Quackenbush Overstated Prop. 103 Fees : Insurance: Amounts awarded to consumer interveners is scaled back.
An aide to state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush acknowledged Friday that his department significantly overstated the amount of money that had been awarded to consumer interveners in Proposition 103 litigation.
Two groups headed by Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield have received $704,000 for legal fees and other expenses since 1990, not the $1.8 million Quackenbush cited Wednesday in a statement criticizing interveners for having “gotten fat off the public trough.”
Another $555,000 in fees that former Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi approved was challenged by insurers and is being reconsidered by Quackenbush.
The Quackenbush aide said the discrepancy was apparently the result of a typographical error.
Under Proposition 103, the 1988 insurance rate-cutting initiative, consumer advocates may intervene in regulatory proceedings and be reimbursed for expenses if they can prove that they made “a substantial contribution to the adoption of any order, regulation or decision by the commissioner or a court.”
Saying that some groups were taking advantage of the provision, Quackenbush promised to “crack down on frivolous legal bills.”
Rosenfield on Friday called the crackdown “political retaliation.”
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