The City Council on March 12 voted 7-1 to adopt a resolution I cosponsored with at-large Councilor Marissa Elkins and President Alex Jarrett of Ward 5 to censure Quaverly Rothenberg of Ward 3 for egregious conduct during a phone call to the public safety dispatch center at 11:19 p.m. Feb. 18.
Jeremy Dubs of Ward 4 voted against the resolution, and Councilor Rothenberg recused herself at the beginning of the 95-minute meeting, citing a financial conflict of interest.
During the 17 minute, 29 second phone call that was routinely recorded, Councilor Rothenberg made false statements about the powers of the City Council; repeatedly cited her position as a councilor in an effort to coerce two dispatchers to violate protocols that prohibited them from providing emergency numbers for Department of Public Works personnel; and inaccurately claimed that DPW Director Donna LaScaleia had resigned earlier in the day. Councilor Rothenberg explained the call by saying that icy roads had created “an emergency for Ward 3” and that her constituents had reported “injuring themselves.”
The resolution states that Councilor “Rothenberg called the non-emergency dispatch line and engaged two city employees in a communication that violated the city charter, potentially violated Massachusetts rules and laws governing the ethical conduct of public officials, harassed city employees and generally behaved in a manner unbecoming to a city councilor.”
In my remarks supporting the resolution, I said that Councilor Rothenberg’s false claims that “the City Council outranks the mayor” and “everybody in this city works for the City Council” demonstrated either ignorance about the charter or a willful misreading of its provisions.
Moreover, Councilor Rothenberg during the phone call continued a pattern of intimidating behavior that has undermined the morale of city employees and disrupted municipal government. Her baseless insinuation that Director LaScaleia had abruptly left her post overseeing the city’s response to a severe and long winter storm was a reckless, defamatory attack on the professional reputation of a department head.
The vote to censure does not prevent Councilor Rothenberg from serving the remainder of her two-year term.
The complete resolution is available here:
The recording of the Feb.18 phone call to the dispatch center is available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-cZ2sf-y13ToxT1yq-O7oRGRsFdEvc0k/view
A memo from DPW Director LaScaleia about the dispatch call is available here:
Stan