Hartford's missing $669,997 for an insurance premium payment ...

Nine students from High School Inc., Hartford's Insurance and Finance Academy, traveled to New York on Sept. 18 to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange — a reward for having the highest scores on Connecticut Academic Performance Test. Congratulations to them and their teachers and parents.

Their work, however, has just begun. The students are urgently needed in Hartford's city government, which is a mess. WPNR's Jeff Cohen, who covers the capital city, broke a disturbing story of nearly $670,000 in missing insurance premium payments for policies covering the city's school system.

The details of the sorry tale are told in a Sept. 24 memo from Hartford school head of finances Paula Altieri to Superintendent Christina Kishimoto. The memo and an attachment are online at http://www.courant.com/schoolmemo.

The city government and the schools in many ways are separate entities that converge for certain purposes. Insurance is sometimes one of those. Hartford uses various agents and companies to meet its insurance needs, spreading business around. Hybrid Insurance Group, headed by Earl O'Garro, is one of the agencies it uses to secure coverage.

In July, Hartford treasurer Adam Cloud's office wired $868,244 "to Hybrid on the same day of the request by Mr. O'Garro," Altieri wrote. There was a sense of urgency because O'Garro told Cloud that "policies were in danger of cancellation if the premiums were not paid ASAP." The board of education's chairman, Matthew Poland, confirmed in an email Wednesday afternoon, however, that the city had not received a notice of cancellation from the companies providing the coverage in July. Curiously, public schools spokesman David Medina said Wednesday that this is not a Hartford Public Schools matter, there is a complaint pending and the school administration would not be commenting.

Nevertheless, on Sept. 6, a city insurance manager was notified that two policies covered in the July payment from Cloud's office had not been paid. Those premiums totaled $669,997. As of Wednesday afternoon, the last city officials saw of the premium money was when it was on its way to Hybrid's bank account. Altieri reports that initial attempts to reach O'Garro were futile. O'Garro eventually told an inquiring (and probably uneasy) city official that he had sent the money to the insurance companies, but he has declined to provide proof of the payments. The companies, however, have no record of receiving the payments.

Altieri did some detective work. She discovered that Hybrid is represented by a lobbying firm that includes Christopher Cloud, Adam Cloud's twin brother. According to lobbying reports filed with the Office of State Ethics, Hybrid was expected to pay Cloud's firm $32,055 between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2012. Hybrid's office is located at 30 Lewis St., a property owned by a limited liability company in which Sanford Cloud, Adam and Christopher's father, is the managing member. Christopher Cloud's lobbying firm is located in the same building.

There's more. The sovereign people of Connecticut gave O'Garro's Hybrid $126,320 to move to the Cloud building all the way from — wait for it — Windsor. That's a town that shares a border with Hartford. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy hailed Hybrid as "a fast-growing insurance group, beginning operations in March of 2010 in Windsor," a satellite office in Ohio, "and a service operation in Kathmandu, Nepal."

These state assistance programs often feel counterintuitive. If Hybrid, with 11 employees, was growing fast, the company was probably making money, especially if it wanted to move to an expensive Hartford office building. Or maybe it knew there was plenty of money in the state trough. Working men and women should not have to pay for that. Then there's Katmandu. That has the sound of an offshore operation. In 2010, the Himalayan Times reported last year, per capita income in Nepal was $568.

The school board also is trying to figure out why the treasurer moved a different insurance policy to Hybrid last year without benefit of a competitive bid. The board is having trouble obtaining documents from Adam Cloud, providing some irony among the panic and gloom. Hartford's school board is often contemptuous of requests for records. It's learning how alarming keeping important secrets can be.

Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. He can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com.

Source: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-rennie-who-has-hartfords-missing-money-1013-20131010,0,1937951.column
Related Topics: revenge   Brad Culpepper   Mayweather   Tropical Storm Flossie   helen thomas