Thread: State Sanctioned Racketeering - MSFH

Once again the front page of Sunday's Tampa Tribune was headlined the Storm of Problems homeowners have encountered entrusting themselves to approved, recommended and above all state licensed contractors to perform work outlined in the My Safe Florida Home Program.

Not only was the work in most cases substandard, shoddy & incomplete but in many instances it was priced higher then what could have been negotiated outside the program.

Hopefully the consumer has seen through the gimmick of "state licensing" in that it is in most cases a simply tool the state uses to favor a protected group of contractors who then get to control their competition and gouge the public.

This is just another glaring nail in the coffin that graphically depicts the failure of state licensing as a consumer protection tool, instead of protecting the consumer the state aided and abetted licensed contractors in crimes against the public, sad very sad testimonial to licensing.

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I am writing in regards to Sunday’s May 19th front-page story about the failure of the My Safe Florida Home program and what was omitted from the story. There were probably many readers who breathed a sigh of relief because they had never become entangled in the MSFH program and did not have to suffer the financial loss as those who had trusted the state approved contractors, but unfortunately this is not entirely true.

Everyone who has purchased homeowners insurance in Florida is shouldering the burden of the MSFH program through the assessments that go directly to the state run Citizens insurance company. The 250 million dollars earmarked for the MSFH program could have been used to reduce the deficit to the catastrophe fund and all Florida homeowners would have benefited, this of course was not the case.

Furthermore it appears the issue with shoddy overpriced work by certified MSFH contractors might have been reduced had the state utilized the findings of the 2006 Task Force on Long-Term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurance Market which suggested the state utilize existing contractors & inspectors instead of creating a special class of contractor known as a Wind Certification Entity.

The promise of the program was if $1 was spent on mitigation it would save the citizens of Florida $4, based on the evidence thus far the program is an abject failure. Rumor has it the MSFH program is running out of money, hopefully based on what we now know the people of Florida will refuse to fund this program any further and it will be curtailed. This is just another clear example of what happens when choice is taken away from the people, and government is tasked to perform the work that free enterprise is designed to accomplish


Yours truly,

Joe Burkeson, Riverview
813-671-6011

For what it's worth... Most of this letter to the editor made it into the Tuesady edition of the Tampa Tribune.
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So does anyone out there actually have to be any better at their jobs than George Bush? Or more honest? Sorry couldn't help myself.