The best laid plans of legislators and billionaires

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Photo by Antonio Cuellar on Unsplash

This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter and podcast devoted to producing independent journalism about Florida politics, with an emphasis on the ways that big businesses and other special interests influence public policy in the state. Seeking Rents is produced by veteran investigative journalist Jason Garcia, and it is free to all. But you can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber and/or by making a one-time donation.

Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

In mid-June, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law requiring Citizens Property Insurance — the state’s public nonprofit insurance company for Floridians who can’t find affordable coverage anywhere else — to push condo owners into higher-priced private insurance.

The new law requires Citizens to launch a pair of new programs — known as “commercial lines clearinghouses” — through which private insurance companies could swoop in and take over Citizens policies covering condo buildings and business properties. One clearinghouse would offer up policies to standard insurance companies; the other would peddle policies to much more loosely regulated “surplus lines” insurers.

Senate Bill 1028 passed Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature on votes of 88-19 and 33-1. And it was written, records obtained by Seeking Rents show, partly by lobbyists for Ryan Specialty Holdings Inc., an insurance broker run by a billionaire Republican megadonor that was angling for a contract to run the surplus lines clearinghouse.

The Chicago-based company made $750,000 in Florida campaign contributions shortly before this year’s legislative session began, which Ryan’s lobbyists then doled out to lawmakers and other key leaders in Tallahassee.

But suddenly the whole scheme seems to be falling part.

The first surprise came on Sept. 1, when Citizens announced its intention to award the contract to manage the surplus lines clearinghouse not to Ryan but to another vendor: An entity backed by Brown & Brown, a big insurance broker based in Daytona Beach (whose chairman, J. Hyatt Brown, is a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives — and another billionaire who is a substantial campaign contributor in his own right).

Ryan, which finished as the runner-up in the procurement, initially signaled that it would protest the decision.

But then another blow came last week, when the Office of Insurance Regulation announced that it was withholding approval of the entire clearinghouse program — both the clearinghouse for regular insurers and the one for surplus lines insurers — because it could not meet a mandatory approval deadline.

The denial has left the entire idea in limbo.

There’s a certain irony here. Both Citizens, in selecting Brown & Brown over Ryan Specialty, and OIR, in refusing to approve the entire clearinghouse program, cited a rushed procurement process and tight regulatory timelines imposed by Senate Bill 1028.

That accelerated process was pushed, at least in part, by lobbyists for Ryan Specialty — perhaps because the company, which has been developing a platform it wanted to sell to Citizens for more than a year, thought forcing regulators to move very quickly might give it an edge over potential competitors who didn’t have the same kind of head start.

Now, it’s possible that all of this gets resolved before Jan. 1, which is when Citizens is supposed to have these two clearinghouse programs up and running under Senate Bill 1028. Citizens has already signaled that it wants to continue working on it.

“I look forward to the opportunity to discuss these issues soon with the hope of developing an orderly plan for regulatory approval that meets our shared obligations to keep this program on track,” Brian Newman, Citizens’ general counsel, wrote in a Sept. 16 response the Office of Insurance Regulation.

And, of course, there’s always the chance that Ryan Specialty goes running back to the Florida Legislature to try and re-rig the rules.

But here’s hoping this entire concept never gets off the ground.

Because as unseemly as the process was — a rent-seeking vendor writing a law to create program that it would then get a contract to run — the underlying concept is even worse.

Under this law, condo owners whose buildings are insured through Citizens would get kicked out of the public nonprofit company against their will if another insurer were to offer its own policy through one of these clearinghouses — even if that policy was more expensive.

A surplus lines insurer, for instance, could offer a policy priced as much as 15 percent above what Citizens charges — and that would immediately disqualify the condo building for any coverage through Citizens.

The inevitable result is that some untold number of condo residents across Florida would end up being forced to pay more to protect their buildings against hurricanes and other risks — and they could end up paying that money to an insurance company they never wanted to do business with in the first place.

This is one of those bills — and votes — to remember the next time you see an ad from a state representative or senator who is running for re-election and claiming to care about “affordability.”

The Seeking Rents roadshow

Seeking Rents has been popping up in all sorts of places around Florida the last month or so:

• I participated in a panel discussion and town hall on data centers organized by Suncoast Searchlight (watch here)

• I participated in a panel discussion on Amendment 3 organized by the League of Women Voters of Orange County (watch here)

• I moderated a town hall on Amendment 3 organized by Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson and state Rep. Leonard Spencer (watch here)

• I joined Billy Corben of #BecauseMiami for a discussion about the Hope Florida scandal (watch here)

• I joined Anne Schindler of First Coast Connect for a discussion about Amendment 3 (watch here)

• And I joined Steve Mort of Talking Central Florida for a discussion about the Hope Florida scandal (watch here)

We’ve also got several more appearances lined up over the next month.

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This Saturday (Sept. 24) I’m going to be giving a talk to journalists at the Investigative Reporters & Editors’ “Watchdog Workshop” at the University of Central Florida. Registration information and other details are available here.

On Oct. 1, I’ll be part of a panel discussion on Amendment 3 in Orlando hosted by the Urban Land Institute Central Florida. Find more details and purchase tickets at this link.

I’ll in Sarasota on Oct. 10 for a pair of events. In the morning, I’ll join WSLR News’ “Talk of the Town” for a discussion about the growing influence of PACs and dark money in local elections (more info here). And in the afternoon, I’ll speak to the Social Justice Alliance of the Florida Suncoast as part of a community event focused on resource extraction in Florida, from data center development to public school privatization (more info here).

Then I’ll be in Clermont on Oct. 15 for another panel discussion on Amendment 3. This one is being organized by Braver Angels. Tickets are free and you can register at this link.

We’ve got a few more pre-election events in the works, too. Look for additional announcements soon.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.

They locked human beings inside tiny cages

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees were held in cages the size of a phone booth (Florida Trib)

See also: Officials called Alligator Alcatraz’s ‘box’ a hoax. Detainees called it torture (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: Florida AG Candidate Jose Javier Rodríguez wants probe of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ after DHS findings (WLRN)

See also: Alligator Alcatraz report raises questions about Florida’s Deportation Depot (Miami Herald) ($)

See also: Doral mayor says city can’t stop ICE operations as businesses report 70% drop in sales (CBS News Miami)

See also: Where Donalds and Jolly stand on partnering police with ICE (Miami Herald) ($)

Using taxpayer money to defend people who took taxpayer money

Exclusive: Taxpayers paid nearly $200,000 in legal fees for a witness the Hope Florida grand jury found “not credible” (Florida Trident)

See also: Florida’s Attorney General race plays out in the shadow of the Hope Florida scandal (WPLG Local 10)

See also: “A black box”: Watchdog hopes to pry loose Hope Florida court records (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

Duke Energy gave $500K to Byron Donalds

How much could data centers cost Duke Energy Florida customers? It’s redacted (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

See also: Debate about data centers emerges in Donalds-Jolly gubernatorial race (Florida Phoenix)

See also: Orange County closer to temporarily banning data centers (Orlando Weekly)

See also: St. Johns County denies 4,462-acre Davis agricultural enclave (Jacksonville Daily Record)

The Florida Senate doing the insurance industry’s dirty work

How Florida fights to hide insurers’ finances (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

See also: Jolly and Donalds clash on property insurance proposals (Florida Phoenix)

The faces of Florida extremism

Exclusive: He Marched With Nazis in Charlottesville. Now He’s Expected to Join the Florida Legislature. (Talking Points Memo)

See also: Florida judge who questioned surrogacy appointed to appeals court by DeSantis (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

See also: Trio of powerful DeSantis appointments will face voters for the first time (Florida Trib)

Perspectives

Disney backs Uthmeier — and anyone else who can do Mickey favors (Orlando Sentinel) ($)

Florida county officials try to eliminate public comment on development (Florida Phoenix)

Data centers will only cost Floridians [REDACTED] dollars (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

The Hope Florida scandal shows that the state’s priorities have to change (Tampa Bay Times) ($)

Florida put migrants in literal boxes, then called them ‘calming areas’ (Miami Herald) ($)

Mark Woods: 43 years, thousands of stories, one last column (Florida Times-Union) ($)