The Essex Regional Retirement Board is getting out of the money management business next year. That's not enough. It ought to go entirely out of business.
The board, which has been thumbing its nose at the public for most of its existence, has done it ever more frequently and flagrantly during the past year. And it is ending the year with yet another outrage.
While its primary task of handling retirement funds is being turned over to the state, its budget will go up anyway.
Why?
The board plans to spend an extra $150,000 of your money next year to hire lawyers to deal with requests for information from you, the public.
It's just the latest in a string of incidents proving the board has outlived its usefulness.
The Eagle-Tribune's sister paper, The Salem News, reported last week that the board plans to hire three additional law firms next year, boosting its legal spending by 60 percent. That would bring to nine the number of law firms on the board payroll; the projected $150,000 increase in legal bills means about $368,000 of the board's $1.35 million budget is expected to be spent on lawyers and consultants.
By contrast, the Middlesex County Retirement Board's legal expenses this year totaled about $80,000, according to Chairman Thomas Gibson. Most of that money was spent in a single case.
Why all the extra spending in Essex County?
Chief Operating Officer Lilli Gilligan said it was "all because of the media attention this office has gotten in the past year."
Well, 2009 was a busy year. The board, dogged by the worst-performing portfolio in the state and uprising among the dozens of towns, school districts and other municipal entities that rely on it, finally voted to transfer investment control to the state's Pension Reserves Investment Trust.
It also found the time to make government more expensive. It approved new rules to let emergency dispatchers retire five years early, at age 60 rather than 65. It also sought to lower the retirement age of public works employees from 65 to 55.
But much of the board's time was taken up by another pursuit: making it more difficult for the public to gain access to public information.
While Gilligan singled out the media as the problem, municipal officials were asking inconvenient questions of their own. And they weren't having much luck getting answers.
"They've been stonewalling attempts by town administrators and managers and the press for documents that are public," said Ipswich Town Manager Robert Markel. "They've been wholly uncooperative."
An example is the request, on Sept. 30, from Ipswich Town Treasurer Kevin Merz to Executive Director Timothy Bassett, asking for the names and districts of everyone serving on the board's Advisory Council.
The board turned the question over to its lawyers, who waited more than 10 weeks before denying the request for names. In the letter, the board's lawyers cite state laws that exempt public agencies from disclosing the home addresses and phone numbers of officials, even though Merz never requested that information.
"That would be like going to a town and saying, 'Who are your selectmen in this town?' And the town saying, 'I'm sorry, that's not public information,'" Merz said.
The tactics used by the board are familiar to anyone trying to get public information from the government: Deny and delay as long as you can, and hope the public gives up and goes away.
The public isn't going away this time. The board, however, should. It is long past time for the Legislature to abolish it, and to transfer the administration of benefits either to member communities or the state.
