By Donovan Slack
The Boston Globe
BOSTON — The Boston Retirement Board this afternoon voted to accept the departure of executive officer Robert E. Tierney and to launch a wide search for his replacement.
Tierney is stepping down after five years running the day-to-day operations of the board, which has come under fire recently for lengthy delays in processing disability retirement applications from Boston firefighters.
The board also voted today to hire a fraud prevention specialist to consult with the board. Federal authorities have been investigating disability pension claims by Boston firefighters since April.
The investigation was prompted by a Globe report in January that showed 74 percent of Boston firefighter retirements approved by the board between 2005 and 2007 were due to career-ending on-the-job injuries, more than twice the rate of similarly sized cities.
The votes by the board occurred the same day that the fire department said it ended the employment of Albert Arroyo, a firefighter who competed in a bodybuilding contest six weeks after reporting that he was permanently incapacitated and unable to work as a fire inspector. Arroyo was not technically fired, but instead has “voluntarily separated” himself from the department by not coming to work for 14 days, said a Fire Department spokesman, Steve MacDonald.
Tierney, who has been executive officer of the board since 2003, spent much of last week trying to defend his office’s handling of disability pension applications after Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser sent him a letter demanding to know why 71 firefighter applications had not been processed after six months, the time limit specified in state law for approval or denial of such claims.
The delays are costing taxpayers at least $44,000 per week, money that firefighters are paid, tax free, while they wait out the pension decisions on injury leave, according to city officials.
“We can’t afford to just turn a blind eye to the inefficiencies and questionable decision-making in the Boston Retirement Board,” Fraser said in comments that were published by the Globe in a report Thursday.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino has also pushed for better handing of retirement applications.
“The Retirement Board should follow the commissioner’s lead in making sure that this process isn’t costing taxpayers more than it should,” Menino told the Globe last week.
Tierney is the brother of former Boston city councilor and mayoral candidate Joseph Tierney.
Robert Tierney is also a lawyer and certified mediator who previously served as a state civil service commissioner and spent 20 years as a magistrate in the Division of Administrative Law Appeals.
He was appointed to the state Civil Service Commission by Governor Paul Cellucci after lobbying efforts on his behalf by the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, which represents firefighters statewide.
Copyright 2008, The Boston Globe