>>This week on NewsNight, the latest in Florida's effort to stabilize its beleaguered property insurance industry.

But do new consumer protections go far enough?

Disney amends its federal lawsuit alleging retaliation by the state in violation of the company's First Amendment rights.

And Florida's new budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for central Florida road projects.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect you.

We start tonight with the seemingly intractable issue of property insurance.

We've talked on the show many times about homeowners insurance.

But now there's a new effort to iron out some of the problems that plague the market in Florida.

The newly passed insurer Accountability Act aims to protect insurance customers and expands the authority of state insurance regulators.

Supporters say it's key to reining in so-called bad actors.

But others say the legislation doesn't go far enough, calling for laws to penalize insurers who fail to pay claims and requiring them to disclose their profits.

The new consumer protections follow a report in The Washington Post in March finding insurers slashed Hurricane Ian payouts far below damage estimates.

It also comes after criticism of legislation passed last year aimed at attracting insurers back to Florida and keeping those already here in state.

Previously policy holders could collect legal fees if they won in court, but plaintiffs were not liable for the insurer's legal fees if they lost the so-called one way attorney's fee provision for residential and commercial property insurance was eliminated by the legislature in a special session in December, which backers say will end the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits and thus cut insurers litigation related losses, all with the aim of stabilizing Florida's beleaguered insurance market.

Well, I spoke this week with former Florida State Senator Jeff Brandes, who is one of the leading voices for insurance reform.

And I started by asking him what he makes of the Insurer Accountability Act.

>>Well, I don't think it does anything to lower rates or encourage competition in the state of Florida or attract new capital.

So I think if our goal and our ultimate thing that we wanted was lower rates, this does nothing to help lower rates.

>>But there are provisions that are welcomed by consumer groups, including preventing insurers from canceling property insurance policies during pending claims.

They think it should go further.

Should there be fines for insurers in certain cases, for example?

>>Well, I think ultimately, look, if you want to encourage more businesses to come here, putting more penalties on the companies that want to do business in the state, isn't it's going to be a successful model.

Understand, this is like a patient in the ICU and that the legislature has done here is put its foot on their throat.

This bill is a bunch of words that don't do a lot because the office already had the power to do much of these things.

It just enumerated many of those things.

So it doesn't seem like that's that's the outcome that we want, which is more competition, Increased capital and markets and lower rates are achieved that all through these pieces of legislation.

>>But isn't this accountability package just to do with the pushback against the elimination of one way attorneys fees that we saw in the special session?

And in fact, the tort reform passed just this session, making it harder to bring claims of bad faith against an insurance company.

Isn't it just a response to what the legislature has done before?

>>No, I don't think it's because the legislature of what the legislature to before.

I think largely it comes down to Trump's tweet against DeSantis more than anything else that he said that, you know, DeSantis kind of completely rolled over for the insurance industry and things of that nature.

But I think ultimately, look, if you want an industry to exist in Florida, you have to do things that support the industry.

And what Florida had done for the last, you know, decades, frankly, is allow one way attorney's fees and assignment of benefits to basically eat away at the overall insurance industry to the point we were 8% of total U.S. property claims and 80% of the national litigation in the country occurring in Florida.

So that's not sustainable.

You can't be the most hurricane prone state and the most litigious state and expect rates to come down.

So they had no choice but to do what they were doing on on tort reform if they wanted the industry to exist at all in the state.

>>Does this, do you think, get to the nub of the problem in Florida, need to keep insurers writing policies in an environmentally vulnerable state whilst also protecting customers?

And is it a balancing act do you think that's even possible?

>>Oh, I think it's possible, but we have to get to a place where insurance companies can make money.

Unfortunately for the last four years they've lost $1,000,000,000 every year throughout the industry.

Nobody's going to invest in companies that are losing billion dollars as an industry a year.

And what we see now is what, 10, 12 property insurers leave the state over the last two years, probably five or six will leave the state by June 1st of this year when reinsurance renewals are over.

You, Citizens growing from half a million policies, just six or seven years ago to almost 2 million policies by the end of this year, potentially putting Floridians on the risk for almost $800 billion of insured properties.

That's unsustainable.

And frankly, one large category one or category two storm could put put a place in a place where Floridians are having to bail out the Citizens Property Insurance company.

That isn't sustainable either.

Ultimately, we need more companies to come in.

The way that they're going to do that is if they can write profitable business without the government putting its foot on their throat.

>>Just finally, you referred earlier to former President Trump's criticism.

The governor has received criticism, hasn't he?

A recent Guardian headline said DeSantis has been accused of favoring insurance industry donors at the expense of residents.

Do you think that's fair?

>>Ultimately, DeSantis had very little choice.

The legislature, because of its years of inaction, has placed us in a place where they had to make these extreme moves at this point in order to save the industry as a whole.

Because, listen, people aren't going to continue to to invest in companies that are losing billions of dollars they just aren't.

And that's one of the major challenges.

Yes, we can lose 10 or 12 companies, but there's not those new companies being formed and coming in and definitely not better leadership in these companies.

>>Former Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, who now leads the nonprofit Florida Policy Project.

>>Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Peter King, CBS News radio correspondent here in Florida.

Thanks for coming in, Peter.

Really appreciate your time.

And Alexa Lorenzo, morning anchor at WFTV, Channel 9, thank you for coming in as well, Alexa, appreciate it.

I've talked, Alexa, with your colleague Christopher Heath about the insurance issue many times here on the show.

It's something that he's been in depth on, but this is a new effort, a consumer protections, right?

Talk a little bit about what the Insurer Accountability Act actually includes.

>>Yeah, We've been diving into every special session, every time this is brought up.

And this essentially increases fines against bad faith providers who linger on their claims.

It provides more oversight to the Office of Insurer regulation.

It requires the state to do a better job of logging complaints more frequently against companies.

And they continue to say that this is going to benefit both sides, the companies and the consumers.

This was a bipartisan effort, but no one's 100% happy.

They think there's more that could have been done.

That would that was not done.

But this is where they they came to this agreeable point.

And it again punishes those bad actors and goes after the policyholders who essentially want to sue.

They have to either now pay out of pocket or fork over a percentage of the money that would win on that claim.

>>And of course, we saw a bipartisan effort there, but there was also bipartisan disagreement about something that should go further.

Some people say it went too far, including Senator Brandes there, Peter, I referred briefly at the top to that Washington Post piece on Hurricane Ian claims.

Has there been criticism of how the industry handled the aftermath of that storm and were those problems predicted before?

>>I don't know that they were predicted, but a lot of the things that were in place to turn it into a cluster, if you will, certainly were in place.

So maybe some of that should have been predicted.

There are some wild cards in this as well, though, that Post article detailed a problem that insurance adjusters, for example, are having with the companies.

The companies are bringing in third party people to look at those reports and downgrading the the assignment of benefits that go back to policyholders.

And the adjusters have been saying, hey, I didn't write that.

We didn't do this.

I don't want my name on it.

And in some cases, you've got people who have lost homes for example, down to the Fort Myers area where they were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, getting back something from the insurance company that says, yeah, we're going to pay $3,000 for you.

And that's a big, big problem.

I mean, we have had three incredibly major hurricanes since 2017.

And the billions of dollars, I mean, they're the most expensive storms in history and each one seems to top the other.

And you understand that the insurance companies have lost a small fortune over that time.

But there's a reason why we have insurance and there is a reason why we pay the money we do to ensure our home.

>>Yeah, no doubt.

I mean, Alexa, the aim of all these reforms, right, is to try to stabilize the insurance market to a certain degree, which I think a lot of people would agree was in crisis in Florida, attract more companies that are willing to write policies here.

Is there any indication from the reporting that you guys have done at Channel 9 that it may be working yet?

>>Blanket wise?

We shall see.

But there is some sort of a glimmer of hope.

Back in early April, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation did go ahead and give the green light to a new company to start issuing new policies here in Florida.

And it's the first company to do so since the special sessions.

Since all of this talk started and it's the HCI group.

They are good to go to start issuing new policies under a new company called Tail Row.

And at this point, the Department of Financial Services says this is a good sign.

The changes in legislation were to have more competition, have more accessibility and hopefully down the road reduce rates.

So, again, we shall see.

But it is kind of a light at the end of the tunnel.

>>A good sign, but certainly a long way to go.

Well, Citizens is expected to hit 2 million policies this year.

Brandes told me he doesn't expect to see any beneficial impacts from last year's special session until at least 2025.

>>What I'm hearing from the property insurance world and reinsurers is they're very still very skittish on Florida.

And until we get new capital and new businesses forming in the state, I think consumers are going to find competition very anemic and very little options out there.

>>Well, insurance premiums are continuing to rise, Peter, and what are the projections?

>>The Insurance Information Institute says our premiums will rise by 40%, astronomical 40%.

We are already here in Florida paying much more than the national average per year.

Our average here in Florida for homeowners, 4,200 plus per year.

The national average is closer to 1,500 a year.

So so something's got to give.

>>A lot of people are seeing their insurance premiums go up.

I know I certainly have.

And I'm definitely not alone.

Let's talk about federal flood insurance, a moment which is especially important here in Florida.

As we saw after Hurricane Ian, FEMA has changed its methodology for calculating risk.

And last month it put out its new premium estimate showing large increases in some parts of Florida.

I asked Jeff Brandes how he thinks Florida should address that issue, especially now that customers of Citizens are mandated to buy flood insurance.

>>Florida is actually a leader in private flood insurance.

Back in 2014 2015, I passed a piece of legislation that allowed Florida to to go deeper into the private flood insurance world, and we believe about 85% of all flood insurance policies can be written cheaper in the private market than in through FEMA.

But look, largely at Florida, largely was formed from from the 1960s when the National Flood Insurance Program went in place.

And up until today on subsidized flood insurance rates, where flood insurance rates didn't actually reflect the risk.

Now what we're doing is moving it towards reflecting the actual risk.

And I think people rightly so, feel like the carpet's being pulled out from under them because it is.

The federal flood insurance program is billions and billions of dollars in debt.

But this is the risk we take when we have politicians setting rates and not mathematicians.

>>Jeff Brandes again there, okay Alexa on this one, the legislature now mandates Citizens policyholders to have flood insurance, even though citizens actually doesn't sell that federal flood insurance policy.

Is there a deadline for Citizens customers to find a policy?

>>There are different deadlines and it depends on where you live and the replacement cost value of your home.

So there was an April 1st deadline for new customers who live in a FEMA designated special flood hazard.

There's another deadline July 1st, for existing customers who live in that same SFHA.

Then we have somewhat of a rolling deadline.

Depending on the cost value of replacing your home, it would be 2024 for customers with homes insured for 600,000, then 2025 for 500,000 by 2027, all said and done.

Everyone needs to have it.

>>So not the same deadline for everyone.

Really quickly, Peter, do we know sort of by how much premiums might increase?

>>Yeah, it could go up by as much as more than 200% for some of those high hazard areas.

There's supposed to be a cap for primary homes at 18% per year.

Secondary homes and businesses that have had continued repeated flooding 25% per year.

So we're talking we're talking a lot.

>>Really serious increases.

Well, you can read the text of the Insurer Accountability Act on our website.

It's at wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay.

Next tonight, new developments in the Disney special taxing District saga.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District now has a new administrator.

The board on Wednesday appointed the president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, Glen Gilzean to the $400,000 a year role replacing John Class.

Governor DeSantis has previously appointed Gilzean to other positions, including the Florida Commission on Ethics.

The district administrator, along with the governor and members of the governor appointed district board, are named in Disney's federal lawsuit, which it expanded on this week.

Disney amended its lawsuit following the recent passage of two pieces of legislation in Tallahassee, one that gives the state the right to regulate Disney's monorail system, and another that effectively nullifies planning agreements between Disney and the special taxing district in the dying days of the former Reedy Creek board.

On the monorail amendment, the company says in its filing, now that the proposed amendment was precision engineered to target Disney alone, just as Governor DeSantis intended and previewed.

It also says Senate Bill 1604, nullifying its development contracts, is, quote, patently retaliatory, patently anti-business and patently unconstitutional.

The company alleges a campaign of retribution by the governor and others for its opposition to HB 1557, which opponents dubbed Don't Say Gay.

A violation, Disney says of its First Amendment rights and the contract and takings clauses of the Constitution.

The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Florida is amended to include several quotes from the governor and legislators to bolster its retribution claim, including this, quote from the governor on May 5th at the end of the legislative session.

>>First of all, you know, this all started, of course, with our parents rights bill.

>>It also includes this quote from Republican senator and DeSantis ally Blaise Ingoglia.

>>So I have a couple words for Disney.

You are not going to win this fight.

This governor will.

>>But the governor's team says Disney's development agreements with the Reedy Creek board had legal infirmities, even though the company says they were publicly noticed.

And supporters of the governor's battle with Disney say it's simply about making the entertainment giant play by the same rules as other companies.

All right.

Well, Alexa, let's start with the monorail.

What have we learned, exactly, will be the state's powers now when it comes to overseeing that piece of infrastructure.

>>Up to now, this has been in the hands of Disney.

They have full time inspectors on staff who check it periodically and do their own safety inspections.

So this is really a jolt to the system, how it's going to work.

How often will they be there?

So now Disney will be required to submit an annual safety plan to the Florida Department of Transportation.

They'll review it.

Florida Department of Transportation will do onsite visits every three years to ensure that full compliance, but then also do periodic evaluations.

And at this point, it's not really understand it understood, rather, if it's going to shut down the monorail when they do these inspections, will they do it during park hours?

How will this affect business?

So we're still trying to understand how it all will work.

>>And the administration saying it's certainly needed because it carries so many people and it should be a state safety issue.

Right.

Peter, as I mentioned, some Republicans in Tallahassee say this is reasonable, right?

Because Disney has had special treatment in it and it shouldn't.

And overseeing the monorail makes sense from that safety standpoint that we're just talking about.

What is the pushback on that?

>>Well, Disney's position is special treatment, not quite.

There is some 2000 special districts.

And why are we being singled out?

And Bob Iger, on Wednesday did a financial call with investors-- >>The CEO of Disney.

>>The CEO of Disney.

And I'm trying to get all this right to the letter, not about special privileges or leveling the playing field and that Florida needs to remember that Governor DeSantis needs to remember that, quote, We operate responsibly.

We pay our fair share of taxes.

We employ thousands of people.

And he added, of course, that they pay above the state's minimum wage.

And the other thing is that he Iger, I asked, Does the state want us to stop investing?

Does it want us to stop employing thousands of Floridians and stop paying all those taxes?

So this is a fight that's I mean, it's like a big chess game, but the stakes are astronomically high.

>>Making that point about Disney's economic clout.

So, you know, we're a big part of your economy, right?

I mean, Alexa, your colleagues at Channel 9 have really been across this story in depth.

I think Nick Papantonis has been covering it a lot.

This expanded lawsuit really kind of highlights the specificity.

Right?

And Peter had mentioned this before of these pieces of legislation that were just passed that Disney says sort of tailors them specifically to affect only Disney.

What is the company objecting to there.

>>At this point, Disneys saying Governor DeSantis and his allies have no apparent intent to moderate this campaign and this retaliation any time soon.

So this is just going to continue.

I see more amendments down the line with this lawsuit as this fight continues.

And I don't think it's in the beginning process anymore.

I think we're deep in this and I don't see an end in sight anytime soon.

>>And certainly the governor doesn't seem to be interested in stopping this particular conflict.

Peter, let's look at the developments with regard to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight district that took place this week.

What do we know about the new administrator, Glen Gilzean who's now going to run the sort of day to day operations, right?

And the outgoing administrator.

>>First of all, he's going to make more than the last administrator, John Clash.

He's going to make about $400,000 a year.

But the board says it's justified because he has to deal with the Disney lawsuit and that's going to be a handful.

Gilzean was the CEO of the Central Florida Urban League.

He was the chair of Florida's Commission on Ethics, appointed by Ron DeSantis and also served on the Reopen Florida Task force, also appointed by Governor DeSantis.

>>The governor was appointed him to several different positions.

>>Right, Right.

Friend of Ron, if you will, in February in an Orlando Sentinel op ed, he when he was running the Urban League here, he endorsed the governor's position on African-American study courses and the restrictions on what should be talked about and what shouldn't be and in his words, it was pushing education, not an agenda.

Now, he got blowback immediately from the from the national organization Marc Morial, who wrote a letter to the Sentinel immediately saying, basically, that's not our position.

We kind of disavow any of this.

>>And if this challenge by Disney is successful in the courts, what might happen?

Could all this be back to how it was?

>>A complete 180?

Yes, it could undo everything that we've been covering for the last several months.

And at this point, Disney is claiming that the state violated the contracts clause, that takings clause, the First Amendment, the due process.

So if this goes and Disney's favor, we very well could see a full reinstatement of the original Reedy Creek Improvement District.

And a lot of those contracts and agreements that were entered in February that they voided, those can be very well brought back into play.

>>Fascinating political, legal and economic issues all sort of rolled into one, I think.

Well, we plan to talk a bit more about this issue next week.

Meantime, you can read Disney's amended federal lawsuit on our Web site, wucf.org/newsnight along the bottom of your screen.

Well, one thing the legislature had to do was sign off on the budget.

The $117 billion budget includes many of the governor's priorities, such as a 20% increase in funding for Florida's Office of Election Crimes and Security.

It also adds billions to speed up road projects.

Many in central Florida well Alexa is here.

So let's discuss some of these and other important transportation issues this week.

Alexa, how much more money are we talking about here and what do we know about the road projects in central Florida that are going to see more cash?

>>So he wanted $7 billion for the moving forward Florida.

And it's to expedite 20 road projects across the state.

Wanted 7 billion.

Got 4 billion.

They're still seeing that as a significant win.

That's a lot of money to put toward several transportation projects across the state.

Here, locally, the bulk of it is going to go to reconstruct I-4 from Champions Gate all the way to Osceola Parkway, about 1.4 billion will go to that.

So that's a huge update there.

$479 million is expected to add auxiliary lanes to I-75 between Wildwood and Ocala.

And I've talked to the Florida Department of Transportation about this.

They say that is very needed during spring break.

>>Thats a lot of traffic on that road right when you 75?

>>UCF Students moving up, UF moving down, it becomes quite the clog there.

And then 340 million is set to improve I-95 and the interchange of U.S. One and Ormond Beach.

So different pockets of our area will see a lot of improvement with this money.

>>I love how you know all this stuff.

Alexa roads is one thing, right?

Rail is another.

And you've been really across this Bright Line story.

Bright Line put out a lot of traffic advisories this week.

What are those advisories mean?

>>So at this point, we're seeing advisories for construction and testing.

At this point, we're testing overnight now we're seeing a lot happening.

So these advisories are closures for bridges that they're testing through are closures of lanes where they're still construction construction happening.

At this point, they're a little over 90% complete.

So those advisories are going to be far more frequent now that testing is in place.

>>And you and I have talked about sort of the hiring spree that the Bright Line is, is on.

What do we know about the latest state of it's hiring at the moment for its stations and its maintenance?

>>Yeah, they put out a big push this week, hiring for everything from inside the vehicle maintenance facility to out on the track to inside the new station to inside the trains.

This is a massive operation that is set to start sometime in the summer.

Still very vague there, but they're at a point where they need all hands on deck and they want people from central Florida to fill those roles.

>>Yeah.

Finally, I mean, for both of you, one big announcement this week was Princess Cruises is going to start sailing from Port Canaveral.

Port Canaveral really is expanding fairly rapidly.

And with that, so is traffic.

And and I wonder what the move is in the community there.

And I think we've talked about this before with getting a Bright Line station there.

There is a there is a push in Brevard for maybe having a station in Cocoa.

>>Even before talking about the port, We've talked about this with the space launches and the tourism that's happening.

People going to see these launches, you know, while people are going to Brevard County.

So leaders right now in Brevard County are getting all the information they can to help make that push.

It's not off the table, but at this point, it's not on the table, if that makes any sense.

Bright Line says we could do it.

But right now, Brevard leaders are saying maybe Cocoa, maybe Melbourne.

We'll see where and if it ends up landing.

>>You spend a lot of time in Brevard.

>>Well, very much so.

And one of the things I could tell you is that, you know, the mentality in Brevard, the feeling in Brevard, is that, okay, you're shutting down our streets several times a day for your trains to cross here.

You're tying up our traffic.

You're making our lives a little more inconvenient.

It's time for you to do something for us.

Put a station here and you're right.

Brevard is more of a destination now more than ever for cruises.

The space launches.

We're going to have about about 100 of them this year.

That attracts tourists.

And of course, there's always the beach.

>>Yeah.

>>Is there the infrastructure to go along with it?

That's always the question.

In the meantime, be sure to join this conversation on social media.

We are at WUCFTV on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but that is all the time we have for this week, I'm afraid.

My thanks to Alexa Lorenzo, WFTV Channel 9.

Thanks for coming in, Alexa.

Peter King, CBS News Radio.

Coming back to the program.

Thanks so much for coming in again, Peter, appreciate it.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.