MICHELE McSCREAMER IN FOR HIM ALL NEXT WEEK
Pension pitch; drop the mike!
Feb 17, 2013
By Howie Carr / Boston Herald
Memo to the Chelsea Retirement Board: Don’t even think about it.
Don’t even consider giving the about-to-plead-guilty-to-felonies Mike McLaughlin a pension. He shouldn’t get even a “reduced” one of $128,000 or so that he would have been eligible for if he’d played by the rules, as impossible as that would be for the lifelong payroll patriot.
This may seem like a scenario not even worth discussing. But we are, after all, talking about Chelsea, Damascus on the Mystic. This is a city where McLaughlin, as head of the Chelsea Housing Authority, was for years able to pay himself an annual salary as high as $360,000 while telling his board that he was actually making $164,000.
Nobody ever checked.
He was setting himself up for a pension of $278,000 — $80,000 more than Billy Bulger. He wanted to be a Bulger and now McLaughlin gets his wish, only instead of Billy, he’s Whitey, spending his golden years in the can.
According to state law, you forfeit your pension if you commit a crime while in the execution of your duties. And since McLaughlin claimed the hundreds of thousands in extra dough while filling out the forms required by the state and federal agencies that were keeping his bust-out agency afloat, it seems like a no-brainer.
But I repeat, this is Chelsea. Rest assured that the Chelsea Retirement Board is composed of the same high-class caliber of citizens as the former members of the Chelsea Housing Authority.
Why do you think McLaughlin, who has worked in the hackerama his entire life, decided to let the Chelsea Housing Authority control his pension? For the same reason John Buonomo, another graduate of the crime school known as Middlesex County, was relying on the Somerville Retirement Board to do the right thing by him.
This of course was before Buonomo was caught on a state police camera breaking into the copy machines at the Southern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
The State Retirement Board? That’s run by the treasurer, who’s always running for governor, whoever he or she is. They have to worry about bad PR. The Chelsea and Somerville Retirement Boards, not so much.
Fear not, however, there is a silver lining in all this for McLaughlin. He’ll get a full refund of all the money he paid into all of the various public retirement systems he was a part of, minus interest. That’s what they did for Sal DiMasi, the crooked House speaker, after he lost his pension. Naturally, Sal didn’t have to repay any of the pension money he’d received before he was caught with his hand in the till.
This is Massachusetts, after all. Nothing on the level. …
Sometimes, these brazen, sticky-fingered thieves try to get their kiss in the mail back even after they’ve been convicted. Take the third of the brothers Bulger, Jackie, the runt of the litter. After a nationwide search, he became clerk of what was then called the Boston Juvenile Court. He was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about one of Whitey’s safe-deposit boxes and stripped of his state pension.
Jailbird Jackie appealed. He acknowledged committing a crime in the federal judicial system. But, he argued, he worked in the state judicial system. Therefore, his courthouse crime had nothing to do with his courthouse job.
Are you following me here?
Believe me, if Jackie could have, he’d have thrown himself on the tender mercies of the Boston Retirement Board. Louise Day Hicks used to run that, with assistance from one of Kevin White’s dimmest ward bosses.
In those days, many city retirees insisted on picking up their checks in person at City Hall. Receiving one’s check by mail was far too risky — each letter represented one more potential count of mail fraud, at five years per.
Poor Mike McLaughlin. He tried to out-Bulger Bulger, and instead he ends up another John Buonomo, a guy he regarded with contempt, except McLaughlin is going to Club Fed instead of the Billerica House of Correction.
But things could be worse, Mike. You could be Lt. Gov. Tim “Crash” Murray.