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If Governor Rick Scott has his way, the 1.3 million customers of Citizens property insurance will be looking for new coverage before he starts a second term. Reports over the weekend claim Scott wants to dismantle the state run property insurance company. As Whitney Ray tells us, there’s legislation to scale back Citizens but lawmakers say their plan isn’t as aggressive as the governors.

After Hurricane Andrew rocked Homestead in 1992, destroying thousands of homes, many private insurance companies stopped writing insurance altogether, others in just in high risk areas.

The state responded with Citizens property insurance. Lawmakers then called it the insurer of last resort. Today some call it Socialism.

“It’s nothing more than Socialism and we need to stamp out Socialism in this country as soon as we can,” said Hays.

State Senator Alan Hays is sponsoring legislation that would force citizens to drop million dollar properties in 2012 and properties over half a million by 2016.

Hays says his legislation would return Citizens to its insurer of last resort status, but Governor Rick Scott may have other plans.

Over the weekend reports began to circulate of the governor’s plan to kill citizens in four years. Senator Mike Fasano says ending Citizens would force some people out of their homes.

“Those who have mortgages, there would be a forced insurance policy put on them by their mortgage company and it would windup being a surplus lines company and those individual, those home owners, those condo owners would windup losing their homes because they wouldn’t be able to afford to keep it any longer,” said Fasano.

There are 1.3 million Citizens customers. If a major hurricane destroys a lot of Citizens homes, the state insurer could go belly up. And the burden to pay claims would fall on Florida policy holders in the form of assessments.

There’s an amendment to the Citizens bill that would rename the state insurer, Taxpayer Funded Property Insurance Corporation. The bill’s sponsor called the proposed name change truth in advertising.