State pension overhaul pleases Lynn’s McGee

LYNN – State Sen. Thomas M. McGee applauded the actions his Beacon Hill colleagues took Wednesday after a state pension-abuse bill was fast-tracked toward law.Some of the most egregious forms of abuse, including the now infamous one day-one year provision, were targeted in the legislation.”I think it’s a really good piece of legislation and everybody is ready to move forward on it,” said McGee, D-Lynn.Gov. Deval Patrick and House and Senate leaders announced that a conference committee had settled on language ending the “one day-one-year” provision allowing employees to be credited with a year’s service for even just a day’s work in a calendar year; the “termination allowance” for lawmakers who were not re-elected and a provision letting workers receive credit for years of service when they were holding unpaid jobs.Patrick, who said he looked forward to signing the bill, praised lawmakers for reaching agreement on the legislation, which he said would help “regain the confidence of the whole of the public in this state government.”Most significantly, the conferees agreed to apply the changes to both current and future state workers. The House had voted to make them apply only to future workers, which would have eliminated any financial benefit from the changes. Some members feared legal repercussions for changing benefits for workers who had already started to pay into the system.House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, said he backed the final version of the bill even though he had previously raised concerns about applying new rules to existing employees.”If people wish to approach that through the court system, so be it,” he said.The bill applies to everyone who retires after July 1, 2009.The House and Senate are expected to debate and approve the measure today and deliver it to Patrick’s desk for his immediate signature.Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, said the bill was a bipartisan effort that ensures “loopholes in the (pension) system will be shut down once and for all.””This would be the first round going after the low-hanging fruit and I think that accomplished that,” said Sen. Scott Brown, R-Wrentham, a member of the conference committee.Brown said the final bill would also limit the definition of “compensation” to wages and salary. It would specifically ban the use of housing benefits, car-related costs and other bonuses to increase pensions.That change was inspired in part by retired Senate president and former University of Massachusetts president William Bulger.Bulger, brother of the FBI’s most wanted mobster Whitey Bulger, got his yearly $29,000 housing allowance to count as compensation, raising his annual pension from $179,000 to $196,000, one of highest state pensions in Massachusetts.Michael Widmer, president of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the changes are a good first step, but are too targeted to generate the big savings local communities are looking for.”These are mostly important symbolic changes, but they don’t address the cost of pension benefits for cities and towns,” Widmer said. “There needs to be a phase two.”Brown said the goal of the legislation was to go after some of the more obvious abuses of the system. A separate Senate task force is looking for other possible changes.Senate Ways and Means Chairman Steven Panagiotakos, D-Lowell, conceded the changes in the bill were more about preventing abuses than generating big savings.The final bill also would bar “dual service” pensions that allow employees to combine compensation from two jobs to artificially boost their pension. The employees would have to retire separately from both jobs.Another change would bar the so-called “king for a day” rule that allows workers who serve for as little as one day in a higher-paying position to factor that higher pay into their pension calculation. Instead workers would have to use the average salary from the entire year.One more change would prohibit employees who retire a