Letters: Inappropriate pension for inappropriate PPA director

ISSUE | SEX HARASSMENT

I do not know which was more bothersome - that the board of directors of the Philadelphia Parking Authority tried to protect the executive director, or that by resigning and not waiting to get fired, Vincent J. Fenerty Jr. will get to keep his estimated $154,620-a-year pension ("Beset by accusations, chief quits," Thursday).

Definitely the pension. I wonder whether Philadelphians realize an annual pension of that size in the private sector would require a retirement account at a company such as Vanguard that amounted to about $3.9 million? I doubt he had put that much away, so the underfunded pension account will need to be topped off with more tax dollars.

The board's first punishment for sexually harassing a senior official was to let Fenerty keep his full $223,000-a-year salary but do less work. Now, after the board became aware of a second woman who had been harassed, he will get to loaf around the house and will still be getting almost 70 percent of what he was paid while working. Tough life.

|Stephen Cooney, Pottstown

Reading the letter from City Councilman Al Taubenberger justifying the Parking Authority board's inaction against Executive Director Vincent J. Fenerty Jr. sickened me ("Parking board valued Fenerty's work," Tuesday). Their idea of punishing abominable behavior was to continue paying him a quarter of a million dollars a year, but not letting him do any work. I wonder whether Fenerty's "many accomplishments for the authority" would negate his behavior if it was Taubenberger's wife or daughter who had been groped. Would the good, old boys have been so forgiving if this ugliness had been directed at women they care about?

If there truly is "no situation in which sexual harassment in the workplace is acceptable," why did this board accept it? Every one of those members who did not demand Fenerty's immediate dismissal is as guilty as he.

And finding out that he will now draw a pension in excess of $154,000 a year is a slap in the face to every woman trying to make a living while fending off perversion.

|Jane Britcher, Linfield