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What were they thinking? Unregistered nonprofit pushed by Boston’s Kickback Councilor got big boost from City Hall
Just call it an epic case of bad judgment.
Boston planning officials helped ease deals requiring developers seeking permits for projects to pump boatloads of cash into the coffers of an unregistered, politically-wired nonprofit, Contrarian Boston has learned.
And that charity was spearheaded by none other than City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson.
The Roxbury pol now faces a slew of federal charges for a brazen kickback scheme unrelated to her efforts on behalf of the so-called District 7 Boston Fund Inc.
What appears to be the same group eventually won official nonprofit status from the IRS in March of last year under a different name, the District 7 Community Fund Inc.
But for two years, Fernandes Anderson cut deals with developers on behalf of what was then an unregistered nonprofit, all under the watchful eyes of city officials, who were kept informed of the talks, a review of city records by Contrarian Boston reveals.
All told, deals brokered by city officials helped secure formal and informal pledges of several hundred thousand dollars by developers to the Fernandes Anderson-backed group.
The developers behind plans to restore the historic and now-shuttered Hotel Alexandra, where Roxbury meets the South End, were at one point prepared to pledge $245,000 to the District 7 group, whose backers also included State Rep. John Moran, documents show.
Negotiations with the District 7 group led by Fernandes Anderson began in the spring of 2022, two years before the nonprofit won a green light from the IRS.
Developers behind two other Roxbury housing projects, at 1 Elmwood and 1 Taber, each pledged $200,000 apiece to the then unauthorized and undocumented charity backed by the Roxbury councilor, records show.
That represented a significant shift. When developers in Boston agree to ante up for “community benefits” as part of the negotiation process for new projects, the money typically goes directly to City Hall, which, in turn, redistributes the money to various groups and causes.
Scott Webster, the Roxbury developer behind the 1 Elmwood apartment building proposal, recently told Contrarian Boston that he agreed to pay into the group after being pushed by Fernandes Anderson, but only with reluctance.
While a believer in supporting local causes, the head of Triple W Development had balked after his lawyer couldn’t find any record of the group. Public charities and nonprofits are required to file extensive paperwork with state and federal regulators.
Another issue here? The relatively large amounts of money Fernandes Anderson was seeking for her group from developers behind relatively modest projects that already face challenges simply obtaining financing and getting off the ground.
In an April 2022 email to a city planning official, the lawyer representing the developers hoping to restore the 19th-century Hotel Alexandra cited a “marathon weekend of Zoom meetings” with Fernandes Anderson and Roxbury groups.
“The project truly was in peril,” Marc LaCasse, an attorney for the developer, noted in an email to city officials.
LaCasse warned that the project’s developer, having already committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Fernandes Anderson-backed fund, could not afford to commit additional dollars for other city causes.
The solution, he argued, was to roll money that would have gone to the Boston Planning & Development Agency into the fund pushed by Fernandes Anderson.
“The project cannot bear the payment,” he noted in the email.
In the end, the developers may have escaped those payments, with the Boston Planning & Development Agency not including any specific reference to Fernandes Anderson’s group in its final approval last May of the Hotel Alexandra project, though earlier drafts had.
In the weeks leading up to that vote by the BPDA board, the developers were considering paying as much as $660,000 to the councilor’s pet charity, which, by that point, had finally won a green light from the IRS.
That said, a city spokesperson insists that the developers wound up not making a commitment to Fernandes Anderson fund.
It’s not the responsibility of city planning officials to “conduct an investigation into the third-party entities to which a developer has promised a community benefits contribution,” a city spokesperson said in an email in response to Contrarian Boston’s questions.
OK, but would it have been all that hard to do a simple online search of the Attorney General’s public charities site to see if Fernandes Anderson’s group was a registered nonprofit, with all its paperwork in order?
Meanwhile, the Hotel Alexandra developers have yet to break ground on the hotel restoration project, despite winning a final green light from City Hall last spring.
And for her part, Fernandes Anderson’s days of shaking down developers for so-called community benefits may be numbered.
The city councilor allegedly agreed to pay out a $13,000 bonus to a staffer and relative of hers, according to a federal indictment released last month. In exchange, the aide agreed to give back a big chunk of the bonus to the city councilor.
The whole grubby transaction culminated in a June 2023 meeting in a City Hall bathroom, with the staffer handing over $7,000 in cash to Fernandes Anderson, who stuffed the bills in her pocket, the feds contend.
As for motivation? Fernandes Anderson was drowning financially, hit with bank overdraft fees and and missed rent and car payments, according to federal prosecutors.
Her reckless attempt to pad her payroll with family members also contributed to her monetary woes, triggering a $5,000 fine from state ethics officials.
More progressive posterior kissing: GBH radio hosts praise former Globe editor Brian McGrory for leading the way on the Steward story, when, well, he didn’t
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