Yank pensions from felonious officeholders

Several readers have written and called me asking me why a felon, former State Sen. Robert Mellow, will get his $245,000 annual taxpayer-paid pension back.

They, as we, are incensed that this longtime Democratic leader of the General Assembly’s upper body will get such a generous, and undeserved, reinstatement. The State Employees Retirement System voted 6-5 to restore the Archbald, Lackawanna County, resident’s pension, the only time in about a dozen years that the board has made such a ruling in the face of a criminal conviction.

Some of those who opposed the action said it is sending the wrong message to the public and setting a bad precedent.

As best we can tell, it all comes down to splitting hairs. We feel when there is a close call like this, the taxpayers, not the crooks, should get the benefit of the doubt.

At the heart of the question, which was debated intently by the board and members of the Mellow defense team, was whether Mellow’s federal conviction for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and intent to defraud the United States had an equivalent state crime.

The way state law is written now, employees are required to forfeit their pensions if they are convicted of or plead guilty to certain state crimes, or federal crimes that are “substantially the same” as state crimes. Mellow’s legal team contended that there was no comparable state crime to the federal crime under which Mellow was charged.

The majority opinion, signed by Chairman David Fillman, compared Mellow’s conviction to the state crime of theft by deception. The majority wrote that a theft by deception conviction would have required Mellow to “actually obtain money and property of the Senate,” but, the opinion concluded, that this was not an element of the federal conspiracy charge to which Mellow pleaded guilty.

Mellow’s fall from grace occurred in 2012 when he pleaded guilty to using taxpayer-paid staff to raise money for his re-election bid and also to work on his political campaigns.

The type of crime was reminiscent of the one that ensnared Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin in 2010. She was indicted two years later on nine criminal counts for using taxpayer-paid legislative and judicial staff to perform campaign work.

She was suspended by the court, and in 2013, she was found guilty on three counts of felony theft of services and other charges and sentenced to three years of house arrest then two years of probation.

Common Pleas Court Judge Lester Nauhaus is a man after our own hearts. As part of his order, he required Melvin to send a note of apology, written on a photograph of herself in handcuffs, to every judge in the state — more than 500 of them — and apology letters to her staff and family members. This order was vacated upon appeal, because it was determined that such action is not considered part of a criminal’s rehabilitation. We disagree. It would be the perfect requirement to humble and humiliate a high court judge who brazenly used taxpayer funds for her own political purposes in 2003 and 2009.

Originally, the State Employees Retirement System voted for Mellow to forfeit his generous pension because of the conviction. Mellow appealed — twice — with the second time being the charm.

“The board struggled with this decision as evidenced by the split nature of the vote, including the filing of dissenting opinions, which does not happen often,” said board spokeswoman Pamela Hile.

In a dissenting opinion written by SERS board member and state Treasurer Joe Torsella, the five members cited a case in which a district judge charged with mail fraud lost his pension. Some want to know why Mellow would qualify for such a hefty pension — more than $20,000 a month. Simple. The now-74-year-old Mellow served as a state senator for 40 years, many of them in a higher-paid leadership position. For much of that time, his district included parts of Monroe County.

In addition to getting his pension restored, Mellow also will receive a lump sum for payments that had been withheld and for interest during the withheld period.

Part of this settlement will go to Mellow’s divorced wife, Diane, who also had appealed the decision to forfeit Mellow’s pension.

We strongly recommend that our state legislators enact corrective legislation that would clear up any ambiguity. They should take a page from New York state’s playbook, which on Jan. 1 enacted a taxpayer-approved constitutional amendment that allows judges to reduce or revoke the public pension of a public officer convicted of a felony related to his or her official duties.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com