State OK’s bond to help business move to Norwalk

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7 responses to “State OK’s bond to help business move to Norwalk”

1. Diane C2

   December 14, 2013

   Beyond belief – again I must ask: What part of it’s OUR money doesn’t this governor and bond commission understand?
   Why does he/they insist on spending money to give CT companies to move from one town or city to another? Shouldn’t we be spending some money (not billions) on getting out-of-state companies to move here?

   Also, a quick search of Homeserve on the Secretary of State site* shows that the officers of the company list their headquarterse on Main Street in Stamford as their personal residences. Geez, that some of kind of committed employees who actually live as big happy family in their offices!
   * http://www.concord-sots.ct.gov/CONCORD/online?sn=PublicInquiry&eid=9740

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2. Oldtimer

   December 14, 2013

   Diane
   That is pretty common, the address is for service, where to deliver the paers, if they get sued, POKO lists everything at a Portchester address, apparently a lawyer’s office, but Ken Olsen lives in Westport.

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3. Diane C2

   December 14, 2013

   @Oldtimer – the address you are referring to is called the “Agent’s address”, which is the one for documents, etc.
   See the link to POKO’s other business, where Mr. Olsen chose to correctly identify the business, residence and agent addresses.
   http://www.concord-sots.ct.gov/CONCORD/online?sn=PublicInquiry&eid=9740

   I’m referring to the resident’s address. Why isn’t it fraudulent to give the wrong address when the business registration with the Sec’y of State forms specifically require business AND residential address? Here is instruction line that pertains to it…

   5. OFFICERS: Please provide the name of all of the corporation’s officers, their titles and their residence and business addresses. Complete street addresses including a street number, street name, city, state, postal code and country if other than the United States are required. Note: P.O. boxes are only acceptable as additional information.

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4. Jeff Hall

   December 16, 2013

   Hi Diane,

   I share you disgust at this piece of corporate welfare. Despite having the highest taxes in the country, and the highest business taxes on the continent, the state claims that it can’t fix our roads and public transportation, but it does have enough money to dole out to private businesses, and to certain private businesses and not their competitors.

   But a business address is the an address where mail is sent to. If they want their mail sent to the founders’ homes, then that’s were it gets sent. If they have ten offices, you wouldn’t expect them to have to list all ten offices, would you?

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5. Diane C2

   December 16, 2013

   @Jeff – thanks for the sympathy.
   The registration with the Secretary of State requires officers of companies to disclose their residential addresses. This is in addition to disclosing the physical address of the business (corporate headquarters, if more than one location) and also the address of your ‘agent”, presumably one who is responsible for all the legal and government documents and communication. If one operates a business out of their own home, then presumably the address for all 3 requirements would be the same.
   However, this is not the case with HomeServe USA. If I get a chance, I will call the Secretary of State’s office to have them review the file. They are usually pretty good about making sure businesses comply to the letter of the law. I will also inquire as to whether the state statutes allow a business to withhold the residential addresses of it’s Officers (ie, for security purposes)

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6. Jeff Hall

   December 16, 2013

   Diane,

   I see, I didn’t understand your complaint. I apologize. My understanding from friends who do business in Connecticut is that the Secretary of State’s office is a nightmare of bad data, and that it is very easy to miss deadlines, etc. because important mail gets sent to the addresses of officers pretty much at random.

   Maybe they’ve had bad luck. But if the state has that reputation, it’s perfectly reasonable for a startup to give one address to try to get any official communication coming to one inbox.

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7. Diane C2

   December 16, 2013

   @Jeff – no worries. And I did get a chance to speak with the Document Review folks up there, only to learn that the statutes don’t give them any enforcement powers if someone deliberately uses an office address instead of their residence (assuming they have not received a security waiver). When I spoke with the department attorney, she told me that there is no way the doc review folks would even suspect that an address was not a residence, and that any investigation that even could result would be a matter for a state’s attorney.
   I’ll try to find out if homeserve filed for and received a waiver – can you believe you either have to drive to Hartford to go thru microfiche files or request the documents and pay the standard FOI fees? So much for the electronic data world… LOL

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