Insurance Administration

Perdue official to speak at Biz Tech Expo The Carroll County Technology Council, Chamber of Commerce and Carroll Community College will hold the Biz Tech Exposition 2002 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday at the college. The expo will offer information and demonstrations to help businesses become more effective and display the latest in technological advances. Keynote speaker Jim Perdue, board chairman of Perdue Farms Inc., will discuss how technology has helped his business. As board chairman of the company, he is responsible for developing Perdue's vision and growth strategies.

The agitation felt when shopping for auto or homeowners' insurance can be eased by following a basic rule of thumb -- determine precisely what coverage you are seeking, and then shop around. Consumers who don't do their research may pay higher premiums or end up underinsured, the experts say."When shopping for insurance, it's not always good to just look for the lower price. It's important to shop for quality," says Sheila Stevens, an insurance agent for 12 years who opened her own agency, SIS Insurance Agency, two years ago in Baltimore County.

A former state regulator has sued the Maryland Insurance Administration after the agency refused to release publicly the rates it approved last month for a new standard package of health benefits to small businesses.Darah Phillip Kehnemuyi, a lawyer with offices in Damascus and Frederick, said in a lawsuit filed this week that the administration's failure to release the rates violated the spirit of a new health insurance law intended to encourage comparison shopping and price competition.

A year after giving the Maryland Insurance Administration a failing grade for policing the industry it is charged with overseeing, a national regulatory association is recommending accreditation of the state agency in light of what appears to be a remarkable turnaround.A team from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) ended a weeklong inspection of the state agency in Baltimore last week by recommending that the Maryland agency be approved for accreditation when the national body meets this fall.

In the three months since a hail storm left large dents and small scuffs on the mostly aluminum-sided homes in Anne Arundel's Provinces and other Severn neighborhoods, home repair crews have spread through the communities.But several dozen Provinces homeowners say that while their neighbors are having the siding on their homes completely replaced, their insurance company, State Farm, is offering to replace only damaged siding and that they are left with mismatched siding.State Farm officials say they are not required to replace all of the siding on a home when only a portion has been damaged.

For Maryland's insurance administration, the school year is already over and the grades are in: straight 'A's, after posting failing marks in tests taken last fall.It has been a remarkable turnaround -- and a necessary one.Until Maryland was threatened with loss of national accreditation, both Gov. William Donald Schaefer and the General Assembly refused to admit there was a crisis brewing in the insurance agency. But when it finally dawned on them that 113 insurance companies with headquarters in Maryland could be forced to move to another state, reform action moved swiftly through the legislature last year.

Letting the foxes go back to guard the chicken house, as one official put it, is a mild way of describing the state's lax regulation of title insurance companies. Agents convicted of stealing escrow funds deposited by home buyers can return to their old tricks, and state regulators can't do much about it. Even if the Maryland Insurance Administration tried to crack down on crooks in a business handling millions of dollars of citizens' money, the application for licenses to sell title insurance is so inadequate the agency may not even know who's selling for the company.

The man at the center of an emerging controversy over Internet postings about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's personal life is a Baltimore County native, longtime political operative of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and unpublished novelist who writes horror and science fiction in his spare time. Joseph F. Steffen Jr., 45, who resigned yesterday after word spread that he was the author of Internet messages on the subject, is divorced and lives in Rosedale. He grew up in Reisterstown, graduated from Franklin High School and said he bypassed college for the world of politics.

The state computer used by an Ehrlich administration employee who was forced to resign after spreading Internet rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley has been secured, and some contents will be disclosed in coming days, Insurance Commissioner Alfred W. Redmer Jr. said yesterday. For the first time, Redmer responded to questions about ex-employee Joseph F. Steffen Jr., testifying at a budget hearing in Annapolis. Steffen cleared his desk Feb. 9 after acknowledging that he posted messages and exchanged private e-mails on a Web site, discussing rumors - denied by O'Malley - about the mayor's marriage.