County Receives Coverage Reduction

St. Clair County officials have received encouraging news from a representative of its property and casualty insurance coverage firm, the Lockton Companies, which it has been with for close to 10 years now.

At last month’s meeting of the St. Clair County Board Finance Committee, Steve Holman from Lockton shared that there would be a premium for 2026 that is two per cent less than what it had been for the current year.

This represents a savings of $56,000 over the expiring premium and does not, Holman added, involve any material changes in the coverage or its terms and conditions.

This coverage encompasses the county 9-1-1 emergency service, the intergovernmental grants department and MidAmerica St. Louis Airport plus other property and vehicles owned by the county.

The carrier for all this coverage, Lockton Companies, with its world headquarters located in Kansas City, Missouri, had also, in 2024, provided St. Clair County Director of Administration Debra Moore with correspondence indicating that the policies renewing were subject to a decrease of $163,101, or 9.8 per cent, over the previous total. Previously, Anthony V. Palumbo, executive vice president for Lockton, which has been the insurance broker for the airport for many years and had been appointed concerning coverage in the other aforementioned property and casualty areas of the county in 2017-18, said in a letter to Moore that the combining of the packaged plans for both the airport and St. Clair County into one policy is a significant component in the cost savings because of the reduction in administrative attention and other internal expenses.

Also factoring into this positive outcome, Palumbo said, is the county’s success in managing its workers’ compensation and law enforcement liability programs for which expenses have gone down by 56.8 and 34.8 per cent, respectively, during the past four years. In essence, this means the safety practices utilized by county employees and those involved in law enforcement have resulted in fewer claims concerning on-the-job injuries or illnesses.