The My Safe Florida Home program, which offers up to $10,000 to help Floridians harden their homes, is intended to strengthen buildings against hurricanes and help reduce sky-high homeowners insurance premiums.

But the state doesn’t know how effective the program is at curtailing insurance costs, and isn’t poised to find out. Florida lawmakers approved the funding without requesting any data collection or studies.

To longtime observers, the decision was another sign of the Legislature’s apparent unwillingness to study the state’s insurance crisis, which lawmakers in both parties say has become their top constituent issue. Lawmakers have not produced any studies about it. Their primary response has been to make it harder to sue insurance companies, but they produced no proof that lawsuits are the main driver behind rising premiums and failing companies.

In September, Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, told the state’s insurance commissioner that more information has been released on UFOs than Florida’s insurance industry. On Wednesday, Pizzo asked how the state was evaluating the My Safe Florida Home program.

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“How are we collecting data to gauge its efficacy?” Sen. Pizzo asked on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

“To be perfectly honest with you Sen. Pizzo, I’m not aware at the moment,” the bill sponsor, Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, responded.

Some homeowners see meaningful savings

Since launching last year, the My Safe Florida Home program has been popular. It pays for free home inspections and, if eligible, the state will pay $2 for every $1 the homeowner spends on upgrades, up to $10,000. Applicants who are deemed low-income can receive funds without having to make matching payments.

Insurers are required by state law to issue discounts for completed upgrades. The discounts take effect when the policy renews.

As of Oct. 6, the state had approved 79,119 inspections and 20,890 grants. The money allocated this week was for people who applied before Oct. 15 and had not yet gotten funding.

Early indications are that some recipients are saving money on their premiums. Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who oversees the program, told lawmakers that the average homeowners insurance savings was just over $1,000, a figure that was repeated by some lawmakers this week.

That would be meaningful relief for many Floridians, where the statewide average annual premium is around $6,000, the highest in the nation, according to the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute.

But the $1,000 figure does not accurately reflect the average recipient’s experience.

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The figure is based on about 1,600 recipients who self-reported their savings to Patronis’ office, according to data given to the Times/Herald by the office. Their reported savings ranged from 7 cents to $31,644, for an average of $1,001.17 per year.

The median average — which neutralizes the effect of outliers in the data — shows a much more modest discount of $577.

Even $577 is not an accurate reflection of the homeowner’s experience, because it does not capture homeowners who saw no savings or saw their premiums go up.

In a briefing to a Senate committee last month, a Department of Financial Services official said that while 1,325 recipients saw their premiums go down, 644 saw no difference and 341 saw their rates go up. Another 101 recipients didn’t report any information.

“This doesn’t mean the program wasn’t helpful,” the department’s chief business officer, Steven Fielder, told senators. Premiums that went up might not have gone up as much without the program’s discounts, he said. The department doesn’t currently track that information.

The program is valuable in another crucial way, however: Homeowners could save thousands of dollars in repairs when a storm hits, said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute.

It might not be the solution to reducing rates, which rose 42% on average this year, he said.

“A discount is good. That’s valuable to the homeowner,” he said. “But it does not make up for an average 102% cumulative premium increase over the last three years.”

Other states study programs

Several other coastal states have similar home-hardening programs and perform studies on the programs’ effects.

North Carolina launched a program in 2019 offering homeowners $6,000 to fortify their roofs. The state is partnering with multiple universities to analyze data the state is collecting on the program.

Since 2016, Alabama has offered homeowners $10,000 to fortify their homes, and the program has been studied by the University of Alabama.

Florida in 2009 hired consultants to study the effectiveness of a previous version of the My Safe Florida Home program. The study found that for every $1 invested in home-hardening, $1.50 in hurricane risk was reduced.

State lawmakers have not committed to continuing the program beyond this year, but leaders have voiced support.

“I believe in the program, I believe we should look at ways to expand it,” said House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast.

When asked why the state wasn’t collecting more data about the program, he said lawmakers could look for that in the regular legislative session, which begins in January.

Former state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, has been frustrated by the lack of data and ideas to fix the property insurance crisis. He launched the Florida Policy Project, a think tank, this year to come up with best practice solutions to insurance and issues including housing and criminal justice reform.

The lack of good data on the home hardening program is emblematic of the larger problem with the Legislature’s approach to the crisis, he said.

“It highlights: What work was done over the summer on property insurance? And it seems to me, nothing,” he said.

Brandes questioned how useful the My Safe Florida Home program could really be, in part because the state could never afford to harden the millions of eligible homes in the state.

“There’s been no deep dive into whether it works or not,” Brandes said. “They don’t care. It’s just good politics.”

Miami Herald staff writer Alex Harris contributed to this report.

But he was so hostile and condescending to the contractors managing the program that he was banned from contacting some of them, according to an inspector general’s report focused on DiNapoli’s time at the Florida Housing Finance Corp. The investigation was quietly posted on the corporation’s website recently and has not previously been reported.

DiNapoli’s history at the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, now known as the Department of Commerce, predated the turmoil and abuse employees said they experienced during DiNapoli’s nine months overseeing the housing corporation. DiNapoli resigned last month, a day before the organization’s board of directors was set to meet to discuss his employment.

The inspector general’s report concluded that DiNapoli created a hostile work environment and violated multiple corporation policies at the housing corporation. Employees described an unprofessional boss who would explode in anger over previously routine activities. He repeatedly threatened to fire people, and two employees told investigators that his behavior affected their mental health.

“I don’t want to give my talent to this tyrant,” the corporation’s data management director told the inspector general, according to the report.

The saga over DiNapoli’s hiring set up an unusual public clash between DeSantis and the corporation’s board of directors, most of whom are appointed by DeSantis but who lead an entity that is supposed to be independent from his administration. The corporation is effectively a state-created bank that manages billions in bonds and affordable housing dollars.

In July, the board placed DiNapoli on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the inspector general investigation. In August, DeSantis reinstated him, with a spokesperson saying the investigation “found nothing to justify the placement of Mr. DiNapoli on administrative leave.”

After Inspector General Chris Hirst released his findings to the board, the board placed him on leave a second time. DeSantis’ press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, then blasted the board as members of the “deep state” who lacked the “ability to sort fact from fiction.”

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DiNapoli was a longtime financial adviser in New York City until 2015, when he lost his job with the financial services firm UBS. Weeks later, a woman claiming that DiNapoli was her brother filed a complaint alleging he stole money from her account and forged her name on a check.

He then fell into a series of financial hardships. His Ocala home went into foreclosure, creditors garnished his bank accounts and he filed for bankruptcy.

DiNapoli then took a mid-level job at the Department of Economic Opportunity and was promoted to oversee Florida’s Homeowner Assistance Fund, a federal program to help people afford their homes during the pandemic.

Florida hired the contractor Horne to administer the program. Hirst interviewed two former Horne employees, both women, who said they quit the company because DiNapoli was unprofessional, condescending and made one of them feel uncomfortable.

DiNapoli was “banned” from contacting some members of the Horne team, a fact that DiNapoli “had to be constantly reminded” about, one of them told Hirst, according to the report.

That employee also reached out to a partner at Horne, who “traveled to Tallahassee to have a meeting with unknown DEO management,” Hirst’s report states.

DiNapoli told Hirst that he did not hear of the complaints and was never talked to about his behavior. DiNapoli said an information technology employee at the Department of Economic Opportunity filed a complaint about a comment DiNapoli made, but he apologized, according to the report.

In February, DeSantis appointed him to lead the housing corporation.

Hirst interviewed 17 current and former employees, including numerous top managers, with more than 183 combined years of experience with the corporation. All of them said they had either been on the receiving end of unprofessional behavior or witnessed it.

Several described a desire by DiNapoli to control information sent to people outside the corporation. He adopted a change to slow down the release of public records and didn’t want information in writing, one of the corporation’s general counsels said.

Two people said he threatened to fire them — one after she communicated with board members, and another after she sent a routine email to outside stakeholders.

DiNapoli also made comments to employees that some found offensive, including comments about weight. One person reported that DiNapoli said his wife quit her job because she “got hurt lifting f**king 400-pound fat people off the toilet,” according to the report. The report does not say what DiNapoli’s wife’s job was.

DiNapoli told the inspector general that he didn’t recall making that exact statement, but did remember “stating his wife gets hurt from picking people up and pushing them around on wheelchairs.”

The corporation’s chief financial officer told Hirst that DiNapoli also compared “managing staff to training a horse, by convincing or tricking people into doing something without them knowing they are doing it.”

In his resignation letter, DiNapoli blasted the “vicious attacks” by board members and “career bureaucrats that have been in control of the organization for many years.”

“Given the timing and the groundless accusations of the investigation, I believe it is part of a desperate and coordinated attack to discontinue my reform efforts,” DiNapoli wrote. “This level of corruption should not be tolerated.”

Three people who were interviewed for the investigation said they hadn’t seen DiNapoli be abusive, although one said the corporation purchased white noise machines for DiNapoli’s office “because he could be heard down the hallways.”

All three were hired during DiNapoli’s tenure, including Amanda Prater, who has since left and is now chief of staff at DeSantis’ Department of Education, according to her LinkedIn page.

Lured by the nation’s highest premiums and new laws making it harder to sue insurance companies, investors see an opportunity in Florida’s broken insurance market. Current and former state officials and others said they are receiving regular inquiries from potential investors looking to make a profit.

“As soon as we were done with the last vote in session, I had a couple of people … including legislators, asking if I wanted to invest in an insurance company,” Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, told the state’s insurance commissioner last month.

That includes state Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, who has pitched fellow lawmakers on investing in a new homeowners insurance company that projects a 165% return on investment over five years.

Investing millions of dollars into one of the nation’s most volatile insurance markets might seem like folly. Hurricanes and floods are multiplying. Meanwhile, companies have gone insolvent without being hit by either of those threats.

But Florida-based insurance companies employ unusual financial structures that can allow executives to extract considerable profits from homeowners’ premiums.

Those structures, combined with a reduced threat of lawsuits, is an enticing combination, at least to some investors. And Gov. Ron DeSantis and state regulators see it as the solution to the state’s insurance crisis, hoping that free-market competition will eventually drive down rates.

“The market needs green shoots, and it’s exciting to see new companies,” said former state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, who was a vocal supporter of lawsuit reform in the Legislature.

Pizzo, one of the state’s wealthiest lawmakers with a net worth of $60 million, declined to invest in Gruters’ company. He also turned down nearly a dozen other pitches from investors, he said in an interview.

“I just don’t want to be directly involved with profiting off of what I think is less restrictive, or more favorable, conditions for insurers,” Pizzo said.

To the public, the optics of lawmakers forming insurance companies right after passing legislation affecting those companies “probably aren’t great,” he said. But he doesn’t begrudge Gruters for trying.

“If he gets them affordable policies, I don’t think they’ll care,” Pizzo said.

‘A unique and lucrative opportunity’

To solve Florida’s insurance crisis, DeSantis and lawmakers tried to stop people from suing insurance companies, which insurers have blamed for rapidly rising premiums.

Although lawmakers and regulators haven’t proven that lawsuits were driving up rates and causing insurers to go out of business, they passed legislation in December that stopped requiring homeowners insurance companies to pay attorney’s fees when plaintiffs sue and win. This year, they extended that to all insurance companies.

The legislation hasn’t yet had a meaningful effect on homeowners’ premiums, which the industry now says will not go down in the foreseeable future because of factors such as climate change.

But it has sparked immediate interest from investors looking to put their money into insurance companies.

Barry Gilway, the former head of state-run Citizens Property Insurance, said he’s fielding calls from investors at least every two weeks. The reduced threat of litigation and the potential to get started by pulling thousands of policies out of Citizens has them interested, he said.

“You have a number of different investors that are looking at this … as a real potential opportunity,” he said.

Gilway said the market was so active that he’d consider joining one of the companies.

“If the right opportunity came along, I’d get serious about jumping back in,” Gilway said.

One of the new companies is Village Protection Insurance, led by a former executive with the reinsurance broker firm GuyCarpenter, according to the trade journal Inside P&C.

In May the company announced it was raising $75 million from investors, the publication reported. In August, it reported the company changed that target to $55 million. The minimum to start up an insurance company in Florida is $15 million.

Gruters’ role is unclear

It’s unclear what role Gruters, an accountant by trade, has with the company. His involvement has not been previously reported, and he did not respond to calls and text messages for comment.

In a pitch to investors sent by Gruters, company leaders wrote that “there lies a unique and lucrative opportunity for investors” as Florida’s insurance market “undergoes a transformative disruption.” They tout an experienced leadership team with “fresh perspectives” to meet the demands of consumers and investors.

The pitch directs potential investors to a spreadsheet of financial projections showing that the company would take 20,000 policies out of Citizens next year. By 2028, the company would grow organically and be writing $475 million in premiums across 99,596 policies, for an average customer premium of $4,775.

The current statewide average is around $6,000, according to industry groups.

The pitch directs investors to one category of the financials in particular, involving the company’s “managing general agent,” which is an affiliate company. Village Protection Insurance’s managing general agent would charge the company 28% of all premiums, plus a $25 charge for every new policy, typical rates for Florida-based insurance companies.

Most of that money would go to pay a contractor to perform Village Protection Insurance’s business, according to Inside P&C: everything from underwriting to claims management to reinsurance and customer service.

After paying those expenses, tens of millions of dollars would be left over each year to repay investors. By 2028, the company would show a cumulative return on investment of the managing general agent of 165%, the document shows.

“We firmly believe that this venture presents an extraordinary chance to achieve exceptional returns in an environment of change and growth,” the pitch states.

Gruters voted for the December 2022 legislation requiring homeowners to pay their attorneys’ fees, along with other senators who work in the insurance industry. Senate rules require senators to vote on bills unless senators know they would experience a “special private gain or loss” from the measure. In those instances, senators have to disclose why they were abstaining from the vote.

Gruters also voted for this year’s legislation shielding all insurance companies from paying attorneys’ fees in most situations, but he bucked most of his party by voting for an amendment that would have watered down the bill. The amendment failed.

Thieme spent more than 35 years in the Marines, most recently as a colonel and senior operations officer, according to the governor’s office. His accomplishments include “launching and standing up a new civil military organization,” according to the office.

Thieme will be the third director of the State Guard in the last year. Its first director died by suicide. Its second director, U.S. Navy Reserve Capt. Luis Soler, quit halfway through the State Guard’s first training class in June.

The World War II-era organization was revived by the Legislature last year, at DeSantis’ urging, but it has struggled to get off the ground.

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Originally pitched as a 400-member organization that would supplement the overworked and understaffed Florida National Guard, its scope and mission has changed dramatically in the last year.

Its original organizers envisioned members, who are volunteers, wearing polo shirts and khakis and helping after disasters within Florida.

Instead, its members are now referred to as soldiers and they wear camouflage uniforms. The governor can now send them out of state for any emergency, and their budget includes boats, planes and helicopters. The guard’s first training class included “engagement skills training” and how to fire weapons without live rounds during a video-game-like setting.

The mixed-messages caused military veterans who volunteered for the State Guard to quit over the militia-like training.

Veterans who attended the training told the Herald/Times this summer that their National Guard trainers were inexperienced and the training slapdash.

One volunteer, a disabled retired Marine Corps captain, called the local sheriff’s office to report he was battered by Florida National Guard instructors when they forcibly shoved him into a van after he questioned the program and its leadership.

Mike DiNapoli, 54, stepped down a day before the Florida Housing Finance Corp. board of directors was set to fire or reinstate him.

The resignation ends months of drama since DeSantis chose the former New York financial adviser to lead the housing corporation, an independent state entity that oversees and distributes billions of state and federal affordable housing dollars.

In July, the corporation’s board chairman placed DiNapoli on paid leave while its inspector general looked into allegations that he was abusive and sexist.

A month later, DeSantis reinstated DiNapoli, with a spokesperson saying the investigation had “found nothing to justify the placement of Mr. DiNapoli on administrative leave.”

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In September, the corporation’s inspector general, Chris Hirst, presented his investigation to the board, reporting that employees alleged DiNapoli screamed at staff, made sexist comments, talked about their weight and threatened their jobs.

The board then placed him on leave a second time, prompting a DeSantis administration official to call the inspector general report a “media hit piece.” DeSantis’ press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, blasted the board, mostly made up of DeSantis appointees, as members of the “deep state” who lacked the “ability to sort fact from fiction.”

A spokesperson for the corporation did not respond to a request for comment on the resignation.

Since DiNapoli took the job, 10% of the housing corporation’s workforce were fired by him or quit, including its longtime general counsel and its board liaison. After DeSantis reinstated DiNapoli, the human resources director also quit, citing “the abuse and trauma of the last six months.”

Outside counsel for the board concluded that DeSantis did not have the legal ability to reinstate DiNapoli.

In his investigation, which has not been publicly released, Hirst interviewed 24 current and former employees over two months.

“The conduct is severe and pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile or abusive,” Hirst told board members last month.

Hirst’s investigation also found that DiNapoli violated the corporation’s policies.

DiNapoli also served on the board of the First Housing Development Corp. of Florida, which contracts with the corporation. Three of the corporation’s general counsels said it was a conflict of interests. Hirst agreed.

According to Hirst, DiNapoli responded to the allegation by saying it was a “gray line,” and “an appearance of a conflict is not a conflict.”

DiNapoli also ordered the corporation’s chief financial officer to sell its Disney bonds, at a loss, Hirst concluded, in reaction to the entertainment company’s ongoing dispute with DeSantis over control of its Orlando-area special taxing district. Hirst found that action violated the corporation’s policies.

The corporation also violated its policies when it hired DiNapoli, Hirst concluded. DiNapoli came recommended by James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, who is also leading his presidential campaign. But the corporation did no background checks or interview references. Nor did it have DiNapoli’s resume or application on file.

Had they looked into DiNapoli’s background, they might have found a recent history of financial troubles. In the eight years before he was appointed by DeSantis, he lost his job with UBS in New York City, filed for bankruptcy, had his Ocala home foreclosed on and had his bank accounts garnished by debtors.

Weeks after leaving UBS in 2015, a woman who claimed DiNapoli was her brother and financial adviser filed a complaint alleging that DiNapoli “stole money from her account as well as forged her name to a check that was addressed to her and deposited those funds in another account.”

As she fled her Tampa home of 35 years, clutching nothing but a duffel bag of clothes, she knew what to do next. She called her insurance company, Universal Property and Casualty. And she waited for them to make her whole.

After months of feeling jerked around by the company and seeing her home condemned by the city, she took her case to court. In February, Glover became one of 4,571 people — 15 per day — to sue Universal this year.

As property insurance premiums rose to become a full-blown crisis for Floridians in recent years, the primary response by Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislators is to stamp out those lawsuits. But five years into the crisis, the evidence that lawsuits caused Floridians’ premiums to skyrocket and caused 13 insurers to go out of business hasn’t materialized.

Litigation has yet to be found the reason a single insurance company failed. Despite cracking down on litigation, premiums are still going up, and the industry now says they won’t go down in the foreseeable future because of factors, such as climate change, that are out of their control.

Some lawmakers are now wondering when, if ever, they’ll see proof that what they voted for was effective.

“We’ve been getting more information from our federal government on UFOs in the past year than we have on insurance data from the state of Florida,” Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, told Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky during a virtual town hall last month. Pizzo noted he voted for the bills over the years despite the litigation issue having “never been proven.”

Yaworsky, who was appointed by DeSantis in February, didn’t disagree.

“That’s a great way to frame it,” he responded.

Extreme number of suits

Florida does have an extreme number of lawsuits against insurers compared with other states. Even plaintiffs’ lawyers and consumer advocates will admit some litigation against insurance companies is abusive or unnecessary. One law firm has been shut down for its practices.

But the Legislature hasn’t studied how many of those lawsuits are excessive and not triggered by legitimate grievances against the insurer.

State regulators also can’t give definitive answers about how much excessive or frivolous lawsuits have caused Floridians’ premiums to go up, compared with other factors.

“No one seems to be able to provide proof of it,” said Gavin Magor, director of research and ratings at West Palm Beach-based Weiss Ratings, which examines the financial health of every Florida-based insurer.

Instead, Florida insurers could be driving the litigation rate by trying to reduce payouts. The Florida-based insurers who dominate the market receive an outsize percentage of the nation’s complaints, and one company has been accused by its own adjusters of manipulating reports to lowball or deny homeowners’ claims.

For Glover, she says she didn’t want to have to sue her insurer. The company sent her checks totaling about $100,000 within a month, but without telling her what the money was for or how much the company estimated the damage, she said.

Her home hasn’t been inhabitable since the storm, and in April, the city condemned it, requiring her to tear it down to a slab. The company has still not paid the maximum under her policy provisions, which still wouldn’t be enough to rebuild.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Universal told the Times/Herald the company promptly paid her. As for the home being condemned, he noted the city’s notice said it was from “fire.” Glover’s lawyer, Scott Jeeves, says there was no fire, and the city made a mistake.

“The possibility of a fire loss to the home causing its demolition raises several new questions that will need to be explored in the litigation,” spokesperson Travis Miller said.

Glover said she was raised “old-school” and taught the three grandchildren she raised in her home that anything of value needed to be insured.

“How can I tell them that, when it looks like a big scam?”

For years, insurance companies, state regulators and many Republican lawmakers have blamed lawsuits for causing Florida’s crisis.

One important statistic

Those claims have been supported by the sheer number of lawsuits filed against insurers, and by one statistic in particular: the percentage of lawsuits compared to the rest of the country. A 2021 analysis by then-Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier found that Florida made up 8% of the nation’s homeowners’ claims in 2019, but 76% of its lawsuits.

Although critics note the study didn’t include some data, such as Texas windstorm claims, the numbers have been difficult to refute.

Insurance companies point to some law firms filing hundreds of lawsuits per day against insurers — a pace insurers say is beyond reason. Some law firms are using targeted online advertising to find clients, observers allege.

So far, Florida officials have taken action against one law firm, operated by Coral Gables attorney Scott Strems, whose 30-lawyer office became the top law firm in the state for suing home insurance companies. The Florida Bar accused Strems of filing multiple claims on a suit and committing “fraudulent” conduct, and in 2020, the Florida Supreme Court suspended him.

DeSantis and the Legislature have tried to reduce the incentives for lawyers to take cases against insurers.

In 2021, lawmakers limited the ability of homeowners to assign their insurance benefits to a contractor, much like a patient assigns their benefits to a doctor’s office to directly bill their health insurance company.

After that move failed to reduce Floridians’ premiums, lawmakers this year took a more dramatic step. Undoing 130 years of state law, they stopped requiring insurance companies to pay attorney’s fees when plaintiffs sue and win.

For years, Republican leaders in the House had resisted the move, believing that insurers’ claims were overblown. In March, former President Donald Trump blasted it as a “BAILOUT” for insurance companies.

There was a surge in lawsuits before the new laws took effect. In March, 156,652 more lawsuits were filed against all insurance companies, including auto insurance, compared to March 2022, according to the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute. Those additional lawsuits will increase insurers’ costs by 8%, the group estimates.

The decision was hailed by insurers and business groups as a historic win, however.

“The changes that the Legislature adopted were transformational,” said Locke Burt, a former state senator who runs Ormond Beach-based Security First Insurance Co.

More information gathered

In 2021, lawmakers required state regulators to start collecting from insurers more detailed data on lawsuits, but the first results won’t be released until the end of this month, Yaworsky told senators last week.

The release has been held up in part because when insurance companies were first required to report details on their lawsuits, 71% of them submitted no data and another 18% missed the deadline.

In 2020, Florida Insurance Consumer Advocate Tasha Carter surveyed 7,000 people whose claims were represented by a lawyer. The survey found that 78% of them said they hired a lawyer because of a poor claims experience, either from their insurer delaying payments, denying payments or not offering enough money. Another 20% said they hired a lawyer based on advice from a contractor, a consultant or an insurance adjuster.

“These types of marketplace behaviors and claim handling practices can lead to litigation,” Carter told lawmakers in 2021.

Florida law used to allow insurance claims to be filed up to three years after the date of the loss. Insurance companies have blamed contractors for going door to door and convincing homeowners that damage to their roofs or homes was caused by storms that happened months or years earlier.

In response, lawmakers last year changed the deadline to file a claim to one year after the incident.

But Carter’s survey found that those instances might be in the extreme minority. About four out of every five claims were filed within two weeks of the date of the loss, she found.

Carter mentioned her findings in a presentation to the House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee in 2021. Her spokesperson said the survey was sent to “legislators, consumers and other stakeholders.”

During a Senate Committee hearing last week, Yaworsky said he keeps hearing complaints from Floridians upset with how their claims were handled.

“I’ve sometimes been surrounded by consumers,” he said.

Despite years of reforms by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature, insurance experts and analysts are now saying they don’t expect to see premiums falling any time soon.

“Unfortunately, in our opinion, we don’t see a path to lower rates right now,” said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, which is backed by insurance companies.

On Monday, analysts with Karen Clark & Co., a catastrophe modeling firm, issued a five-page report that concluded “it is unlikely these costs will go down.”

Those conclusions are unwelcome news for Floridians, whose homeowners insurance premiums are the highest in the nation — and rising. It’s also an indication that recent legislation might not bring the relief that homeowners need.

DeSantis, lawmakers and insurance companies have blamed “excessive,” “abusive” or “fraudulent” litigation for Floridians’ rising premiums, and curbing those lawsuits have been their primary response to the state’s insurance crisis.

It’s now more difficult and more expensive to sue an insurance company. Unlike their response to the last insurance crisis in 2007, the Legislature did not make lowering premiums the goal of the recent reforms. Instead, the stated goal was to stabilize the state’s insurance market, and DeSantis and state lawmakers have urged patience while waiting to see the reforms lead to lower rates.

The reforms have stabilized the market, said Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, an insurance broker and chairperson of the Senate’s Banking and Insurance Committee, which held a hearing on the insurance market on Tuesday.

State regulators have approved new insurance companies to enter Florida’s market. Others are forming, and although companies like Farmers and Progressive recently announced plans to withdraw from the state, no companies have gone insolvent since February.

“I think, really, the indicators are pointing in the right way, but it’s going to take some time,” Boyd said.

Office of Insurance Regulation Commissioner Mike Yaworsky said, “we’re seeing improvement across the board.”

He dismissed “prognostications” of continued high premiums, saying they were being made by “people that are making money off of one or more aspects of the property insurance market.”

But when pressed, he didn’t say when Floridians could see lower premiums.

Over the last two decades, state lawmakers have responded when insurance companies complained of sinkhole claims, abuses in other types of claims and litigation, noted Sen. Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach.

“Every year it’s something new,” Powell said. He said he’s heard from other legislators that the changes could take five or six years to be realized. He lamented that the Legislature isn’t considering other ideas to reduce rates, such as capping rate increases.

“People don’t have five or six years,” Powell said. “People are suffering now.”

Experts say that other factors beyond the Legislature’s control will keep rates from falling. The cost of repairing or replacing damage to a home increased 55% between 2019 and 2022, for example, Friedlander said.

Florida-based insurers, which cover about four out of every five policies in the state, are also highly dependent on reinsurance, which they purchase to help pay out storm claims each year.

The cost of reinsurance has increased dramatically in recent years, including 27% this year on average, according to the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation. “That’s going to be a pass-along cost to consumers,” Friedlander said.

Had state lawmakers and DeSantis not made it more expensive to sue insurance companies, “we could have seen the failure of dozens of Florida domestic insurers,” he said.

The analysis by Karen Clark & Co. also cited climate change. Global warming is creating more severe hurricanes, the report states, and warming waters in the Gulf of Mexico are causing Florida to experience higher-than-usual losses from hail, tornadoes and wind. “These factors will continue to influence future homeowners premiums, and it is unlikely these costs will go down,” the report states.

In May, Tallahassee lobbyist Fred Karlinsky, who represents numerous Florida-based insurers, told the ratings agency AM Best during a panel that he was also pessimistic about falling rates. “I think it’s going to be a while, if ever, until we see that,” he said.

He cited one simple reason: Home values keep going up, making them more expensive to insure.

That review never delved very deep, according to the results, contained in 124 pages of records received from the governor’s office in response to a public records request.

DeSantis’ chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, never interviewed anyone involved in the scandal, the records show. Her office instead referred the case back to the Department of Education’s inspector general, who produced no reports and pulled no records.

A federal grand jury out of Gainesville is now investigating the bid-rigging allegations.

The state’s review was requested by state Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, after the Times/Herald reported last year how the Department of Education, led by former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, tried to steer an estimated $4 million contract to MGT Consulting, led by former GOP lawmaker and Corcoran business partner Trey Traviesa.

Corcoran is now interim president of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota County that DeSantis and political appointees are trying to turn into a beacon of conservatism.

The contract was to be paid for by federal coronavirus relief dollars and was to help the struggling Jefferson County School District, a rural, majority-Black school district near Tallahassee.

State law forbids agencies from giving contracts to companies with an “unfair competitive advantage,” but records and interviews showed that:

On Nov. 1, 2021, a week before the state asked for bids, officials with the Department of Education held a meeting with Traviesa and Jefferson County school leaders to discuss MGT’s consulting deal.

When education officials drafted the request for proposals, it was based on a draft agreement that MGT had already drawn up.

On the first day of the competitive bidding, Jefferson County school Superintendent Eydie Tricquet told the county’s school board that she was told MGT would receive the contract.

Jefferson County school officials fought against the contract, and it was ultimately not awarded after two top education officials created a separate company and submitted their own bid. (The department’s inspector general investigated that competing bid, but not the apparent bid-rigging.)

On Monday, Tant said it didn’t appear that state officials wanted to get to the bottom of what happened.

“The public, my Jefferson County community, is owed an answer on that,” Tant added. “It shouldn’t take a federal investigation to get an answer to that.”

DeSantis’ office didn’t return emails requesting comment.

Records show how the Department of Education’s inspector general responded to Tant’s complaint and to a second complaint filed by writer and former Polk County School Board member Billy Townsend, who both raised concerns based on the Times/Herald’s report.

Tant suggested that investigators speak with Tricquet, school principal Jackie Pons and anyone else who was at the Nov. 1 meeting with school officials and Traviesa.

Records show that Department of Education Inspector General Mike Blackburn emailed Tricquet and Pons, writing that they were both “identified as a potential complainant with information related to misconduct by a Department of Education employee.”

Tricquet said Tuesday that she called the inspector general’s office and spoke with someone whose name she couldn’t recall. But the person didn’t seem eager to speak with her, she said.

“They said, ‘Do you need to come in and talk to us?’” Tricquet recalled. “It wasn’t, ‘We would like to talk to you.’”

She said she never learned what the inspector general’s office was investigating, so never met with them.

“It was like, ‘OK, if you want to talk to us, you can,’” she recalled them saying. “It was very odd.”

Pons never spoke to the inspector general, Tricquet said.

That appears to be where the state’s investigation began and ended, according to records. Investigators noted repeatedly that neither Tant nor Townsend had “direct knowledge” of what happened.

In one meeting of investigators, Blackburn noted that the Nov. 1, 2021, meeting happened prior to the procurement, but he couldn’t proceed without the help of Tricquet or Pons.

“The (Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General) does not know the purpose of the meeting or who attended without corroboration from Tricquet or Pons,” records state.

The Times/Herald was able to confirm the existence of the meeting and some of its attendees, which included an official with MGT, through the Nov. 1 visitor logs for the Department of Education’s headquarters in Tallahassee.

In June last year, the inspectors general wrote to Tant that they were closing out their review.

“We have reviewed the information you provided and attempted to interview the contacts you suggested,” they wrote. “At this point, this office has determined that no further investigation is warranted at this time.”

Last year, DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske said Miguel would take a “holistic approach” to reviewing whether the state tried to steer the contract to MGT.

“The record shows that Taryn Fenske clearly lied on behalf of the governor when she said there would be an ‘all of the above’ investigation,” Townsend said in a text message. “There has been a ‘none of the above’ investigation, which is obviously why federal authorities have been forced to step in.”

About 300,000 customers of the state-run insurer of last resort are receiving letters in the mail this month with an offer to switch to a private insurance company.

If customers don’t respond by Oct. 5, the letters state, customers can be forced to go with the private company at a potentially far higher cost. But in many cases, the customer can reject the offer.

A Citizens spokesperson said Tuesday that the vendor hired to print the letters has been inundated, meaning some policyholders are getting less than the customary 30 days to respond. Although the letters are typically dated Aug. 28, as many as a third of customers received them much later.

Some customers still haven’t been notified. Between 10,000 and 15,000 letters were sent out Tuesday, but everyone should receive the letters by Friday, Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier said.

Because of the problem, Citizens is extending the deadline to respond to Oct. 10. Insurance agents have been alerted about the delays, he said.

If customers don’t respond in time, they could be in for an expensive surprise.

Eunic Epstein-Ortiz said she received a letter at her St. Petersburg home on Monday with an offer from Tampa-based Slide Insurance, a startup company that has increased its footprint in Florida’s ailing property insurance market.

The offer from Slide was for a premium of $7,484 — 77% higher than the $4,227 if she stayed with Citizens, according to the notice she received.

The envelope bore no indications that an urgent deadline was inside, said Epstein-Ortiz, who ran for the state Senate last year as a Democrat representing St. Petersburg but lost.

“I am completely aware, our insurance system currently is not where it needs to be,” Epstein-Ortiz said. “But offloading 300,000 people, seemingly in the dead of night, with almost no notice, with no urgency to it, is not the way to do it.”

To reduce Citizens’ policy count, state regulators this year have approved several companies, including Slide, to assume some of the state-run insurer’s policies. Customers don’t have to accept the private companies’ offers.

But if the offer is within 20% of Citizens’ rate, customers can still decline the offer, but they can’t renew their policy with Citizens. Policyholders who receive offers can make their choice through their agent or online at citizensfla.com/online-choice

An Orlando Sentinel editor received a letter earlier this year that said Slide would take over his policy for an estimated $4,232 a year. He paid $2,700 this year for his home in Orlando, so he rejected the offer and stayed with Citizens.

As insurance companies have folded or reduced their exposure in Florida in recent years, Citizens has seen its policy count grow to about 1.4 million, making it the largest insurer in the state.

Asked whether she and her wife would take up Slide’s offer, Epstein-Ortiz’s response also was an immediate “no.”

“Why would we go to another insurer with worse coverage for twice the price?” she said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

About 300,000 customers of the state-run insurer of last resort are receiving letters in the mail this month with an offer to switch to a private insurance company.

If customers don’t respond by Oct. 5, the letters state, customers will be forced to go with the private company — at a potentially far higher cost.

A Citizens spokesperson said Tuesday that the vendor hired to print the letters has been inundated by the volume, meaning some policyholders are getting less than the customary 30 days to respond. Although the letters are typically dated Aug. 28, as many as a third of customers received them much later. A notice sent to a Miami Herald editor was postmarked Sept. 13, for example.

Some customers still haven’t been notified. Between 10,000 and 15,000 letters were sent out Tuesday, but everyone should receive the letters by Friday, Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier said.

Because of the problem, Citizens is extending the deadline to respond to Oct. 10. Insurance agents have been alerted to the delays, he said.

“The goal is always to give policyholders at least 30 days, but vendor issues prevented that from happening,” Peltier said. “Worst-case scenario is folks are going to have a couple weeks.”

If customers don’t respond in time, they could be in for an expensive surprise.

Eunic Epstein-Ortiz said she received a letter at her St. Petersburg home on Monday with an offer from Tampa-based Slide Insurance, a new startup company that has increased its footprint in Florida’s ailing property insurance market.

The offer from Slide was for a premium of $7,484 — 77% higher than the $4,227 if she stayed with Citizens, according to the notice she received.

The envelope bore no indications that an urgent deadline was inside, said Epstein-Ortiz, who ran for the state Senate last year as a Democrat representing St. Petersburg but lost.

“I am completely aware, our insurance system currently is not where it needs to be,” Epstein-Ortiz said. “But offloading 300,000 people, seemingly in the dead of night, with almost no notice, with no urgency to it, is not the way to do it.”

As insurance companies have folded or reduced their exposure in Florida in recent years, Citizens has seen its policy count grow to about 1.4 million, making it the largest insurer in the state.

To reduce Citizens’ policy count, state regulators this year have approved several companies, including Slide, to assume some of the state-run insurer’s policies. Customers don’t have to accept the private companies’ offers. But if the offer is within 20% of Citizens’ rate, customers can still decline the offer, but they can’t renew their policy with Citizens.

Policyholders who receive offers can make their choice through their agent or online at citizensfla.com/online-choice.

Asked whether she and her wife would take up Slide’s offer, Epstein-Ortiz’s response was an immediate “no.”

“Why would we go to another insurer with worse coverage for twice the price?” she said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”