Florida Bill Would Make Insurance Commissioner An Elected Position

A bill introduced by State Sen. Annette Taddeo, D, would make Florida the 12th state to elect its insurance commissioner.

The bill introduced this month would make the commissioner of insurance a member of the governor's cabinet.

Thirty-nine states have appointed insurance commissioners. In 37 of those states, appointments are made by the governor, and in the remaining two, they are appointed by a commission. Florida is one of those two states.

If the bill becomes law, the first elected commissioner of insurance of Florida would be voted on in November 2022 and assume office in January 2023.

In other insurance-related news from the Sunshine State, courtesy of Clyde & Co., a global law firm:

Privacy Legislation

Identical Consumer Data Privacy bills introduced in both the Florida House (HB 963) and Senate (SB 1670) continues the momentum from 2019 across several states to grant consumers greater control over their personal data.

Twelve states introduced consumer data privacy laws in 2019, many of those modeled after the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which became effective on Jan. 1, 2020, and is widely considered the broadest and most sweeping privacy and data security law enacted in the United States to date.

Of those states with legislation in 2019, only Mississippi's was a near-clone of the CCPA, with the rest being narrower in scope. Florida's law would be similarly narrower than the CCPA and notable differences would include:

• A prohibition on using public records data obtained from state agencies to market or solicit products or services without the person's affirmative (electronic or paper) consent, whereas the CCPA excludes publicly available information from the definition of personal information.
• An "operator" is an owner or operator of a website or online service who collects and maintains information on Florida consumers for commercial purposes, which varies from the CCPA's application to businesses of a certain revenue threshold or data sale activities that collect PI of California residents.

Check out the rest of the differences between the Florida bill and the CCPA at Clyde & Co.