Drive Planned to Spur Rate Rollbacks

The chairman of the Proposition 103 campaign, Harvey Rosenfield, announced Thursday that his Voter Revolt organization is launching a statewide drive to put pressure on Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie to order immediate rate rollbacks as called for in the measure.

Rosenfield accused Gillespie of “refusing to act” to dismiss what he termed “bogus” insurance company filings for exemptions from the rollbacks. He said that 1.2 million Californians would be canvassed in the next few weeks and asked to send Gillespie personal petitions demanding that she order the rollbacks.

A spokeswoman for the commissioner responded angrily:

“We are the insurance regulators. We are the professionals in this field. We are on the job for consumers. We are busy implementing a new regulatory system in California. And, quite frankly, we are tired of incessant, inaccurate and insulting criticism from back-seat drivers who have never been road-tested in regulation.”

The spokeswoman, Carey Fletcher, said that “the Department of Insurance has acted swiftly to implement Proposition 103 in a manner that best serves California policyholders. As outlined by the commissioner in June, final administrative decisions on the rollback issue and all cases filed by June 3 will be wrapped up before Nov. 8 when the prior rate approval system becomes effective in the state. We are on target.”

At a May 11 news conference, Gillespie, outlining her schedule, had promised to make all decisions on rollbacks by Nov. 8 and that the first rulings on individual companies would come by late July. As of Thursday, no decisions have been announced.

Rosenfield’s sharp criticism Thursday of the pace of Gillespie’s work followed by one day new demands on Gillespie for a stronger position against the insurance companies from a coalition of leading consumer and public-interest organizations. And just a week ago, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp came out with some suggestions of his own in this line.

Gillespie has dismissed the suggestions with increasingly sharp words. And it appears that a political confrontation is shaping up on Proposition 103 enforcement that will pit the Republican commissioner, a prospective candidate for the post next year, against a group of primarily Democratic critics.

Fletcher charged Thursday that there is another purpose behind Rosenfield’s announced canvass and a $500,000 “emergency” fund-raising effort to boost the drive for “rollbacks now.” She said the hidden agenda is to support the prospective candidacy for commissioner of Democrat Conway Collis, a member of the State Board of Equalization.

Collis, for his part, joined Rosenfield at his news conference and accused Gillespie of “nine months of inaction” on implementing Proposition 103 “that is a slap in the face of every California voter.”

On Wednesday, a group of organizations--including Voter Revolt, Consumers Union, California Common Cause, the Insurance Consumer Action Network and the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP--called on Gillespie to require the companies to provide extensive new information on how they set their rates in advance of hearings she has called on auto insurance pricing for mid-August.

In these hearings, as in those held in June, Gillespie will be seeking recommendations on how to implement parts of Proposition 103 requiring that a driver’s safety record, the number of miles driven and the years of driving experience be the paramount factors in setting rates, rather than the neighborhood-based pricing that now prevails.

The groups told Gillespie in a letter that unless she forces the companies to provide precise rating information, “it is unlikely that these (August) hearings will be any more productive than those held in June . . . (when) most insurers presented a series of arguments attempting to justify a ‘business as usual’ approach to rating.”