Better late than never. The Essex Regional Retirement Board finally did the right thing by taxpayers this week, voting to transfer the remainder of its assets to the state Pension Reserves Investment Trust.

Now the Legislature should take the next logical step and abolish the agency entirely, transferring the administration of benefits either to member communities or the state. It seems folly to continue paying one or more six-figure salaries (the board has consistently refused to divulge how much its employees make; but executive director Timothy Bassett is believed to earn $134,000, and he's assisted by a chief operating officer who likely is similarly compensated), for the administration of a bureaucracy whose function will now be primarily a clerical one.

For now, though, taxpayers in the system's 19 towns owe a huge debt of gratitude to municipal administrators like Middleton's Ira Singer and Ipswich's Bob Markel for bringing to light the failings of this stealth agency that operated without any regard for those paying its bills.

In North Andover, the largest community served by the retirement board, selectmen and Town Manager Mark Rees have kept the pressure on to move the assets to the much larger state fund. The PRIT manages $40 billion in assets compared to the Essex system, which holds $213 million.

Dominated by pensioners and political hacks, the regional retirement board has spent money on trips to exotic locales, handed out better-than-average raises and lobbied for increasingly generous retiree benefits, all the time knowing that any difference between the money it collected in employee contributions and investment income and what it paid out to retirees, had to be made up by the municipalities and 29 other governmental agencies that participated in the system.

These communities could ask no questions, take no votes — they simply had to pay the bill. In North Andover, the bill for the 2010 fiscal year was $2.6 million.

And this entitlement mentality came directly from the top. Having prevailed on his friends in the Legislature to pass a bill allowing him to collect both salary and pension from his previous jobs in the public sector, Bassett, a former state representative from Lynn, truly wrote the book on how to game the system.

Thursday's meeting was conducted in the board's typically bizarre manner, with veteran member Katherine O'Leary being allowed to participate (but not vote) via speaker phone. Two months ago she'd succeeded in postponing a decision on the funds transfer. But not this time, as members voted 3-1 in favor.

Finally, this long-running taxpayer nightmare may be nearing an end.