Recently Promoted Former Insurance Lobbyist Dunmoyer Will Hurt Governor’s Bipartisan Push
SANTA MONICA, CA — Consumer advocates called on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to remove recently appointed Deputy Chief of Staff and Cabinet Secretary Dan Dunmoyer after revealing an antagonistic and highly charged 2002 memo written by Dunmoyer when he was California’s top insurance lobbyist. The “Insurance Industry of California Strategic Plan: 2003-2010” document reveals Dunmoyer’s hostile and punishing attitude toward civil servants at the Department of Insurance and his tactics for punishing “anti-insurer” government employees and politicians.
In a letter to Schwarzenegger, the nonpartisan Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) said that the post of Cabinet Secretary, especially in light of the Governor’s call to tackle healthcare reform in a bipartisan manner, must be occupied by someone capable of being an honest broker between the Governor and state agencies.
The letter said:
“In the memo, Mr. Dunmoyer called [Department of Insurance] staff ‘hostile and unmanageable.’ He describes the employees as ‘not regulators but self-promoting consumer advocates.’ And, in presenting a strategy for improving the stature of the insurance industry in California, he lists as number one of ‘tactical’ things that can be done:
‘The investigation and publication of political contributions by [Department of Insurance] employees and others.’
“This proposed witch hunt is clearly an attempt to intimidate civil servants because of their beliefs.”
Read the letter here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/insurance/rp/7172.pdf.
The full text of Dunmoyer’s unsigned memo is viewable here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/insurance/rp/7171.pdf.
The memo names former state Senators Joe Dunn, Jackie Speier and Martha Escutia as “our chief antagonists” in the Legislature and says the insurance industry should “look for ways to ensure that when they run for higher office, there is no place for them to land.”
The letter concludes:
“This memo reveals the extreme disdain with which Mr. Dunmoyer views the type of civil servants and appointees who will report to him if he remains Cabinet Secretary. It also asserts antagonism as a preferred approach to government, its agencies and employees. Mr. Dunmoyer has never disavowed the content of the memo and, in light of it, he cannot serve as a dispassionate communicator between regulatory agencies and your office.”
– 30 –
