Malden challenges pension validity

City Attorney Katheryn M. Fallon told the City Council last night that Brennan should not receive a pension based on library service because the Malden library is a private corporation, not a branch of the city government.

The council's vote in 1998 adopting a state law branding trustees' credit toward pensions covers municipal employees, and Brennan was not a municipal official, she said.

"The Malden library board is not under the authority of the city," she told councilors. "Library trustees do not serve the city."

Another option being considered is to legally challenge the pension on the basis of Brennan's low attendance record as a trustee.

Fallon, however, said that approach appears less likely because library trustees set their own rules on attendance. The Brennan pension matter now goes to the Malden Retirement Board.

Brennan could not be reached for comment last night.

During his 19 years as a trustee, Brennan missed more than half of the meetings: 104 out of 189 meetings, or 55 percent of meetings, a Globe review of the minutes showed. In his last four years on the board, Brennan missed all but six of 36 meetings, the review revealed.

Nonetheless, Brennan, under the little-known state law passed in 1998, was permitted to use his volunteer library trustee service to combine city retirement credit worth $22,000 a year with his state legislative pension, raising his total pension to $41,000 a year.

"There's outrage over this pension," Paul DiPietro, one of the councilors who requested the legal analysis, said in an interview. "I have received numerous telephone calls on this."

"We want to know exactly what constitutes service on the board if there is low attendance of meetings," he said.

Meanwhile, the council voted 10-0 last night to rescind a 1998 Malden City Council vote that allowed local participation in the state library trustee provision. That means that, going forward, no other trustee will be eligible for pension credit.

"I would have never thought anyone would benefit from doing what should be considered purely voluntary service," said Councilor Gary Christenson.

Brennan's pension sparked controversy when the Globe reported on Feb. 11 that he is the only library trustee in the state to ever benefit from the 1998 law, which was passed as an amendment to another bill without public notice or hearing.

A plan unveiled by the state Senate this week aims to overhaul the state and local pension system, including prohibiting municipal officials such as Brennan from receiving pension credit in nonpaying public jobs.

Since leaving the state Senate as its third-ranking member in 1990, Brennan, a Democrat, has established himself as one of the most powerful lobbyists on Beacon Hill, with a wide assortment of clients and a deep set of contracts in the Legislature. Brennan's lobbying firm, The Brennan Group, had $1.3 million in receipts last year, and has represented such clients as Boston University, Boston Properties, Fidelity Investments, Ameriquest Mortgage Co., and the City of Boston, according to public filings and the firm's website.

When asked in February about his pension, Brennan declined to say whether he engineered the amendment in 1998 that resulted in the public paying him about $22,000 a year for volunteer work as library trustee.

But an examination of state and Malden public records shows Brennan to be the only person to have spoken in favor of making library trustees eligible for pensions. He made those comments at two Malden library trustee meetings in 1998, months before the amendment was slipped through the Legislature.

Members of the state Senate say they do not know who sponsored the amendment. It came through the committee chaired by Stanley C. Rosenberg, Democrat of Amherst, but Rosenberg said he did not sponsor it and does not know who did.

Brennan, 63, joined the Malden library board in 1989, and resigned in December 2008, when his length of public employment, including his years in the Legislature, provided the maximum possible pension.

The cost of Brennan's pension is to be split between the state and Malden, a city often strapped for cash, including a $1.5 million cut in state aid for the current year.

Last night, councilors said they also want to know more about the vote of the council in 1998 that adopted the state law.

There is no documentary evidence of the issue being studied before the council took it up, a sharp departure from usual procedure. The ordinance the council adopted was sponsored by former councilor Joan Chiasson, who said in an interview that she has no recollection of it. She was absent from the council meeting when it passed.

Malden Mayor Richard C. Howard acknowledged getting a call from Brennan asking him to sign the ordinance.

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