If you’re Gov. Patrick, you spend a lot of your time trying to defend (or back-tracking from) actions that lead to bigger bankrolls for political allies. You may even lose the next election because you’re seen as enabling the “hackocracy.” 

But if you’re the mayor of the small city of Malden, you can help a friend without becoming the center of a political storm. The Boston Globe‘s Sean Murphy reported yesterday that Malden’s City Council is trying to take back a $22,000 annual pension that was awarded to former state Sen. John Brennan based on his limited service as a member of the city’s library board. (Brennan missed most of the meetings held during his 19 years as a trustee.) 

“There’s outrage over this pension,” says City Councilor Paul DiPietro in the Globe story. Oddly, the story doesn’t include any criticism of the chief executive who helped make the pension happen through a law that has benefited exactly one person. (Murphy reports that no other library trustee in the state has benefited from the law that gave Brennan his pension.)

As Murphy reported in a previous story:

At Malden City Hall, Mayor Richard C. Howard recommended the City Council pass what he described in official documents as “Provisions of Chapter 456 of 1998,” with no details on the law’s ramifications. The council passed it on May 18, 1999, without discussion, and Howard signed it, records show.

The council’s action was unusual because it came without the matter having gone to a committee for study and without Howard’s administration having presented an analysis of its potential cost, said Joan Chiasson, the former council president who was absent for that meeting and who recently reviewed city records on the matter.

Howard, in an interview, said that Brennan was a close friend and former law partner. Brennan grew up in Malden and was first elected to the House of Representatives as a law student at Suffolk University.

“I’m sure he probably called me and said, ‘Hey, Richard, this thing is coming and would you mind signing in?’ ” Howard said. “And I signed it.”

It’s hard to imagine the governor, or the mayor of Boston, getting away with such a casual admission of using his office to help out a friend financially, but the mayor of Malden just doesn’t get the same level of constant attention from daily newspapers, talk radio, and political blogs.

Howard was unopposed for re-election in 2007; he won’t be on the ballot again until 2011.