As we look at counties and zip codes in Georgia that voted blue no matter who this cycle, they include some of the nicest neighborhoods in Gwinnett, Cobb, and Fulton counties. They gave us Governor Bottom of the Barrel, whose proposed policy on data centers is helping to tank the market and making Xi Jinping smile. They also might have given themselves an insurance rate hike by checking the box for people they had never heard of.
In their performative rage over an average gas price on Election Day that was over a dollar less than the high they paid under Joe Biden, not only did they promote Atlanta's disastrous former mayor, but our suburban betters also gave us Insurance Commissioner-elect Keisha Sean Waites.
Waites has never been licensed in the insurance industry nor done statistical risk assessment. She worked as a legislative liaison with FEMA and was deployed to administer programs during some large disaster responses. And she served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2012 to 2017 and in an Atlanta City at Large post from 2022 to 2024.
In her own words in Grady News Source, Waites' priorities are "Enacting a rent freeze initiative, ending zip code and credit score discrimination, and spearheading a consumer fraud task force." Let's break this down.
The one in the middle is the suburban self-own. By prohibiting insurance companies from using zip code and credit scores, she will be doing with property, business, and auto insurance what Obamacare attempted to do with the individual mandate. She wants to make the financially healthy people in safer areas subsidize the insurance of people who don't pay their bills and live in high crime areas.
In a post-election interview on WSB-TV, when she was asked how geography doesn't relate to home or auto risk, Waites actually said this out loud: "Those things have nothing to do with calculating your risk as it relates to your insurance premiums." I am almost sure a nine-year-old could tell you your house is more likely to be broken into on the west side of Atlanta than in East Cobb.
And while she says she wants to increase competition by bringing new insurers into the market, she openly flaunts one of the tools she will use to hold down rates. She touted her authority to scrutinize proposed increases and delay or deny them when companies don’t provide actuarial data to justify the higher prices. Someone should have asked how she knows what justifies rates when she believes geography does not. No one did.
She also pointed to the office’s ability to investigate complaints and penalize insurers when customers experience problems with claims. “We have the authority to fine and penalize insurance companies,” Waites said. Sounds like a great attitude to bring new insurers into the market.
According to testimony from James E. Litan, a staff economist for the Carter administration and President Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget assistant director, that was published by right-wing think tank The Brookings Institute, in states where rates have been suppressed below market rates, it not only discourages entry by new insurers; it encourages existing insurers to leave. Further, he concluded, "The economic case for eliminating rate regulation in auto insurance is overwhelming and compelling. Virtually all economists who have studied the industry over the last several decades have reached this conclusion. The obvious policy implication: auto insurance, indeed, all lines of insurance should be governed by the market, just like other industries in our economy."
Likewise, a white paper from The American Property Casualty Insurance Association detailed how forcing low-risk suburban policyholders to absorb the financial losses of higher-risk zones removes the incentive for individuals to mitigate risk. So the high-risk insured keep making bad decisions because there is no penalty, forcing low-risk suburban policyholders to absorb increased financial losses of higher-risk zones.
So Waites is proposing rate subsidization and rate control through bureaucratic suppression while she lobbies her former colleagues to ban the use of high-impact risk assessment data by insurance companies. Yet decades of research and failed experiments with insurance price controls in Massachusetts, South Carolina, and New Jersey will not deter an ideologue. Suburban Georgians will pay with higher rates, and everyone will have less choice, unless the two-seat Republican majority in the Georgia State Senate holds.
Waites' first stated priority is not even her job. Her elected post has no authority over rent, leasing, or tenant-landlord issues. Her powers are strictly bound to Title 33 of the Georgia Code which limits her authority to regulating insurance companies, agents, and premium filings and overseeing building fire safety codes. In fact, under Georgia Code § 44-7-19, local cities and counties are completely banned from enacting any rent regulations. Waites signed a resolution urging the state legislature to repeal this ban when she was on the Atlanta City Council, but it is still on the books. And even if it wasn't, she would have no authority to freeze rent.
Finally, her office already has an insurance fraud task force. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire website: "The mission of the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire Criminal Investigations Division (OCI-CID) is to protect Georgia citizens against economic loss and victimization by thoroughly investigating individuals and criminal organizations suspected of committing fraudulent insurance acts and other related crimes." The Georgia Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division takes on consumer fraud and product liability.
So, this is the second newly elected officeholder in Georgia who does not seem to have familiarity with the scope of the job she asked for or the market that underlies the economic activity she is responsible for regulating. On the staff of a governor-elect who just announced Tyler Perry, the subject of two civil lawsuits for sexual assault and battery from men employed by his studio, is part of her transition team.
2027 is shaping up to be quite a year in the Peach State.