Earlier this week, the city Law Department released an opinion finding that School Superintendent Alan Ingram does not have to repay the city money he got as part of his eyebrow-raising employment contract. Specifically, according to the opinion by City Solicitor Ed Pikula, Ingram can keep the $30,000 he received for “relocation costs,” despite the fact that, three years after taking the job, Ingram has yet to buy a house in the city, or move his family here from Oklahoma.
Ingram’s controversially generous 2008 deal was exposed by Antonette Pepe, the School Committee member who’s running for mayor. She called for Ingram to return the $30,000, as did the Committee’s Legislative and Contract Subcommittee, in a unanimous vote.
Pikula found that the deal—laid out in a “side letter” with the state-imposed Finance Control Board that oversaw city spending at the time—required Ingram to reside in the city, but never specifically called for him to buy a house. (He lives in an apartment in the South End.)
Furthermore, the lawyer noted, the contract’s language does not provide any way for the city to demand that Ingram repay the money. “The Law Department suggests that, to the extent that future contracts include similar relocation provisions, conditions for repayment be included in the event of the failure of the employee to meet the intended terms,” Pikula wrote. Well, no kidding.
Pepe responded to Pikula’s opinion with a sharply worded campaign press release in which she suggests that the lawyer’s findings were influence by the fact that he wrote the opinion at the request of his boss, Mayor Domenic Sarno, who also serves as chair of the School Committee. “Attorney Pikula works for the Mayor, not the taxpayers, and this opinion was issued at the request of Mayor Domenic J. Sarno,” she said.
Pepe also contested Pikula’s reading of the contract, suggesting that “he look a little deeper into the definition of certain words.” She points, by way of example, to language referring to Ingram’s potentially renting a residence in the city as part of his “transition” to Springfield, and calling the $30,000 a bonus to compensate for the higher cost of real estate in the city.
“It is a shame that the intent of this contract and side letter are being manipulated by legal jargon and that Attorney Pikula is playing legal games with the contract’s wording,” Pepe said.
Another mayoral candidate, City Council President Jose Tosado, meanwhile, has filed a public records request with the Mass. Department of Revenue seeking all emails and hard-copy documents by Control Board members and staffers containing information about Ingram’s contract negotiations. Stayed tuned to see what Tosado finds.
Ingram has defended the contract, earlier telling the Springfield Republican, “It was a legally binding contract. It was negotiated and executed in good faith.” The contract also granted Ingram a $190,000 salary; that’s since been raised to $202,000.
It’s ironic that Ingram’s contract was overseen by the Control Board, which had, after all, been sent to the city to enforce a level of fiscal prudence that had long been missing from City Hall. Going forward, will city officials think a little harder about what benefits and perks they want to give away—even when it’s not an election year?
