News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed

Oklahoma Has Nation’s Highest Average Homeowners Insurance Premiums

Published

2 days ago

July 16, 2025

oklahomawatch.org – JC Hallman – 2025-07-16 06:00:00

by JC Hallman, Oklahoma Watch
July 16, 2025

After Oklahoma Watch debunked a claim that hail explained skyrocketing homeowners insurance rates, Oklahoma Insurance Department Commissioner Glen Mulready — who amplified the hail claims — backtracked in a statement published on the department’s website entitled “It’s Not Just Hail: A Look Into Oklahoma Homeowners Rates.”

According to a June 9 Lending Tree report, Oklahoma has the highest average homeowners insurance premium in the country at $6,133 per year, 2.2 times the national average of $2,801. Rates in Oklahoma have climbed 50.8% from 2019, the year Mulready took office, through 2024, rising faster than the national average of 40.4% the report said.

Mulready explained that insurance rates are driven by a combination of factors beyond hail, and championed the work of the department on behalf of consumers.

A new Oklahoma Watch investigation revealed some of these claims to be dubious.

A False Claim

Mulready said that the department fields complaints, enforces laws, and ensures that companies treat consumers fairly.

“We take action to protect consumers when insurers act illegally or violate contracts,” Mulready said.

Mulready said that $12 million was returned to consumers in 2024 by the Consumer Assistance/Claims Division of the OID. However, the Consumer Assistance/Claims Division has no impact on homeowners rates as set by insurance companies.

Mulready said that Oklahoma law prevents the OID from interfering on rates.

“OID has no statutory authority to set or approve homeowners rates except in certain, extraordinary circumstances,” Mulready said.

He went on to claim that 38 states follow a similar model.

That is false.

Mulready ignored the fact that Oklahoma’s tornado alley neighbors, Texas and Kansas, which by various measures enjoy lower homeowners insurance rates while suffering from weather conditions similar to or worse than Oklahoma, follow the same model but do in fact perform regulatory work to approve rates.

The difference is the role of actuaries, the number crunchers of the insurance world.

The Last of the Actuaries

“What I’ve found is that most people have not heard of us,” said Thomas Cummins, 83, who as far as he knows is the only independent actuary left in the state of Oklahoma.

Originally from Duncan, Cummins studied math at Oklahoma State University, but had to go to the University of Iowa to study actuarial science, which he defined as the effort to measure the financial impact of certain occurrences on financial markets or people.

Actuaries are financial statisticians, Cummins said. When they are employed by an insurance company, their role is to ensure that the company has enough money to cover claims on the policies they have written.

Cummins said there are about 30,000 actuaries in the United States, but he was aware of only three in Oklahoma: an actuary who lives in Tulsa but does most of his work in California, another actuary who is employed by Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Cummins himself, in business since 1981 and the last independent actuary working in the state, as far as he knows.

Kim Holland, who served as Oklahoma’s insurance commissioner from 2005 to 2011, recalled that an actuary had been employed on the health side of the department during her tenure, but at that time there was no actuary on the property and casualty side, which included homeowners insurance.

Today, OID does employ a chief actuary. According to OID’s 2024 annual report, the chief actuary is Andy Schallhorn, who is also the deputy commissioner in charge of the financial division. Schallhorn’s job is described as monitoring the financial solvency of insurance companies and working to ensure compliance with Oklahoma law.

Oklahoma law is the problem.

The Devil in the Details

Mulready’s claim that Oklahoma’s insurance model matched that of 38 other states ignored significant state-to-state variety.

“All states have different regulatory requirements and prerogatives that vary on the needs and dynamics of that particular state,” Holland said.

Rich Gibson of the American Academy of Actuaries said what Mulready likely meant was that 38 states operate on what’s known as a file-and-use model.

File-and-use means insurance companies file rate changes and put them into use immediately to charge customers; states that scrutinize rate filings before they are put into use are known as prior approval states.

That’s where it gets tricky, because there are significant differences that separate file-and-use states.

In Texas and Kansas, when filings are put into use, actuaries immediately review them to ensure that rates are adequate (to protect insurance companies), not excessive (to protect consumers), or unfairly discriminatory.

The critical difference: Oklahoma does not examine rates to protect consumers. In fact, Oklahoma law prevents the Insurance Department from protecting consumers by ensuring that rates are not excessive.

“OID has no statutory authority to set or approve homeowners rates except in certain, extraordinary circumstances.”

Glen Mulready

When Mulready said that Oklahoma may set or approve rates only in extraordinary circumstances, he was not citing a similarity between Oklahoma and other states; rather, he was referencing a significant distinction between Oklahoma and its file-and-use, tornado alley neighbors.

Specifically, the automatic process of actuarial scrutiny in Texas and Kansas is applied to every rate filing. By way of contrast, Oklahoma can scrutinize rate filings only if the commissioner has previously found the market to be non-competitive.

As Oklahoma Watch documented in its original investigation, the process for declaring a non-competitive market is legally murky and not widely understood; it’s unclear whether the state’s lone 2016 invocation of the non-competitive market statute was fully legal.

Also unclear is the precise job of the chief actuary. The 2024 annual report made a brief reference to the chief actuary protecting consumers, but how the actuary can protect consumers when the law prevents scrutiny of excessive rates is an open question.

In response to an interview request, Mulready cited dissatisfaction with Oklahoma Watch’s original story. He indicated that he had instructed the public agency’s staff to no longer engage with Oklahoma Watch.

“We will not be participating in this story,” Mulready said in an email.

Texas and Kansas Save Consumers Millions

The Texas Department of Insurance employs 18 actuaries to review rate filings, of whom 12 are dedicated to scrutinizing an annual average of 3,000 property and casualty filings, which include homeowners insurance.

Texas Department of Insurance actuaries submit questions to insurance companies or request changes on approximately 75% of filings; 10% of filings are withdrawn or rejected.

Since 2021, actuarial review of filings has saved Texas consumers $131.7 million, a TDI spokesman said in a written statement.

The Kansas Insurance Department employs a Chief of Actuarial Services and utilizes a pool of consulting actuaries to evaluate hundreds of property and casualty rate filings annually, said KID Deputy Chief of Staff Kyle Strathman.

Filings are evaluated for rate reasonableness, to ensure that rates are not excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory.

“If a filing is found to be out of compliance, the carrier is required to make an adjustment to the filing,” Strathman said, while declining to provide a precise dollar estimate on what the rate review process saves consumers each year.

It’s not Just Homeowners Insurance

Rather than encouraging competition by advising consumers to discriminate and shop among insurance companies, an I-44 billboard featuring Commissioner Mulready’s face alongside images of severe weather incidents sends a dire message: you can’t fight higher rates, so batten down the hatches and ride out the storm.

The problem of rising property insurance rates extends beyond homeowners insurance.

Sherie Donahay, president of the Bradbury Corner Homeowners’ Association in Edmond, reached out to OID to complain when the association’s rates skyrocketed despite the fact that Bradbury Corner had few assets to insure.

“I know the policy had doubled since 2023,” Donahay said, adding that she was aware of rate increases at other HOAs as well.

Donahay expressed her concern to OID that Bradbury Corner was being used to cover costs in other states where there were huge homeowners associations.

“I continue to see record profits on Wall Street by insurance companies.”

Keith Easley

In 2023, Sasakwa Public Schools Superintendent Kyle Wilson was featured in a story about rapidly rising property insurance rates for schools; Wilson fretted over whether out-of-control rate hikes would affect his ability to hire much-needed teachers.

Since then, Wilson said, rates had continued to rise for Sasakwa Public Schools; the anticipated 2026 rate of $151,000 was more than three times the 2020 rate of $45,000.

Insurance Companies Review Themselves, Actually

Oklahoma law does require insurance companies to submit an annual statement of actuarial opinion; however, the statement, by law, is authored by the company’s own appointed actuary.

In Oklahoma, insurance companies review themselves, actually.

Former commissioner Holland noted that during her tenure OID worked to clean up old regulations, and interacted with lawmakers constantly to suggest legislative changes.

Holland recalled that she had support from both political parties during her time in office. It helped that she had worked in insurance her whole career; she wasn’t hostile to the industry, but continued to believe that oversight was necessary.

“Do I think they need to be held accountable?” Holland said. “I did then, and I do now.”

In Oklahoma Watch’s original investigation, former legislator Kevin Easley, who championed a law that was later warped into the statutes that now govern homeowners insurance, spoke passionately about the changes to the legislation he had helped pass.

“They can damn sure change it back, can’t they?” Easley said at the time.

Now an oil and gas executive, Easley seconded Holland’s nostalgia for a time when agency heads worked closely with lawmakers to make problem-solving recommendations.

Easley was unimpressed with Mulready’s description of Oklahoma’s insurance model. Regardless of whether the model was similar to other states, Easley doubted whether 38 states were having the same kinds of problems Oklahoma is having.

“I continue to see record profits on Wall Street by insurance companies,” Easley said. “If the model in Oklahoma does not provide the authority to get involved in setting rates that are market-based, then maybe Mulready needs to be recommending to the legislature that the model be changed. If the model isn’t working, we should be changing the model.”

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Oklahoma Has Nation’s Highest Average Homeowners Insurance Premiums appeared first on oklahomawatch.org

Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article from Oklahoma Watch presents a critical examination of Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready’s claims and the broader policy framework governing homeowners insurance in Oklahoma. While it cites factual data and sources, the language and framing—such as labeling Mulready’s statements as “false,” using pointed headlines like “Insurance Companies Review Themselves, Actually,” and concluding with statements emphasizing corporate profits—indicate a skeptical stance toward deregulated markets and industry-friendly policy. The article implicitly advocates for stronger regulatory oversight, aligning with policy preferences typically associated with the political left, thus suggesting a left-leaning bias in tone and presentation.

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FEMA pulls back funding for Norman's flood alert system

News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed

FEMA pulls back funding for Norman's flood alert system

Published

2 days ago

July 15, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4 – 2025-07-15 22:25:54

SUMMARY: FEMA has abruptly withdrawn funding promised to Norman, Oklahoma, for a life-saving flood warning system. The federal government labeled the grant program supporting this project as wasteful and ineffective, despite its potential to prevent tragedies like recent deadly floods in Texas. Norman faces losing $350,000 vital to building the early detection system, with officials struggling to find alternative resources. Local leaders, including Senator Mary Boren, criticize the decision as politically motivated and detrimental to community safety. Meanwhile, the city emphasizes its ongoing commitment to public safety through existing monitoring methods while seeking new funding to advance flood preparedness.

FEMA pulls back funding for Norman’s flood alert system

Stay informed about Oklahoma news and weather! Follow KFOR News 4 on our website and social channels.

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News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed

Oklahoma sends additional resources to Texas

Published

3 days ago

July 15, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4 – 2025-07-15 06:50:43

SUMMARY: Oklahoma has sent additional resources to Texas to aid flood relief efforts amid ongoing heavy rains and rising rivers. Over 170 people remain missing, and recent rain has hindered search operations. A seven-member Swift Water Rescue Team from Oklahoma’s fire departments arrived safely Saturday to support water rescues and relief in flood-impacted areas. Oklahoma City Fire officials emphasize their readiness to assist neighboring states while maintaining preparedness at home. The team is trained to navigate debris-filled waterways and will continue efforts downstream, hoping to find some of the missing. Search operations paused temporarily due to worsening conditions.

Oklahoma swift water rescue teams have been on the ground in Texas for a little more than a week and more help is on the way.

Stay informed about Oklahoma news and weather! Follow KFOR News 4 on our website and social channels.

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News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed

FEMA Cuts Sink Norman’s Automated Flood Warning Plan

Published

3 days ago

July 14, 2025

Staff Editor

oklahomawatch.org – Anna Kramer – 2025-07-14 11:32:00

by Anna Kramer, Oklahoma Watch
July 14, 2025

The city of Norman was prepared to build an automatic flood warning system this year, the same kind of early warning system that Kerr County, Texas, could have used to help save lives during the deadly floods over the July Fourth weekend.

But in April, the Trump administration said it was ending the wasteful and ineffective program that would have paid for it. The city, which dealt with flooding as recently as June, was forced to table its $313,000 project to install automated sensors and cameras to monitor water levels and provide real-time alerts to the public.

“Now we don’t have that automated system that we would very much like to have if there was funding available for it,” Tiffany Vrska, a spokesperson for the city of Norman, said of the administration pulling back the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

President Donald Trump’s administration has systematically reduced states’ access to resources to safeguard their people against natural disasters, frustrating city and state leaders across the country, including from communities that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

“I’m a super big fan of the president, but I’m going to challenge him any time he gets something wrong,” Central, Louisiana, Mayor Wade Evans said.

Central regularly faces flooding, and a disastrous 2016 flood submerged thousands of homes and other structures in the city of about 30,000 just east of Baton Rouge.

A FEMA grant for $39 million was intended to stop a cycle of repeated flooding, damage and repair for hundreds of structures in the city. Evans estimated that the project, by creating new retention areas for flood waters, would save more than $100 million in projected losses over time.

“I never thought I would have to evacuate my neighborhood,” Evans said. “Have my kids evacuated on a boat, crying. This isn’t wasteful at all. This is actual brick-and-mortar solutions that have nothing to do with politics.”

While the administration is backtracking on Trump’s initial proposal to completely eliminate FEMA, the agency has been relentless in continuing to cut programs aimed at lessening the catastrophic impact of future disasters.

In February, the Trump administration took down the application for the Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant Program, which was supposed to make $600 million in grants available this year to reduce long-term flood risks, especially for properties that are covered by government-funded flood insurance. The Biden administration opened applications for the latest round of that program in January, and some states were already preparing lists of places that badly need support.

Then, in April, FEMA retracted both awarded and planned grants for well over 50 communities under the BRIC program, including Norman and Central.

The administration maintains that the disaster resilience program was wasteful, despite Trump signing the law creating the program in 2018.

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans affected by natural disasters. We are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a written statement.

This term, Trump also ended the standard practice of granting funding for hazard mitigation when states experience a major federal disaster, including for Texas. Texas’s request for hazard mitigation funding is pending.

Many states, including Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and Mississippi, were ultimately denied hazard mitigation funds this year. Trump also denied North Carolina’s request for FEMA to match 100% of the state’s investment in recovery from Hurricane Helene this year, reversing an offer set by the Biden administration.

In September 2023, an intense storm swept rapid flooding through homes, cars and bridges in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Over the course of a long night, the city sent firefighters in rescue boats to pull people trapped in flooding homes. The firefighters saved lives, but no one could save the homes.

Now, more than a year later, those homes still stand rotting and uninhabitable. It’s not safe to rebuild them, and it will never be safe for anyone to live there again.

Scranton applied for a $2.5 million BRIC grant to buy the homes from their owners, knock them down, and turn them into soccer fields — areas that can be used by the community when the weather is normal and safely flood when the weather turns extreme.

“To hear about FEMA pulling this down was a shock,” Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said.

She said she doesn’t know where the city will find the money to buy the ruined homes, but she knows that it needs to happen.

“This was a $10 million storm,” Cognetti said. “I can’t sustain another $10 million storm, our coffers don’t have that, there’s just no well to go back to.”

Cognetti is a Democrat. In Congress, her city is represented by freshman House Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who won Trump’s endorsement and has voted for the president’s priorities. On FEMA, however, Bresnahan wants the administration to reverse course.

“This one is pretty close to the heart here. I remember sand-bagging my grandparents’ house,” he said, talking about floods that filled their first floor with four feet of water. “The first time you remember the smell of flood mud, it’s something you’ll never forget.”

Bresnahan is one of several House and Senate Republicans to challenge the White House on pulling the BRIC program by introducing a bill with bipartisan sponsorship that would require FEMA to disburse the funds. He is planning on introducing a second piece of legislation this week that would require FEMA to study the effectiveness of its hazard mitigation efforts, he said.

Rains flooded parts of Norman on April 30. The view shown is 60th Avenue looking toward Lindsey Street. (Ben Fenwick/Norman Transcript)

“I don’t feel this is a partisan issue,” Bresnahan said. “This is about keeping our community safe and our infrastructure reliable. We have to do something. These small communities just don’t have the available capital to be able to make these investments independently.”

Other Republicans have also challenged FEMA on the BRIC program in hearings and letters: Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.

So far, their advocacy hasn’t succeeded. The BRIC grantees who spoke with Oklahoma Watch have not been able to restore their funding, even after Evans, the Central, Louisiana, mayor, came to Washington, D.C. to meet with the Louisiana delegation and other interested Republicans.

“I’ve had no luck trying to talk to FEMA,” Evans said. “You take our tax dollars up there in Washington, and you give us a set of guidelines, and we follow everything to a T. We spend the money putting the application together, and you award us the project, and then, with all the whims of an administration, you take it from us. And I’m talking about an area that has overwhelmingly supported the president’s agenda.”

The kinds of floods that killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children, along the Guadalupe River in Texas this month are becoming increasingly frequent in the United States.

About 90% of U.S. disasters involve flooding, as the number of floods with catastrophic effects increase globally. After heat-related deaths, floods are the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States. Severe flooding events after periods of intense rainfall, like what happened in Texas (either overwhelming rivers or overwhelming sewer systems) have become more common in the United States over the last several decades, according to research from the First Street Institute and U.S. Geological Survey data.

“The water is coming down at a pace that municipalities cannot keep up with,” Cognetti said. “It’s cities, it’s rural counties, you name it, the water doesn’t discern.”

Other communities that lost their BRIC program funding include Wood River, Nebraska; Crisfield, Maryland; Forsyth, Montana; and Goldsboro and Taylorsville, North Carolina. Approximately 60% of the projects awarded funds through BRIC in 2024 were in counties that voted for Trump in the most recent election.

The Trump administration isn’t just removing funding, it’s also reducing disaster mitigation regulations. In March, FEMA revoked the requirement that structures like hospitals, wastewater treatment plants and fire stations damaged in previous floods be designed to withstand greater risks if they want to use federal money to rebuild. The Trump administration argued the rules, first introduced under President Obama, repealed during Trump’s first term, and then reintroduced under Biden, slowed recovery.

“They know what their hazards are,” Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator under Biden, said. “They know what they need to do to reduce the impact. Yet now we’ve taken away that funding source. This is how we should be spending our taxpayer dollars. We should be doing smart investments so that we don’t have to respond, so that we don’t have to recover as much.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with insurance provider Allstate, found that every $1 spent on disaster preparedness leads to about $7 saved in economic costs for a community, in a 2024 study looking at 25 disaster scenarios. The National Institute of Building Sciences found that for every $1 invested in resilience, communities save anywhere from $4 to $11 in future losses, depending on where in the country the disaster happens. Those studies also conclude that communities receive economic benefits from those types of investments even if no disaster strikes.

“This isn’t wasteful at all. This is actual brick-and-mortar solutions that have nothing to do with politics.”

Wade Evans

“If we are going to provide disaster assistance to individuals and to communities to repair, why should we not have an additional source of funding to break that cycle so that we’re not perpetually providing repair assistance?” said Chad Berginnis, the executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

“It’s a good investment for the taxpayer,” he said. “Disaster assistance is a good leg up for the individual and the business owner and the community, but mitigation is an overall good investment for taxpayers because it breaks the cycle.”

That hasn’t been the administration’s view. From the beginning, Trump and top administration officials have said they would like local governments to lead recovery efforts.

“FEMA will continue to support Americans impacted by disasters no matter the state or jurisdiction they live in, allowing local governments to lead the response managed by their states,” the DHS spokesperson said.

DHS did not specify how possible changes to FEMA’s structure would impact states’ budgets.

The president’s budget proposal to Congress included language referring to the BRIC program that appeared to recognize its value, stating: It “mitigates against the impacts of natural hazard to lower future disaster costs.” The budget did not specify whether the administration plans to direct any funding toward it or disperse any awarded grants.

The budget document has similar language praising the hazard mitigation grant funding that Trump has been denying states since April.

“HMGP reduces future need for Federal disaster assistance by reducing the impact of and increasing the resistance to natural disasters,” it reads.

Still, local leaders have no idea how much money they are going to be expected to find for disasters.

“The very real possibility that FEMA is not going to be there for us financially or even operationally, it’s scary,” Cognetti said. “It’s scary about saving people’s lives, it’s scary because we won’t be able to proactively mitigate things as well, and it’s scary from a public safety standpoint.”

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post FEMA Cuts Sink Norman’s Automated Flood Warning Plan appeared first on oklahomawatch.org

Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This article presents a critical perspective on the Trump administration’s handling of federal disaster mitigation funding, highlighting cuts to programs aimed at flood prevention and community resilience. It emphasizes the negative impact on local governments and communities, including those that supported Trump, and underscores the importance of federal investment in disaster preparedness. The tone favors proactive government involvement and accountability, reflecting a viewpoint generally aligned with center-left priorities on public infrastructure and climate-related risks. However, it includes voices from both political sides and refrains from overt partisan language, maintaining a largely factual but critical stance.