Putting a face on the need to reform

Every cause needs a champion. Now Charles Bradshaw Lincoln has emerged as the new face of the need to reform Massachusetts' wasteful public pension system.

Last month the Pioneer Institute, the market-oriented think tank, published a detailed examination of how abuse and inefficiency are costing taxpayers billions. The report, written by Ken Ardon, who teaches economics at Salem State College, found a system that is ``riddled with exceptions, ambiguities, and loopholes" that allow some employees to game the system, requiring an additional $125 million in annual taxpayer funding. Ardon attributed $3 billion of the state's $13 billion in unfunded pension liabilities to such abuse.

As good as the Pioneer report is, the story of Charlie Lincoln, lifetime Brockton cop, tells it better. Lincoln -- as the state inspector general calls him in his own scathing new report -- is ``a master manipulator." You almost have to admire the guy's genius in playing the system -- if we weren't picking up the bill.

That bill comes in the form of a lifetime pension of nearly $140,000 a year -- or $11,648.9 2 a month. That is an extraordinary payday for a retired a cop -- 55 percent higher than any pension ever paid in Plymouth County -- but the most stunning part is how Lincoln allegedly ``earned" that pension. The inspector general, Gregory Sullivan, calls it ``one of the most significant abuses in the expenditure of public funds and abuse of employment benefits in the history of the Commonwealth."

According to Sullivan, Lincoln fattened his pension by working two jobs at once -- as a Brockton police lieutenant and director of security at the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office -- for three years before he retired in 2004. Just a hard-working guy, you say? Try again. Lincoln is a hack's hack, the Barry Bonds of the Hack Hall of Fame. Two words: sick leave.

In the three years that Lincoln worked the day shift at the Plymouth jail and the night shift as a Brockton cop, he called in sick 251 days, the inspector general says. Repeat: 251 days. On 148 days he took sick leave from Brockton, he worked a full shift in Plymouth. On his last year on the ``job" in Brockton, Lincoln worked only 60 full days and 14 partial days out of a possible 243 work days, the inspector general found.

For his three years of ``service" to Plymouth County, those taxpayers will pay Lincoln $62,696.63 a year FOR LIFE. Brockton taxpayers will pay $76,553.81. Dedham will kick in $536.64.

The pension system was no match for this cop. Lincoln boosted his pension by combining his salaries at Brockton and Plymouth. He more than doubled his Plymouth vacation time by piggybacking on his years in Brockton. He used up all his sick days in Brockton because he knew he couldn't get paid for them when he quit. And finally, the inspector general says, Lincoln retired from Plymouth rather than Brockton because it would lower his expenses for retiree health insurance.

Not that he needs the dough, but Lincoln could clean up with a late-night infomercial on how to hustle your local pension system.

The pension system is the way it is because those who oversee it -- the cops and firefighters who run the retirement boards -- have it just the way they like it. As the inspector general notes, Lincoln was no accident. Former Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonough, who hired Lincoln for this three-year victory lap at the jail, knew how the system worked. He is on the Plymouth County retirement board. Lincoln, not coincidentally, helped on McDonough's campaign in 2000.

``Sheriff McDonough apparently decided to reward Lincoln for his campaign assistance at the expense of the taxpayers," Inspector General Sullivan wrote.

Neither Lincoln nor McDonough returned my calls.

Charlie Lincoln is how a state with 106 separate pension systems is spending your tax money. On Friday I'll tell you about the cowboys who are investing your tax money.

Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.