Phil Ammann
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty is reportedly on the chopping block as the Rick Scott administration continues to attempt to put its new team on the field as it enters a second term.
McCarty’s alleged transgression? Actually having the audacity to protect Florida’s insurance-buying public by not rubberstamping every self-serving scheme insurance lobbyists try to shove through the regulatory process. McCarty has for years been viewed as one of the savviest and most even-handed public servants in one of Tallahassee’s most challenging and important jobs.
For the Scott administration, the timing couldn’t be worse.
A scandal exploded across Tallahassee on Tuesday afternoon after Scott admitted that Gerald Bailey did not voluntarily resign as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but was forced out against his will. Under Florida law, the governor cannot fire the head of FDLE without the support of at least one other member of the Cabinet.
Similar to that, current state law says that the insurance commissioner can only be appointed or removed with the “Yes” votes of both the governor and chief financial officer and, of course, one other Cabinet official.
The key vote then is CFO Jeff Atwater. He has been reluctant to get rid of McCarty, but reportedly a deal has been made with the Governor’s Office in which McCarty has been traded away for Atwater getting his way on a separate high-level appointment. If this is true, it’s politics at its worst.
Driving the McCarty situation, sources say, is pressure on the Scott administration from a prominent lobbyist who specializes in insurance matters. This lobbyist was one of the Scott campaign’s top fundraising bundlers and played a prominent role is raising money for Scott’s inaugural.
It’s hard to get past the irony that four years ago Scott was talking about the “Tallahassee lobbyists crying in their cocktails” when he was elected, and now after his re-election he seems willing to oust dedicated public servants while those same lobbyists are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s hard to look at the organizational chart of the Governor’s Office and not wonder whether the prominent role of The People at the top is not just another cynical sham that obscures the identity of those who are really flipping the switches on the Plaza Level in the Capitol.
And, with McCarty, we’re not just talking about an ordinary bureaucrat. According to a release from Scott’s office when it first appointed McCarty:
McCarty’s work within the National Association of Insurance Commissioners ensures Florida consumers and insurers have a voice on national insurance issues. He served as President of the NAIC in 2012, and achieved the organization’s key initiatives which included: approving changes to the Actuarial Guideline 38 (AG38); and the adoption of the Valuation Manual for implementing Principle Based Reserving. Florida is participating on over 50 committees, task forces and work groups in 2014. McCarty also serves as Secretary of the Non-Admitted Insurance Multi-State Agreement (NIMA) group.
He has elevated Florida’s international presence by serving as an NAIC representative on the International Association of Insurance Supervisors’ (IAIS) Executive and Technical Committees and is the co-vice chair of the IAIS Executive Committee.
McCarty has been privileged to testify on several occasions before the U.S. Congress on a number of insurance related matters.
McCarty and the Office received the 2010 Esprit de Corps Award for outstanding service to the NAIC. He was selected for the Spirit of Independence Award in 2011 from the National Association of Health Underwriters for his work to preserve the role of health insurance agents in light of federal health care reforms. He was also selected as the 2008 Regulator of the Year by LexisNexis.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam also have a critical decision to make. One of them might play the role of the critical third vote needed to fire McCarty. If you believe their public comments this week they were duped by the governor when Bailey was canned, one can sense barely concealed outrage on their part at the shoddy handling by the Governor’s Office. Their response to the push to fire McCarty will tell us a lot about whether the Cabinet system acts as a real check on the misuse of executive power or whether they’re just another minor annoyance to be placated and ultimately dismissed by Team Scott.
