Lawmakers bury proposals to change offices to appointed positions

Saturday, March 13th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Lawmakers have buried proposals this session to change the state insurance commissioner position from an elected office to one that is appointed by the governor, but they say it has nothing to do with pending charges against the current officeholder.

Insurance Commissioner Carroll Fisher was indicted last month by a grand jury. He faces four felony counts related to operating a charity illegally and embezzling insurance education funds.

Resolutions for a statewide vote to amend the state Constitution to let the governor appoint insurance commissioners weren't heard in House or Senate committees.

Sen. Maxine Horner, chairman of the Senate Business and Labor Committee, chose not to hear Sen. Mark Snyder's Senate Joint Resolution 33 to appoint the commissioner. A similar proposal by Snyder, R-Edmond, to make the labor commissioner a governor-appointed office also died in the committee.

Horner, D-Tulsa, said voters should have a say in who fills those positions.

Snyder attributed the failure of his bills to the populist belief of electing rather than appointing officials.

"The old populist concept is still very strong," Snyder said. "I understand that."

A similar insurance commissioner proposal by Reps. Dan Boren, D-Seminole, and John Trebilcock, R-Broken Arrow, met the same fate in the House Rules Committee.

State Rep. Larry Roberts, D-Miami, chairman of the Rules Committee, said, "I think voters should have a say."

Boren said he wanted the office appointed because it would help give a governor more authority to create an administration. Boren and Trebilcock also authored legislation that would have targeted the labor commissioner's office.

Oklahoma is one of 11 states that elects an insurance commissioner. The other states are Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, North Dakota, California, Washington and Montana.

Governors in several of Oklahoma's neighboring states -- Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas and Missouri -- appoint the director or commissioner of insurance.

Fisher says being elected creates more accountability.

"If we don't do a good job, the people of that state have an opportunity to remove us," Fisher said.

Gary Copeland, director of the University of Oklahoma's Carl Albert Center for Congressional Research and Studies, said turning elected offices into appointed positions puts distance between voters and elected officials, which makes voters nervous.

"I think there's a strong sense of populism in this state where we as voters want to keep our elected officials close to us," Copeland said.

The traditional justification for making an office appointive is if it is more an administrative than policymaking position.

James Davis, political science professor at Oklahoma State University, said the trend toward electing officials is part of Jacksonian democracy that began under President Andrew Jackson in the 1800s.

A lot of people still want to elect everybody, Davis said, although there are benefits to appointments by a governor.

"If you had a governor who could appoint more broadly in the executive branch, he would be more able to keep his promises," Davis said. "Also, you would have somebody to blame. You don't have to wait until the next election cycle."