The information “infuriated me,” Sorrentino said.
So in April, his lawyer Filed a complaint The federal court argues that the delays deprived Sorrentino of his constitutional due process rights. Fourteenth Amendment.
Such lengthy delays are common in state retirement disputes, according to lawyers who have appeared before the appeals panel, with some cases lasting nearly a decade before a ruling was reached. Until then, it cannot be challenged in court. Lawyers say many retirees rely on these benefits to make ends meet, and waiting years to receive them can be an incredible hardship.
Sorrentino spent over 1,000 hours during his “golden years” Get the benefits he is due and shine a light on a broken system.
“It stopped being about me a long time ago. It’s something much bigger,” he says. “Retirement, by its very nature, is time-limited. Retirement is the final chapter of your life.”
And no one should have to spend money fighting to get the promised benefits, he said.
For Sorrentino, the controversy New England Newborn Screening ProgramSorrentino worked on the research for more than 18 years at what is now the Massachusetts Public Health Laboratory in Jamaica Plains. He ran the program for more than eight years, testing about 500 newborns a day for treatable conditions in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island. When Sorrentino started working at the lab in 1980, he was paid by the Public Health Service. But in 1990, management of the program was transferred to the Massachusetts Health Institute, which had been established in 1959 by Massachusetts’ governor and health commissioner to support the Public Health Service.
In 1997, after the state inspector general uncovered financial irregularities at MHRI, the newborn screening laboratory and other programs were transferred to the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
Sorrentino was not allowed to contribute to the state pension fund while at MHRI, so he withdrew his previous contributions, but started contributing again once the school was under the umbrella of the state medical school, then later paid them back in order to maximize his benefits.
Throughout all this, Sorrentino said, his job remained the same: working in the same lab, with the same people, and with the same state ID.
Within a year of transferring to the University of Massachusetts Medical School, he left the Jamaica Plains lab to work for a newborn screening company in Pittsburgh, where he regularly received letters confirming his eligibility for retirement benefits for the next 20 years. But when he applied for his pension of about $1,400 a month in late 2018, the retirement board informed him that public servants must have worked continuously for at least two years to be eligible for a pension, and he was disqualified.
Sorrentino seemed incredulous. He just wanted a return on his investment. “I’m not asking for something I didn’t contribute to,” he said.
He has been battling denial ever since.
The Department of Public Health would not comment on why Sorrentino was not considered a public employee throughout his tenure, even though he worked in the same lab and program, saying he “resigned in 1990 and began working at MHRI,” an interpretation Sorrentino disputes. The State Retirement Board did not provide details about why reinstated employees must serve two years to receive their previously earned pensions.
The Contributory Superannuation Review Board, known as CRAB, also refused to provide information about caseloads or waiting times.
According to the state retirement board, if the CRAB rules against Sorrentino, he would get back the roughly $57,000 he paid, including interest, but not the extra money he would have received every month for the rest of his life.Many public employees who don’t have the time or means to fight the retirement board would probably just give up and agree to these terms, Sorrentino said.
But the sentence is deeply unfair, Sorrentino said, considering the thousands of dollars in investments and interest he made to the state over the past few decades — and if he dies before the case is resolved, his family won’t get to see those benefits.
“Pensioners are being left behind,” said Sorrentino’s lawyer, Richard Glovsky.
The state’s Employee Retirement Agency has been slow to act because it lacks funds, said Lee Panettiere, a Woburn attorney who represents public employees seeking disability pensions. During the appeals process, retiree contributions continue to generate interest and investment returns for the overall pension system. In 2021, only 69% of funding was raised. This is one of the lowest levels in the country. The Pew Charitable Trusts.
“There’s no incentive to speed up the process,” said Panettiere, who now has four CRAB lawsuits pending for more than four years.
But if the board rules in their favor, retirees would get their full benefits, including retroactive payments. Given that Massachusetts’ 104 public retirement systems have hundreds of thousands of members and there are an estimated fewer than 1,000 lawsuits pending (many brought by retirees who already have benefits), the impact of any money the pension funds get during the appeals process is minimal, said Bill Keefe, executive director of the Public Employees Retirement Board. The state’s situation is improving, and it’s on track to be fully paid by 2036, he added.
One of Panettiere’s clients, a police officer, has been waiting for a resolution to his case for more than seven years. Panettiere suffered a heart attack at work at age 50 and became disabled, but was awarded a smaller pension than she applied for in a dispute over whether the accident was work-related. She said she now earns about half what she used to and has to rely on her family for mortgage payments.
“In addition to feeling like a failure that I can no longer work, I feel even more depressed that I can’t financially provide for my family,” Panettiere said.
The other client, a civil servant who suffered a head injury at work and has been trying to collect his pension since 2017, has cancer.
“He may die before the appeal is completed,” she said.
Contact Katie Johnston at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her Follow.
