Kentucky Officials Looking Into Counties’ Insurance Organization

The Kentucky Department of Insurance is reviewing the operations of a nonprofit group that provides insurance for most of the state’s counties.

The action came after a series of newspaper articles in the Lexington Herald-Leader about the Kentucky Association of Counties, or KACo and spending by its top executives.

Three KACo officials and a lawyer met last Tuesday for more than an hour with regulators, including Insurance Commissioner Sharon P. Clark. Department of Insurance spokeswoman Ronda Sloan declined to describe what was discussed, but says there’s not a formal investigation.

Lexington lawyer Brent Caldwell says insurance regulators asked about “operational issues, how the programs run and how they operate.”

Currently, 112 of Kentucky’s 120 counties use the liability insurance provided by the county association.