December 1, 2011 Public Statement Regarding Retirement Announcement of Harold Pumford as CEO of the Association of Governmental Risk Pools (AGRiP)
For additional information contact AGRiP President Shawn Bubb at 406-457-4418 or sbubb@mtsba.org; or, Harold Pumford at 405-567-2611 or hpumford@agrip.org.
PRAGUE, OK. Harold Pumford, who in February 2000 became the first executive for the Association of Governmental Risk Pools (AGRiP), will retire in mid-2012. The association’s current President, Shawn Bubb, said Pumford notified all board members on November 29 that he would retire as early as June 1, but no later than August 1, 2012 depending upon when a successor is available to assume his duties.
Bubb, who is the Director of Insurance Services for the Montana Schools Group Insurance Authority, said the board will now implement their CEO Succession Plan which has been developed over the past three years. This will involve posting job notice announcements in a number of publications and websites, as well as on the AGRiP website at www.agrip.org. Under timelines set forth in the succession plan, he said, the board could begin to interview finalists in early March.
Pumford, who is 66, said in his retirement notice that he looks forward “to exploring other gainful means to apply my experience – with hopefully more time to spend with my wife, our family and my ranching interests” in Oklahoma. Bubb said that Pumford notified the board in 2007 that he was nearing retirement age and urged them to develop a succession plan.
Bubb noted that Pumford’s public sector career which will span 44 years by May 2012, involved city management positions for two communities in Oklahoma and one in Tennessee as well as posts with the Oklahoma Municipal League, over 20 years as the Chief Executive Officer of the Oklahoma Municipal Assurance Group and more than 12 years at AGRiP. In his letter to the board, Pumford said that, “the privileged involvement this position has afforded me to interact with officials from a host of public entities has cemented my abiding respect and admiration for those who commit to public service, whether in paid, volunteer or elected positions”.
Pumford has also served as an adjunct professor for Midwest Christian College and the University of Central Oklahoma, as a consultant or advisor on a number of state and federal government projects and as a member of the Oklahoma Police Pension Board.
As the person with perhaps the longest history of continuous employment in public entity risk and benefits pooling, since 1979, Pumford told the board that, “It has been especially gratifying to have experienced the development and maturity of public entity risk and benefits pooling into what I often proclaim as the greatest success story in intergovernmental relations in the history of our country”.