1668 that will create a new standard based on “usual and customary” charges or the amount that a commercial or governmental health insurer would pay for medical services and treatment when determining medical damages from personal injury or wrongful death cases. The new standard would prevent attorneys from inflating costs in claims.
HB 169 was filed in Virginia. The bill aims to expand occupational disease presumption laws to cover corrections officers.
Lawmakers in Colorado introduced HB 1089, which would make it illegal for employers to terminate employees who engage in lawful off-duty activities, such as smoking marijuana or consuming alcohol. The bill asserts “that the prohibition on termination for lawful off-duty activities includes activities that are lawful under state law, even if not lawful under federal law.”
Washington introduced similar legislation. House Bill 2740 would make it unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire a prospective employee who tests positive for marijuana if its use is legal.
SB 6122 was filed in Washington and would require staffing agencies that provide temporary workers to review the health and safety training practices and provide free hazard training before work begins.
Washington also introduced SB 6281, a new version of Sen. Reuven Carlyle’s (D-Seattle) previously-failed privacy act for the state. The new proposal would govern companies’ collection and sale of people’s private digital information and apply to entities that conduct business in the state and control or process data for at least 100,000 consumers.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed AB 1924/SB 2930 into law, which required the commissioner of the Department of Banking and Insurance to waive the initial insurance producer licensing fee for any New Jersey resident veteran who has received an honorable discharge from a branch of the active or reserve component of the U.S. Armed Forces. Veterans are still required to pass the licensing examination and fulfill any other requirements for their licensure.
“PIANJ thanks the governor and the members of the state Legislature who supported this legislation,” PIANJ President Bruce Blum said in a statement. “PIANJ is grateful to those who serve our country, and it is honored to have former military men and women join the ranks of the professional, independent agency system. Our association feels it is important to support military veterans as they embark on the next phase of their careers.”
Oklahoma will consider two new bills aimed at making workplaces safer:
- SB 1869: This bill would require employers that directly provide services to clients and are licensed by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to create a workplace prevention program and crisis response plan for their workers. Employers would also be required to establish a system to record all threats and incidents of workplace violence, distribute a written plan to all workers, and put together a training program for responding to workplace violence and crisis.
- SB 3965: This bill would require hotels to provide employees who work alone with a panic button. It also requires hotel employers to create protocols for and provide training on how to respond if a panic button is used.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma also filed a new bill that would regulate drone use at the state-level and implement a test and permitting system for commercial drone operators.
Senate Bill 30 was introduced in the Maryland legislature and would criminalize the possession of ransomware if a person intends to use it maliciously.
The New Mexico House Consumer & Public Affairs Committee passed House Bill 156. The “chop shop” bill would make it a felony to dismantle unlawfully obtained motor vehicles and sell or purchase illegally obtained components.
“While New Mexico has made significant progress in combating the auto theft rate in the past couple of years, there is still more work to put the state’s auto theft rates on par with the rest of the country,” said Howard Handler, government affairs director for the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), in a statement. “This bill will provide law enforcement one more tool to combat vehicle thefts by providing officers with the right criminal statutes to deter and prosecute these thieves and help dry up demand for stolen vehicles.”
Alabama lawmakers prefiled HB 44, which would provide workers’ compensation benefits to emergency response team members, including law enforcement officers, paramedics, emergency dispatchers, and emergency medical technicians, who suffer from an occupational mental illness or PTSD that has arisen out of and in the course of employment.
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