North Carolina’s insurance commissioner, Wayne Goodwin, is in a battle with a powerful member of the state Senate apparently over his handling of coastal insurance coverage.

Wayne Goodwin

Senate President Pro-Tempore Marc Basnight, a 13-term Democrat who represents the state’s coastal counties, including Beaufort, Camden, Currituck, Dare, Hyde, Pasquotank, Tyrrell, and Washington, included language in a Senate budget proposal that would have stripped the insurance commissioner of his authority to regulate insurance activity in the state, according to the Richmond County Daily Journal newspaper.

Instead, Basnight wants an appointed commission to regulate insurance.

Later, Basnight said the proposed change should not have been included in the budget. He told the newspaper he intends to propose creating a seven-member commission to regulate maximum rates for the 20 coastal counties in the state. His original proposal was to have a commission regulate rates throughout the state.

In August 2009, Goodwin resolved problems with the Coastal Property Insurance Pool, which provides insurance to property owners living along the Atlantic Ocean in the state. His plan called for premium increases, a reduction in coverage from $1 million to $750,000, and state funding for losses exceeding $1 million if the result of a catastrophic hurricane or other natural disaster, the newspaper said.

Goodwin “worked us up real good in the 20 coastal counties when they stuck it to us with the rate increases we experienced,” Basnight was quoted as saying at a press conference. “It was unfair. It was not something that was needed and it was simply wrong.”

Goodwin told the newspaper that as an elected commissioner, his performance is reviewed by voters every four years, whereas an appointed commission would be “unelected and unaccountable.”