Lawmakers look for guarantee of car insurance savings from Hochul’s plan

For state lawmakers on the fence with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s car insurance plan for the state budget, legislative language designed to ensure any reduced costs flow back to drivers could help bring an end to the negotiations stalemate.

“You see how the insurance companies are gonna end up making money from this. The question is how do we make sure that gets passed back to the consumers,” Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris said on The Capitol Pressroom.

The Queens Democrat said he raised that point with insurance industry representatives and their noncommittal response was a “red flag” to him. “If they are telling us the rates are going to go down, let’s just write that into the law,” he said. “Maybe that’s where we end up. I don’t know. The discussions are ongoing.”

The Hochul administration has maintained that savings for drivers would be realized by utilizing the state’s excess profits law when state financial regulators approve rate proposals from car insurance companies. Skeptics of that future note that the excess profits law is only triggered by a multi-year average rate of return that exceeds 21 percent.

The governor has expressed a willingness to revisit the threshold for defining excess profits.