April 28, 2010 Baldwincountynow.com
Christian Coalition getting involved in insurance crisis.
Chairman says meetings with gubernatorial candidates will be held.

FOLEY, Ala. — The Christian Coalition of Alabama is taking up the cause of thousands of coastal property owners who are facing rising insurance rates and wind and hail cancellations.

Dr. Randy Brinson, chairman of Montgomery-based CCA, said Friday that between now and the political primaries in June he hopes to spend time with some of the gubernatorial candidates and discuss the insurance crisis that has plagued tens of thousands of homeowners in Baldwin and Mobile counties since 2004.

Brinson said the meetings would hopefully be held at his condo in Baldwin County. Among those he said have shown interest in meeting with CCA and discussing the insurance crisis are Tim James, Robert Bentley and Bill Johnson. Bradley Byrne has not said he would sit down and discuss the issue with CCA to date, Brinson said.

CCA is a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote and apply Christian principles to public policy matters on both the state and federal levels.

Asked why CCA has chosen to address the insurance crisis which began locally with the landfall of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Brinson said there is a Biblical mandate to do so.

“(Jesus) met the immediate needs of people. We’re looking at the immediate needs people have,” he said, noting that families losing homes because of rising insurance rates qualifies in that regard.

“Baldwin County produces so much needed revenue for the state ... if it fails we’d be mired even longer in recession,” Brinson said.

Grassroots groups such as ACT-II (All Churches Together) and the Homeowners’ Hurricane Insurance Initiative — groups that have been concerned with rising insurance rates for years in the state’s two coastal counties — say that 50,000 homeowners have had their insurance cancelled since Ivan struck and Hurricane Katrina the following year, 2005.

Brinson said CCA has looked at the insurance data that has resulted.

“We could not find any real justification for the massive amounts of insurance premiums,” he said of Baldwin and Mobile counties as compared to the rest of the state, where he said tornadoes traditionally occur.

Asked where CCA would hold a forum on the insurance crisis, Brinson said they are working on Battleship Park on the Causeway between the two counties.

Among the principles Brinson said CCA hopes to put forth as a kind of “middle of the road” approach to dealing with the insurance crisis is insurance companies in the state reporting premium and claim information to the Alabama Department of Insurance.

HHII, the grassroots group, called for the same thing in a “transparency” bill that was introduced in the last session of the Alabama Legislature. The bill never got out of committee.

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