Luke Bronin, supporter of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, taps South Bend’s former chief fiscal officer for Hartford work

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin has selected for his new chief financial officer a former mayoral staffer of Pete Buttigeg, who Bronin endorsed and campaigned for in the 2020 presidential election.

© Mark Mirko / Hartford Courant/Hartford Courant/TNS
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, pictured campaigning for presidential prospect Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire in February 2020, has tapped a former CFO of South Bend, Indiana to fill the work in Hartford.

Bronin is inquiring the Hartford City Council to ensure the appointment of Jennifer Hockenhull as CFO and director of the Business of Management, Spending plan and Grants. Hockenhull, 1 of two appointments this week to Bronin’s leadership staff, started out in an interim ability on Monday.

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The mayor has also employed Karen Taylor, a diversity, equity and inclusion discovering advisor at Cigna, as the city’s director of fairness and prospect, a new place separate from director of human resources. Taylor, a longtime, energetic Hartford resident, will report to Chief Operating Officer Thea Montanez and make an once-a-year income of $125,000, in accordance to the mayor’s business.

Hockenhull’s salary was not out there from the city Thursday morning.

“I am energized to deliver on people today of Karen and Jennifer’s caliber to our workforce,” Bronin explained in e mail past thirty day period to Treasurer Adam Cloud and users of the town council.

Hockenhull would be fifth CFO of the Bronin administration, changing interim director Michael Lupkas, who took over for interim director Jolita Lazauskas in September. Lazauskas stays deputy director of the division.

Melissa McCaw held the position right until Gov. Ned Lamont appointed her secretary of the state Workplace of Plan and Management in 2019. Bronin’s initial CFO, Darrell V. Hill, was hired by previous Mayor Pedro Segarra and resigned in 2017.

Hockenhull has additional than 15 years of budgeting and finance expertise in the public and nonprofit sector, including four yrs as deputy city controller and then town controller of South Bend, Indiana, when Buttigieg was mayor.

Bronin strike the marketing campaign trail in New Hampshire in February, heading doorway to door in assist of his Buttigieg, who Bronin has acknowledged for about 15 yrs.

Buttigieg, who dropped out of the Democratic presidential primaries in May well, is now President-elect Joe Biden’s designee for transportation secretary.

Prior to Buttigieg, 38, declared his bid for president in April 2019, his career bore hanging resemblance to that of Bronin, 41. They both equally attended the University of Oxford as Rhodes scholars, and had been afterwards commissioned as intelligence officers in the Navy Reserve. They both equally deployed to Afghanistan, Bronin specializing in anti-corruption and Buttigieg in counterterrorism.

Each men also labored on gubernatorial campaigns in advance of starting to be mayors of midsize metropolitan areas, Buttigieg an adviser to Jill Lengthy Thompson’s unsuccessful bid to operate Indiana, and Bronin as deputy marketing campaign manager for Dannel P. Malloy in Connecticut.

Now, Buttigieg’s chief fiscal officer will be signing up for Bronin’s management staff.

For the past calendar year, Hockenhull has labored as a director of wealth advisory firm ClinftonLarsonAllen’s business in Bellevue, Washington. Before that, she served a calendar year as controller of Bastyr University in Kenmore, Wash.

Hockenhull has as a bachelor’s of science from Indiana University South Bend and is a licensed community accountant licensed in Indiana and Washington.

Bronin has been trying to find a new, long term CFO considering the fact that prior to his reelection in 2019. Like a selection of other Bronin appointees, Lazauskas used an extended interval of time as a temporary director since she would not choose up long lasting residence in Hartford, as expected by metropolis policies.

Lazauskas lives in Tolland.

Bronin has argued all through his tenure that the city’s 35-calendar year-previous residency requirement is a barrier to recruitment, and often helps make it tougher to use somebody who life in the location than it does to seek the services of a person from out of condition.

In March, Bronin submitted a proposal to make the residency need fewer onerous by enabling waivers for most council and mayoral appointees and unclassified personnel.

The proposal is continue to underneath thing to consider by the metropolis council.

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at [email protected].