Citizens Property Insurance CEO Barry Gilway Gets Thumbs Up for Senate Confirmation

The chief of the state's insurer of last resort made his case Monday before a Senate committee, and after nearly two hours of questioning, he secured the panel's favorable vote to move forward for Senate confirmation.

Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Executive Director Barry Gilway was reported favorably for confirmation by the Ethics and Elections Committee to continue his $350,000 position. Gilway came to the job nine months ago amid a storm of scandals involving employee misconduct and abuse of expenses at the company. The executive told the committee cleaning up the black eyes on Citizens' reputation was one of his first duties.What I have done is assess the need for change and improve the organization moving forward," he told the panel.

When he started at Citizens, Gilway was asked by Florida Gov. Rick Scott to depopulate the insurer as his first priority. Gilway said that in his nine months at the helm, Citizenshas gone from a $7.2 billion assessment load for a one in 100 storm down to $4.1 billion. The corporation has also reduced the amount of policyholders by 300,000, down to 1.2 million entering the wind season. The sheer size of the insurer is illustrated by the fact it has $600 million worth of vendor agreements, he said.

Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, reminded Gilway that in his early days on the job, the CEO criticized the media for hyping up the insurer's problems. The committee chairman asked Gilway if he had changed his tune.

Gilway admitted the company's problems were real and said he look[s] at the press in a different way today. As part of his efforts to clean up Citizens' image, the executive has engaged the media and said he had made more than five editorial visits in a handful of weeks.

The CEO was grilled by senators on topics ranging from sinkholes to reinsurance forms, but at the end of it, he had gained enough confidence to secure a yes vote from the committee.