Springfield City Council President Tracye Whitfield will retain her seat on the council, and the presidency, after a vote of no confidence failed Monday night.
Whitfield, is accused of conflict of interest violations by the city solicitor.
Councilors voted 7 to 4 against the measure. Whitfield recused herself from the vote and one councilor was absent.
Councilor Victor Davila led the call for no-confidence saying Whitfield should have recused herself and disclosed that she had a financial interest in JETS Property Development, LLC, a company that came before the council last month looking to purchase a parcel of land. Whitfield has admitted she made a mistake by not recusing herself early and has since resigned from the development company.
"Serving as a president of this body is a privilege that we, the members of this body, confer to another councilor, a privilege that requires complete loyalty to the city and to this body, not to advance self-interest," Davila said.
The meeting became heated with councilors throwing accusations at each other and members of the audience cheering and booing several councilors. Council Vice President Jose Delgado tried to keep order, saying he would not allow the meeting to become a "clown show."
The councilors speak
Several councilors spoke up in favor of Whitfield. Councilor Malo Brown said the vote had no weight and called it "divisive."
"We all swore an oath. Of course we're going to make mistakes, okay? And we let the ethics decide that. This vote means nothing. It doesn't remove the current president, so I will not be supporting it," he said.
An investigation into Whitfield's actions is still pending with the state's ethics commission.
Councilor Justin Hurst said the credibility of the complaints against Whitfield are put into question because City Solicitor Stephen Buoniconti has his own history of ethics violations.
Hurst was likely referring to Buoniconti stepping down from the Hampden County Regional Retirement Board in 2021 after a state audit revealed he and his former co-counsel were granted a salary plus valuable health benefits, as reported in The Republican. The article says auditors found the arrangement was illegal under state law.
At the time Buoniconti called the payout an "honest mistake" and he resigned from the board.
Hurst also accused the council of a double standard, saying it was unwilling to hold fellow Councilor Michael Fenton accountable for a similar transgression in the past, citing a 2021 meeting for a discontinuance on Armory Street.
"Councilor Fenton recuses himself, but never discloses his financial interest in the discontinuance. He also never filed a conflict of interest disclosure with the clerk's office," he said.
Hurst said Fenton was not questioned, but that he was assisted by city departments.
"The end result was drastically different. See, the department heads never reached out to the law department to say he [Fenton] was placing an undue influence on the departments to advance the Armory Street discontinuance and in fact, quite the opposite occurred," Hurst said. "...the Department of Public Works were willing to jump through hoops for [Fenton]. Often they were willing to expend time and city resources to negotiate easements... so that he and his neighbors could take over a public street and didn't have to spend a dime in return."
Fenton clarified that the discontinuance never happened and the petition was brought forward by a neighborhood council and abutters of the street. At the time Fenton was an abutter.
"What he didn't say is that Councilor Whitfield didn't do anything wrong or that there wasn't a pattern here that was worth looking at. Instead, he tried to change the narrative, the way that our president of this country does from time to time," Fenton said to boos from the crowd. "Well, it's true, he sounded like Trump."
Fenton said if it was just about the recusal he would not have signed on to the resolution for a vote of no confidence. He then said the solicitor's 100-page report showed that Whitfield had violated ethics rules with "reckless abandon."
"I take Councilor Whitfield at her word when she says that she made a mistake by failing to disclose her interest in the Wallace Street property deal. I do. If that were all that happened, I would not support a vote of no confidence," he said.
Racially motivated vote
Councilor Zaida Govan said Whitfield is the first Black woman to lead the council and asked other councilors for grace.
" I know that Councilor Whitfield worked in City Hall. I'm sure that she was witness to many meetings where things like what she probably did happened right in front of her. So she thought it was okay," she said. "I'm not condoning any unethical behavior, but what I want us to do is to be sure, that we give grace, where it's due. I think we should let the process play itself out instead of rushing to judgment."
Govan said there is a "good old boys" network in the city.
"In the late 1800s, right after slavery ended, white men, straight white men, decided that they needed to have a system to make sure that they were in control and that they maintained control. That system still plays out today," she said.
The vote of not confidence was brought forward by Davila, a Puerto Rican man and supported by Melvin Edwards, a Black man.
Edwards said his yes vote had nothing to do with Whitfield's race.
"I'm most disheartened by the characterization of this vote of no confidence and the related investigations as being racially motivated," he said. "There is no one collective voice of the Black experience in America, and we are all free to think for ourselves."
After the vote Whitfield returned to finish out the rest of the regular meeting business and said, "everyone is entitled to their opinions and I just want to move forward from here, doing city business."