Having an Insurance Commissioner who is willing to stand up to the insurance industry can save consumers tens of millions of dollars.

A settlement reached recently between the insurance industry and the Department of Insurance reverses a 9.4 perent rate increase, bans all further increases into 2011, and requires insurance companies to return $50 million to consumers with interest.

That's $102 in the pocket of an average driver in Durham or $92 for an average driver in Raleigh, according to the department.

Simply put, North Carolinians would not be receiving these rebates if the Commissioner of Insurance was not been willing to spend months fighting the insurance industry on their proposed rate increase in court. If the Commissioner of Insurance was in the pocket of the insurance industry, we likely would not have, what the department calculates to be the fifth-lowest auto insurance rates in the country.

The fact that Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Goodwin ran under our state's Voter-Owned Elections program last year certainly helped ensure that we have an insurance regulatory head who is willing to stand up to one of the most powerful industries in the state . The program allowed Goodwin and his Republican opponent John Odom to raise less than 5 percent of their total campaign money from the insurance and other department-regulated industries. Compare that with the 66 percent of campaign money former Commissioner of Insurance, the late Jim Long, received from the industry in 2004, according to a study done by NC Voters for Clean Elections.

So let's do the math. North Carolina consumers will save $50 million in insurance premiums this year, in part, because we have a state insurance commissioner who is not dependent on campaign money from the insurance industry. The program that facilitates this independence costs the taxpayers less than $800,000 per election cycle or $200,000 a year over four years. That's a 25,000 percent return.

Now you might question whether Voter-Owned Elections was really what made the difference. After all, maybe a candidate who had received two-thirds of their money from the industry would have still challenged the proposed insurance hikes, as Jim Long did for many years.

Maybe so, but the question of influence would still remain as long as that official had raised money from the industry. Would the Commissioner have pushed as hard knowing that he/she was going to have to ask for money from these same people two years later? Would he/she have had the same will to strike as good of a bargain? The reality is, raising that much money from a single industry would affect any of us, no matter our intentions.

That's what's so great about Voter-Owned Elections. It makes all of these questions and ambiguities moot. By eliminating the fundraising reliance on the insurance industry North Carolinians don't have to wonder if the industry is using donations to gain undue influence. By taking away the mere possibility that an elected official's conduct could be influenced by campaign donations, we all can have more confidence in government.

Hopefully the General Assembly will take this lesson to heart and pass SB-966: Expanded Voter-Owned Elections. The bill would expand the public financing option to five other Council of State races including Attorney General, State Treasurer, Secretary of State, Commissioner of Insurance, and Commissioner of Agriculture.

Not only would it allow state residents to benefit from better government, but as we have learned, it might also save all of us some hard cash.