Legislative Session Recap and Key Insurance Bills

Louisiana wrapped up the 2024 regular legislative session with all sorts of “fun” stuff. While we could dedicate the next year to parse the 1000+ bills that were introduced from elected leaders all over the state, we want to focus upcoming Take Note newsletters on the several bills aimed at public records, crime, healthcare, education, and NOLA’s infrastructure, via the Sewerage and Water Board.?To read other editions of our newsletter Take Note, or to sign up click HERE.

Today, we are going to zone in on insurance. Times Picayune writer, Sam Karlin, has been doing a great job of keeping us informed on insurance overall.

Read more HERE:

Out of the twenty bills that made it through to the other side, the ones we think are most noteworthy include:

PASSED SB484 by Royce Duplessis (Orleans) – Shores up the Fortified program and the direction for the state to conduct an actuarial study to determine how much of a discount should be provided by insurance companies when policyholders upgrade roofs. (THIS IS HUGE – We fully supported this.? This is a step in a good direction to bring actuarial relief to our insurance crisis).

PASSED HB375 by Mandie Landry (Orleans) – Requires insurance companies to disclose any/all discounts after May 1, 2025 that a homeowner could possibly be eligible for. (THIS IS HUGE – We fully supported this. This will help educate policyholders on available options. Most people today still don’t know that they can get a Wind Mitigation Survey/Inspection of their home that will possibly give them a discount).

PASSED HB120 by Matthew Willard (Orleans) – Relates to keeping the Fortify program from expiring. (THIS IS HUGE – We fully supported this. This may have been one of the better bills from the entire session).

FAILED HB625 by Rodney Lyons (Marrero) – Relates to property owners being able to file civil suits against local governments over zoning / land use issues. This was farcical, authored by AirBnB, and tragic. Luckily this pretty much died in committee as it was poorly written and would have had pretty shocking results, far greater than just affecting STRs. (We were happy to see this bill die and advocated as such).

PASSED SB344 by Regina Barrow (Baton Rouge) – Requires policyholders to disclose to their insurer if they are using their property as a group home. (We are OK with this, but know that it might make housing less affordable).

PASSED HB654 by Stephanie Hilferty (Metairie) – Creates the ability for the West End area (think the old Fitzgerald’s) to be reconstructed with a partnership between Jefferson and Orleans. Several issues have kept this from going forward since some of this is state land. Shoutout to NOLA’s own District A City Councilmember Joe Giarusso for pushing this hard from the Council stage.

PASSED SB396 by Patrick McMath (Covington) – Restricts some current ways in which civil engineers can “act” as Architects. We were happy to see this set of loopholes closed, while we do note that it might restrict the available pool of options for folks to get a “professional of record” on their projects. We were happy to support this bill.

PASSED SB489 by Stewart Cathey Jr. (Monroe) – Consolidates powers of the LA State Fire Marshal (SFM), but most notably sets the NFPA 101 to expire on July 1, 2026. We think this was a terrible bill. It originally started one way and then went off the rails to sunset the use of the NFPA 101 statewide. We believe that this is bad for the safety of all commercial buildings in the state, at least compared to the status quo of building code regulations in the state. The dual track enforcement that the state has enjoyed (local municipalities enforcing the IBC and the state fire marshal enforcing the NFPA) have created a much safer state and allowed for independent review by two separate groups on almost all commercial buildings. As passed, the NFPA will be replaced by a code book that the state already uses. For purposes of our review, we do believe this change will make design and permitting easier and will likely reduce the costs of building in the state, however, we see the change as top-down, and will create great pressure for the design and construction community to force this change through over the next two years.

What we would like to see:? Boards and commissions, such as levee boards, should be combined or removed. For example, HB 954 (Mena – Orleans) allows state boards, including the LA State Board of Hearing Aid Dealers, to deny licenses for "moral turpitude." This biggest red flag is that this state regulates hearing aid dealers.?In my limited understanding of the economy, having this type of board means that hearing aids are more expensive than they could be, just due to the enhanced regulatory process.?Rather than spend time on these things, we can start removing all of these boards and commissions that create the byzantine rules.?Did you know that the infrastructure for requiring all of these permits goes back to Napoleon himself? We continue to propagate rules and regulations from around the time of the Louisiana Purchase. The Napoleonic Code is sometimes not the best approach for modern governance.

-Zach Smith