Erin Stewart Sought Pension Benefit That Didn't Exist

Erin Stewart spent 12 years as mayor of New Britain and, in the final days of her tenure, tried to collect a pension benefit the city’s charter simply does not offer.

On Oct. 31, 11 days before the end of her term, Stewart wrote to her human resources director, Linda Guard, requesting what she called a “deferred partial retirement pension” based on her 14 years of combined public service in New Britain. Two years on the school board, 12 as mayor. The problem: the city charter has no such thing.

The charter is straightforward on this point. Elected officials who serve 20 years, either continuously or cumulatively, receive an annual lifetime pension equal to half their compensation. That’s it. No prorated formula. No partial benefit for officials who fall short of the threshold.

She asked anyway.

Stewart, who signed the letter as “Erin E. Stewart, Outgoing Mayor, City of New Britain,” calculated her own eligibility: 14 years of service, which she said translated to roughly 35% of her $112,475 mayoral salary. City benefits administrator Wilbert Vazquez replied three days later and, without raising any legal questions about the charter, produced a document labeled “Elected Official Pension ESTIMATE*” showing Stewart would be eligible for a gross annual benefit of $39,366 starting May 4, 2042, when she reaches 55.

No one at the city, at least not in any record that exists, questioned whether any of this was legal.

Stewart told reporters Wednesday that she saw nothing wrong with making the request. “Why wouldn’t I make the ask? I didn’t ask for the full thing. I didn’t ask for the full 20-year benefit,” she said. When asked what in the charter led her to believe a partial pension was even possible, she said, “I think that it would be foolish for me, after 14 years of service, to not make the inquiry and see that if I was entitled to the benefit.”

Not exactly a legal rationale. More of a shrug.

The Blogoslawski MOU

There is one prior example of a partial pension arrangement in New Britain, and Stewart herself created it. On June 24, 2024, she signed a memorandum of understanding with Cheryl Blogoslawski, the city’s elected tax collector, promising Blogoslawski a deferred partial pension after 16 years of service in a position that was eliminated by a charter revision in 2023.

Stewart acknowledged signing that MOU. The Blogoslawski agreement at least had a clearer political rationale: a long-serving elected official lost her job because the city restructured itself. Whether that MOU itself was legally sound under the charter is a separate question, but it was at least responding to specific circumstances. Stewart’s own request involved no such extraordinary situation. She served out her term and chose not to run for reelection.

The timing matters here. Stewart is now running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Connecticut, positioning herself as a fiscally responsible executive who turned around a struggling mid-sized city. New Britain’s finances have been a central part of her pitch to primary voters. Asking a city administrator to calculate a pension benefit that doesn’t exist in the charter, 11 days before leaving office, is the kind of thing that cuts against that image, whatever Stewart thinks of the optics.

She disagrees. “No, I don’t think this is bad optics at all,” she said Wednesday.

What this means for CT voters

Connecticut’s municipal pension obligations are already a serious fiscal pressure point for the state’s mid-sized cities. New Britain has struggled for years with legacy costs, and the idea that a departing official could self-calculate a pension benefit outside the charter and receive a formal written estimate from city staff without any legal review is, at minimum, a governance question worth asking.

The estimate isn’t a final payment. It’s not clear Stewart will ever collect it, and the benefit could face legal challenge if she tried. But the episode raises real questions about how New Britain handled the request internally, and whether Vazquez or anyone else in the benefits office had an obligation to flag the charter problem before producing a document.

CT Mirror first reported the details of Stewart’s pension request and the Vazquez estimate.

Connecticut’s gubernatorial primary is still months away, and Stewart hasn’t locked up the Republican field. But stories like this tend to stick, especially when the candidate’s closing argument is managerial competence. Watch for opponents to use this one.