HB 1305 Coastal Insurance Moves to the House Floor

HB 1305 Coastal Insurance Moves to the House Floor

After a contentious and long debate, with five amendments on the floor and heavy lobbying pressure from NC20 (represented by BASE), NC Home Builders Association, and the NC Association of Realtors the standing House Finance Committee favorably reported HB 1305 out of committee.  The Bill will now head to the House Floor early next week for a full vote of the House.

BASE (Business Alliance for a Sound Economy) would like to give a special thanks to the following Representatives: Danny McComas, Dewey Hill, Sandra Spaulding Hughes, and Bill Owens.  Representatives McComas, Hill, and Owens all offered key amendments that helped to change critical elements in the bill.

Representative Owens offered an amendment that would tie the current 1% deductible to a named storm.  This amendment was critical because it now levels the playing field on storm events across the entire state.  Because of this amendment coastal residents will not pay a 1% deductible if you have any damage from an afternoon thunderstorm or related wind event, it would have to be a named storm.  Representative McComas offered an amendment that stripped the unnecessary and onerous Flood Insurance requirement out of the bill.  Representative Hill introduced a controversial amendment that would have restored the $750,000 Beach Plan home coverage limit back to its original amount of $1.5 million.  Unfortunately the House Finance Committee rejected Representative Hill’s amendment and decided to keep what is currently in the bill keeping the maximum at $750,000.  Two other amendments that were introduced, but unfortunately were not successful would have lowered the 10% catastrophic assessment recoupment limit down to a mandated 5% , and reduce the 10% surcharge for separate wind and hail coverage, and 20% for wind and hail for homeowners coverage down to 5% and 15%.  On each of these three amendments it was quite apparent that the western divide and geographical differences of “non-coastal” Representatives were very prevalent.

To look at a copy of the bill “Click Here“