Scott already eyeing replacement for state's top insurance regulator

TALLAHASSEE Gov. Rick Scott recruited a Louisiana state official as the replacement for Florida's chief insurance regulator weeks before he publicly called for the regulator's removal as part of a second-term reorganization.

Scott's office confirmed Monday that it asked for a resume from Ron Henderson, 45, the deputy insurance commissioner for consumer advocacy in Louisiana. His name was pitched to Scott by a Tallahassee lobbyist for the insurance industry, Fred Karlinsky, a friend of Scott's and co-chairman of his recent second inaugural.

Henderson was being considered as a replacement for Kevin McCarty, who has headed Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation since 2003 and plays a critical role in setting the property insurance rates that affect all Florida homeowners and businesses.

Karlinsky, a Fort Lauderdale-based lawyer, recently switched law firms and joined Greenberg Traurig, one of the state's most politically active.

Scott last month appointed Karlinsky to a prestigious state board, the nine-member Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission. That gives the lobbyist a seat at the table in recommending who should be the high court's next justice.

Karlinsky has had a tense relationship with McCarty's office, and the lobbyist is on friendlier terms with Henderson. Karlinsky and Henderson were co-presenters at an insurance regulation seminar on ethics in New Orleans in July, sponsored by the Louisiana Department of Insurance.

Karlinsky has twice donated $5,000 to the election campaigns of Henderson's boss, Louisiana Insurance Commissioner James Donelon, in 2009 and 2013.

Scott's office reached out to Henderson while the governor was at the center of a growing furor over his office's sudden December ouster of Gerald Bailey, the long-time commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That move has led to calls for an outside investigation by two Cabinet members Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

McCarty, like Bailey, does not report only to Scott, but also to the three independently elected Cabinet members. All three said they were blind-sided by the removal of Bailey and all three belatedly criticized the way Scott's office orchestrated it.

By law, the hiring of an insurance regulator requires Scott and Atwater to agree.

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Scott already eyeing replacement for state's top insurance regulator