City auditors say insurance payments may be lost

Thousands of dollars paid to ineligible dependents of board of education workers likely won’t be recovered

HARTFORD — City auditors said Wednesday it may not be possible to recover all of the money lost because of insurance payments to ineligible dependents of board of education employees.

At a city hall meeting of the Hartford Internal Audit Commission on Wednesday, auditors said thousands of dollars paid out by insurance companies to ineligible dependents may be lost because of a five-year statute of limitations and a $2,000 threshold for law enforcement agencies to bring criminal charges, which would make civil litigation unlikely due to legal costs.

Meanwhile, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said an additional audit of all city employees, which began last summer, will be completed soon.

The city last audited other employees for health care dependent eligibility 10 years ago, Bronin said.

“I think the most important thing to remember is that in any organization with thousands of employees, it’s not surprising that there are some ineligible dependents,” Bronin said.

Joseph Caruso, the city’s auditor, said Wednesday that they are anticipating the results of the audit by the end of the month and that preliminary indications are that the city has a much lower rate findings of ineligible health care recipients.

Caruso said the auditors would begin reviewing that report immediately.

On Wednesday, the audit commission was meeting to discuss an outside review of the board of education’s health care eligibility requirements which found that more than two dozen former spouses of district employees were still listed improperly as dependents for years after they were divorced.

In one case, the former spouse remained on the district employee’s health care plan for 15 years and received about $700,000 in benefits, according to Hartford auditors, who reviewed the school board’s audit by Secova Inc. and made inquiries of their own.

The auditors, who referred their findings to Hartford police for possible criminal charges, also referred another 21 names to the department to determine if they are current or former spouses who have received an additional $420,000 in health care benefits.

“They’ll get a conviction but no recovery,” said Craig Trujillo, the city’s chief auditor, who added that the commission should follow through to make sure the district at least punished employees who were found to have improperly listed their spouses as dependents.

However, Hartford Schools Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said Tuesday that the district will hold employees found to have taken improper benefits accountable and added that steps have been

taken to prevent the issue from occurring again.

School officials said that accountability would include seeking financial compensation.

Those steps, according to district officials, include communicating to employees that any change in family status must be reported within 30 days, yearly notices to all employees and requiring additional supporting documents such as a joint tax filing or mortgage or lease and marriage certificates.

School officials also noted that the last audit of health care eligibility was 10 years ago, and that Secova officials said that the percentage of ineligible recipients was in the same range as the top five audits it had recently completed.

Torres-Rodriguez initiated the audit on the recommendation of the city auditor in December 2017.

Steven Goode can be reached at sgoode @courant.com.