Romney puts a top aide in line for pension

Governor Mitt Romney has installed his most prominent aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, as the state appointee on the Brookline Housing Authority, a move that will allow Fehrnstrom to qualify for a state pension when he reaches retirement age.

Fehrnstrom, who earns close to $160,000 and is scheduled to leave his state job Jan. 4, would have been nearly two years short of the decade of service required of state employees to vest in the pension system. The five-year housing authority term will allow Fehrnstrom, the governor's communications director, to exceed the 10-year threshold and be vested.

The additional years of service could mean a difference of several hundred thousand dollars to Fehrnstrom during retirement. Without them, he would not have qualified for a public pension at all.

While the Brookline position is part-time and pays only $5,000, the pension Fehrnstrom receives will be calculated based on his top three earning years in government.

Fehrnstrom insisted yesterday that his interest in serving on the Brookline Housing Authority is purely civic-minded.

"I've lived in Brookline for the past 20 years, and I have two children in the public schools, and I look forward to serving my local community," he said in a statement e-mailed to the Globe.

Fehrnstrom declined to comment on the pension implications of his appointment.

Romney was in Florida yesterday and did not respond to phone and e-mail messages left with his political aide Spencer Zwick, who was traveling with him. However, the governor's chief of staff, Mark Nielsen, called the Globe late last night and said that when Romney appointed Fehrnstrom to the Brookline board last week, he did not realize his aide could use the position to qualify for a pension.

"When the appointment was made, the governor did not know that Eric Fehrnstrom could accumulate service time toward his pension," Nielsen said.

Asked whether Romney planned to ask Fehrnstrom to decline the appointment, Nielsen said, "I don't have any further thing to say."

Fehrnstrom's pension boost is legal, and such transitions are frequently sought by political insiders and state government officials to extend government service for pension purposes. But the move could create political trouble for Romney, as he touts his reformer image and explores a presidential candidacy.

Beacon Hill perks and traditional practices have been targets of attack for Romney, who, often through his spokesman Fehrnstrom, has described state government as riddled with patronage and cronyism. Early in his tenure, Romney criticized the state's pension benefits as overly generous, saying they had left taxpayers facing what he says is a $1.4 billion public "pension bomb."

Most recently, the governor has denounced sick-leave policies at the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the Massachusetts Port Authority. Top executives at the agencies have built up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unused sick time that they can cash in upon retirement.

In July, Romney vetoed a bill granting a $44,000-a-year pension to the widow of a former state representative who did not contribute to the state retirement system. Romney had proposed that lawmakers pay out of their own pockets to create a pension on behalf of Michael Ruane, a Salem Democrat who died last month from cancer. But House and Senate lawmakers rejected Romney's plan, and the Legislature overrode that veto.

The governor has also taken aim in the past at a key provision of state pension policy that will benefit Fehrnstrom: the basing of annual pensions on a public employee's three highest-paid years. That calculation has allowed former University of Massachusetts president William M. Bulger to draw an annual pension of $190,000, a deal that Romney said called out for pension reform. Bulger's pay during 35 years as a legislator never topped $81,000, but his pension was boosted by his seven years as president of the University of Massachusetts, when his salary topped $300,000.

During the 1990s, Fehrnstrom worked for 4 1/3 years as an aide to state treasurer Joseph D. Malone. When Fehrnstrom left that post in 1999, he opted to take the cash he had contributed to the pension system in a lump sum, according to public records. But in recent years Fehrnstrom made arrangements to buy back into the system, essentially repaying the money for those years to make them count toward eligibility in the system.

Fehrnstrom, a former Boston Herald reporter, will take the place on the Housing Authority of a Brookline Republican activist, Russell Evans. Evans had been appointed to the board about a year ago to fill out the unexpired term of a member who left. Evans said he has been in a hold-over status for several months, but said yesterday that Romney administration officials have discussed other potential appointments for him within the administration.

"They have pointed me in the direction of other opportunities," Evans told the Globe.

Christine McConville of the Globe staff contributed to this report.