| Well, one thing you can sure say about Andrew Cuomo is that he knows how to jump on a bandwagon when the public is pissed about something. Nigh on to one-upped the President in "that'll show 'em" over the AIG bonus payments, he did.
That move has Simon wondering here what ever happened to that special deal that Governor Paterson gave AIG just before the first Federal bailout... you remember, the one where they didn't have to abide by the normal regs, and the gambling side of the corp could borrow 20 billion from the side that handles your health insurance? Anybody got the follow-up file on that?
So, Simon's question got me pondering something even older than that-- a special bill that the NYS Senate passed, without a sponsor, back in the bad old Bruno days.... it would have made it illegal to disclose the names of any parties that were unearthed in an insurance dept. investigation of any wrongdoing.... you know, like, the stuff Andrew is asking for by subpoena would have been illegal to disclose had it become law... |
Strange, eh? Well, some of us here at TAP were pretty upset about it at the time... check this, and Cap Con thought it was a bit short of open government:
Interestingly, the Senate passed a bill that would change the insurance law to limit disclosure of correspondence, memoranda, and other documents arising out of an examination, investigation or inquiry.
This bill, S.8446/A. 11432 would make these documents exempt from freedom of information laws, disclosure under public officers law, or subpoena.
It's passed through the Senate (with no sponsors, which, according to NYPIRG's Blair Horner, "is how you know a bill really stinks") and is in the Insurance committee, sponsored by its chair, Assemblyman Joseph Morelle, D-Rochester.
Got that straight, Blair Horner.
Roatti drew a Line in the Sand, and, who knows if it was him that did it, but, somehow, the Assembly managed to not pass it. Although, the Insurance Dept. was pushing hard to get it passed (thanks, Executive-- always lookin' out for we little guys... like with that Fair Share tax thing...).
I was looking back at it in October of last year, thinking that we really needed Senator Seward gone as chair of the Senate Insurance Committee....
Think that they didn't know about it? Well, back then, when I called the NYS Dept. of Insurance about this bill, the Deputy Commissioner of Insurance assured me that this move toward a different kind of regulation was absolutely necessary to ensure the competitiveness of NYS in keeping large, multinational insurance companies headquartered in NY. That would be, I assume, AIG. He also referred to a Blueprint for 21st Century Regulation of Financial Services, what was known at the time as the Paulson Plan, which stressed the need to deregulate financial services to maintain "global competitiveness" of US companies. Irony, irony.
Well, here we are, with the same old slimy AIG. Cuomo is on them, at least as long as people are riled up.... but, what does the Senate Insurance Committee look like? Well, better.... but, gee, what are all those turncoat Gang of Three Dems doing all on the same committee with Seward and the Repubs.... and Neil Breslin chair? Just how completely beyond corruption do we trust him to be?
Committee:
Insurance
Monday 11:00
Room 124 CAP
Chairperson:
Breslin
Members:
Stachowski Seward
Kruger LaValle
Diaz Larkin
Parker Alesi
Sampson Leibell
Thompson Golden
Johnson C Young
Espada McDonald
Monserrate
We may still need to keep an eye on all this funny insurance business.... |
