EDITORIAL: Narrow Miss A Caution For Hartford City Treasurer Adam Cloud

Dec. 17--Hartford city Treasurer Adam Cloud played with fire and almost got burned. Let's hope he realizes that.

Mr. Cloud befriended an up-and-coming young insurance broker four years ago named Earl O'Garro Jr. Mr. O'Garro moved his business, Hybrid Insurance Group, into a downtown Hartford building owned by the Cloud family and hired Mr. Cloud's brother Christopher Cloud as his lobbyist. Soon enough, Treasurer Cloud was making introductions for Mr. O'Garro and otherwise promoting his business. Hybrid landed some city business.

Mr. O'Garro turned out to be a crook. He was convicted in federal court this week on charges that he swindled lenders and clients of more than $1 million to support a lavish lifestyle. One of the government's witnesses was Adam Cloud. Mr. Cloud said, in effect, that Mr. O'Garro lied to him and took advantage of their friendship. Mr. Cloud wasn't arrested or convicted of any wrongdoing, and the city didn't lose any money or insurance coverage. The issue with Mr. Cloud was that he, an elected official, promoted a private business with whom his family had business connections.

Remarkably, he did much the same thing in another instance with another Hartford business, Back9Network. There again, the company hired Christopher Cloud as its lobbyist and eventually rented space in a Cloud-owned building. Adam Cloud used his city email in several instances from 2011 to 2014, Jeff Cohen of WNPR was first to report, to steer potential investors to Back9, a broadcast start-up now all but defunct.

Adam Cloud apologized for poor judgment in the Back9 case. He should have been subject to scrutiny by the city's ethics commission, but commission members looked at the city's weak ethics ordinance and found it was too narrowly drawn to apply to Adam Cloud's case. So they will ask the new city council, which takes office on Jan. 4, to strengthen it. That should be done posthaste. Mr. Cloud should focus on his duties as treasurer, and let someone else handle economic development.

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