LOOSE CANNON

The director of the Missouri Department of Insurance, Jay Angoff, has been handed another blow in yet another legal action taken against the industry he is charged with overseeing. A Jefferson City judge this week issued a summary judgment that halted Angoff's efforts to get Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the state even after regulators had given -- and then rescinded -- approval of a for-profit subsidiary.

When not-for-profit Blue Cross set up RightCHOICE, the for-profit unit, it took great pains to jump through all the regulatory hoops set up by the Department of Insurance. The plan was carefully reviewed by the company's own legal advisers and scrutinized in detail by the insurance regulators. Angoff gave his blessing but later decided their might be a way to coerce up to $500 million out of Blue Cross.

There has been a pattern of antagonization by Angoff of the state's insurance industry since he became director in 1993 by appointment of Gov. Mel Carnahan. Many inside the industry have wondered aloud why the director of a state agency would be so deliberately heavy-handed when the state's insurers contribute nearly $150 million a year to the state treasury in premium taxes.

Other efforts to weigh in against some of the largest insurance companies in the state have been similarly rebuffed by judges, mainly because Angoff's track record is one of changing his mind in midstream.

In a case involving a title insurance company in St. Louis, a judge in 1994 ruled that Angoff had made unfounded allegations in his pursuit of the company, which subsequently went out of business due to the state's harassment. The Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission ruled a year later that Angoff's actions against the title company weren't justified and ordered the state to pay the company's legal fees. But it was too late for the company by then.

It isn't just the insurance industry in Missouri that is upset with Angoff and his Jefferson City tactics. Taxpayers across the state rightfully should question why a governor would keep someone like Angoff in that position. The governor has repeatedly been approached by insurance executives seeking leadership and intervention, but Carnahan has chosen to look the other way -- even when Blue Cross threatened to leave the state. Either the governor doesn't care that Angoff is a loose cannon, or he approves of the harassing tactics that in the long run could diminish insurance protection for Missouri residents.