100 years ago in The Record
Monday, Aug. 26, 1918
The state superintendent of insurance tells the state’s insurance underwriters today that their drastic increase in Troy’s fire insurance rates was “like holding a man up after dark.” Mayor Cornelius F. Burns leads a Troy delegation to Albany to push for a reduction in rates. They find superintendent Jesse S. Phillips very sympathetic to their situation. “Throughout the afternoon Superintendent Phillips asked questions and otherwise directed the hearing in a manner to indicate that he at least is convinced that there has been certain discriminations against Troy, and certain lack of fairness, though probably not intentional,” The Record reports. The underwriters raised rates last May without giving Trojans time to comply with their demands for improvements in fire prevention, particularly the installation of a new fire alarm system. Phillips considers this unfair because the city can’t implement any improvements until it approves its 1919 budget. Representing the underwriters, R. G. Potter concedes that “some of the figures on which the increases were founded were inaccurate and a few of them in large percentages.” However, “this thing has been brewing about three years before it came to a head. There are companies which claim they can not stay in Troy and make a fair profit at the present rates.”
Challenged by Troy corporation counsel Thomas H. Guy to prove his story, Potter begs off. “It is a huge task to assemble the premiums and losses but I shall ask the companies to do so,” he says.
“We have done everything to meet these fellows’ demands,” Mayor Burns says, “We have a better water supply, a larger fire department, have driven the firebugs out of the city, convicted one and indicted three others and given every support within our means to these insurance agents.
“The underwriters tell us to put in a new fire alarm system; the one we have may fall down. Well, it hasn’t fallen down yet and of course any piece of mechanism may slip up some time. We couldn’t get a new fire alarm system to- day if we offered to pay a cold million for one worth only $200,000. They are asking the impossible.”
While Phillips mostly takes Troy’s side in the dispute, there’s one thing on which he and the mayor disagree. When Burns predicts that “the legislature would be forced next year to give the insurance department rate making power,” the superintendent argues that “in the states where [that] has been tried it has been unsuccessful and barren of benefits to the people.” Instead, he asks Potter to ask the underwriters to postpone Troy’s rate increase until January 1.