Florida lawmakers aren’t happy.
They're demanding to know why they didn't know about a state report that shows insurance companies transferred billions of dollars to affiliate companies at the same time they claimed financial losses.
At a Friday morning House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee hearing prompted by the findings from The Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald, lawmakers vented their frustration.
“How does the office justify receiving this report that seemed to indicate $14 billion went to affiliates, and they just dropped the ball because they were too busy?” said Rep. Hillary Cassel, a Dania Beach Republican and subcommittee vice chair.
Her comment was directed at Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky, who had stressed that the report written in 2022 was “very incomplete.” He said it failed to provide a “comprehensive analysis” of what had truly occurred between the studied years, from 2017 to 2019.
The analysis was enough for House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, to begin the legislative session demanding accountability from insurance companies.
Perez recently contrasted the report with how the “insurance industry came to the Legislature and said without sweeping reforms, (insurance) companies could not compete in Florida.”
He’s referring to a December 2022 special session that resulted in laws that Democrats called "bailouts.” It has reduced litigation against insurance companies.
While Perez said he believes these changes are having a positive effect, the report is still a sore point for him — and lawmakers at the hearing.
On Friday, they questioned Yaworsky and former insurance commissioner David Altmaier about why the legislature wasn’t alerted to the report.
The state Office of Insurance Regulation received information early in 2022, from an outside firm, Risk & Regulatory Consulting LLC.
But Altmaier said it was still in draft form by the end of that year.
“That's an area where I wish I had done a better job,” Altmaier said, adding he “should have probably checked with my staff to make sure things were going.”
He left his position soon after that 2022 session. Altmaier said he had assumed the work on the report would continue after his absence.
“In hindsight, if I had known how everything was going to play out, perhaps I would have given [Yaworsky] a call,” he said.
Yaworsky, meanwhile, said he didn’t know about the report until late 2024, when he heard about a reporter’s public records request for it.
An attorney for the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald reached out, as the request was sent around two years before. Yaworsky has since created a “much clearer process” for requests, he said.
Yaworsky told lawmakers he didn't completely know why the report was never finished.
“I think it just got wound up in a very overwhelming time,” he said.
What lawmakers said after the hearing
Lawmakers aren't satisfied.
“We still have to do some digging,” said Brad Yeager, subcommittee chair and a Republican from New Port Richey, after the hearing. “This is just scratching the surface. This was step one in this process.”
More hearings are expected, he said.
“What I was satisfied with: If you notice, we were all, Democrats and Republicans, concerned about pretty much the same thing,” said Representative Kevin Chambliss of Homestead, the Democratic ranking member of the subcommittee.
If you have any questions about the legislative session, you can ask the Your Florida team by clicking here.
This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
