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Hartford City Treasurer Adam Cloud Gets $20,000 Raise, Surprises City Councilors

Jeff Cohen
/
WNPR
Not one city councilor remembers approving the treasurer's raise.

Hartford city Treasurer Adam Cloud has just gotten a $20,000 raise, but not one member of the city council remembers approving it.

Documents provided by city hall show that Cloud used to make about $140,000 a year. But in November, he got a bump up to more than $160,000 -- and that 14 percent increase was apparently retroactive to July, when the city budget took effect.  

A city attorney has claimed that the increase was included in Hartford’s budget, but Councilman Ken Kennedy remembers it differently.

“There was nothing that came before council to raise the treasurer’s salary, it was not discussed during budget at all,” said Kennedy, who oversees the city’s budget process.

“As I see it, it's an effective: Government official giving themselves a pay raise,” Kennedy said. “And that’s just not allowed.”

Cloud has looked for a raise before.  The city council approved a $10,000 bump for him back in 2011, but Mayor Pedro Segarra vetoed it.  

In an email, Cloud said his salary is funded by the city, its pension fund, and another benefits fund. He defended the raise, saying it was long overdue.  

"[T]he salary increase is equivalent to the growth increment that non classified employees receive which in the case of the Treasurer has not happen[ed] for more than five years," Cloud wrote.

To explain the raise, he pointed to the city’s approved budget, though Kennedy said it made no specific mention of the salary. In addition, the treasurer doesn’t appear to have mentioned the increase in a meeting before the city council last April.

Cloud also forwarded a legal opinion from a city lawyer written on election day last month. It said that the treasurer was legally eligible for a raise.  

It also said this:

The City Council has increased the salary of the treasurer as of July 1, 2015 by approving the salary in the City budget.

But Kennedy disagreed. “I don’t know where the treasurer feels he got a pay raise approved by the city council,” he said. “That just did not happen.”

All others on the nine-member council -- Council President Shawn Wooden, Larry Deutsch, Raul De Jesus, David MacDonald, Kyle Anderson, Alexander Aponte, Joel Cruz, and an assistant for Cynthia Jennings -- said they don't remember approving the raise.

“I have no recollection of it,” Cruz said, adding he probably wouldn’t have given one had he known about it.  “It looks bad in the public’s eye when we’re giving raises to individuals.”

Councilman Anderson agreed.

“We didn’t approve that,” Anderson said. “We kept everything flat across the board. I don’t recall it. I don’t recall it all.”

Councilman Aponte also didn’t remember approving the raise. He also said that, were he to approve one, it wouldn’t have been part of an omnibus budget.

“My personal belief is it should come by separate resolution,” Aponte said.

Council President Shawn Wooden also has no recollection of the increase, but he went further saying that he doesn’t think the numbers presented to council reflected the raise.

“Is there anything in the budget that actually shows an increase?” Wooden asked.  

Efforts to reach Segarra were unsuccessful.

Kennedy said he’s considering submitting a resolution to return Cloud’s salary to $140,000.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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