Don’t let the polite talk about “reasonable compromise” fool you. The legislation overhauling the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association was bad news for coastal residents.

The association is a pool that more and more coastal property owners find themselves in as insurance companies restrict the availability of regular commercial coverage.

There are many problems with the bill that passed.

• The bill makes it difficult for the public to play any kind of meaningful role in developing rates and rules. The new legislation seems to anticipate that the industry will make the calls — even about rules involving the amount of coverage available through the windstorm pool — and simply inform the public of its decisions.

• Coastal residents — the people served by this pool — are in the minority on the association’s nine-member board.

• The legislation limits the amount of money for paying claims. Insurance companies had complained about open-ended exposure, although their expenses were reimbursed through tax credits.

But capping the amount of claims at $2.5 billion begs the question of what happens when a storm just a little more destructive than Hurricane Ike hits the coast.

Will the association just tell its policyholders it does not pay all claims in a really bad storm?

And won’t that invite problems with mortgage lenders?

Isn’t that, in fact, a recipe for slowing the economic development on the coast?

If you are a coastal resident and don’t see problems with this legislation, then your sense of optimism has overwhelmed your sense of reality.

For years, coastal residents were able to put up a strong enough lobbying effort to keep just this kind of legislation from passing.

For the next two years, coastal residents will get an expensive lesson in the importance of building coalitions along the entire coast and mounting a lobbying effort that can match the insurance industry’s.

The lesson will be expensive because, with the passage of this legislation, insurance rates will go up quickly.

Perhaps they will go up enough to spark interest in the kind of coastal coalition that once had the clout to block just this kind of legislation.

Lee Otis Zapp Jr., president of the Galveston Windstorm Action Committee, has suggested that it’s time to rebuild that coalition and build up its ability to lobby.

The more we read the fine print of this legislation, the more we’re convinced he’s right.

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