100 Days

Until Marzilli's Pension Increases.

135 Days

Left until Marzilli's pension increases.

Next Court Date For Sen. Marzilli

Sen. James Marzilli appeared in court yesterday for a pretrial conference, and is due back Oct. 23 for a motion to dismiss hearing, then slated for a trial to begin on April 6, 2009. Marzilli, who was arraigned earlier this month in Lowell Superior Court on charges of groping and sexually harassing women, has said he would not run for re-election, but retains his seat and chairmanship in the state Senate. (State House News Service, 7/29/08)

Howie Carr Weighs in on Marzilli

It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the pensions.

Everything now in the hackerama is about the kiss in the mail. The body-building firefighter, the ex-Senate president groveling for the job at the Boston Public Library, the gangster’s brothers and, of course, Sen. Jim Marzilli, the alleged perv in the Prius.

They’re all after the same score. A fatter pension check, while they’re still young enough to enjoy it for, oh, 40 years or so.

Life in the Dreaded Private Sector is short, nasty and brutish, and only getting more so. But in the hackerama, the COLA’s just keep climbing, you get a free car, and the work week is shrinking - hey, let’s shut down all the town halls on Fridays. You know, to save energy. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Here’s Marzilli’s situation. He’s 50, he’s already got in enough years to check out with about $13,000 a year, but obviously that will not suffice. His plan is to keep his snout firmly entrenched in the trough until January, because as a solon, if he “works” a single day in any calendar year, he gets to claim an extra year for his pension.

For Marzilli, that would amount to only a few hundred extra bucks a year. So now suspicion is growing that Marzilli may be plotting a “Forman” - named after the former sheriff of Plymouth County who claimed he was “fired” by Jane Swift. Under an obscure provision of state retirement law known as Section 10, Peter Forman’s termination enabled him to basically double his pre-age 65 pension.

Read the whole article here