Who do you like more, your homeowner’s insurance provider or your local state lawmaker? If the answer is neither, it might be time to pick sides.
As Capitol News Illinois detailed Friday, the General Assembly might – as soon as today – make another serious attempt to increase regulations on companies that sell homeowner insurance. The governor pushed for legislation last year after State Farm, based in Bloomington, announced premiums would go up 27.2%, ostensibly to mitigate years of losses linked to paying for weather-related property damage.
A plan to give the state Department of Insurance new influence over rate increases passed the Senate in the fall veto session before falling four votes short in the House. But the proposal can resurface during the spring session.
People backing the changes argue it’s time to bring Illinois in line with other states where the government has the power to limit premiums. Under the current system, an insurer can raise rates at any time, effective immediately. Although companies file rate schedules with state regulators, the agency can’t review or approve those figures.
But the plan, as drafted, presents a confusing attempt at a solution. As CNI’s Peter Hancock wrote, a Senate amendment to House Bill 3799 stipulates that although insurers still wouldn’t need permission to implement rate changes, they would have to give customers 60 days of notice before instituting changes of 10% or more.
After that, he said, “if the agency found a company’s rates to be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory, it would send the company a notice specifying the agency’s objections. Companies then would be allowed to defend their rates at an administrative hearing. But after that hearing, if the agency still believed the rates violated standards of the law, it would be authorized to order the company to rebate excess charges back to customers.”
Setting aside concerns about “excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory” being subjective terms inviting trial lawyers to haggle on either side of the table, it’s hard to understand the logic behind the half measure of letting a company charge a price, starting the process of collecting from customers, then considering whether it’s above board and perhaps ordering refunds.
The unpredictability of that scenario isn’t especially helpful for budget-conscious customers and it’s difficult to envision the kind of company that wants to operate with uncertain cash flows. (Just ask lawmakers how they feel about building state spending plans around federal allocations that get retracted with little to no notice.)
If lawmakers have a sense of the fair amount to charge in premiums, they should just write that into law or take over the responsibility of insurance themselves. Further complicating a challenging marketplace is likely not in customers’ best interests.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
Top Feeds,Politics
via Shaw Local https://ift.tt/HL3C5IW
February 17, 2026 at 10:00AM
Illinois Delivered 