Texas Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Julia Rathgeber as commissioner of insurance.

Rathgeber, current deputy chief of staff for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, replaces Eleanor Kitzman, who did not receive confirmation during the Legislative Session.

Kitzman did not make it onto the agenda of the Senate Nominations Committee. She needed to be confirmed to the post after being appointed in 2011 by Perry to take the place of Mike Geeslin.

Rathgeber, of Austin, is a past director of research for the Texas General Land Office and a past director of the strategic assessment divisions for the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, which is now the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

She is also subject to Senate confirmation, but not until the next regular session, in 2015. Texas lawmakers meet every other year.

“The new commissioner will face a steep learning curve but she will be assisted by a seasoned staff at [the Texas Department of Insurance],” says Mark Hanna of the Insurance Council of Texas, an industry trade group. “She will face no shortage of critical issues.”

Senators PC360 spoke to in Austin said Kitzman did not have the votes to receive confirmation.

Late last week the now former insurance commission told staff her last day would be Memorial Day, May 27.

In a May 21 one-on-one interview in Austin with PC360 Kitzman said of her job future: “This is what I do, not who I am. I've had a job before this one and I'll have another one after it.”

Kitzman, who was director of the South Carolina Department of Insurance before coming to Texas, has also worked in the private insurance and reinsurance industries.

Kitzman on TWIA

In Austin, Kitzman told PC360 she had reached, “one inescapable conclusion” on an issue she said she spent her entire tenure working on—the state's last-resort insurer, The Texas Windstorm Insurance Assoc.

“All roads lead to depopulation,” she said. “It's the only solution that makes sense.”

TWIA, she said, is insolvent and would be under the insurance department's control with a ban on writing new policies, if it were a private company.

She described the entity as a “ticking time bomb,” and it wouldn't take a big storm to wipe out its funds.

“It could be the accumulation of smaller events that deplete bonds without reaching reinsurance,” Kitzman said.

Additionally, with TWIA rates artificially low, “new capital can't come in and gain traction,” she said. About 20 percent of the risk held by TWIA is adequately priced, Kitzman added.

Depopulation would need to occur gradually, she said, possibly with the use of a clearinghouse in order to allow policies to be shopped in the private market before landing with TWIA.

Special Reports /

Rathgeber Named New Texas Commissioner; Kitzman's Parting Words on TWIA

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