Page 4 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2022 Honoring the memory and celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. APPEALS | FROM PAGE 1 respectively.” Bisignani, who served nine years as Saugus town manager before leaving in December of 2011, pleaded guilty in December of 2017 to 12 counts of procurement fraud, destroying public records, municipal bid-rigging and other crimes related to his position as Town Manager of Saugus and Nahant from Jan. 1, 2009, to June 30, 2014. In November of 2017, the Saugus Retirement Board voted 3-2 in favor of a motion for Bisignani to forfeit his entire pension. Lawyers representing Bisignani argued that the potential loss of $1.5-million was an excessive fi ne for his crimes and violated the Eighth 100 Salem Turnpike, Saugus, MA 01906 WIN-WASTE.COM Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They appealed to Lynn District Court and later Essex County Superior Court. But both courts upheld the ruling of the Saugus Retirement Board. “The question presented in this appeal is whether the forfeiture of Bisignani’s substantial retirement allowance – the largest amount to our knowledge forfeited by a public employee to date – constitutes an excessive fi ne in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Justice Blake wrote in the Appeals Court opinion. “In the circumstances of this case, we conclude that the forfeiture of the entire amount of his retirement allowance required by the statue, as applied to Bisignani, was within constitutional limits. Accordingly, we affi rm the judgment of the Superior Court.” Thirty-four years a public employee Bisignani received all of the money that he paid into the retirement system, but forfeited his expectation of the public funds he would receive upon retirement – determined to be $1,533,68, according to the court opinion. Bisignani was employed as either a Commonwealth of Massachusetts or municipal employee for an aggregate of 34 years and seven months. Bisignani worked for the Commonwealth from 1965 to 1967. He was the purchasing agent and city auditor for the City of Revere from 1978 to 2003, and then served as the Saugus town manager from January 2003 to February 1, 2012, before retiring. In early 2012, just as he began receiving a monthly allowance of $6,425.46 from the Saugus Retirement System, Bisignani took part-time employment as the temporary town administrator of Nahant, a position from which he resigned in June 2014. An Essex County Grand Jury indicted Bisignani on Dec. 30, 2014, after a two-year investigation by the District Attorney’s Offi ce. Bisignani pleaded guilty to 12 crimes, eight of which carried the penalty of forfeiture. Bisignani faced an aggregate maximum sentence of 54 years in prison and $102,500 in fi nes on the 12 counts of which he was convicted. He was sentenced to two years of probation, with certain conditions, and a $60,000 fi ne. No restitution order was imposed. “This was ‘no solitary lapse in judgment’ by Bisignani,” Justice Blake wrote in her opinion. “The criminal acts that led to his convictions spanned fi ve and one-half years and occurred in separate municipalities,” she continued. “While on this record there is no evidence that the eight convictions linked to Bisignani’s offi ce were ‘related to’ any other contemporaneous illegal activities, they led to the commission of additional crimes,” Justice Blake noted. “Facing a criminal investigation and grand jury proceedings, Bisignani committed four more crimes in an eff ort to cover up his felonious behavior, and to obstruct the interests of justice. These crimes included altering municipal documents and illegally recording a conversation with a Nahant selectperson. In addition, as refl ected on the docket of his criminal case, Bisignani’s home confi nement was to begin when his Federal probation was scheduled to end. Although the record is silent as to the details, this is evidence that Bisignani was involved in other illegal activities.” Those “other illegal activities” involved federal income tax evasion. Bisignani admitted that he failed to report more than $375,0000 of his income on federal tax returns he fi led over several years, between 2010 and 2013 – part of the time that he served as Saugus town manager. APPEALS | SEE PAGE 17
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