IPSWICH — How dare you?
That was the gist of the mood of more than 30 angry town officials from across Essex County who gathered in Ipswich Town Hall yesterday morning.
They wanted to know how the Essex Regional Retirement Board and its executive director, Timothy Bassett, could "scam" their communities, while simultaneously mismanaging the pension funds of the public employees it represents.
The board, they said, behaves as though those employees are their only responsibility, with total disregard for taxpayers, who are on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Is this a sufficiently rogue organization that it can't be changed?" Ipswich Town Manager Bob Markel asked.
All the officials seemed to agree they'd be better off if the board's assets were transferred to the Pension Reserves Investment Trust, which manages the investments of state employees.
Many expressed anger at recent reports that the board moved to reclassify emergency dispatchers, thereby allowing them to retire at age 60, and that the board is pushing legislation to let DPW workers retire at 55 — without even discussing the moves with town officials.
While most town officials don't want the retirement board managing investments, they feel it does a good job helping employees process their accounts. Most said their individual towns are too small to pay for their own administrators, and some kind of regional approach makes more sense.
"But if this board is going to continue, clearly, there's got to be more accountability," Markel said.
"If we can reform the administration and move the investments, we may have the best outcome," Candace Wheeler, Hamilton's town administrator, said.
While the administrators were meeting in Ipswich, Bassett defended his system at a meeting of members at the Village Pancake House in Rowley.
Bassett wants each unit in the system to decide by the end of the month whether it should transfer retirement funds into the state system.
He said switching to the state system will cost towns more money — approximately $1.7 million more — because of differences in the rates at which the two boards bill communities.
Although Bassett's board compiled the worst investment record in the state last year, he pointed out that the state system has had difficulties, as well, finishing 92nd out of all retirement boards in the state.
"We had no money with Bernie Madoff," Bassett said. "(The state) had $120 million."
Sarah Johnson, Wenham's finance director, said the retirement board wants to declare its returns on investments in 2008 "an extraordinary economic event." That would exclude it from being figured into the board's 10-year performance figures.
If the figures are included in the 10-year average, the average would drop low enough to trigger a clause that requires the board to transfer its assets to the state system.
Although some officials think the time is ripe to get local legislators involved, others said any attempt to legislate control over the board would be met with stiff opposition, since employee unions are primed to lobby lawmakers in defense of the board.
Markel noted he originally included an article on the Town Meeting warrant that would have allowed Ipswich to withdraw from the Essex Retirement Board if it chose.
"The lobbying (by employees) was breathtaking," Markel said. No sooner had he added the article than state Rep. Brad Hill, R-Ipswich, was on the phone, he said.
"He told me, 'I know what you're doing, and I'm opposed to it,'" Markel said.
Hill said yesterday his resistance was less about politics than consensus.
"What I wanted, what I still want, is for all the towns to meet collectively with the retirement board and discuss any problems they have," Hill said, adding he didn't think a piecemeal approach would be as effective.
A subcommittee of town officials will be formed to investigate whether all the statutory requirements that established the board are being followed, and to work for better representation by getting a selectman and town administrator or manager added to the retirement board.
"We may not have to have a revolution," Wheeler said. "Maybe it can be a bloodless coup."
Staff writer Chris Cassidy contributed to this story.
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