Eighteen months into the job of state insurance commissioner, Dwight K. Bartlett III could be forgiven if he wondered occasionally why he took it.
The former insurance company president could easily have retired to his home near Annapolis to spend more time on his sailboat, and with his wife, Catharine, indulging their interest in antique New England country furniture.
Instead, he finds himself today under a public microscope, facing a decision with far-reaching implications for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland's 1.4 million subscribers: Should he permit the nonprofit giant to reorganize and create a new for-profit company accountable to stockholders?
Mr. Bartlett is not tipping his hand -- nor showing any regrets about taking the commissioner's job in 1993.
"I do enjoy public service," he said in his office in Baltimore after presiding over a public hearing at which he shot one tough question after another at Blue Cross officials concerning their reorganization plan.
He wanted to know how the proposal would affect the company, subscribers and the general public. But if his questions challenged Blue Cross, they came coated in Yankee courtesy and reserve.
The Massachusetts native never raised his voice nor jabbed his finger in the air. That's not his low-key, conservative style. Soft-spoken, fond of old-fashioned striped ties, he has a shy way of averting his eyes sometimes while speaking to someone -- which should not be mistaken for a lack of nerve.
The Maryland Insurance Administration was in shambles when he became commissioner. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners declared it incapable of protecting the public from insurance mischief. His predecessor, John A. Donaho, had been fired because his outspoken and impolitic manner angered Gov. William Donald Schaefer.
Yet at age 62, after a distinguished 40-year career, Mr. Bartlett accepted the governor's offer. The explanation for why he did so is rooted in a career-changing decision made in 1979, when he had been with Monumental Life Insurance Co. in Baltimore for 19 years and was its senior vice president and chief actuary.
"When I got up to my late 40s, having done more or less the same thing for 20 years, I kind of made a decision which I think my wife thought was motivated by going through male menopause," he said. He quit the company and embarked on the first of what he calls "five mini-careers."
He became chief actuary at the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, developing short and long-range financial projections for the mammoth agency. Then he joined Mutual of America Life Insurance Co. in New York, becoming president of the $5 billion-asset firm in 1984.
Making another sharp turn, he began teaching at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Later he created a consulting company, which he ran until being named insurance commissioner. He jokes that he'll be eligible for six pensions when he retires.
Successful in all these ventures, Mr. Bartlett believes he has already achieved a great deal as in the commissioner's post, which pays $90,000 a year in salary. Armed with additional staff, power and independence granted by the legislature in 1993, he has earned the agency full, five-year accreditation from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Mr. Bartlett said he reminded Governor Schaefer recently "that I told him when I took the job that it would be my objective during my four-year term to make this agency the best performing insurance regulatory agency in all of 50 states and the District of Columbia. I said I felt so good about what we accomplished in a year and a half I was declaring victory."
Among those praising Mr. Bartlett's performance is Del. Michael E. Busch, chairman of the House Economic Matters Committee in Annapolis, which oversees insurance issues.
"My general impression is that everybody's been impressed with Dwight Bartlett," the Anne Arundel Democrat said.
William C. Richardson, president of the Johns Hopkins University and head of a state commission recommending changes in the health industry, credits Mr. Bartlett with helping to make a new insurance program for small employers a success this year. He is "extremely effective and a wonderful colleague to work with."
When his term ends in 1997, Mr. Bartlett expects to resume his consulting business, but take life a little easier. He has two married children living nearby and two grandchildren.
Plus there's that boat, an 18-footer he can take out alone on the Severn River on a fine day and ignore, for awhile, insurance issues.