John Buonomo’s pension a steal
By Howie Carr | Friday, April 22, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Who could have ever predicted it — John Buonomo got his pension back before Jackie Bulger.
I asked Buonomo’s lawyer, Nick Poser, how much the sticky-fingered Somerville hack was collecting while serving time at the Billerica House of Correction.
“Somewhere between 30 and 40 thousand a year,” Poser said yesterday. “But the check didn’t go to the jail.”
It’s actually $38,300, according to the Somerville Retirement Board.
Where was it sent?
“I don’t think I’m at liberty to reveal that.”
John Buonomo got his kiss in the mail back in August. The city of Somerville hand-delivered a check to Poser’s law office on Portland Street in Boston for the $20,000 or so they were in arrears. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
And here’s some more news — the reprobate register of probate was cut loose by the sheriff March 7.
You remember Buonomo. The state police caught him red-handed on surveillance videotape, creeping downstairs into the courthouse offices of his political ally, the register of deeds, another old Somerville hack named Gene Brune. He’d look around, and then he’d empty the copying machines of all their quarters (actually it was dollar bills, but somehow the story sounds better when you say quarters).
In a fair world, John Buonomo would have been elected Massachusetts Democrat of the Year by acclamation. He pleaded guilty to 39 various and sundry counts, most of which involved ripping off his campaign account, which he treated like one of Gene Brune’s copying machines in East Cambridge.
The story of his pension miracle appeared in the Somerville Journal, so I called up his attorney, Poser, to get some more background, and it turns out Buonomo was even shiftier than we thought. The pension the city of Somerville was trying to strip him of had nothing to do with his last $110,000-a-year elective job in the hackerama.
When he was first elected, he already was collecting a pension, on top of the 110 large, and had been since around 2000 — when he was 48. How very Group 4 of him! Poser wasn’t sure, but it probably had something to do with his old job, Middlesex county administrator, which ended when the Legislature abolished the county. Since then, the state also had abolished the odious provision that may have allowed him (and a host of other hacks) to start collecting early because they’d been “fired.”
So now Buonomo presumably needs a new job. Qualifications: convicted thief, jailbird, never worked a day in his life.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one possible job for John Buonomo: Mass Pike toll collector.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1332496
So you believe the Whitey Bulger death rumors?
In terms of the article, I am a bit ambivalent. Not that I like the public sector in general, but if you were in the private sector and pillaged your company, you would still get your pension, I think, especially if it was a defined contribution plan like a 401k program. So in this case, I would be inclined to still give pensions to retired felons.