Cindy Ossias

Re "Bill Proposes Protections for State Lawyers," Feb. 22: Insurance Commission attorney Cindy Ossias took the proper action when she notified the Assembly Insurance Committee about the wrongdoing occurring under Chuck Quackenbush's reign. Ossias was hired by the state to work for the Department of Insurance. She was not hired to work for Quackenbush. Ossias had a professional duty and affirmative obligation to report wrongdoing. She should be commended for the professional, and correct, handling of Quackenbush's wrongdoing.

Re "Bill Proposes Protections for State Lawyers," Feb. 22: Insurance Commission attorney Cindy Ossias took the proper action when she notified the Assembly Insurance Committee about the wrongdoing occurring under Chuck Quackenbush's reign. Ossias was hired by the state to work for the Department of Insurance. She was not hired to work for Quackenbush. Ossias had a professional duty and affirmative obligation to report wrongdoing. She should be commended for the professional, and correct, handling of Quackenbush's wrongdoing.

When the phone call finally came, Cindy Ossias was ready. Her mounting frustration over insurance company settlements had reached critical mass. It was time to talk. So it was that Ossias, a seasoned lawyer with the state Department of Insurance, became a whistle-blower, launching investigations into California's biggest political corruption scandal in years. It is not a role she sought.

When the phone call finally came, Cindy Ossias was ready. Her mounting frustration over insurance company settlements had reached critical mass. It was time to talk. So it was that Ossias, a seasoned lawyer with the state Department of Insurance, became a whistle-blower, launching investigations into California's biggest political corruption scandal in years. It is not a role she sought.

An Orange County company that sells surety bonds to cover incomplete or shoddy work by contractors agreed Tuesday to pay a $1-million fine to settle state charges that it routinely delayed and withheld claim payments from consumers. The fine, to be paid over four years by Indemnity Co. of California, is the third-largest ever assessed against an insurance company by the state Department of Insurance. Indemnity didn't admit liability in settling the charges.

The mystery is over. It turns out that the documents that triggered an investigation of state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush were leaked by a veteran lawyer for the Department of Insurance, hired by one of Quackenbush's Republican predecessors. The purloined papers didn't come from some Democratic spy as part of a "political witch hunt," as Quackenbush insists.

Ah, the ease of dictatorship. Elian Gonzalez? Send him home, or make him stay. Whatever the kingpin says. Chuck Quackenbush? As Times columnist George Skelton reminded us last week, under another form of government Quackenbush might just have been taken out and shot by a mob. Or maybe made top deputy to the dictator. What about the agony of Bill Foster of Willowbrook, the man who turned in his son to police, who as a result found the body of a toddler encased in concrete in the trunk of a car?

Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley's testimony before a Senate panel today should be accompanied by the applause of an appreciative nation, both for her and for other principled whistle-blowers. Rowley, who fired off the now-famous 13-page memo to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III about the roadblocks her office faced in obtaining a search warrant against suspected 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui, took a big risk.

The turmoil in the wake of Chuck Quackenbush, the disgraced former state insurance commissioner, has left the agency in need of a steady, honest hand on the tiller. Gov. Gray Davis has aimed at exactly that with his nomination of longtime Judge Harry Low as commissioner. Low, who spent a quarter-century on the state bench and the last several years as a private arbitrator, often in insurance cases, is described by those who know him as a man of great integrity and intelligence.

Whistle-blower Cindy Ossias, whose disclosure of confidential documents and explosive testimony contributed to the downfall of former state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, will be reinstated in her job as a lawyer in the Department of Insurance.

The plight of a whistle-blower who risked her law license by exposing misdeeds at the Department of Insurance prompted legislation Wednesday to protect government attorneys who report wrongdoing. Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said he was introducing the measure, AB 363, to fulfill a commitment to push for reforms that would help avoid a repeat of the scandal that involved former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush and forced him from office last July.

An Orange County company that sells surety bonds to cover incomplete or shoddy work by contractors agreed Tuesday to pay a $1-million fine to settle state charges that it routinely delayed and withheld payments on claims from consumers. The fine, to be paid over four years by Indemnity Co. of California, is the third largest ever assessed against an insurance company by the state Department of Insurance. Indemnity didn't admit liability in settling the charges.