First elected insurance commish wants incumbent out | Thomas Elias

Think back: When was the last time you heard the former occupant of an important political office, state or national, declaim publicly that a successor of the same political party wasn't doing the job well and ought to be ousted?

If your answer is never, that would be correct. Jerry Brown has never criticized Gavin Newsom. During Donald Trump's first term as president, neither George W. Bush or his father George H.W. Bush said much about his performance.

But John Garamendi has changed that script. An eight-term Democratic congressman from a Central Valley district and the original elected insurance commissioner (he served from 1991 to 1995), Garamendi is sickened by what he's seeing from Ricardo Lara, the fellow Democrat who now holds the office.

He looked on silently for six years as Lara first took political contributions from the insurance companies he regulated, then was forced to return them. He also said nothing when Lara began kowtowing to those same companies by okaying extra-high premium increases.

But he's now had it. He's told a San Francisco Bay Area television station that Lara "should go" if he's unwilling to battle those same insurance companies.

And Lara is demonstrably not willing to fight the hand that fed him, the hand he's not supposed to hold in any affectionate way so long as he's in the office he now holds.

For example, when the insurance rates on a building directly next to a fire station in the hilly town of Portola Valley were raised 50 percent this year, Lara said nothing, did nothing to prevent it, even though its very location makes that structure about as fire-safe and risk-free as anyplace could be.

Garamendi pointed out that Lara, when a candidate in 2018, pronounced himself "leery" of insurance rate hikes unless customers were getting something in return, like more extensive coverage or guarantees of renewal.

But that's all gone by the wayside. Lara has finalized a plan to allow insurance companies to assess massive rate increases even in areas with no significant fire danger without making the concessions he had promised to require.

For example, he promised earlier this year that insurance companies would have to cover 85 percent of homes in wildfire areas (where policy cancellations have lately been rampant) in exchange for significantly higher rates. But the regulation he issued said that companies can instead opt to cover only 5 percent more homeowners than they do now.

"The commissioner lied," said the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group. "And companies don't even have to meet that 5 percent threshold; they can opt out… if they want," added the group's president, Jamie Court.

Lara's response was to say new rates will "reflect the risks of where we're living." But that's not true, either, since all homeowners will be paying more, even if they don't live in fire areas. Said one Santa Monica policy holder who has never filed a fire claim in more than 45 years of home ownership, "Any fire would have to cross an awful lot of city before it got to me, but my rates are going up anyway."

She is not alone. Meanwhile, some owners of city properties in sections of San Francisco with many older homes that have been remodeled in recent years (like Noe Valley and the Mission District) have seen their policies canceled even though few claims have been made in those districts.

That led Garamendi to say, "Over the last three years, I have observed that this commissioner is not willing to take the hard task and the necessary task to stand up to the insurance industry. If the commissioner is not willing to do that… then he's not doing his job and he should leave."

In short, the pioneering insurance regulator Garamendi is saying "Lara must go."

But there's no sign of that. As a candidate, Lara said that he was running because "California needs a strong defender, one who will stand up to bullies." But his predecessor finds he hasn't come close to doing that.

Which leads to an almost unprecedented political scene, with one Democratic party stalwart telling another to depart.