How many times since Katrina have you said, there ought to be a law and gone on to explain? Plenty, I’m certain if you live in one of Mississippi’s three coastal counties.
This is your chance. The 2009 session of the Mississippi Legislature is heading toward its first major deadline. According to the Timetable published on the Website for the Mississippi Legislature, next Tuesday, February 3rd, is the deadline for Committees of the House and Senate to pass bills that were introduced in each Chamber. In other words, bills introduced in the House must pass the appropriate House Committees and Senate Committees, likewise, must pass bills introduced there.
Since insurance is the concerned of the slabbed, you’ll want to start by looking over the legislation referred to the House Insurance Committee and the Senate Insurance Committee.
Bills are listed in a three-column format:
- Left Column: Bill number linked to the the text of the bill as introduced.
- Center Column: Short-title with date introduced and Committee assignment(s) below linked to a history of the legislation.
- Right Column: Primary author/co-author
Click on the links for Senator Baria’s Policyholder Bill of Rights so you’ll know what to expect when reading other bills:
Left Column: SB2386
Center Column: Missississippi Insurance Consumer Policyholder Bill of Rights; create01/08 S Referred to Insurance/Elections
Right Column: Baria
When you click on “Baria” you will see a listing of the legislation he has authored or co-authored thus far during the Session. In the upper right corner below the member’s name is a link to the author’s biography, Senator Baria in this example, including occupation and contact information.
Several of the insurance bills are “double referred” meaning they were assigned to two Committees and must pass both by next Tuesday. Review the lists naming Senate Committees and members and House Committees and members and find the appropriate Committee.
If you want to find the Committees your Senator or Representative is serving on, look for his or her name on the list of the Members of the House of Representatives with linked biography or Members of the Senate with linked biography.
Just a few more links and I’m done – and ready for any questions.
Daily Action Reports Exactly what its name implies
Bill Status (MS) Again, exactly what the name implies – but with lots of search options including Select a Measure. Type in the bill number of the bill you are tracking and you’ll be linked to the current history – typing the Code section will work as well, but it’s a little early for that to be helpful.
Lobbyist A directory of lobbyist searchable by name of either lobbyist or client.
Mississippi Code (law) A searchable web version of State laws.
Questions?
No question but an observation. Here are the people that lobby for State Farm in Mississippi. For truth in advertising sake they really ought to take down honest Abe’s picture and replace it with a $100 dollar bill.
sop
I wish you all the success in your dealings with your state’s legislators. However, don’t forget about the upcoming issue of renewing or extending the NFIP in March by our Congress.
Flooded homeowners are not the only victims in this debacle. The NFIP was supposed to protect the National Treasury, it has failed miserably.
There are so many issues with this program it is incredible that it has survived at all. Untill you realize that it has become a cash cow for the insurance industry.
My compliments to all your authors for providing a quality and superb forum for this disaster called the NFIP. Although my personal perspective on this issue is more from the premium side rather than the claims end, SLABBED has been the inspiration to start my own blog. I will try to attain reach the same high standars and quality evident in SLABBED.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr SealedBeam for stopping in and for the very kind words. We are very happy you we’re moved to join us blogging on these issues.
We have NFIP re-authorization on our radars. We’ll have more on that next month. Meantime I’d encourage our readers to visit your new blog.
sop
Great post Seal.
I think it is very important to start your own blog on insurance issues. Insurance is one of the basic building blocks of our economy and is even more important than banking for economic development.
The focus in Washington right now is banking. Insurance has no tangible form so its presence is often overlooked. Blogs bring a consciousness to insurance which help society attend to the impact insurance has upon eonomic and more importantly community development.
We down here in the land of slabb’s(not sure of spelling for this new word or many older ones for that matter) know one thing about insurance. We know what happens when insurance is removed from a community—NOTHING. Without insurance nothing happens.
Keep that in mind as you form your blog, you are helping make more visible the most import building block of our society. Insurance. Good luck on your adventure.
Thank you Nowdy for this great post. Although the legislative process is tangible, it is also confusing to voters.
Your post is a real roadmap to the legislative maze which opens up the process to the voters. The post is amazing or should I say demazing?
It helps us take the written word and use it to access our legislative branch in a manner the Greeks would certainly admire.
A representive democracy can be conceived of as being only as effective as the people it represents. If our government is not working properly than perhaps it is us who are not working it properly. I thank you for helping me in my own efforts to work my government more effectively and look forward to meeting with our good elected officials tommor in Jackson. I will let you and SOP know how it goes when I get back to slabbed.
PS– representative—not representive. I’m sure there are more misspelled or misgrammered words and phases—but alas I am getting better…
You’re welcome Steve and not to worry about the errors – it just means you think faster than you can type and that’s a far better problem to have than the opposite.
Look forward to your report on tomorrow’s meeting.
Steve;
Thanks for the thought provoking post. My quest has always been a search for equity rather than one of elimination or avoidance.
The NFIP was established for all the right reasons. However, it appears to have degenerated into a bureaucratic form of taxation based on information and processes which are marginally accurate at best.
Just last Friday the National Research Council released a report titled “Mapping The Zone: Improving Flood Map Accuracy” . It is a thorough study of all efforts that went into the old and original maps and the technology available to correct all deficiencies discovered on those maps. The vast majority of metadata relating to flood risk does not meet FEMA’S own standards of accuracy. And computer models used to process all that data are far from comprehensive.
Combined with the “less than accurate” testimony from representatives of the NFIP, the insurance industry and mortgage companies to our elected officials at both the state and national levels makes for a disaster of its own.
Flood insurance is a good idea but its current incarnation at the NFIP is an economic disaster and a political trainwreck.