Slick Rick slips again, bullshit inspection scheduled
You may recall the big controversy that went down last year where the Florida legislature, acting on Rick Scott’s directive, passed a bill that started docking employees that were on the state pension system a mandatory 3% of their pay towards the pension system. This decision came on the back of many state workers already suffering from a half decade of no salary increases.
At the time the tea party nut jobs, like Rick Scott, were riding high on their, “state workers are the cause of the problem” bandwagon. Lots of “me too’rs” jumped on board.
Well the teacher’s union did not take this action sitting down and filed a lawsuit stating the state’s actions were unconstitutional. The pension benefit was enacted in 1974 and was offered in lieu of pay raises. The union claimed trying to flip back was basically a breach of contract since state employees typically trade lower salaries for steady employment with retirement benefits. Yanking that rug out from under existing employees that signed on under those terms is shady.
Well yesterday a judge finally made a ruling on the case and guess what, she said it was shady too, ruling the mandatory 3% contribution was indeed a breach of contract. It was a nice victory for employees but it will be likely appealed all the way to the Florida Supreme Court until a final resolution is reached.
The funny thing is originally this employee contribution was pitched by Tricky Rick as necessary to help balance out the state pension system which took a dip like everything else when the stock market took a dump a couple years back. However since then it has rebounded and remains one of the top 5 strongest state pension systems in the country.
But to me, the most outrageous part of all is the 3% that was skimmed from employees was not used to help fund the pension at all. Instead it was just given back to the local governments to spend as they saw fit, a true indicator of just how much bullshit the entire situation was.
Anyway I will be thrilled if this holds up all the way up the court food chain, dealing Rick Scott yet another black eye. His governorship has been an epic fail thus far.
So yesterday I got the call from the company contracted by my home insurance carrier to do a “quality assurance wind mitigation inspection” on Friday. Several years ago the state offered free wind mitigation inspections to home owners. If your home met certain requirements after the inspection your insurance carrier was required to offer you a discounted rate. Well this is All State’s (Castle Key) attempt to reverse that discount.
The letter I received from them a couple weeks ago said that basically they didn’t trust that the original inspectors did a good job. So they have gone out and paid for another company to do an “independent” inspection. Yea right, that’s total bullshit. I guarantee that these independent inspectors are getting a kick back for each and every house that they are able to disqualify for the discount.
Anyway when I made the appointment the woman asked me a couple questions like if anything was repaired on the house in the last 10 years. She also asked if the front door was hurricane rated which I had no idea if it was or not. (I later found it is not) She was obviously trying to lay the groundwork for possible red flags when this inspector shows up. Of course I have a plywood ‘storm shutter” that goes over the front door anyway so the hurricane rating of the door itself should be a moot point. Our house has gone through a true Cat 3 storm and escaped with only pool cage damage.
Although Ali is off Friday, I made arrangements to make sure I will be home to meet this inspector. I will be carefully making mental notes of what he does/says. If they do indeed try to withdraw our home owners discount I will be using the info on my follow up call to my agent where I will tell them the discount better remain or I will be shopping my insurance needs for our home and four vehicles elsewhere.
Allstate has already filed for huge premium increases, they will not be getting a penny more from me.