In the theater of municipal governance, there is a cardinal rule regarding security: you do not broadcast your vulnerabilities. Yet, the administration of Sherman, Connecticut, recently did exactly that. This was not a casual hallway conversation; according to the official Board of Selectmen agenda for March 26, 2026, "Cyber Insurance Premiums" was formally slated under the "Information & Discussion" section. The town leadership sat down, evaluated the costs, and officially decided to gamble with the municipality's digital infrastructure. Days later, buried deep in the April 2nd edition of the Town Tribune, they effectively published a full-page prospectus for international ransomware syndicates.

The revelation came disguised as a mundane bureaucratic update. Following that late-March discussion, it was noted that the town’s IT provider believes cyber insurance is unnecessary, relying instead on existing network safeguards. The report concluded with a chillingly casual sentence: "Both Mr. Lowe and Selectman Bob Ostrosky were comfortable with the assessment".

To the untrained eye, this reads as fiscal prudence. To a sophisticated bad actor, it is a flashing neon target. It is a public confirmation that a municipal government—currently preparing to vote on an $18 million operating budget and actively funneling another $50 million into a massive school construction project—is operating completely without a net.

The Illusion of Safeguards

First Selectman Don Lowe’s "comfort" with this assessment exposes a staggering detachment from the realities of modern digital warfare. Claiming a town does not need cyber insurance because it has IT safeguards is the equivalent of canceling the fire insurance on Town Hall because you bought a dozen fire extinguishers.

No IT provider on earth can guarantee that a well-meaning municipal clerk won’t click a highly targeted spear-phishing link. A firewall cannot preemptively neutralize a zero-day vulnerability buried in third-party software. In the current landscape, cyber insurance is not a luxury; it is the absolute baseline of fiduciary responsibility.

The threat facing Sherman is neither abstract nor theoretical. Across the country, small municipalities are increasingly hunted by ransomware gangs precisely because their digital infrastructure is porous, and eventually, they are forced to pay. When a town’s servers are encrypted, the civic apparatus flatlines. Police cannot access dispatch records. The tax collector cannot process payments. The town clerk is paralyzed. And because Sherman is currently moving tens of millions of dollars through its ledgers for the school renovation, the town has never been a more lucrative mark.

A Staggering, Uncapped Liability

This brings us to the terrifying calculus of the administration's decision. If the town's network is compromised tomorrow, the liability is entirely uncapped.

The numbers paint a sobering picture of municipal vulnerability. Over the past three years alone, 246 ransomware attacks have struck U.S. government organizations, inflicting an estimated cost of $52.88 billion. The mean cost for a state or local government to recover from an attack in 2024 was $2.83 million—more than double the $1.21 million average reported in 2023.

And the threat is only accelerating. Between April 2024 and April 2025, ransomware attacks against government entities more than tripled, marking a staggering 235.4% year-over-year spike. In the first five weeks of 2025 alone, U.S. ransomware attacks surged by 149% compared to the previous year.

Where does the ransom money come from when the town is hit? Who pays the specialized forensic cybersecurity firms charging thousands of dollars an hour to scrub the servers? Who finances the total reconstruction of Sherman’s digital infrastructure from scratch?

It will not come from the IT provider who offered this dangerously optimistic assessment. It will come directly from the pockets of Sherman taxpayers.

When you manage tens of millions of public dollars, opting out of catastrophic coverage is not a cost-saving measure; it is municipal malpractice. The Town Tribune dutifully printed this admission without interrogating the risk, treating a massive systemic vulnerability as a passing footnote. But the residents of Sherman must understand exactly what is at stake before they vote on this year's budget. The First Selectman may be entirely "comfortable" operating without a net, but when the system inevitably crashes, it is the taxpayers who will hit the ground.