Boston Council Panel Debates 100 Percent Pension for Disabled Fire Lieutenant Bracken

BOSTON — June 18, 2025 — Boston's City Council Government Operations Committee advanced no votes but held substantive debate on two pension home rule petitions at its June 18 virtual hearing. Committee Chair Gabriela Coletta Zapata and lead sponsor Councilor Edward M. Flynn sparred over whether a petition for retired Fire Lieutenant Leo J. Bracken — who fell more than 20 feet down a flooded fire pole at Engine 52, Ladder 29 on Blue Hill Avenue in October 2019 and is permanently disabled — could legally deliver a 100 percent pension rather than the 80 percent cap the State House applied to similar 2022 petitions. Legislative agent Michael O'Reilly, representing the Massachusetts Association of Contributory Retirement Systems, argued the special act places Bracken's pension under Chapter 41, Section 100, entirely outside standard caps, and asked the council to send it up at 100 percent. A second petition, for Boston Police Sergeant Detective Michael Sullivan, would credit his five years of service with the Warwick, Rhode Island Police Department — including response to the 2003 Station nightclub fire — toward his Massachusetts pension through a buyback arrangement Sullivan said would cost him no public funds. Coletta Zapata committed to workshopping language on both dockets with corporation counsel and the Boston Retirement Board before scheduling a vote.