Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson admitted to an ethics violation for employing her sister and son on her staff, the State Ethics Commission announced Tuesday.
Fernandes Anderson agreed to pay a $5,000 civil penalty over the conflict of interest, the commission said. NBC10 Boston has reached out to Fernandes Anderson for comment, though she tweeted a message to her sister Tuesday afternoon lamenting that she couldn't keep her on staff for ethical reasons.
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"For you a thousand times. Forgive me for not doing my research and consequently lost an amazing team member and hurt you at such a vulnerable stage of your life. You are my everything and if it wasn’t unethical I would do it again. A thousand times," Fernandes Anderson wrote.
It's the latest ethics issue for a member of the council — last month, Ricardo Arroyo admitted to violating conflict of interest law for representing his brother in a sexual harassment lawsuit, while Kendra Lara faces nine charges in a Jamaica Plain car crash that injured her son. Lara had a not guilty plea entered on her behalf and was ordered by a judge not to drive without a license, one of the charges she faces in the crash.
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Fernandes Anderson appointed her sister as director of constituent services soon after her election as city councilor for District 7 in 2021, then bumped her salary up by $5,000 and awarded her a $7,000 bonus in June 2022, according to the ethics commission. That month, she hired her son as her office manager, then approved a $18,000 raise for him 15 days later.
Fernandes Anderson took the state's conflict of interest training course on line on Dec. 30, 2021, days before she and the full council approved her appointment of her sister, according to the agreement the commission said the city councilor agreed to. She ended her sister and son's employment on Aug. 31.
Several weeks later, The Boston Globe reported on Fernandes Anderson hiring her family members to her staff. She told the newspaper at the time that "it was a priority for me to hire staff who I could fully trust shared my commitment to providing timely constituent services for District 7 residents," and that she let them go the day she learned about ethics conerns around them working for her.
State law prohibits city employees from "participating in their official capacity in matters in which they know members of their immediate family have a financial interest," the commission said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Boston City Council President Ed Flynn said that colleagues' recent "ethical and legal lapses" are drawing "negative attention" to the body and distracting from the work it's doing, specifically citing the Lara and Arroyo cases.
