Increasingly light library board duty doubled pension of former senator

But a closer look at the record shows that Brennan, a 63-year-old former state senator who departed the Legislature in 1990, barely attended monthly library board meetings during the last four years, missing 30 out of 36 meetings.

His application for retirement benefits last December may explain why he hung onto the post for so long. An obscure 1998 legislative amendment that originated among Brennan's former Senate colleagues allowed him to fold the years he volunteered on the Malden library board into his pension calculation, doubling his taxpayer-supported pension.

Instead of receiving $19,097 a year in retirement based on 16 years as a full-time legislator in the 1970s and 1980s, he will receive a $41,088 annual pension for the combination of his legislative and library service, according to estimates based on his retirement application.

If Brennan collects his pension for 18 years, as actuarial tables predict he will, his pension receipts will total about $740,000. The cost of almost all of that pension, according to state law, must be split proportionately between the state and Malden, a city often strapped for cash, including a $1.5 million cut in state aid for the current year. Brennan himself has contributed about $70,000 toward his pension, mostly through a payroll deduction during his years in Legislature.

Brennan declined to comment. "I am not inclined to discuss my private matters with you," he said.

He is scheduled to begin drawing his pension at the end of this month, state officials said.

Brennan's case is a prime example of pension practices on Beacon Hill in which obscure amendments and bills that fly through the Legislature with little attention are often worth thousands of dollars for certain retirees.

Lawmakers frequently submit bills to pad the pensions of individual municipal or state workers, and occasionally these measures pass. For example, the Legislature has passed special bills in recent years giving dozens of police officers and firefighters increases in their disability pensions, with no formal medical scrutiny required.

When the amendment that Brennan capitalized upon was passed in 1998, it baffled the few who noticed it, not least because library trustees typically spend only a couple of hours a month helping to set library policy and budgets at board meetings.

"I was a bit perplexed when library trustees were singled out, because there are dozens of other public servants in a municipality who do not get this benefit," said Michael Sacco, a lawyer who represents dozens of municipal retirement boards statewide.

The law's enactment was a surprise even to the group that represents the state's library trustees.

"We only found out about it after it passed," said Robert C. Maier, director of the Board of Library Commissioners, the state agency that advises local libraries. "We didn't propose it, and we didn't work on it in any way."

Maier said he didn't know what possible rationale the Legislature had in mind for including library trustees in the state pension law. Library board members rarely, if ever, get any financial gain from the job, he said.

"All the library trustees I know and have dealt with over the years freely give their time to serve their communities, without expectations of pay or pensions," he said.

In theory, the law made all of the state's 2,500 volunteer library trustees eligible. But the law limits the pension benefit to trustees in municipalities where local officials have voted to adopt it. And only Malden has put it to use. The law is also limited to trustees with public sector service before or after their terms on the library board, which, coincidentally or not, applies to Brennan.

Moreover, Brennan is the only library trustee in the state to have benefited from the law in 10 years, according to a survey of officials in the handful of municipalities that inadvertently adopted the library trustees measure as part of a legislative change in cost-of-living increases for municipal retirees.

After the measure passed, it meant that for every year that Brennan remained on the board after 1998, he would add an estimated $1,220 to his eventual annual pension. It also credited him with an instant boost of $9,775 in his annual pension for the eight years he had served on the board through 1998.

Brennan stunned the Beacon Hill political world in 1990 by announcing he was leaving the Senate. At the time, he was Senate whip, the third-ranking position, and considered a favorite to succeed his mentor, Senate President William M. Bulger.

Brennan now heads The Brennan Group, a lobbying firm that says on its website that it has the "knowledge and know-how to influence important constituencies and generate positive regulatory results." The firm has an enviable list of clients, including Boston University, Boston Properties, Fidelity Investments, Ameriquest Mortgage Co., and the city of Boston, according to the firm's website.

Brennan declined to answer when asked in a brief interview whether he played a behind-the-scenes role in getting the law passed.

But Malden Library Board meeting minutes showed that he raised the idea of pension benefits for trustees in 1998. Later that year, Brennan volunteered at a board meeting to write a letter seeking the support of the Malden City Council, according to meeting minutes, copies of which were obtained by the Globe under the state public records law.

There is no evidence in meeting minutes that the nine-member Malden board ever followed up on Brennan's offer.

The Legislature passed the library trustee provision later that year, but public records provide few clues to who was involved. The 141-word measure was a last-minute amendment to a bill relating to cost-of-living increases for certain pensions. Legislators passed the amendment by voice vote in the final days of the legislative session. It was never publicly discussed.

Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg, Democrat of Amherst, is listed in official documents as bringing the amendment to the floor. But Rosenberg said in an interview that he did not author the amendment and does not know who did. The amendment originated in the Ways and Means Committee, and he merely fulfilled his duties as committee chairman by forwarding it to the full Senate.

"If I had made the amendment, I would remember it, and I have no memory of it," said Rosenberg. It could have come from any member of the committee or from the Senate leadership, he said.

"There is just no way of knowing," he said.

At Malden City Hall, Mayor Richard C. Howard recommended the City Council pass what he described in official documents as "Provisions of Chapter 456 of 1998," with no details on the law's ramifications. The council passed it on May 18, 1999, without discussion, and Howard signed it, records show.

The council's action was unusual because it came without the matter having gone to a committee for study and without Howard's administration having presented an analysis of its potential cost, said Joan Chiasson, the former council president who was absent for that meeting and who recently reviewed city records on the matter.

Howard, in an interview, said that Brennan was a close friend and former law partner. Brennan grew up in Malden and was first elected to the House of Representatives as a law student at Suffolk University.

"I'm sure he probably called me and said, 'Hey, Richard, this thing is coming and would you mind signing in?' " Howard said. "And I signed it."

In his letter stepping down from the library board of trustees in November 2008, Brennan cited "the increasing demands of work and other board memberships."

There might have been another explanation for the timing. By November, Brennan had logged 34 years and 10 months of public service, according to the retirement application. That was precisely the amount of time he needed to get the maximum possible pension under state law.

It signaled the end of Brennan's public service.

Sean Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.