Mayor Daniel T. Drew announced today that the General Counsel Brig Smith has received the GC Impact Award for the Connecticut Law Tribune’s 2019 Professional Excellence Awards. The awards recognize the state’s top lawyers across various categories and Smith won for the general counsel category.
Since Mayor Drew appointed Smith in 2013, the city has experienced a nearly five-fold drop in the number of claims it faces and over a nine-fold drop in their cost and severity. Prior to Drew and Smith’s arrival, the city was facing 20% annual increases in its insurance premiums. Not only did the increases subside-- they stopped and reversed course, with the city securing a 15% decrease in the past policy year. Within three years of Smith’s appointment, the city’s outside counsel expenditures plummeted from over $740,000 on an annual basis to less than $40,000—a twenty-fold decrease.
Smith has also spearheaded a number of the city’s most transformative projects, including the Mary Shepherd Home on the Connecticut Valley Hospital Campus, which turned a beautiful, but decrepit, 1924 nurses’ dormitory with stately colonnades into a state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar facility to provide permanent supportive housing for veterans.
“I’m proud of Brig and his efforts on behalf of our community,” said Drew. “He has been at the heart of many of my administration’s most important initiatives.” Smith said, “Although my name is on the award, the honor really belongs to the talented and dedicated people who serve in the Office of the General Counsel. They fight and work so hard every day for our city without recognition. This award is for them.”
Smith is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a former White House staffer. He lives in Middletown with his sons, Kai and Grayson.
Formal Press Release (PDF)