Lynn tax dollars go to Vegas junket

LYNN – Two Lynn Retirement Board members spent thousands of taxpayer dollars in Las Vegas in May while attending a national conference on public retirement systems.Claire Cavanagh, the newest appointee to the five-member board and Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy’s chief of staff, and member Gordon “Buzzy” Barton, a retired Lynn firefighter and current head coach of English’s boys basketball squad, submitted expense reimbursement requests for $3,000 each.Gary Brennan, executive director of the Retirement Board, said Tuesday the members voted to authorize the expenditure and send Cavanagh and Barton to the conference at the Wynn Hotel casino and resort on Las Vegas Boulevard.According to Brennan, the board’s travel expenses have been modest and no member has attended a national conference in the past three or four years.”Our travel expenses have been very low. The board members felt they had a fiduciary responsibility to attend the workshop. They thought it would be worthwhile,” he said.The annual National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems was held May 1-6.”The reimbursement request included the cost of the NCPERS conference itself, lodging and plane fare,” said Brennan, noting that the pair attended a three-day trustee training workshop followed by the three-day conference agenda.Brennan said the $6,000 reimbursement is paid out of the Retirement Board expense account.The Lynn Retirement Board is primarily funded from three sources – member contributions, revenue from investments, and monies from the city.Chief Financial Officer Richard Fortucci said the city gave the Retirement Board $19.6 million in taxpayer dollars during fiscal 2010. The city will increase that contribution to nearly $21 million for fiscal 2011, which began July 1, according to Fortucci.When Kennedy took office in January she declared that no city money would be used for out-of-state travel until further notice, given the precarious economy.”I was a new board member as of January and unfamiliar with the procedures, so there was no issue for me attending the conference in order to get the information I would need to participate. It was an opportunity to learn how to better serve on the board,” Cavanagh said Tuesday. “I don’t think anyone can fault me for attending those meetings. I was committed to going before the mayor made any announcement about no out-of-state travel.”Cavanagh said she received the conference information packet on Jan. 26 during her first Retirement Board meeting and made arrangements to attend shortly thereafter.Barton said the national conferences are beneficial to both fledgling and veteran members of any retirement board.”These things are very educational and the networking you do at them is second to none,” he said Tuesday. “If people are anonymously going around saying I went to this conference, you can tell them, yes, I did go. And if you look at the expenditures, you’ll see that the conference itself was $1,000 just to get in. It is what it is. If somebody thinks I did something wrong, let them put their name on it and face me.”In addition to Cavanagh and Barton, the Retirement Board members are John Pace, retired Lynn firefighter Richard Biagiotti and attorney Michael Marks. Brennan is an administrator and does not vote.”This was strictly a Retirement Board decision,” Brennan said. “The mayor had no say in it.”