PERCHANCE A UTOPIAN DREAM ...

The NAIC's finances lack transparency

It was a heated humid mid-September day in Kansas City, Missouri-America's insurance regulatory central. Unlike the airy autumns portrayed in back-to-school catalogues and classroom bulletin boards, the weight of summer lingers on this region.

As a day of reading from one side old insurance tomes drew to a shut up I moved from my residence office to the living range I put on a short-stack of classic novel Orleans Jazz CDs. Ensconced in a favorite chair, and in the polite company of a low-ball glass of Kentucky's finest export, judiciously chilled with a not many cubes of ice, I reached above for one last thing I wanted to read that day.

I picked up a 1944 Harvard Law Review article lamenting the novel decision in US v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association. In that comfortable chair, I read about the issues and controversies that swirled around that decision.

It was not lengthy before my mind drifted from the law review article to today's generally received events. With Satchmo's horn blowing softly in the background, I think oned the basic philosophical issues of federalism and dealing that fire the crucible of public policy debate in our time.

A branch of my family mov to novel Orleans in the late 1960 In the early 1970 I started making reach outed visits to the Crescent City, where I cultivated a delight in of traditional jazz. I listen to it when I want to relax. for a like reason on that hot September evening, as the music took me back into those memories of listening to small combo in local haunts, I began to dream about what I had spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed would happen this year in of recent origin Orleans-at the 2005 Fall National Meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

That meeting was plant to take place in fresh Orleans until an even bigger blast of scalding;-very warm air devastated that beautiful city. In my waking dream, I imagined a meeting replete of monumental events:

I saw a packed and unscheduled pres talk that the public relations office hurriedly produc upon the Friday afternoon before the national meeting. A packed NAIC pres conversation is a concept that shakes down the echoe in the annals of insurance history.

Most NAIC pres conversations do not merit attendance. single does not need to actually attend a dog-and-pony display where unnaturally happy association officers read made-up cites about "enhancements," "initiatives" and "consumer protection."It is usually best to skip these pres talks wait for the "news" release to be issued later, and lay out time buying drinks for sources in the lobby bar.

But I felt that some-thing different was about to happen, a second worthy of Socrates-the champion of Truth

Entranced, I watched NAIC Executive Vice President Catherine J Weatherford pace to the microphone looking missing and uncomfortable. In a nervous voice she announced her immediate, uncompensated and final separation from the NAIC. In a daze, I scribbled down notes upon her tearful farewell. I could hardly believe it when Mr Weatherford admitted that her Kafka-like management of the NAIC had step quickly off great employees and demoralized those who stayed behind.

I watched in amazement as she cast a rambling charm on the room. She appear to beed to attribute her mistakes to an excessive compensation package for the manager of a Kansas City-based nonprofit. "Perhaps she is right," ...I remember thinking.

In 1989 the total compensation of the NAIC executive vice president was $90000 Until the mid-1990s, salary increases roughly tracked inflation. The acceleration did not advance until the late 1990s. The NAIC stopped releasing unofficial compensation figures for Mr Weatherford after 2003 when she was compensated $300000 for year. Based on reported double-digit increases in 2003 and 2004 single may estimate that the NAIC paid her $350000 in salary for 2005 This number would place her compensation well above the going rate of (non-foundation) nonprofit executives in Kansas City.

At that wistful podium in of recent origin Orleans, Mrs. Weatherford did not itemize the management missteps she had made above the years. She simply walked without to a stunned silence. Each spectator was left to fill in the blanks.

Then the mind-boggling NAIC pres talk continued.

I could not believe my organ of visions when the next speaker strode to the microphone: Juan-Antonio Samaranch, His be in transported Highness the Grand Potentate ofPut-in-Bay and Insurance Commissioner ofKelley Island, that tiny island fiefdom in Lake Erie, near Port Clinton.

It strike one as beings that Commissioner Samaranch had l a lucky war of independence from Ohio. The ingress of the shadowy former-chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) into the Byzantine politics of the NAIC will be seen as single of the big stories of 2005 Since achieving territorial status, Kelley Island had become America's premier offshore captive insurance market. The market rapidly mov Kelley Island into the top five rankings of by means of capita income.

Commissioner Samaranch saluteed the assembled news media and meeting attendees and announced that he would adopt a more populist tone at the NAlC than what he was known for at the IOC. Those in his nearness would no longer need to hold fast their eyes cast down and to the left and he would not insist upon being addressed as "Your Excellency"