County scrambles with insurance gaffe

LEE COUNTY – A mowing accident in the county last week uncovered a slip in coverage of some county equipment.
At a workshop Tuesday following the board’s regular meeting, the incident came up in the middle of a conversation around the county’s property and casualty renewals.
According to County Engineer Ben Hull, several pieces of equipment in the county have gone uninsured but unnoticed over the past year due to a list sent to the county’s previous insurance company not getting transferred over accurately.
“I don’t know the answer fully, but we do not find it on a list of itemized equipment on the insurance policy. It had been insured, but for some reason, it appears not to have been once we switched insurance companies,” Hull said.
Hull said it wasn’t just his department, but was countywide.
According to the county’s insurance representative, there is coverage for unscheduled equipment, but that is limited to $5,000 for each piece.
Hull said during the workshop that the equipment was insured with the previous insurance company, but it didn’t transfer over for whatever reason.
“We were insured and the information to our insurance company, who we had insurance with,  did not transfer over for some reason,” Hull clarified at the meeting.
Lee County Auditor Sherri Yasenchok said she, Hull, and Budget Director Cindy Renstrom came in on Saturday and poured through documentation to get everything up to speed and the information to the insurance representative to get the issue cleaned up under the policy.
She said the equipment that wasn’t covered should be mostly covered under the unscheduled equipment portion of the policy.
Yasenchok said after looking through the equipment listings, the pieces that didn’t get transferred in coverage to the new insurance company were several pieces of smaller equipment.
Hull said to be safe he pulled multiple pieces of county equipment out of service when the mistake was realized.
The employee riding the mower suffered some injuries and is on light duty according to the Lee County Board. His condition wasn’t discussed due to HIPAA regulations.
Yasenchok said going forward, each department will get a list of covered equipment to review on a quarterly basis and, if they signed off on a list that is incomplete, they would be held accountable for that information.
“I’m blessed that we figured out what happened. Ben and I and Cindy were in here Saturday working on this,” Yasenchok said.
More than anything we’re happy that the gentleman is okay, moreso than the equipment. But we’re also lucky we had the uninsured policy to help us out. So, there are two positives to take away from this.”
Yasenchok said everything has been pulled together and sent to the county’s insurance carrier. The carrier in turn is working to pull all emails sent to current and previous carriers to put the coverage back together for all county equipment.