Mortimer’s an attorney and longtime member of the Board of
Aldermen in the City of Melrose, where I reside. A sincere
and amiable fellow, he works diligently at the part-time job of Ward Six
alderman, a position that comes with a second-rate salary of $5,000 a year and
a first-rate health plan.
As related in an article in the latest edition of the Melrose
Free Press, (“Alderman explains retirement,” 10-23-14), Mortimer, age 58,
was concerned that a bill filed in the Massachusetts legislature in early 2013
would threaten his eligibility for lifetime health coverage through the state’s
Group Insurance Commission. He was so
concerned that he quietly arranged to “retire” from the Board of Aldermen before
House Bill 59, An Act Providing Retiree
Healthcare Benefits Reform, could become law. He applied to retire in December, 2013 and
his application was approved some six months later, retroactive to the date he had
applied, according to the Melrose Free Press.
If you think Mortimer became a former alderman when he
retired, you can be forgiven. This is
kind of a confusing situation.
Mortimer, you see, was re-elected to the board in November,
2013 and sworn in to a new term in January of this year, said term running
through December, 2015. Between being re-elected and beginning a new term,
Mortimer briefly retired, as he was allowed by law to do. And because he had been on a public payroll
for at least 10 years as of his “retirement date,” Mortimer preserved his right
to obtain health coverage through the state for the rest of his life. He also preserved his wife’s right to the
same.
During the entire time Mortimer was working out his
retirement, House Bill 59 was pending on Beacon Hill. One of its main provisions was a 100%
increase in the minimum number of years someone on a public payroll would have
to serve, from 10 to 20, before becoming eligible for health coverage in
retirement.
Mortimer need not have worried.
House Bill 59, which had been filed by Governor Deval
Patrick in the House on February 12, 2013, never gained traction in the
legislature. On July 31 of this year,
the Joint Committee on Public Service sent the bill to “study,” a legislative
euphemism for trash bin.
As a public retiree, Mortimer is collecting the normal salary
of a Melrose alderman and his monthly retirement benefit of $78.15, the Melrose
Free Press reported, although he has directed his pension checks to an account
to be used solely for charitable donations.
“I would never take both (an aldermanic pension and an
aldermanic salary),” Mortimer was quoted as saying.
The law allows Mortimer the public retiree to make up to
$15,000 a year as Mortimer the public employee, as well as any additional amount
in the private sector. There’s no limit
to what he can make in the law, his chosen profession, for example.
When House Bill 59 was heard by the Joint Committee on
Public Service on October 31, 2013, the hearing room, Gardner Auditorium, the
largest such space in the State House, was “packed with municipal workers,
corrections officers and labor union groups opposing the legislation,”
according to the State House News Service account of the proceedings, (“Patrick’s
Retiree Health Care Bill Met with Backlash from Workers,” 10-31-13).
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation, testified in favor of the bill, saying, in part, “Without any
reform, retiree health care is projected to cost municipalities more than $1
billion within five years and nearly $1.5 billion in 10 years.”
According to Widmer, cities and towns spent about $800
million on health care for retirees in Fiscal Year 2012, an amount equal to
nearly 90% of the $899 million granted by the state to municipalities in
unrestricted aid.
Among those testifying against House Bill 59 was Ebba
Hierta, the director of the public library in the town of Chilmark on Martha’s
Vineyard. If the bill passed, she said,
it would not make sense for her to continue working in the public sector.
Hierta, age 59, told the committee she had left the private
sector for a job in the public sector because of the promise of health care
security in retirement. “That promise was
made to me when I took my job. It’s just
patently wrong to pull the rug out from under people who are nearing retirement,”
she was quoted as testifying.
It would seem that Alderman Mortimer agrees with Library
Director Hierta on that point.“The purpose of this (retiring in December, 2013) is to prevent something that I’ve already earned being taken away from my family,” he told the Melrose Free Press.
Mortimer pointed out that he, personally, has not heard
complaints from Melrosians about his retirement happening on a track parallel to
his continued service as an alderman.
“People who know me, people who vote for me, said what I did
is completely reasonable,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “There may be a handful of people out there
who object, (but) everyone who’s talked to me, when they understand what the
situation was, said, ‘I would have done the same thing.’ ”
Completely. Reasonable.
Mortimer touched on a point that’s larger even than he
probably realizes: Most people in Massachusetts would love the opportunity to
obtain health coverage in retirement that is as high in quality and as
attractive in price as that offered through the Group Insurance Commission
(GIC).
Most of us will never have that opportunity, even as most of
us are obligated to support the mission of the GIC through the taxes we pay.
Maybe just a handful of people in Melrose think like I do,
but what the hell. The way the world
goes round today, I think, the public servants serve the public and the public
serves the servants. 
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