By Donovan Slack
The Boston Globe
BOSTON — The Boston Retirement Board voted yesterday to reject the disability pension application of Boston Firefighter Albert Arroyo, who competed in a bodybuilding contest just six weeks after he reported he was permanently incapacitated and unable to work as a fire inspector.
The board, which issued the ruling on the grounds that Arroyo’s application submitted in April is incomplete, also voted yesterday to take the first steps in what one board member described as a wide-reaching overhaul of board operations.
Board members voted to launch a search to replace executive officer Robert E. Tierney, who ran day-to-day operations of the Retirement Board office until stepping down yesterday. And they voted to hire a forensic accountant to conduct a fraud assessment of hundreds of past disability pension claims.
“We need to restore faith in the retirement system,” said board member Mitchell Weiss, who introduced both initiatives. “We have the public’s trust, and we need to make good on that trust.”
The Boston Fire Department, meanwhile, removed Arroyo from its payroll yesterday, after he did not show up to work for two weeks, defying a return-to-work order from Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser. Arroyo has 10 days to appeal the action.
A call to Arroyo’s lawyer, Neil Osborne, was not returned yesterday.
Arroyo submitted his application for disability retirement after reporting he slipped on a staircase March 21 in an accident that no one witnessed in a fire station where he was not assigned to work. His doctor, Dorchester neurologist John Mahoney, wrote in April that Arroyo was so severely injured that he was “totally and permanently disabled” and deserving of a disability pension.
On May 3, Arroyo placed eighth in the Pro Natural American Championships, a bodybuilding competition. Video of the competition posted on Boston.com last month prompted the fire commissioner to conclude Arroyo was not seriously injured.
In addition to ordering Arroyo back to work, Fraser wrote a letter to the Boston Retirement Board urging it to reject Arroyo’s disability pension application.
“In my view, today’s decision by the board bolsters my position that Arroyo is not disabled,” Fraser said yesterday.
Retirement board members declined to elaborate on the reasons for their rejection of Arroyo’s application, except to say that it is incomplete. The board had asked Arroyo’s doctor in June if he stood by his initial diagnosis. Mahoney replied only that he wasn’t aware of Arroyo’s bodybuilding. He did not say whether he stood by his earlier diagnosis.
The board’s decision does not preclude him from submitting another, more complete application. Osborne, Arroyo’s lawyer, told the Globe last week that he planned to submit a second opinion on Mahoney’s diagnosis from another doctor to the retirement board by mid-August.
The board acted amid a flurry of news reports about a huge backlog of disability retirement applications and a federal probe of questionable disability pension claims by Boston firefighters.
The federal investigation was prompted by a Globe report in January that 74 percent of Boston firefighter retirements between 2005 and 2007 were due to accidental disability, twice the rate of similarly sized cities. Those retirements were approved by the Boston Retirement Board.
The board voted yesterday to create a subcommittee that would oversee the hiring of a professional search company to replace Tierney, executive officer since 2003, and the retaining of a forensic accountant to review past disability claims approved by the board and recommend improvements that could help eliminate fraud in the future.
“We could tell the public we are doing everything we can to prevent fraud,” Weiss said in introducing the measure. “Right now, I don’t have the confidence we can say that.”
The board also voted to respond by the end of the week to a demand from the fire commissioner for an update on dozens of firefighter disability retirement applications that have been pending before the board for longer than six months, the statutory limit for processing such claims.
Fraser sent a letter to the board two weeks ago asking what happened to 51 applications submitted more than six months ago and another 20 submitted more than 18 months ago.
Each week the board does not take action on the applications costs taxpayers $44,000, city officials say.
The board voted yesterday to approve five of those applications.