The Boston Water and Sewer Commission fired prominent South Boston politician Michael Flaherty after the former city councilor had a falling-out with the agency’s executive director, Henry Vitale. The agency has also signed off on spending $850,000 for a law firm that undertook an internal investigation of the commission in recent months.
Those revelations come amid allegations of cronyism and possible racism at the commission, where such claims have a history. The agency provides drinking water and sewer services for more than a million people daily.
It’s overseen by a three-member board of commissioners that is appointed by the city’s mayor with the approval of the City Council, although the agency was created by the state Legislature decades ago and is considered separate and apart from the city.
At the center of the commission’s latest controversy is Flaherty, who was fired in January from the commission after holding down a job for about a year in the commission’s legal department. Flaherty, perhaps best known for giving Thomas M. Menino his stiffest ballot box challenge during his two decades in the mayor’s office, was hired as deputy general counsel on New Year’s Day 2024 and promoted to general counsel three months later.
It was a lucrative 12-month period for the South Boston native, who saw his annual pay jump from an initial $164,000 on Jan. 1 of last year to $239,000 by the time it was all said and done and a separation agreement was reached between Flaherty and the commission, according to the commission.
A recent statement from the commission hinted at an internal power struggle that concluded with Flaherty’s termination.
“Flaherty’s employment as General Counsel with the Commission ended following a breakdown in the working relationship between the Commission’s executive director, Henry Vitale, and Mr. Flaherty,” read a letter sent from the commission to the Globe. “Mr. Flaherty was an at-will employee with the Commission who served at the direction of Executive Director Vitale.”
While the details of that breakdown were not offered in the letter, the Globe previously reported that Flaherty sidelined attorneys of color at the agency, replacing them with his own political allies, including his former chief of staff and the daughter-in-law of former state Senate president and South Boston luminary William M. Bulger.
A Globe review showed that Flaherty was not the only one at the agency to have close connections with colleagues. For instance, two of Vitale’s sisters-in-law make six figures at the agency, and one of his nephews was also on the payroll last year.
Brian T. Kelly, a former federal prosecutor, was brought in to perform an internal investigation, the scope of which is not currently clear. But, according to documents produced in response to a Globe public records request, the commission signed off on spending up to $850,000 in outside legal work from his firm, Nixon Peabody, in recent months. (The first of two contracts for the firm was signed in October.)
Contracts called for the firm to provide “legal advice on general business, regulatory, and government matters related to commission protocols and procedures, including confidential labor and employment-related issues.” The specifics of the firm’s work is not detailed in either contract.
The commission did not make its executive director, Vitale, and its three commissioners, Michael J. Woodall, Chris Cook, and Armindo Goncalves, available for interviews.
In a statement, commission spokesperson Dolores Randolph said “the Commission is not permitted to comment on personnel decisions.”
“The Boston Water and Sewer Commission is consistently recognized as one of the highest rated water and sewer commissions in the country thanks to our 450 outstanding employees,” Randolph said.
Flaherty did not respond to a request for comment for this story. (A separation agreement signed by him and Vitale earlier this year includes a clause barring Flaherty from disparaging the commission.)
Flaherty is not alone in seeing eyebrow-raising pay boosts in recent years at the commission while enmeshed in controversy. Another commission official who has drawn negative headlines in recent months, Marie Theodat, the commission’s chief human resources officer, saw her pay climb 27 percent from $158,000 in 2022 to $202,000 in February of last year. An ongoing civil suit alleges that Theodat swindled a house away from an elderly relative who suffers from dementia. Theodat remains on leave amid that litigation.
Six-figure salaries are not unusual at Boston Water and Sewer. Of the 450 or so workers on the agency’s payroll, about 150 made more than $100,000 last year, according to a Globe analysis. A dozen made more than $200,000.
Vitale, the commission’s executive director who has worked at the agency since 1992, pulled in more than $228,000 in 2024.
The organization has a handful of workers who have family connections with one another and the agency’s executive, Vitale. Two of Vitale’s sisters-in-law are on its books: Muna Vitale, director of IT support and communication systems, and Cynthia Woolcock, a manager of communications. They made $159,000 and $128,000 last year, respectively. Additionally, Henry Vitale’s nephew, Dante Shire, a facilities representative, made $52,000. (Documents at the state’s Registry of Vital Records and Statistics confirmed Vitale’s connections to that trio.)
Randolph, the spokesperson who herself earned more than $200,000 last year, declined in an email to confirm whether two other relatives of Muna Vitale also work at the commission.
“The Commission does not possess any documentation relating to these other familial relationships, and is not providing comments to the press at this time,” Randolph said in an email.
The commission also failed to respond directly to questions regarding whether patronage is a problem at the agency.
A spokesperson for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a statement that the mayor “is not involved in BWSC personnel decisions.”
Randolph said Muna Vitale began her career at the commission in 1997, before she was married to Henry Vitale’s brother. She said Vitale made all the necessary ethics disclosures for the hiring of Woolcock and Shire with the agency’s commissioners.
The Flaherty-related friction at the agency appears to feature other family connections as well. Nena S. Negron was among those attorneys of color at the legal department whom Flaherty allegedly sidelined last year. Negron, who had been in contention for the general counsel post before Flaherty got it, is married to Peter Hunt, who, as the commission’s chief operating officer, made the third-highest salary at the agency last year, pulling in $225,000. (Negron no longer works for the commission, according to payroll records.)
Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at UMass Boston, said the thicket of allegations and connections at the agency was “worthy of investigation,” noting that instances of corruption matter if they affect city policy.
“Nepotism isn’t new to Boston and nepotism isn’t new to city politics but when it gets in the way of the functioning of an agency, that matters,” she said. “Then it makes sense we’d try to find out or get to the bottom of it.”
The commission has weathered scandal in years past, with many of the messes focused on allegations of workforce malfeasance. In 2018, a trio of commission supervisors named in a civil lawsuit alleging racial and gender discrimination were placed on leave. The suit, filed by two employees who allege the agency was beset by bigotry, triggered the agency to hire an outside firm to review its culture. At that time, records from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination showed the agency had faced 10 complaints alleging gender or racial discrimination over a 17-year period.
More than 20 years ago, the son of the then-fire commissioner was hired at the agency despite having a criminal record. After six months on the job, he took a personal leave of absence. The reason: He had to serve a nine-month sentence at the Norfolk County House of Correction for driving under the influence of drugs. When he was released on a security bracelet, the worker was welcomed back to his old position.
The same year that scandal unfolded, the state Labor Relations Commission ruled that an employee was unlawfully fired from the commission for trying to organize a union.
In 1992, an attorney who was faulted by the city’s mayoral administration and a commission set up to take at look at Boston police was the sole applicant for a new job at the commission. The applicant had been lambasted for his oversight of BPD’s internal investigations, which raised questions about his suitability for the water and sewer commission post.
Jeremiah Manion and Adrian Walker of the Globe staff contributed.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald. Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.