LOCAL : Ailing Gillespie Skips Hearing

State Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie, blaming a back injury, did not appear today at a state hearing to answer questions about whether she is biased toward insurers in her implementation of Proposition 103.

“I am not pleased at her absence,” said state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana), chairman of the Senate Committee on Insurance, Claims and Corporations, which held the hearing in downtown Los Angeles. He said Gillespie’s office had notified him of the injury Friday afternoon and asked for a postponement.

Criticism of Gillespie intensified last week after she said three of the state’s biggest auto insurers will not be required to roll back rates because they lost too much money in 1988.