Insurance Commissioner Job Should Remain Elective

State Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, an independent from San Francisco, started out with a reasonable idea, introducing legislation this year to prohibit insurance companies from contributing to candidates for state insurance commissioner. But when the Senate rejected that measure, Kopp turned the idea into a bad one: to revert to the old days and make the job appointive again, which would overturn a decision made by California voters in approving Proposition 103 in 1988.

Kopp amended his new idea into a Senate-passed bill, SB 225, which comes up for a critical test before the Assembly Insurance Committee in Sacramento on Tuesday. The measure would have the commissioner appointed by the governor, with a two-thirds vote in the Senate required for confirmation. That virtually assures that anyone opposed by the insurance industry would have difficulty winning approval.

Even if the bill was approved, it would have to be put before California voters since it would reverse a voter-approved initiative. That’s some comfort, but why wait? It’s a bad measure and the Assembly committee should move now to stop it in its tracks.

A major impetus behind Proposition 103 was discontent on the part of consumer groups with the industry-friendly work of then-Commissioner Roxani Gillespie. The first elected commissioner was Democrat John Garamendi, followed by Republican incumbent Chuck Quackenbush, who received more than $2 million in industry contributions in the 1994 election campaign.

Quackenbush’s industry support spurred consumer groups to urge Kopp to sponsor his original bill, which got only 16 votes in the Senate, five short of passage.

Kopp argues that under the new campaign finance law, insurance companies can still have a major impact on elections, even if they cannot contribute large amounts directly to candidates for commissioner. Maybe, but it would be better to have a commissioner subject to broad public pressure and beholden to the voters rather than to one person in the governor’s office.