Special Panel on Insurance Reform Planned

In a last-ditch effort to pass auto insurance reform this year, especially a low-cost policy that would meet minimum state requirements, legislative leaders said Monday they are naming a special committee to come up with a package before the Legislature adjourns Sept. 13.

One sign that the effort may have a high priority is that both Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) are appointing themselves to the six-member conference committee.

Under committee procedures, an innocuous bill already near passage will be used as the vehicle for the reform, with details of the proposed package to be plugged into it. Often, such bills do not come together until the last night of the legislative session.

The Legislature has been hung up for years on proposals for a bare-bones insurance policy that might cost $220 to $300 a year. It remains to be resolved whether such a policy would be for poor motorists or all motorists.

The obstacles are still considerable. Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said last Friday that there has been no agreement at all on what would be in the compromise, and there is no assurance that Gov. Pete Wilson, whose signature would be needed, will participate in the negotiations.

On Monday, Wilson spokesman Franz Wisner said Wilson is not willing to participate in such an effort because he still supports a defeated no-fault bill. Wilson has suggested it might become the basis of an initiative next year.

“We don’t want to water down no-fault at all,” said Wisner.

Besides Brown and Roberti, the committee will include Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who wrote the bill under consideration, and Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton), author of that defeated no-fault bill, according to Bob Forsyth, a spokesman for Roberti.

Assembly members will be Paul Horcher (R-Whittier) and Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles), the chairman of the Assembly’s insurance committee, Forsyth said.

Over recent weeks, Garamendi has been holding closed-door discussions on the package with representatives of all the major special interests in the insurance issue, including the insurance industry, trial lawyers, physicians, chiropractors and consumers.

Garamendi and Brown have opposed the no-fault bill and are plugging for a more comprehensive solution, which would include limits on medical costs, auto safety and repair provisions and compulsory arbitration of many disputes. The insurance industry has sought a package that would push lawyers out of the system, while trial lawyers oppose that.

In the absence of a basic policy, minimum auto insurance costs have soared to $1,000 or more in urban areas, and millions of motorists are going uninsured. Under a bare-bones policy, motorists with assets to protect could buy supplementary coverage. Other states with such plans have found that a large majority do.