New Hampshire’s phony municipal liability insurance monopoly is dead.
Here is the financial part of it:
https://www.pltnh.org/Resources/GetAttachment/909
The real story is about how Property Liability trust operated as a political organization not a real insurance company by any means.
No NH media will print the real story behind the numbers but here is what was going on for several decades.
PLT would pay out huge sums of “other town’s money” to bad cops rather than fight the claims. This encouraged more bad cops.
This I know from being a selectman here in Deering and serving on what amounted to a two person select board with our “expert selectman” an employee of – Property Liability Trust. When one person on a three person board hardly ever shows up you have what amounts to a Mexican stand-off at every selectman’s meeting. I learned my municipal chops at such meetings and a lot about the NH Municipal Association.
Here is an example:
Soon after I was elected we voted to terminate a part time “officer” for actions I would print but you would not believe anyway.
A year later our police chief asks for a non-public meeting about personnel, so in two of us went with the chief. He explained that we had improperly fired the part time nut-case and he was going to sue us over it. Lucky for us he explained NHMA-PLT would pay the former “officer” $30,000.00 to settle. He showed us a letter from some lawyer saying he was representing the former “officer”.
I said that I would wait until I saw a petition to a court not a letter of representation by some out of state law firm fishing for a client – so forget it.
A week later the chief comes back with a new figure, $15,000.00. I said no thanks. Several lesser offers went by.
Then it was a new plan. Just hire him back for one day so he could resign and get a job as a cop somewhere else. I said no again and won.
The reason our chief was so bent on getting his “officer” a payoff was because the part time guy knew our chief was having an affair with several local women who were not his wife and was leaning on him. So where else does a duo like that go for free money – NHMA-PLT.
The trap I did not fall into in this story was the standard news story following the NHMA-PLT pay-off. It goes like this:
Deering Officer Wins Case Against Selectman Naile
This scenario has played out for years in municipality after municipality. I can point you to the Town of Atkinson and the multi-million dollar liability disaster known as their former part time police chief. Take a look at the Weare Police Department payout lately.
NHMA-PLT is gone and hopefully for good.