"What it amounts to is a four-year, interest-free loan."
Ken Kennedy
Hartford Treasurer Adam Cloud will take four years to pay taxpayers back roughly $10,000 -- money he was given for a raise no one remembers approving.
WNPR reported last year that Cloud got a 14 percent raise in November that was retroactive to July. The pay hike took his salary from $140,000 to roughly $160,000. But the problem was that neither the then mayor nor the members of the city council recalled approving it. Though Cloud initially defended the raise, he eventually decided to revert to his old pay scale and to pay the taxpayers back.
When it came to the repayment, Cloud had options. In early January, the city’s then human resources director gave Cloud his first set of choices -- he could pay the roughly $10,000 back all at once, or it could be taken out of his paycheck over a series of pay periods. The latter option would have made taxpayers whole within a year.
But then, three weeks later, that HR director gave Cloud more generous options, including one that allowed the treasurer to pay back $100 at a time over 106 pay periods. That’s roughly four years. And that’s the option Cloud chose.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Cloud, who is independently elected, negotiated the arrangement with Human Resources Director Henry Burgos without the mayor’s knowledge. Burgos, who came to the office under then Mayor Pedro Segarra, has since resigned. Efforts to reach Burgos were unsuccessful.
Former City Councilman Ken Kennedy led a failed effort last year to take Cloud’s raise back before the treasurer decided to rescind it voluntarily. He was surprised to learn details of Cloud’s repayment plan.
“What it amounts to is a four-year, interest-free loan,” Kennedy said Tuesday. “It’s not optimal for the taxpayer, but it’s better than not having any money paid back at all. But it’s a long period to pay it back.”
Cloud initially argued that his raise was in fact included in the budget of the treasurer’s office. Since that budget was eventually adopted, he argued that his pay raise was, too. Segarra and the council disagreed. Nevertheless, Cloud later changed course.
“As I deeply value the confidence of the citizens who elected me to serve them, and believe that government should always be conducted in an open, transparent, and orderly public process, I have chosen not accept more than my previous pay of $140,000 from the $160,000 salary that was set by the Court of the Common Council, and will return any increase I have received,” Cloud said in a statement at the time.
Efforts to reach Cloud for this story were unsuccessful.
(And a note -- the numbers in Cloud's second letter from Burgos don't appear to add up. The city said the error was clerical.)
