BALDWIN COUNTY, Ala. — This is the first of two stories on a local grassroots effort to address the mounting insurance crisis in Baldwin and Mobile counties that has arisen since Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Members of the Homeowners’ Hurricane Insurance Initiative (HHII) Rally Committee recently passed out a thousand flyers in Foley on a Saturday. The purpose was to educate citizens on how a “Transparency” bill introduced in the Alabama House and Senate would dramatically improve insurance rates along the coastal sections of Baldwin and Mobile counties.

In the end, however, it was Alabama legislators who were not interested in being educated on the bill or crisis. The Transparency bill, introduced in both legislative houses on March 11, failed to get out of committee after two hearings were conducted by House and Senate committees.

“I have never attended a public hearing so lacking in hearing,” said Dan Hanson, who is on staff with HHII, in referring to the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee’s hearing on March 31.

Hanson describes the tone of the meeting as one of “impatience … grimacing tolerance … (and) noisy.”

“Even though we delivered information and documents I’m confident they (legislators) have never heard or seen, no one asked a question,” Hanson said this week.

“Not one ounce of curiosity. I personally believe none of those who voted against the Transparency bill could tell you today what it required accurately and why it is significant for both us and all the people upstate.”

Stan Virden of Gulf Shores was one of those who attended the Senate hearing on the bill. He describes it pretty much the same way as Hanson in a e-mail to Sen. Trip Pittman of Fairhope, who co-sponsored the bill in the Senate.

“Our experience with the senate committee a few days ago was convincing evidence that Alabama is ruled not by democratic process, but by a self-serving oligarchy,” Virden wrote.

“I can think of no better argument for constitutional reform by a citizens’ re-write committee separate from the legislature. The hearing was a bad joke.”

Virden wished Pittman well in the latter’s attempts to “steer an honest course” but noted Pittman seems to be in a “small minority” in that regard.

The Transparency bill, which was introduced with bi-partisan support in both legislative houses, would have required the Department of Insurance to collect and publish claims and premium data on a county by county basis, something DOI currently does not do. HHII points to states such as Massachusetts and Missouri where those states’ DOI require insurance providers to provide annual statistical data by ZIP code.

“Last century there were 220 tornadoes in Alabama for every one direct hurricane hit,” said Sarah Harris, who chairs the HHII Rally Committee.

“When Hurricane Ivan hit, 65 of Alabama’s 67 counties were declared FEMA disaster counties. The DOI needs to collect this information so they and we can do all the math,” she said of making a determination as to whether coastal Alabama suffers more insurance losses than inland counties and areas.

Since Ivan in 2004 coastal property owners have seen insurance rates skyrocket in Baldwin and Mobile counties. Insurance companies have also cancelled coverage on 40,000 to 50,000 coastal property owners.

ENCOURAGING

According to Hanson, on March 15 the Montgomery lobbying firm Fine Geddie & Associates requested a hearing on House Bill 713, the Transparency bill. The House Banking and Insurance Committee set a hearing for Thursday, March 25.

“We learned about this hearing that Thursday, a couple of hours after it was over,” Hanson said, noting HHII was not called concerning the hearing, nor was the hearing on the committee’s Web site as late as 30 hours before the hearing.

“We don’t know when the announcement made it to the Web site,” Hanson said.

As for the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, it set a hearing for Wednesday, March 31. Hanson said HHII learned about it two days beforehand, and a dozen or so HHII members and members of the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce attended the hearing.

A vote to report the bill favorably out of committee was defeated 2-6. Sen. Ben Brooks of Mobile voted in favor of the bill as did Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale. Hanson said Brooks had six other insurance crisis bills that were on the committee calendar for a vote.

“They were voted down in exactly the same way,” Hanson said. “The vote was raw, constant no-no-no, no matter what.”

Both Hanson and Virden are critical of Sen. Lowell Barron, the Democrat from Fyffe in northeast Alabama.

“He was arrogant and lordly in a manner unbecoming a public sevant,” Virden said of Barron in his e-mail to Pittman.

According to Virden, Barron’s words during the hearing “revealed that he had no knowledge of the real situation, of the work that has gone into mitigating it, of the harm being done to the entire state, or of the quality of the citizens before him.”

Hanson said Barron’s “scolding” of the people from Lower Alabama who took the time to come to the hearing was “insulting.” As he puts it, Barron told them to stop picking on insurance companies and, if they don’t like what’s being done to them, to start their own insurance company.

Yet, Hanson said he is encouraged by the public hearing on the Transparency bill, in spite of what he called the “rudeness and lack of attention in the Senate. We all assumed the bill would be introduced and disappear in the fog. It has caught attention,” he said.

Pittman, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill along with Brooks and senators Rusty Glover and Democrat Vivian Figures, said this week that persistence is a key in matters such as this.

Is he optimistic about the bill or something akin to it? Pittman said he wouldn’t be in the Senate if he wasn’t optimistic.

“Specifically, I think there’s a chance but there is a lot of institutional insurance opposition to the bill,” he said, adding he doesn’t think the bill will get anywhere this year. As for next year, he said, “A lot depends on the composition of the body (Senate) for next year.”

Likewise, Pittman said that while the bill in its current form has “some merit,” he believes changes will be needed if it is to find support with lawmakers.

Meanwhile, HHII, which is under the auspices of ACT-II (All Churches Together, itself a grassroots faith-based group that addresses social problems in Baldwin County), continues to strategize and plan. Today, five states will have representatives of non-profit groups and organizations at a planning meeting in Biloxi, Miss., a conference organized by HHII and ACT-II. The conference focus will be the coastal homeowners’ insurance crisis.

HHII officials say that while five states have been participating in three months of phone calls concerning the Biloxi meeting, they want consumer groups from the “Mexican border to Maine” to participate and be educated on the issue. It’s the same thing they wanted recently for the Alabama Legislature.