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A new contractor has been chosen to finish Dunkin’ Donuts Park, and work is expected to resume next week, an Arch Insurance official said Wednesday. The new contractor will be Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., which has extensive experience in building sports venues, said Patrick Nails, a senior vice president with Arch Insurance, the company guaranteeing completion of the ballpark. Whiting-Turner officials have already been on-site to review the work that still needs to be done, Nails said in an email to The Courant on Wednesday afternoon. Both Whiting crews and subcontractors who have previously worked on the stadium should be on the job beginning next week, he said. Nails said Whiting-Turner brings extensive experience with sports and recreational facilities “which it will use to complete construction of the ballpark so that we can bring baseball to Hartford next year.” The company’s construction portfolio features more than a dozen sports and fitness projects. They include the home of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s East Campus Athletic Village, which includes an outdoor football stadium and an indoor basketball arena; and a basketball practice facility at Baylor University in Texas. In Connecticut, the company has worked on the Connecticut Science Center, Hartford’s Front Street and the Hartford Classical Magnet School, as well as on projects at Yale, Middlesex Hospital and Norwalk Community College. “These were complex negotiations, and Arch Insurance appreciates the cooperation of the city of Hartford, the mayor’s office, and Eastern League to bring them to conclusion,” Nails said. “A lot of work remains to be done to complete the park, but we look forward to working with all parties to bring baseball to Hartford in April 2017.” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Wednesday that the city was pleased that Arch had selected a contractor with extensive construction experience, including the construction of sports facilities and stadiums. “We look forward to working closely with Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., with the Yard Goats, and with the Eastern League in the months ahead,” Bronin said. The team is scheduled to play its first game in Dunkin’ Donuts Park on April 13, 2017, after spending its inaugural Hartford season on the road because of construction delays and cost overruns at the $71 million minor league baseball stadium. Those delays resulted in the city terminating the developers, Centerplan Construction Co. and DoNo Hartford in June. It has been nearly four months since work ceased on the publicly financed project. In the meantime, the former developers sued the city, claiming wrongful termination, and sought an injunction preventing another company from completing the work. The dispute is in court-ordered mediation. The Eastern League has threatened to move the team out of Hartford if the 6,000-seat stadium is not ready for next season. Earlier this month, Bronin announced that the city and Arch had agreed in principle to have Arch oversee completion of the project. Nails did not say how much the work is expected to cost or how long the job will take to finish, but a report earlier this month from Jonathan O’Neil Cole, the ballpark’s architect, painted a picture of widespread workmanship problems. Raymond Garcia, an attorney for the former developers, declined to comment Wednesday. Attempts to reach Whiting-Turner officials after business hours Wednesday were unsuccessful. http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-dunkin-donuts-park-takeover-agreement-reached-0929-20160928-story.html

ITT Technical Institute suddenly shut down all of its campuses and online courses on September 6, 2016. By doing so, it puts approximately 8,000 employees out of work without warning. Those employees are fighting back. Former ITT Tech employee lawsuits have been filed in Delaware and Indiana. At least one of those lawsuits has requested class action certification. ITT Tech operated 130 campuses in 38 states and also offered online courses. In April 2016 it received a show cause letter from the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, ACICS, to prove that ITT Tech was serving its students in compliance with ACICS standards. That notice prompted the U.S. Department of Education, DOE, to issue a letter to ITT Tech in June 2016 requiring it to increase its surety to 20 percent of Title IV Funding it had received in the fiscal year ending December 2015. Title IV funds are used for federal student loans. ACICS held a hearing and determined that ITT Tech was still not in compliance with hits standards and was not likely to become compliant. This prompted DOE to issue another letter on August 25 that, among other requirements, increased the required surety to 40 percent of the Title IV Funding resulting in a total of $247,292,364. DOE gave the institute 30 days to pay over $152 million that was needed to bring the surety on file up to that amount. Rather than meet the additional requirements, ITT Tech closed the doors of its campuses and online classes. The employee lawsuits allege that ITT Tech was in violation of the federal Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act. That Act requires employers to give at least 60 days notice before mass layoffs. The employees are seeking all of the wages and benefits they would have received during the 60 days after they should have received notice of the closing. It is not clear whether ITT Tech campuses that have less than 50 employees on site fall under that Act. The closure has left thousands of students nationwide hanging. Some had invested years in their education, and owe thousands of dollars in student loans for degrees they will not receive. For those that were fortunate enough to have just finished their degrees, ITT stated that they will receive their diplomas, but graduation ceremonies have been cancelled. The DOE has stated that ITT Tech students that have federal student loans can file a claim to have those debts erased. But, if they do, they cannot transfer any credits they may have received from ITT Tech to other schools. It should be noted that there are very few schools or colleges that will accept ITT Tech credits. http://www.legalreader.com/former-itt-tech-employee-lawsuits/

Aug. 19 — The threat of third-party claims tied to the EPA’s looming financial assurance rule for hardrock mining is ginning up concerns among financial institutions, top surety backers and industry attorneys say. The new Superfund rule may allow states, tribes, the public and federal agencies other than the Environmental Protection Agency to make claims against hardrock mining financial instruments, such as bonds and letters of credit, the EPA says. That may raise risk to an unreasonable level, large institutions such as AIG, State Farm, Liberty Mutual and others recently told the agency. Industry attorneys supported that concern in interviews with Bloomberg BNA, arguing such language may jeopardize the availability of those instruments. Dec. 1 Deadline The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit approved an agreement in early 2016 to force the EPA to complete the rule by Dec. 1 ( In re Idaho Conservation League, D.C. Cir., No. 14-cv-01149, 1/29/16 ). The Superfund statute, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, directed the EPA to complete a financial assurance rulemaking by 1984 making them more than three decades late. Hardrock refers to minerals that contain gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, nickel, tin, lead and other metals, as opposed to, for instance, coal. The assurances exist to cover any cleanup necessary after the mines are closed. The EPA has indicated it will exempt certain categories of facilities, such as mines less than five acres and stream bed mines that don’t use hazardous substances. Third-party Prospects The EPA is “considering” assurance requirements to cover response costs for hazardous discharges or the threat of discharge, natural resource damages, and to cover health assessments, agency spokesman Melissa Harrison told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 18. The public, alongside states, tribes and other government agencies, “could” claim directly against a financial surety, Harrison said, while pointing out that the agency has met with financial industry representatives. EPA officials are now putting the finishing touches on a study to evaluate the ability of financial institutions to make available CERCLA-compliant sureties. “The draft study report is currently undergoing internal review,” Harrison said. “EPA expects to make the report available before it issues the proposed hardrock mining rule.” ‘Threatened Release Too Subjective.’ That outreach, however, has seemingly left the financial industry apprehensive, according to a Surety and Fidelity Association of America said in a July 14 letter. “The potential that multiple parties, other than EPA, can make a claim under the surety bond significantly enlarges the surety’s exposure to claims, and possibly dilutes the protection available to EPA to fund the response to a release or threatened release,” the organization’s General Counsel Robert Duke told EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus. “Further, the triggering event should be the failure to fund the costs associated with a release. We submit that a ‘threatened release’ could be too subjective to define the bright line that marks when the surety’s obligations are triggered.” Claim rights are likely to be limited to those entities rendering services at or near a mine, rather than public advocates contesting, for instance, environmental degradation, John Jacus, attorney with Davis, Graham and Stubbs LLP, told Bloomberg BNA in an interview. Those eligible entities could include other potentially responsible parties under Superfund law, such as mine operators, Jacus said. Despite reservations from the financial industry, mining companies would probably not be able to own up to all natural resource and heath damage liability, David Chambers, president of the Center for Science in Public Participation, told Bloomberg BNA. The center is a nonprofit corporation formed to provide technical assistance on mining and water quality to public interest groups and tribal governments, according to its website. Moreover, such coverage would be globally unprecedented, he said, noting that current state and other federal agency assurance requirements for mining are geared solely towards reclamation. “I’ll bet you a dime to the dollar the rule reflects present procedure, but I would love to see EPA come out and say you have to compensate all injured parties,” Chambers said. “They’ve been sitting on their hands for 30 years in terms of promulgating this sort of rule. For them to take that stance now would be almost unbelievable.” Market Instability Claimant latitude could cause significant uncertainty in the surety market, indicating financial institutions may require more higher-priced sureties, a number of mining experts said. “The ramification of an overly conservative bond for the entity that needs to get the bond is that it costs more; annual costs simply go up for bonding that may not be serving any particular purpose,” Stephen Smithson, a lawyer with Snell and Wilmer, told Bloomberg BNA. “As it becomes a bigger bond and a bigger pool of money that third parties can make claims against, financial institutions begin incurring more costs defending against those claims. It just makes them a bigger target.” Smithson and Chambers said financial institutions historically underestimated cleanup costs and, in the late 90s, had to pony up more money than expected tied to bonds, leading many insurers to leave the market. The duration of the bond also is a critical consideration, said the surety and fidelity association. “A surety bond with a long duration increases the risk to the surety,” Duke wrote to the EPA. “To compensate for the increased risk due to the diminished certainty of underwriting, sureties typically raise their underwriting standards, and provide long-term bonds only to the largest and most financially sound operators. We recommend that the implementing regulations should contain measures by which the surety can control the duration, such as a cancellation clause in the bond.” For example, acid drainage requires water monitoring “in perpetuity,” Chambers said. Self-Bonding The EPA left the door open for self-bonding permission in outreach to interested parties and Bloomberg BNA, saying credit rating-based financial tests and corporate guarantees may be permissible. Jacus said self insurance, accompanied by monitoring that could compel market assurances, helps to diversify industry options. But the questionable ability of self-bonded coal operators to pony up cash for

The rushed Dunkin Donuts Stadium was to be ready for the Hartford Yard Goats home season in April. There seems to be lots of finger pointing going around and now Arch is brought into the fray. http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/20160527/NEWS01/160529942