This information “sent me over the edge,” Sorrentino said.
So in April, his attorney filed a complaint in federal court, claiming the delays are depriving Sorrentino of his due process rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
Protracted delays like this are common in state retirement disputes, according to lawyers who have appeared before the appeals board. Some cases have dragged on for nearly a decade before they were decided —and can’t be challenged in court until then.Many retirees count on these benefits to get by, the lawyers say, and waiting years to receive them can be an incredible hardship.
Sorrentino estimates he’s spent more than 1,000 hours of his “golden years” trying toget the benefits he’s owed — and shed light on a broken system.
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“A long time ago it stopped being about me. It’s much bigger,” he said. “Retirement benefits by their nature are time limited. Retirement’s the last chapter of life.”
And nobody should spend it fighting to get the benefits they’ve been promised, he said.
For Sorrentino, the dispute revolves around the administration of the New England Newborn Screening Program, which he was part of for more than 18 years at what is currently called the Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory in Jamaica Plain. The program, which he ran for more than eight years, tests for treatable conditions in about 500 newborns a day in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. When Sorrentino started at the lab in 1980, he was paid by the Department of Public Health. But in 1990, the administration of the program was transferred to the Massachusetts Health Research Institute, which was incorporated in 1959 by the Massachusetts governor and health commissioner, among other founders, to assist the public health department.
In 1997, after the state Inspector General revealed financial improprieties involving MHRI, the newborn screening lab and other programs were transferred to UMass Chan Medical School.
Sorrentino hadn’t been allowed to make contributions to the state pension fund during his time under MHRI and withdrew what he had previously put in. But once under the umbrella of the state medical school, he started making contributions again, and later repaid all the funds in order to maximize his benefits.
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This entire time, Sorrentino said, his job remained the same: He worked in the same lab, with the same people, using the same state ID badge.
Less than a year after the change to UMass Medical, he left the Jamaica Plain lab to work for a newborn screening company in Pittsburgh, and received regular letters over the next 20 years confirming his eligibility for retirement benefits. But when he applied for his roughly $1,400-a-month pension in late 2018, the retirement board informed him that employees who leave public service must return for at least two consecutive years in order to retire with benefits, rendering him ineligible.
Sorrentino was incredulous. He simply wanted the benefits he had been investing in. “It’s not like I’m asking for something that I didn’t contribute to,” he said.
He’s been fighting the denial ever since.
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John Sorrentino was denied his pension due to a discrepancy over his tenure as a state employee.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
The Department of Public Health wouldn’t comment on why Sorrentino wasn’t considered a state employee for his entire tenure, despite working for the same program in the same lab the whole time, noting that he “resigned in 1990 and began working for MHRI” — a characterization Sorrentino disputes. The State Retirement Board would not provide details about why returning employees have to be on the job for two years in order to collect pensions they had previously earned.
The Contributory Retirement Appeal Board, known as CRAB, also declined to provide information about its caseload or wait times.
If CRAB rules against him, Sorrentino will get back the roughly $57,000 he contributed, including interest, according to the State Board of Retirement, but not any additional money he would have received through monthly payments for the rest of his life. Many public employees without the time or the means to fight the retirement board probably just give up and agree to these terms, Sorrentino said.
But considering the thousands of dollars in investments and interest his contributions have likely generated for the state over the past several decades, Sorrentino said, this outcome would be highly unfair. And if he were to die before the case is resolved, his survivors wouldn’t benefit from those gains.
“The pensioners are left out in the cold,” said Richard Glovsky, Sorrentino’s attorney.
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The state’s employee retirement agencies move so slowly in part because they are vastly underresourced, said Leigh Panettiere, a Woburn-based attorney who represents public employees seeking disability retirement funds. During the appeal process, retirees’ contributions continue to generate interest and investment income for the overall pension plan — whichin 2021 was only 69 percent funded,one of the lowest levels in the country, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.
“There is no incentive to speed up the process,” said Panettiere, who currently has four CRAB cases that have been pending for more than four years.
But retirees get their full benefit amount, including retroactive payments, if the board decides in their favor. And given the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of members across the 104 public retirement systems in Massachusetts and less than 1,000 cases estimated to be in dispute — including many brought by retirees already receiving a pension — the impact of the money the pension funds stands to gain during the appeals process is insignificant, said Bill Keefe, executive director of the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission. The status of the state employees’ pension system is improving, he added, and on track to be fully funded by 2036.
One of Panettiere’s clients, a police officer, has been waiting for more than seven years for his case to be resolved. The officer had aheart attack on the job at the age of 50 that left him disabled, but due to a dispute over whether the incident was work related, he was granted a smaller pension than what he applied for. His current income is about half what it used to be, Panettiere said, forcing him to turn to family members to help pay his mortgage.
“In addition to feeling like a failure because he cannot work anymore, he is even more depressed by not being able to financially care for his family,” Panettiere said.
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Another client, a public employee who suffered a head injury at work and has been trying to collect his pension since 2017, has cancer.
“He may die before his appeal is over,” she said.
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.
A Holbrook, Massachusetts man who fell critically ill while sailing through the South Pacific has died, his family told WBZ-TV Tuesday evening.
Scott Winslow was in intensive care at a hospital in Fiji for weeks, as his family fought to get him back home so he could be treated for septic shock and a serious infection.
Winslow’s wife and two daughters had made the 8,000-mile trip to be with him and fight for his care when he died.
“We are at the hospital and just said goodbye to our father,” his daughters told WBZ-TV. “We are heartbroken.”
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Winslow was traveling on his nephew’s sailboat in the South Pacific on what was supposed to be a three-month voyage when he noticed what appeared to be a bug bite.
His family isn’t sure exactly what the cause of the illness was, but his condition quickly deteriorated, and he could no longer walk once they diverted the boat to Fiji.
The family provided WBZ medical documents from doctors in Fiji, who said he needed to be evacuated to another hospital.
The family said his insurance company, Aetna, denied the transport and the medical flight to get Winslow home would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Winslow’s family said they had secured medical services with the Mass General Brigham group if he got back to Massachusetts.
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“I don’t understand. My problem is, my parents pay for insurance, this is what insurance is for,” Lisa Babbin, Scott’s daughter told WBZ-TV earlier on Tuesday.
Before Winslow died, WBZ-TV reached out to Aetna. In a statement, a spokesperson said they were continuing to work with Winslow’s family “and his providers in Fiji to identify the best way to get him back safely to the United States for continued treatment.”
The Winslow family had also reached out the U.S. Embassy in Fiji for help securing an emergency loan.
The past month in Massachusetts has been synonymous with World Cup fan festivals, cheering crowds and tourists from Scotland crowning statues with traffic cones.
Amid concerns that the Trump administrations would ramp up immigration enforcement during the tournament, international soccer fans have posted on social media that they’ve felt welcome in the United States. The World Cup has even served as a distraction for many immigrants who’ve spent the past year and half in fear of the Trump administration’s deportation push.
And yet beneath the surface, immigration lawyers and advocates say detentions have not only continued across Massachusetts since the World Cup started in early June — they’ve increased in frequency.
“It’s supposed to be a joyous time for families, for children, and we’re still seeing an increase of arrests,” Eloa Celedon, an immigration attorney based in Marlborough, said. “Prior to the World Cup, it had settled down a bit — but since the World Cup started, it has been very sad to see arrests happening.”
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During May and early June, Celedon said her office received one or two calls a week about potential clients who’ve been recently detained. Over the last month, those calls have increased to four to five a day.
Celedon’s experiences track with a reported nationwide surge in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Over a recent five-day period, agents across the nation detained more than 10,000 people. The arrests have occurred during routine check-ins with ICE agents as well as during traffic stops.
Todd Pomerleau, an immigration attorney and the president of Mass Deportation Defense Project, called the spike in arrests a “remarkable” contrast to the international goodwill that’s been on display during the World Cup. He pointed to a recent game he was at in California between Belgium and Iran, recounting the way players and fans cordially listened to both teams’ national anthems played before the match.
“Juxtapose that with what I’ve seen as an immigration attorney,” Pomerleau said. ”The government seems like it goes out of its way to basically arrest people without justification a lot and then just throw them in detention facilities.”
No attorneys have heard of any cases of immigrants being detained around the World Cup matches at Gillette Stadium, temporarily renamed Boston Stadium.
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A closer look at recent enforcement numbers
ICE didn’t respond to questions about how many people it has detained in Massachusetts since the start of the World Cup — the agency usually doesn’t provide time-specific enforcement figures.
Still, there are other ways to get rough estimates. Attorneys often file habeas petitions in federal court, asking judges to intervene in alleged unlawful detentions and keep immigrants from being sent to detention centers in other states.
There have been nearly 190 habeas filings in Massachusetts federal district court since the beginning of the World Cup matches, according to Habeas Dockets, a tracker run by the nonprofit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative. Cases rose by 21% in June overall from the month before, going from 183 in May to 222.
One of those filings was for Malton Lacerda, who was detained June 28 by ICE agents after shopping at a Walmart in Halifax with his son Victor Lacerda, a Navy vet. The elder Lacerda wore a T-shirt saying “Navy Dad” as he put groceries in the car.
“Then we get rushed by a bunch of different ICE agents with guns drawn and threatening us. And we were confused,” Victor Lacerda, the son, said. “I looked back to see what was going on, because at first I couldn’t even believe it was happening to us, because we were just getting groceries. We hadn’t done anything wrong. And that’s when I saw them putting hands on my father and detaining him. But they were still asking me questions about my citizenship and my father’s citizenship.”
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Victor Lacerda, who was born in the United States, served in the Navy after high school and lives in Kingston, Massachusetts. His father, who’s undocumented, is originally from Brazil and has lived in the United States for at least 25 years. He’s currently being held at Plymouth County’s ICE detention facility.
Pomerleau, the Lacerdas’ attorney, says the father was in the process of securing a green card when he was detained. He’s eligible for permanent residency in the United States through a special process for veteran family members.
Pomerleau called the father an exemplary member of his community, noting that he works as a horse trainer and provides horse therapy for disabled veterans. He and his son also march in local parades, and planned on doing so again for the Fourth of July.
“He’s done a lot of work for the community for years. He marched in the 400th Thanksgiving Parade down in Plymouth, Memorial Day parades,” Pomerleau said.
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Malton Laceda in a Massachusetts parade last year.
Courtesy of Victor Laceda
Lacerda has two 20-year-old cases of driving without a license and paying fines, and a misdemeanor assault and battery charge from 2008 that was dismissed, involving his ex-partner who’s now raising funds for his legal expenses. ICE didn’t return requests for comment on the case.
Local immigration advocates say the recent spike in arrests is one more way the Trump administration has cherry-picked which foreigners and immigrants can enjoy the world’s biggest sporting event.
Celedon noted that the federal immigration crackdown has also made it impossible, or very difficult, for people from countries on full or partial travel ban lists to visit the United States to attend World Cup games. Those countries include Haiti and others in Africa.
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“It feels like almost like racial profiling people of certain countries that are allowed to come and those that are not allowed to come and not allowed to stay,” Celedon said.
Carson Erick, Jake Mrva, and Patrick Kilcoyne took a big first step Monday toward reaching match play by sharing the lead at 3-under 68 in the 118th Massachusetts Amateur at Winchester Country Club.
Kilcoyne was the runner-up last year at GreatHorse to Ryan Downes.
Max McColgan posted the only bogey-free round of the day, with a 69. He birdied two of the par 5s, Nos. 2 and 13. He is part of a group of four at 2 under that also includes 2024 champion Matthew Naumec.
Among the six members of the host club in the 144-player field, Joey Monahan led the way with a 70. His cousin, Aidan Monahan, won the club championship on Sunday and turned in a 72. They are nephews of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
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Lucas Dascoli recorded a hole-in-one on the 127-yard ninth hole with a 50-degree wedge. The ace had him make the turn at 1 over, but he dropped five shots over the final four holes and settled for a 77 and is in a tie for 71st.
The average score was 76.83, playing 2.67 over par on the front and 3.15 over on the back. Ten players managed to post a red figure while eight turned in a 71.
The top 32 players following Tuesday’s second round of qualifying will reach match play that begins Wednesday. The 36-hole final is scheduled for Friday.
Keith Pearson can be reached at keith.pearson@globe.com.
