Absentee library trustee entitled to full pension, commission says
Former Lynn public library trustee Linda Bassett is entitled to claim full credit toward her pension for service on the library board, even though she missed more than two years of meetings, according to a legal opinion of the state retirement commission.
Bassett, 61, of Marblehead, stopped attending board meetings in March 1984, but claimed credit toward her pension for service through September 1986. After her attendance record was reported in the Globe, the Lynn Retirement Board moved to lower her pension, and asked the state commission to support its decision.
The Lynn Retirement Board had argued that Bassett, who served a total of six years on the library board, abandoned her position and should not get pension credit for her entire tenure. But last week the state Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission, which oversees the state’s 106 retirement boards, advised the Lynn board in a nonbinding legal opinion that it was not local retirement officials’ prerogative to decide who was or was not a member in good standing of the library board.
That determination belongs to the library board of trustees, according to the opinion, drafted in the office of the commission’s general counsel, Barbara Phillips. By accepting a letter of resignation from Bassett in 1986, the opinion says, the library board of trustees indicated it considered Bassett to have been a board member until the moment of her resignation, her attendance record notwithstanding.
“There is nothing in the [library] bylaws that supports a finding that the trustees have attendance requirements,’’ the opinion states.
The Lynn Retirement Board, which could still reduce Bassett’s pension, plans to address her case again Aug. 25.
Michael J. Marks, the Lynn Retirement Board chairman, said yesterday that it required “a suspension of common sense,’’ to conclude that a library trustee who rarely attended meetings deserved to claim full credit toward a pension.
Volunteer library trustees in Massachusetts typically attend one meeting per month to review library policy, budgets, and personnel decisions. The Legislature abolished pension credit for such positions in June.
Bassett, a former teacher, receives a pension of about $26,000 a year, about $2,900 of which is based on the nearly 2 1/2 years of service during which she did not attend a single meeting. Her attorney, Andrew Oatway, did not return telephone messages to his office.
Lynn library minutes indicate that Bassett spent 18 hours at library board meetings over her six years as a member.
If she lives to age 83, as actuarial charts predict, those six years will bring her $165,000 in pension benefits.
Sean Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com. 
