Sen. Don Humason. (WNG File Photo)
WESTFIELD – In yesterday’s Westfield News, it was reported that Boston’s FOX25 published an investigative story about Massachusetts lawmakers charging taxpayer’s for their commute to the Boston statehouse.
Sen. Don Humason, who represents 11 communities in Western Massachusetts, was one of the legislators who was involved in the FOX25 investigative story.
In the story published on Nov. 2, it was stated that, Humason, a Republican, noted that he voted against the pay raise and change in pier diem’s, as Democrats pushed for the move.
However, Humason said that it was made unclear to him as to when the change would info effect this year and said that the Democrats changed the language at some point to have the law go into effect on Jan. 4.
“I inadvertently applied for pier diem’s that I was already being paid for,” said Humason.
On Thursday, the Westfield News followed up with Humason as he added to his explanation in the initial story. Humason called the State Treasurer’s office in January and spoke to Mark Finnerty about the issue that he discovered.
“Should I be filing my pier diem’s?” said Humason to Finnerty. “He said “go ahead and file and if there’s an issue we’ll take care of it,” “so I filed.” Humason said.
Sen. Don Humason. (WNG File Photo)
Saying that the treasurer’s office never informed him in January, Humason received a letter from Finnerty on Thursday. Finnerty’s response to Humason stated:
“We made a mistake in interpreting the effective date of the travel reimbursement section of the new law. The effective date we used was January 31, 2017 when it should have been January 4, 2017. To rectify this I would like to process a correction in the payroll system in the amount you were paid.
At the bottom of the letter, Finnerty added that he was looking for authorization from Humason to agree for Finnerty to process the reimbursement from his check that was dated on November 17, 2017. The check included eight days in Boston that totaled out to $528.
Humason has agreed to allow the authorization and ensures the community that his intent was never to take taxpayer’s money, as his issue was the fact that he was unclear with when the new pier diem law was in effect.
“I’m repaying the money that I was payed for January when I put in the pier diem’s,” said Humason. “I tried to do the right thing, I’m not trying to fraud the citizens of my district or the commonwealth.”
