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Another Boston city councilor hit with ethics fine
By adamg on Tue, 07/25/2023 - 11:59am
The state Ethics Commission announced today that District 7 (Roxbury) City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson has paid a $5,000 fine for putting her sister and son on her council payroll.
The payment comes a month after Councilor Ricardo Arroyo admitted to his own ethics-law violation and three weeks after Councilor Kendra Lara was cited for a variety of driving infractions after crashing into a house in Jamaica Plain.
According to the Ethics Commission:
Soon after her November 2021 election to the Boston City Council, Fernandes Anderson appointed her sister as her full-time Director of Constituent Services. Following her January 3, 2022 swearing-in, she participated in the City Council’s vote to approve the appointment. Fernandes Anderson initially set her sister’s annual salary at $65,000. In June 2022, she increased it to $70,000 and awarded her sister a $7,000 bonus. Also in June 2022, Fernandes Anderson appointed her son as her full-time office manager at an annual salary of $52,000. She participated in the City Council’s July 15, 2022 vote to approve the appointment, then, eleven days later, increased her son’s salary to $70,000. Fernandes Anderson ended the employment of her sister and son on August 31, 2022.
Fernandes Anderson’s actions as a Boston City Councilor concerning the appointment and compensation of her sister and son violated the conflict of interest law’s prohibition against municipal employees participating in their official capacity in matters in which they know members of their immediate family have a financial interest.
Newly elected councilors are supposed to take an online ethics class within 30 days after the election.
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Comments
We need an NFL Rookie Transition Program
https://operations.nfl.com/journey-to-the-nfl/nfl-development-pipeline/n...
One could argue the NFL's rookie training is hardly a model to look up to. But it seems like some of this dumb shit, like hiring your family to be your staff, not taking a portion of your new salary to clean up your driving record, etc. would be things that a political-transition program could help these people avoid.
Maybe that's a responsibility of the candidate's party or maybe the city needs to do a bit better with its introductory ethics classes and go a bit beyond whatever they do now. But some of this is just downright dumb shit that degrades confidence in the people who clearly had enough political willpower and desire to reach office. Look at their past before politics and they're not grifters...they didn't run because they thought they could pull of these acts as scams.
This rash of dumb acts spread across so many of the newest councilors feels a lot more like negligence through convenience and/or ignorance. Like rookies hiring their best friends as their entourage and spending their entire contract before the ink dries on stupid crap instead of making sure the money will last.
Having sat through these
Having sat through these mandatory state ethics trainings, I promise you that the “conflict of interest” portion is abundantly clear. It is spelled out in plain language that hiring a family member would create a conflict of interest. Arroyo, who is an actual attorney and presumably well versed in his ethical duties to recognize and avoid conflicts of interest, has even less of an excuse than this latest city councilor.
This issue is not that the ethical training lacks clarity. It is councilors disregarding it.
Maybe it’s time
We require elected officials to take annual classes.
Like lots of other professions, I have mandatory CEs I need to complete in order to maintain an active professional license with the state.
If we keep electing clowns, maybe we should apply some training wheels.
How would that help?
How does making someone who knows damn well that it's illegal to do X, Y, and Z but does them anyhow, sit though an annual lecture that says it's illegal to do X, Y, and Z, accomplish anything?
Right
Who here really thinks that insufficient training is the issue here? C'mon now..
They do have state mandated
They do have state mandated ethics training that all city employees have to take. If someone elects to not pay attention to it, that is on them. I have no sympathy for these types of ethics violations. Not only is it spelled out, but common sense dictates that hiring close family members is at best a really bad look.
I came here to say this
I came here to echo the two folks above. The state does have ethics training, and even if you are not a state employee, contractor, or someone on the payroll, but are involved with any sort of process or state agency, you have to go thru this.
I was on the MBTA ROC for a few years a while back and even tho it is a 100% volunteer position, it was sanctioned as an official MBTA sponsored group and used state facilities, we had to go thru that training also.
And yes its abundantly clear what a conflict of interest is.. yet this happens.
Good to know the years of people fighting to get such training after decades of different agencies being breeding ground for nepotism, getting this training has literally done nothing if our elected officials keep doing this crap. Or that simply corruption can't be 'trained out'.
I was a volunteer on a town
I was a volunteer on a town committee and I had ti take a 2 hour training. It’s super super clear how conflict of interest works, and I couldn’t even start my committee service until I completed the training. No sympathy for anyone on this.
Toothless
She gave her sister a $7k bonus and got slapped with a $5k fine.
Why would anyone take the conflict rules seriously when there's so little downside to violating them?
Like any law really
How many small fine laws do you see violated almost daily? I can go 50 feet to the nearest bus stop to see one being violated multiple times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Our laws are useless without teeth, yet the same people who make these laws aren't abididing by said laws themselves. So how can we expect tougher laws.. or even regular people abide by them, themselves when the leaders are not doing it too.
We're slowly turning into a lawless country. Just like others before everything fell apart.
Arroyo will eventually have
Arroyo will eventually have to deal with the Rollins mess which was both unethical and illegal.
As long as they don't repay
As long as they don't repay the ill-gotten salaries, it should be good.
Not quite ill-gotten
Assume that the sister and son both did the work they were hired to do. The city has had that benefit of their being hired. Those people aren't the ones who did anything wrong. The only way to "repay" those salaries would be to increase the penalty to the person who did the thing wrong, Tania. The city did benefit from having those employees (in some amount/capacity), so what exactly is the city out (unless the salaries and benefits like the bonus were inflated as part of the nepotism)?
Is it $5000? Is it more? That's where the commission's judgement has to come into account and why it's a fine and not a restitution.
This is why the arrangements shouldn't have occurred in the first place...to avoid the possibility of doubt around whether their hires were purely lucrative transference of funds from the city to her family...or if they were doing honest work and it only looks improper given the context.
So, I'd guess examining their work output, etc. may have gone into the Commission's determination that $5000 is appropriately punitive and remunerative.
IDK
After 6 months of work getting a raise and big bonus is certainly eyebrow raising. Doesn't sound like these are no-show jobs but how many other relatively new City employees have gotten those perks?
Pretty high salaries
For city council staff. A lot of the councilors have more low paying staff so they can spread them out efficiently and cover more meetings/ ground.
Still ill-gotten
As city employees, they would have gone through the same ethics training and would know that their employment was a conflict of interest.
One still has to follow the rules, even when inconvenient or costs you a cushy job.
Since they were terminated involuntarily...
One might assume they qualified for unemployment benefits
Total Shitshow
Complete and utter embarrassment.
These clowns won't resign?
Bounce 'em, come November.
Clean house.
You know how to fire them?
If you think that you could do better, or know someone who could do better, and you are legally qualified to run, then bounce them out at the ballot box.
I can't view Globe/Herald content ...
And can't determine the names of the sibling and son...
If either one has a Fernandes or Amderson in their name, the whole council should be fined.
Neither does
Neither does
You can find them named in her OCPF, because she regularly pays them from her campaign finance account (which is totally not suspect).
Her son is Louis Roca (also her campaign treasurer)
Her sister I'm not 100% sure of
Both of their names are present all over her OCPF, and frequently have single letter misspellings (also suspect)
There's only one viable alternative
Althea Garrison for Boston City Council District 7!
Garrison
I don't agree with all her politics but she certainly seems a whole lot more competent and ethical compared to the current crop.
I want the late clown back.
Quite the ballot for the District 7 primary
Althea Garrison
Tania Fernandes Anderson (incumbent)
Roy Owens
Jerome King
Padma Scott
Who filed the complaint?
Curious who filed the initial complaint. Was it anonymous?
Hire your friends directly, another department can hire your family.
Also, why is the post tagged "Allston."
Yeah, nothing to do with Allston
Fixed, thanks.
but wait there's more!
She actually lied to the Globe back when this was first reported. She gave them the initial salaries for both employees, but did not tell the Globe that they had received raises after being hired. So the Globe only reported the initial amount, and not the final salary. By not giving the final salary, the Globe would be unaware of how quickly both employees got pay raises.
Original Globe article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/24/metro/apparent-violation-state-ne...
Just astounding how bad some
Just astounding how bad some of these city councilors have been!
conflict of interest training...
Every city employee has to certify on an annual basis that they've gone through the requisite conflict of interest training which is a condition of employment. Doing anything along the lines of what TFA did is an obvious no no and the consequences are well spelled out. But it's much simpler than that. The emphasis is placed on doing absolutely nothing that could create the APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest. What she did is beyond the pale. The lowest paid city employee has this drilled into their consciousness. The idea that she was not aware of this (which no thinking person would actually fall for) is laughable. One rule for me and another for thee. Oh well. She, Lara and Arroyo will in all likelihood be returned to office through a combination of voter apathy, inertia and the cynical belief that "they all do it anyway". You get the government that you vote for. HL Mencken said that "“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” Well, here we are.
Co-conspirators
I’d love to see Uncle Sam sweep in and throw a RICO blanket over the whole council body.
Crime pays
A 5 thousand dollar fine for being corrupt, that'll teach her.
This doubling down
Tweet is quite concerning -- "if it weren't for those dang ethics, I'd do it again" https://twitter.com/Tania4D7/status/1683890284264927248?s=20
Holy cow
That tweet is a piece of work.
It's literally defining why nepotism is a conflict of interest that must be avoided.