RALEIGH -- Hiding among the thousands of items in the state Senate's budget proposal was a little hand grenade that would have politically eviscerated the state's chief insurance regulator.
Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, a low-key former legislator elected to a job that sounds as if it should come with a pocket protector, freaked.
Goodwin called reporters to a hastily organized news conference to decry the provision, which would have completely stripped his authority to set insurance rates in North Carolina. The measure seemed to just appear in the budget: At first, no one claimed to know anything about it.
Using phrases like "shocking" and "irresponsible government," Goodwin said that if passed, the bill would surely cause insurance rates to rise throughout the state.
"Working people do not need this piled on them," he said.
Shortly after his news conference, the item was removed from the Senate's $19 billion budget plan, which is being debated this week.
As the details of the budget proposal became clearer Tuesday, various interest groups spun themselves into varying degrees of tizzy.
But it was Goodwin who spent Tuesday at the highest level of alert. Later in the day, Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, said the item came from his office, although he said he did not intend for it to show up in the budget. Basnight said that homeowners' insurance rates are too high for coastal counties and that he intends to strip Goodwin's role in setting coastal insurance rates.
Basnight said he intends to push this session a bill that would create a new rate bureau to set rates for the coast.
"I believe we have to create some fairness, and that's not occurring," Basnight said.
According to figures provided by Basnight's office, rates on the coast are more than 3.5 times those in Wake County. Basnight said previous hurricanes have demonstrated that inland parts of the state are at just as much risk from hurricanes.
Goodwin said Basnight's proposal would drive insurers from the state.
Meanwhile, the industry says they're both wrong. Jennifer Cohen, executive director of the Insurance Federation of North Carolina, said the state is the only one in which regulators set rates. In all other states, insurers set their rates subject to regulation - the system the industry favors. But if the industry had to choose, Cohen said Goodwin has helped make the insurance industry competitive for consumers.
