MELBOURNE - Florida Chief Financial Officer Adelaide "Alex" Sink today spoke about the need for insurance reform during a Melbourne-Palm Bay Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting.

Sink, a Democrat elected in 2006, flew down from Tallahassee this morning to be the featured speaker at the event at the Crowne Plaza Melbourne Beach Oceanfront hotel.

Addressing about 140 people, Sink said she recently went to Washington, D.C., to visit members of Congress, and they talked about the possibility that Congress will establish a federal catastrophe insurance fund.

Such a fund would be used to provide federal money to help pay insurance costs from hurricanes and other disasters - seen as a partial remedy to Florida's homeowners' insurance woes since the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005.

Sink said, at this point, it seems the House of Representatives is more willing than the Senate to set up the fund.

"There's supposed to be hearings on it next month. I think we'll get some movement in the House," she said. "The Senate will be the sticking point."

However, Sink said she remains hopeful.

"It's not going to happen tomorrow," she added. "But, in the next 24 months, we may have it."
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By Scott Blake
Florida Today