The other day a bill arrived from Citizens Property Insurance announcing a 72 percent rate hike for my windstorm coverage. Once upon a time I would have been furious, but like many Floridians, I've come to expect this annual reaming. Compared to some of my neighbors, I'm getting off easy this year. Citizens Property is operated by the state of Florida, a hilarious concept. Nobody outside of Tallahassee is surprised that it's a shambling wreck. But for one out of five homeowners it's the only option. Because so many real insurance companies were fleeing Florida, the Legislature created Citizens to offer coverage to those who couldn't find it elsewhere. By law Citizens must charge higher rates than the top 20 private insurers; still, it reported a deficit in 2005 of $1.7 billion. Lawmakers and industry lobbyists love to blame the recent flurry of hurricanes. But the roots of the crisis are political timidity and old-fashioned greed. Planning has always been a farce in Florida. Generations of legislators and Cabinet members have obediently taken their cues from developers, bankers and road builders and you see the results. Coastal areas are so recklessly overpopulated that even the puniest hurricane becomes a crippling event. Mass evacuation is guaranteed bedlam, while those who choose to stay can look forward to long days without electricity, ice or gasoline. The pain doesn't end with the storm season. Citizens Property and those private insurers that haven't already abandoned the state promptly jack up their residential rates -- and not just for customers who filed hurricane claims. Everybody gets the shaft. And when working-class Floridians turn for relief to their elected representatives, they get a collective shrug, as if only Nostradamus could have foreseen such a scenario. In the summer of 1992, Mother Nature delivered a major weather event named Hurricane Andrew. It was partly a wake-up call and partly an IQ test. Nobody woke up. Nobody got smart. The notion of limiting density -- and thus damage exposure -- was never seriously contemplated, as it would have interfered with the massive profit margins associated with waterfront real estate. Instead, a great deal of effort was devoted to strengthening the state's building codes, which had previously required the equivalent of Triscuits and Elmer's Glue as construction materials. Floridians who now diligently seek out the most solidly built homes are sometimes startled to find no substantial improvement in their insurance rates. That's because the insurance companies, including Citizens, have done what politicians never dared to do: the math. If windstorm insurance gets much more exorbitant it will negatively affect the housing market, which will negatively affect banking and construction interests, which will negatively affect the amount of campaign contributions flowing to legislators. Moreover, actual voters have been complaining heatedly about property insurance rates, an issue that lawmakers correctly perceive as a potential threat to their re-election. Ironically, the same hurricanes they've been blaming for the fiasco have provided a temporary bailout option. The state budget is overflowing with sales-tax revenues generated by rebuilding efforts following last year's storms -- windfall booty from the blue-tarp economy. Both the House and Senate are considering ways to partly offset Citizens' latest insurance surcharges with between $750 million and $920 million from the sales-tax coffers. This will make some people feel a little better for a very short time. Hurricane season starts in 30-plus days -- and if it's half as bad as last year Citizens will sink like a stone. Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

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