>Tania Fernandes Anderson
This is how the game is played. Look for it in bureaucracies near you:
Boston City Councilors control their own budget, deciding for themselves how much to spend on everything from salary and bonuses to postage. In April of 2023, just one month before giving her relative the bonus, 5 Investigates discovered that Fernandes Anderson advocated for bigger salary budgets. She and other councilors asked to increase their staff salary budget from $315,000 to $390,000, and suggested “to leave the decision making to discretion of the councilors” on what individual salaries should be.
In 2023, the state ethics commission found Fernandes Anderson violated the conflict of interest law by hiring her sister and son at city hall and raising their salaries to $70,000 a year. Fernandes Anderson agreed to pay a fine of $5,000.
According to a federal indictment, Fernandes Anderson gave extra bonus money to "Staff Member A" with the agreement that the staffer would give a portion of the money back to the councilor. That staff member is a relative of Fernandes Anderson, something the councilor lied about, investigators said. Since staff bonus information is publicly available, Fernandes Anderson said the larger bonus for Staff Member A was to compensate them for previous volunteer work, court documents said. Staff Member A's $13,000 bonus was more than double the amount given to other staffers, investigators said.
"But that supersized bonus came with a hitch. Ms. Fernandes Anderson told Staff Member A she would need to fork over $7,000 in cash back to Ms. Fernandes Anderson.
Fernandes Anderson was going to use the money from the scheme to pay a fine issued following an ethics investigation
https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-councilor-custody-investigation-tania-fernandes-anderson/63114354