Garamendi Will Head New Senate Committee on Insurance

The Senate Rules Committee on Thursday gave a boost to Sen. John Garamendi’s public exposure as the Democratic nominee for state insurance commissioner by creating a new fact-finding insurance committee for him to head.

Garamendi said the new Senate Select Committee on the Department of Insurance as a Consumer Protection Agency, empowered to hold hearings statewide, will examine the department’s performance on such matters as rate regulation, consumer complaints and consumer information.

The committee will be in addition to the Senate’s permanent Insurance, Claims and Corporations Committee, which traditionally deals not only with insurance legislation but with other issues relating to the Department of Insurance.

Garamendi, of Walnut Grove, faces Republican nominee Wes Bannister in the general election campaign for the new elective post of insurance commissioner.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), Rules Committee chairman, denied that creating the committee would provide Garamendi with a taxpayer-financed platform from which to campaign.

“He’ll have to restrict himself to legislative policy,” Roberti insisted.

Garamendi said he proposed the committee to the Rules Committee and said he would “vigorously” hold public hearings into what he called the “current inadequacies of the (insurance) department.”

Roberti said the committee was being created less than two weeks after Garamendi won the Democratic primary election because of the “high volatility of the insurance industry . . . and it is time that we start looking at new (Proposition 103) regulations and how they are being implemented by the department.”

The 23 “select” committees of the Senate do not act on legislation but examine topics ranging from the California wine industry and mobile homes to the Pacific Rim and Northern California watersheds.

Garamendi, now the only member of the new committee, resigned his post as chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee. He was succeeded by Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Chula Vista).