Council Challenges Number of Hirees By Acting Mayor

By Adam Swift

The City Council is challenging Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe’s ability to hire and appoint new employees in the city.

Monday night, the council voted 8-0 for the acting mayor to immediately cease and desist taking actions admitting of delay resulting in permanent appointments or hires.

The action came following a legal opinion requested by the council from the firm of Anderson and Kreiger, LLP relative to the power and authority of the acting mayor position. Keefe took over as acting mayor earlier this year when former mayor Brian Arrigo took a position as the head of DCR for the Healey administration.

Back in May, City Solicitor Paul Capizzi provided the council with a five page memo from outside legal counsel KP Law highlighting the role of the acting mayor.

“Patrick Keefe, ward councillor, elected president of the City Council, and in his capacity of acting mayor, may perform all day-to-day functions required of the position of mayor,” said Capizzi. “Some of the examples are … soliciting and entering into contracts, addressing personnel matters, providing programs and services, signing payroll, administering regular maintenance and construction operations, enforcing existing ordinances, (and) undertaking public health and safety efforts.”

The acting mayor is also responsible for “any and all efforts not admitting of delay,” said Capizzi.

However, the legal opinion from Anderson and Kreiger lays out a much more limited scope of the authority vested in the acting mayor position.

“We believe that the Charter limits the Acting Mayor’s authority to (1) time-sensitive actions that cannot wait for the election of a new mayor; and (2) which do not result in a ‘permanent appointment,’” read the letter from George A. Hall Jr. and Mina Makarious of Anderson and Kreiger. “Both conditions must be met. While we agree with Attorney Goldberg’s opinion that this determination requires a case by case analysis, we believe her opinion could give the false impression that the Acting Mayor may take any action as long as it does not have permanent consequences, thereby bypassing the first requirement above. To the extent that is how her advice is being understood, that is incorrect.”

Councillor-at-Large Anthony Zambuto stated that he believed the more recent legal opinion shows that the initial opinion was incorrect.

“This opinion is written by one of the renowned municipal law firms in the state,” said Zambuto. “It is clear that the Acting Mayor has limited powers, and therefore, I think that it is necessary to cease and desist any appointments.”

Zambuto said the motion would not impact any hires or appointments already made by the Keefe administration.

Council President Pro Tem Joanne McKenna noted that there have been about 15 hires by the administration since Arrigo resigned, many of them union positions for public works and the water department, along with some police and fire department hires.

Councillor-at-Large Gerry Visconti requested that the council get a breakdown of the exact number of hires and the positions filled to date.

“The motion on the floor is to cease and desist future hirings,” said Zambuto. “We are not addressing the people already hired because most of them are union positions, and we can’t correct a wrong. He had bad information, a bad opinion, and he followed that bad opinion.”

Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro said he would like to see more collaboration with the acting mayor’s administration when it comes to filling any emergency positions in the city.

Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe said, “Since entering the role of acting mayor we have followed the advice of our city solicitor. Along with an initially requested outside legal opinion as requested from the city council.”

Keefe added, “The council spending more taxpayer dollars to seek an additional opinion to clearly get a different opinion is an irresponsible attempt to stop the city from performing its day to day functions is baffling.

I understand if we are talking about hiring high level positions. I do agree to hold or only temporarily fill these positions. However to suggest I am not following the opinion over hiring rank and file associates is misleading the public.”

“DPW- water and sewer, laborers, parking clerks, senior center clerk, public health nurses, educators, police and fire staff have been the hired positions since May.

The only motive I can see is attempting to stop our city from offering its basic fundamental functions. What happens when a pipe breaks or a street floods and we have nobody to respond. How about the public health nurses that have to support our school department because of a serious nursing shortage. The old ways of political hiring is not how my office operates and all hires have been done so by our Human Resource team with each department heads involvement,” Keefe said.

Keefe ended, saying, “We have not made any permanent appointments and respect that original decision and will continue to follow the direction and advice from our city solicitor.”