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Past-president of the KW Realtors Assn Michael Larsen, left, County Commissioner Heather Carruthers, Congressman Joe Garcia and FIRM Executive Director Chic Wagner at the Flood Insurance forum.

 Forum: ‘Insurance is new civil rights issue’

Keys must stay mobilized, make noise

BY C.S. GILBERT

FEATURE WRITER

“Insurance is a civil rights issue,” said Fair Insurance Rates for Monroe (FIRM) Executive Director Chic Wagner, panelist at the recent Flood Insurance Forum at the Harvey Government Center.

     Sponsored by the year-old Lower Keys League of Women Voters, the forum panel also included Congressman Joe Garcia, Commissioner Heather Carruthers, not incidentally a founder of FIRM, and Michael Larsen, former president of the Key West Realtors Association and chair of the Sustainability Advisory Board. The forum convened against the back drop of that morning’s Citizen headline, “Obama signs off on flood legislation/Garcia praises local efforts to get relief.”

     Wagner joined FIRM in 2012, “new to the table, new to the issues, new to the players,” he said. But with his “civil rights background as a lawyer in Boston, I said ‘Wow! Insurance is the new civil rights issue of the 21st century!’” The group did their homework and was “able to come to the table with substantive data and solutions,” Wagner said. Vitally important, though, was a mobilized citizenry.

     “This is an amazing community,” he said. “We asked you to join FIRM, you joined; we asked you to sign petitions, you signed; we asked you to tell us your stories and you did.”

     The legislation President Obama signed Friday takes a small step toward fixing the damage done by the disastrous Biggert-Waters legislation which, in seeking solvency for the National Flood Insurance Program, which was rendered “$18 billion in the red” by Hurricane Katrina, placed an onerous burden on homeowners in coastal areas, Carruthers explained.

      While “increasing penalties on banks for letting people drop their insurance” and dropping annual residential rate increases from 25 percent to 5 to 15 percent, the recent law unfortunately did not address issues such as risk and actuarial inaccuracy, Carruthers said. “It’s not a science; it’s really an art,” she said. “If you have three actuaries, you’ll have four quotes.” FIRM will be asking residents to open their homes for new inspections which, it is hoped, will result in determinations of actual risk.

     “Of the homes afflicted, 11,000 are here in the Keys,” Larsen said, and home values have “a major influence the economy. “Economy thrives on stability and Biggert-Waters is the antithesis of this,” he pointed out. “We’re in the midst of a fragile recovery. Rate increases destabilize the economy again.”

     The Keys’ most effective weapon, however, is the involvement of the community. Garcia spoke on an early experience as a commissioner of the Public Service Commission seeking input about taking the 305 telephone area code from South Florida. There were six people at a Miami hearing — and 200 in Key West. “That kind of activism makes a huge difference,” he said.

     “This is a bipartisan issue, a nonpolitical issue, a human issue,” someone—I believe Carruthers—said. “Monroe can make a big noise for a small place.”

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