Seriously. Had Jim Marzilli not submitted his attention-grabbing request to boost his pension based on having lost an election that he didn’t contest, we probably would not have had today’s Globe story showing pretty convincingly that Marzilli’s gambit was not an outlier. Rather, it was a standard move to take advantage of a 1950 law (this one, I think) that, in retrospect, seems to have been wildly misguided.
Reporter Michael Levenson’s lineup of legislators who, having either lost or decided not to run for reelection, used the law to boost their post-employment take-home pay, is impressive.
Vincent J. Piro, a former state representative from Somerville who lost his seat after he was charged with taking a $5,000 bribe, used the law to boost his pension from about $6,750 – not including annual cost-of-living adjustments – to $18,872.
Richard Voke, a former House majority leader from Chelsea who retired in 1998 after losing a bitter fight for the speakership to Thomas M. Finneran in 1996, upped his pension from about $14,779 to $28,193.
Francis G. Mara, a former state representative from Brockton who retired in 1996 after he was fined for taking gifts from insurance lobbyists, increased his pension from about $3,783 to $18,921…. Recent recipients include Christopher J. Hodgkins, a former Democratic representative from Lee, who retired in 2003 and upped his pension from about $4,889 to $22,253, and John Businger, a former Democratic representative from Brookline who was ousted from office in 1998 and increased his pension from about $15,083 to $23,301.
Here’s Scott Harshbarger on this weird law:
“It’s ridiculous,” said L. Scott Harshbarger, the former attorney general of Massachusetts and onetime president of Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “How in the world is it appropriate, necessary, or consistent with any reasonable public policy that if you chose not to run for office or are defeated in running for office that you get an enhanced pension? It just seems to me totally unreasonable, and for elected officials this does not enhance their image.” … “These kinds of things become symbols that reinforce people’s cynicism,” Harshbarger said.
Seems about right to me. Now, I am no pension expert. The laws, both state and federal, governing this area are incredibly complicated, and there isn’t much point in folks like me bloviating about what they don’t really have a clear handle on. But one thing seems very clear: a serious, knowledgeable, clear-eyed look at the pension system, and serious, fiscally responsible proposals for reform, are desperately needed. Moreso, perhaps, even than the ethics reform task force that just released its final report. This issue is about ethics too — but it also involves billions of dollars.
And this simply will not do:
The Legislature recently created a 15-member commission to look at ways to overhaul the pension system.
It was supposed to meet in September, but its members have yet to be appointed.
Totally unacceptable. The Governor should take the lead on this. He should follow the pretty successful model of his ethics task force, and he should have a serious reform proposal ready to file within a couple of months.
Because if public officials don’t take the lead on this, you can bet that there will be an initiative petition to demolish the state pension system. And that one will have a really good chance of passing.
Wow, that is an eye catcher!
<
p> Barbara Anderson could loop arms with Scott Harshbarger and scream
for all to hear! I am not a proponent of abolishing the system, but an overhaul is grossly needed.
<
p>Here’s my draft letter to Legislators after reading the Boston.com article:
<
p>Dear Sirs and Madams,
<
p>As the new legislative session begins and towns and cities in the Commonwealth brace for proposed mid-year cuts, I implore you to conduct swift and comprehensive pension reform. Today’s Boston.com article excerpted below outlines some of the high profile abuses and benefits that Legislators have granted unto themselves.
<
p>
<
p>The creditable years of service sometimes include part-time local government positions (eg. Selectboard, Assessor, Housing Board, etc.) that are “rolled” into a full year of creditable service toward pensions when one moves to an elected state position. Further abuses occur with full benefits and pensions granted to part-time state officials such as Governor’s Councillors who work/meet once per week.
<
p>It is egregious to witness the ongoing reluctance of the Legislature to act boldly and repeal these types of benefits granted by the Legislature to the Legislature and other state officials when local government and taxpayers suffer the burden. I look forward to seeing the proposed legislation that you will introduce to correct these problems. While there is no evidence to suggest that the Legislature will act upon these abuses, I will contact the Governor. Please prove me wrong.
<
p>-HD
this type of stuff (and also that provision that allows someone to “buy back” service) is utterly insane. Of course, that assumes that the government pensions have been funded in a responsible manner to begin with, which is clearly not the case.
<
p>Bingo.
<
p>The Governor can really differentiate himself from the business as usual scene on Beacon Hill on this issue.
Deval Patrick doesn’t have the balls to take on his own party, even over such a clear cut issue. We’ll get the standard public lecture and hand wringing from him, then spineless ducking.
<
p>Down deep he either (a) agrees with the policy philosophically, or (b) doesn’t give a s**t that the state is careening towards insolvency and/or massive tax increases.
<
p>Probably both. With cover provided by the a**kissers at the Globe.
Considering how well our Legislature takes care of itself, it will take nothing less than an initiative partition to change the self-serving scheme that passes for a pension system in this state. The fox will not undertake the cleaning of the henhouse.
<
p> Even with a binding partition, reform may not take place. Remember the Clean Election partition that passed with an overwhelming vote over 10 years ago? Because our political ruling class saw public financing of state-wide elections a threat to their comfortable incumbency, they refused to fund it. The refusal was headed under the arrogant leadership of the then Speaker, Tom Finneran. (Yes, the same Tom Finnergan who is now looking for a pardon.)
<
p> Perhaps part of the democratic political process should be never-failing hope.
because they are precisely the ones who benefit from this fine print. It really does point out the difference between private and public sector; even a governor or a president isn’t ultimately going to take the hit now for a problem that will occur 10-20 years down the road, while the private sector owner recognizes the here and now problems and will act accordingly. In point of fact, the Pension Protection Act takes that out of the plan sponsor’s hands in that if funding falls below 60% AFTAP, all future benefits are cut off until funding improves (and that being a scenario where liabilities are measured on a far more conservative basis than this marking to exprected investment return as in the public sector). Now go back to that Globe spreadsheet from a month ago outlining pre-market meltdown public funding percentages and put on your thinking caps. Probably 98% of our municipal plans, if under the private sector, woould be shut down for future accruals in 2009.
<
p>I know we have the argument that public sector employees contribute, while this feature has pretty much disappeared from the private sector, but obviously these contributions aren’t covering the value of the promised benefits (to put it mildly). And this “buy back” feature makes absolutely no sense at all; so a participant can throw in additional money at the end to reflect what they would have contributed in the past to get a higher benefit, ignoring the fact that there is no corresponding reckoning on the employer’s side to make up the past funding for this new and improved benefit? God help us folks.
…that said something about money like drugs to politicians? They keep needing more and more for their habit. The state pension plan is already bust in Illinois. Elsewhere it is about to collapse. The Federal employees had their contributions swept into the general fund years ago and now they get funds that are labeled “entitlements”, subject to any Fed control.
<
p>Oh!, what sin a real – honest to goodness – audit would no doubt reveal of Massachusetts pensions. I wonder how many dead people are getting pensions, or how many multiple pensions to the same individual there are, fictitous people? We’ll never know. I think it was back in the ’80s that the Feds checked on retirement checks to Filipino scouts of WW2. It seems they expected the pensions to be going down as the population thinned. It wasn’t thinning. So they required the pensioners to appear at the US embassy and consolates. Most didn’t show up. They were dead.
<
p>You’re right, nobody is going to take the lead on this. Ignorance is bliss. Tell not the Captain Smith, this ship is unsinkable!
What is it about politics that attracts the dregs of humanity?
Firstly, I wouldn’t “thank” Jim Marzilli for anything. He is a dirt bag.
<
p>Secondly, the state pension system cries out for reform. This law, legislator’s are taking advantage of, simply illustrates how bad the system is and these legislators are!
<
p>Cynicism, that is a wird for it. Discut, rape, and pillage are others.
<
p>
typo
Looking back to another rip-off of the State taxpayer. The issue here should be the provision that allows a politician with many years in a moderate-paying job, to get appointed to a high-paying job for 3 years, and then have his pension based on the high pay of the short service, and the extended years of his public “service”. And then the sense of entitlement extends to increasing his base further with non-salary considerations.
<
p>Let’s not let pension reform be limmited to the single issue of Marzilli, et al.
But it usually takes a big outrage of some kind to get up the momentum necessary for significant change to take place. The Marzilli issue is what (hopefully) will do that.
<
p>The reform needs to be wide and deep.
I agree that it’s easy for rank and file to duck this issue, especially since they’d become unpopular with their colleagues.
<
p>I also think that Deval Patrick can’t touch it. Not enough value for the risk. He can’t make the legislature write a law, and publicly browbeating them won’t help get things done in the big picture sense.
<
p>I wonder though: what if a speaker had reason to look like a reformer, like a penny pincher, like a good ethics guy? If so, he could make it happen just by getting it on the floor — after all, once it’s on the floor for a vote, there’ll be enough pressure from the Globe, Herald, and television for the lege to vote for it.
<
p>
<
p>As for comprehensive reform, I’m not sure. I’d settle for a few tid bits like getting rid of this 1950 law and extending the pension basis from “last 3 years” to “last 5 years”. Honestly though, without a comprehensive study, it’s not clear to me how much things like this really cost. I agree that any poorly spent dollar is a problem, but what I don’t know is how much less the state would shell out in pension money per year if the two changes I suggest above were to take place. $100,000/yr? $1,000,000? $10,000,000? More?
Totally disagree with you on that. The value is immense, in that it re-ups Deval’s status as a reformer and as a change-maker just in time for 2010. It also happens to be the right thing to do, and could allow him to find a few extra bucks for education reform and other expensive things he’d like to pursue but, right now, can’t. There’s not much downside here.
You sow what you reap.
<
p>The pension mess is been a Democratic party mess. Dems have run the state house since I can remember.
<
p>And progressive voters keep electing the same politicians over and over. Correct me if I’m wrong. Can anyone at BMG point to action by a progressive politician which has been discernibly in the direction of reform?
<
p>It’s not a rhetorical question. I’d call my state senator but it’s Diane Wilkerson. My rep, Sal DiMasi, will likely be unhelpful.
Did you miss the last legislative session?
<
p>Closing corporate tax loopholes. Huge progress on environmental issues. A crack (a small one, but a crack nonetheless) in police details. Saving gay marriage. That’s just off the top of my head.
<
p>Yes, there’s lots more to be done. But don’t be silly by pretending that nothing has happened in the last two years.
I haven’t!
2. Participation in that pension system means that they give up on Social Security, because of the WEP/GPO provisions of SS regulation. There is at minimum an offset to Social Security; at worst, no Social Security at all.
3. A retirement annuity is available after 20 years participation in the retirement system, with time portable only within the PERAC-controlled retirement systems (Municipal and state).
4. The largest of these reported enhanced annuities is about $28K, hardly enough to live handsomely. Do they have other retirement incomes? Well, one certainly hopes so.
5. Service to the Commonwealth has traditionally been valued, and rewarded with such things as the pension-doubling provision. What will the effect of removal be? That should be considered. If staying in office for the pension becomes the order, what will that mean for the pool of pols? Should our reps and sens only be people who do not require a pension? If we want to legislate term limits via pension reform…at some point they’ll leave office because they need to consider an “afterlife”, that should be carefully considered.
6. Is there a danger of “reform by sledgehammer?” In other words, I hear great anger against Billy Bulger, against Marzilli. Fine. But will that anger and resulting reform screw some long-term hardworking clerk in, say, the Labor Commission? Or does the anger extend to anyone who gets a check with “Commonwealth of Massachusetts” at the top?
7. Can a system set up and running since 1950, without major change, be blamed on Democrats?
Reasons for pessimism: 1) history of failed reform (below) 2) intransigence by the public sector unions 3) Patrick’s recent history: the pattern by Governor Patrick to “solve” or reform things with multi-point, turnkey schemes derived in some back office within the Executive branch only that are dead on arrival in the Legislature: i.e. casino, police detail, ethics.
<
p>But I think there’s reason for optimism.
<
p>There’s a convergence of:
<
p>1) an ENORMOUS unfunding of the PRIT/PRIM run funds;
2) a Marzilli poster child;
3) a 401(k) hit that leaves (or should leave) non-government employees watching their own retirement finances shrink while the State employees retirement is fat;
4) and towns that are looking at 50+% unfunding ratios and no idea how they intend to fund them short of some State mandated cutback and/or merger of the plans into one State run plan.
<
p>Frankly, if Patrick fails at meaningful reform he’s snatched defeat ….
<
p>2007: Pension reform
<
p>
<
p>—————
<
p>2006: Pension reform
<
p>
<
p>—————
<
p>2003: Pension reform: “To receive a pension at a huge multiple of the median income . . . and to do so based upon a few years of high income makes no sense. It’s wrong, and we’re going to propose that that’s changed in a pension reform plan.” Mitt Romney, Boston Globe, 9/6/2003
<
p>—————
<
p>
The 2006 Pension reform you credited to Healey-Hillman was work done by Salem State Professor’s Ken Ardon, promoted by the Pioneer Institute and supported by then candidates Deval L. Patrick and the x-Lt. Governor as reported here on BMG.
I gave “credit” to no one, but rather quoted a newsource as evidence that 2006, was yet one of many years of pension reform.
<
p>However, with respect to the Ken Ardon plan, a key proposal within that plan, as with the Healey-Hillman plan was this:
<
p>
<
p>I didn’t know that Patrick endorsed this plan or in particular this aspect of the plan, and would be curious if you know.
I cannot confirm, deny or provide evidence on Patrick’s position on that specific aspect of the pension reform proposals. He discussed pension reforms during the campaign and noted that there were some proposals that he agreed with his opponents (a winning strategy for both Patrick and Obama); pension reform being one of those issues. I would be curious if you can find anything specific to that component, too. Keep us posted.
that Deval ever squarely endorsed merging all the pension systems into the state system, but he didn’t rule it out either.
<
p>