The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors last month put forward a resolution asking state legislators to address the home insurance crisis in California.
Chair of the Board and Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe discussed the complex issue with Gary Daigneault on last week’s Z107.7 Up Close Show. She broke down the problem, which she said is impacting Morongo Basin residents and described the intended impact of the board’s resolution.
Dawn Rowe: “One of the top complaints I hear from constituents is that I can’t get fire insurance for my home, or the rates on my insurance plan have grown exponentially.
We’ve tried to work with state legislators, we’ve said to them that folks in the mountains and the desert are struggling to get and keep fire insurance. Can you help us? We have an elected office at the state level called the Insurance Commissioner, his name is Ricardo Lara, and he is sympathetic to the problem.
But it’s a multi-pronged problem, with the first element being the executive branch, the governor, the legislature, and the insurance commissioner.
One of the main issues is that it’s a regulatory issue in the state of California. We do not allow insurance companies to use catastrophic mapping to determine their rates. We force them to use the loss for the last 20 years and that data only.
That limitation means that insurance companies are choosing not to do business in our state.
Our resolution, put forward by all of the County Supervisors, asks these entities to sit down and find a happy medium, because we are driving business out and our homeowners are suffering. We are asking regulators to look at their regulations, and understand the impact that they are having on our residents.”
Listen to the full interview with Dawn Rowe below:
