The Jones County Board of Supervisors held their second and final scheduled meeting of March on Monday morning, March 18 in Laurel.
Brad Kent of Southgroup Insurance Services addressed the Board members about the county’s insurance renewal premium for MASIT (Mississippi Association of Supervisors Insurance Trust). According to Kent, 61 Mississippi counties currently are enrolled in the plan, and he expects more may sign up by April 1 – which is the start date for this year’s coverage.
The Mississippi Association of Supervisors Insurance Trust (MASIT), provides to Mississippi counties low cost but broad insurance coverage along with a range of risk management services (http://www.mssupervisors.org/masit).
The MASIT program is designed to minimize large premium swings, which aids the supervisors in planning their annual budget. Jones County has witnessed a 10% premium increase over three years, which is a positive, considering that 10% annual swings are not uncommon, noted Kent. The program covers 428 total employees, 60 law enforcement personnel and 322 automobiles owned by the county.
Kent also highlighted the cyber-attack liability protection afforded by the plan, citing the massive cyber-attack on the city of Atlanta just a year ago. In March 2018 the city of Atlanta (with a population of nearly a half million people and a metropolitan population approaching 6 million) was crippled with an acrid cyber-attack on its computer networks. According to reports from Fox 5 Atlanta and the New York Times, the network assault blocked access to data and knocked out the city’s ability to take online payments (such as water bills and traffic tickets).
Such ransomware attacks on networks are carried out by criminals who hold the network data “hostage” until a ransom is paid. The Fox 5 report stated that “Investigators said the ransom demanded was $51,000 to be paid in Bitcoin, an unregulated, mostly untraceable, open-source P2P cyber currency.”
It’s a scenario Jones County officials want to be protected from. The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an insurance premium total of just over $461,079.18 for MASIT coverage for 2019. The plan will run from April 1 this year unto April 1, 2020. Last year’s MASIT insurance premium cost the county $443.340.00. The plan has a maximum payout of $500,000 per individual claim, down from a $750,000 max last year. MASIT no longer offers the higher single claim payout. Jones County first signed up for the coverage provided by MASIT in 2016.
Other items approved by the Board include:
*Approving March 30 as a date for an auction by the Jones County Sheriff’s Department.
*Approving a motion to request the assistance of the Jones County Sheriff’s Department in blocking off roads near the Sanderson Farms corporate office for a 5K race on June 15 from 7 a.m. until 9 a.m.
*To support the Jones County Chamber of Commerce’s 18th Annual Membership Golf Tournament.
*Utility permit applications for Bay Springs Telephone Company on Earl Brashier Road, Jackson Road, Riverside Church Road, Garrick Road, in the Bridgewater Subdivision, on County Home Road, Fred Pittman Road, Pittman Road, Pinewood Drive and Pineridge Cove. A utility permit application was also approved for Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company on Johnny Watkins Road.