By: Chris Cassidy, Matt Stout
Former Attorney General Martha Coakley has just scored the same controversial law enforcement pension perk that ex-public safety boss Andrea Cabral secured yesterday, the Herald has learned.
Coakley, the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, will start collecting an $80,643-a-year pension this month, according to the state Retirement Board. Her enhanced pension stems from her work as a district attorney and assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, not as attorney general. She did not return a request for comment yesterday.
The retirement board yesterday approved Cabral’s estimated $91,000 pension amid an outcry from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, one of whom denounced it as “a money grab.”
Coakley’s and Cabral’s bonanzas come as a blue-ribbon panel’s report calling for reforms of the so-called Group 4 classification — originally intended for law enforcement officers who risk their lives in the line of duty — collects dust on a Beacon Hill shelf.
The 13-member special commission — set up by lawmakers to reform pension perks — reported in 2013 that many of the job titles in the Group 4 category seem “arbitrary” and that “legislators are frequently requested to enact special interest legislation that would place a particular job title in ... Group 4.”
After the commission filed its report with the Legislature, “I didn’t hear back from anybody on it,” said Phil Brown, who chaired the panel and now heads the state’s Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission.
The Group 4 section has been modified 26 times since 1967 and now stretches 567 words. Among the jobs added to the list:
• The “conservation officer” of Haverhill in 2010; although the mayor’s spokesman couldn’t explain why, he noted that the officer carried a handgun while on duty;
• District attorneys and assistant district attorneys in 1995, after a Suffolk gang prosecutor was murdered in Boston; and
• Municipal electric workers, in 1970.
Other sheriffs and district attorneys have cashed in on the lucrative perk, including U.S. Rep. William Keating, who’s raking in a $110,900 pension from his time as Norfolk district attorney. Former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt also is receiving $59,453, a Group 4 pension from when he was Norfolk district attorney.
Former Nantucket Sheriff Richard Bretschneider, who retired at 51 after twice being fined for violations by the state ethics commission, grabbed nearly $67,000 in Group 4 benefits. He did not return a message left at his home.
“What’s happened is that over the years, there’s been ad hoc legislation to add in this job or that job to one of the classifications,” said former panel chief Brown. “That’s how the whole statute became a hodgepodge.”
Since Jan. 1, the state retirement board has approved 30 people for some type of Group 4 classification. Three had their requests denied, including a University of Massachusetts police officer, a unit manager in a sheriff’s office and a head cook for the Department of Correction.
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