City records show a hefty bonus doled out to a staffer for Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson comports with the timeline of the alleged kickback scheme, bringing scrutiny to the body’s practice of pushing through large staff bonuses.

A May 10, 2023 Boston City Council meeting agenda shows a stark discrepancy between the bi-weekly pay for one of the five staffers included in a May 7 personnel order submitted by Fernandes Anderson and passed by the body “under suspension of the rules.”

The $13,000 bonus, $7,000 of which, per the feds, was allegedly kicked back to Fernandes Anderson in a City Hall bathroom, appears to be reflected in the bi-weekly pay approved for her staffers that week. One of the five staffers’ pay was approved at an amount that was more than $10,000 higher than the next-highest earner.

The total amount doled out to that employee, effective May 13, was $14,250, compared to four other staffers included in that personnel order who were paid $1,750; $3,942; $1,930; and $1,875. The staff member with the higher bonus was approved at a bi-weekly pay rate of $2,500 in a different personnel order, effective May 20, at the same meeting.

The indictment alleges the employee involved with the kickback arrangement by the councilor, identified as “Staff Member A,” was a relative but not an immediate family member of Fernandes Anderson.

The staffer, a woman, was paid a bonus amount in that personnel order that was “more than twice as large as the total amount of all bonus payments to Fernandes Anderson’s other staff combined,” the indictment said. The councilor had told her staff the larger bonus was due to that employee’s volunteer work.

As a condition of the bonus, the employee had agreed to give a portion of it back to Fernandes Anderson, a handoff that was coordinated by text and took place in a City Hall bathroom in June 2023, per the indictment.

The Herald’s request for comment from the woman, whose pay for that time period indicates she is the feds’ unidentified “Staff Member A,” was not returned to confirm her identification or relation. All five staffers’ names are included on the Council order.

Fernandes Anderson is alleged in the kickback scheme to have pocketed roughly $7,000 of the $13,000 bonus, which reflected weekly salary, and after taxes, was approximately $10,204, payable by the City of Boston. She pleaded not guilty to federal public corruption charges, and has vowed not to resign, despite calls to do so from the mayor and five councilors.

When asked whether the Council should look to review its bonus review practices for Council staffers, given that the bonus in question came before the body and was seemingly, like other personnel salary orders, approved without debate, Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy said ‘no.’

Councilor Ed Flynn said, however, that he would like to see the longstanding practice end.

“We need to restore public trust by thoroughly reviewing the process of annual office budgeting, surplus funds, and best human resources practices,” Flynn said.

Flynn is also calling for formation of a Council ethics committee and a pause on the nearly 5% raise set to be issued to the City Council in January, which would hike the body’s pay from $115,000 to $120,000. The Council’s pay increased from $103,500 this past January.

Murphy countered that Fernandes Anderson’s alleged misdeed does not represent how other councilors go about their business.

“I’d say no, because I’m pretty confident that this behavior is not common,” Murphy said. “We shouldn’t expect because other councilors are choosing the timing of how they spread out their staff payments, they shouldn’t be under the assumption that people are trying to get a personal kickback from it.”

Murphy said three of the councilors who departed the body last term were doling out higher bonuses to pay down the amount they were allotted for Council staff salaries, spread across their staff to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

Former Councilor Michael Flaherty, for example, paid roughly $25,000 worth of bonuses to four of his staffers last fall, including one that was nearly $10,000, records show.

Each councilor, per the indictment, is allotted a budget of several hundred thousand dollars to pay salaries and bonuses for staff, which are determined via personnel orders introduced and passed by the City Council.

Murphy said the payment allotted by Fernandes Anderson to that particular staffer may have caught the feds’ attention, because it was so much higher than her other employees.

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Fernandes Anderson was also being watched at the time by the Massachusetts Ethics Commission for hiring two members of her immediate family, her sister and son, to salaried positions on her Council staff and giving them raises, along with a $7,000 bonus for her sister, in violation of the state conflict of interest law, per the indictment.

The hires were made in 2022, the same year Fernandes Anderson took office. The councilor was required to terminate their employment in or about August 2022. She was notified by the Ethics Commission of its findings and that she would be required to pay a $5,000 fine, “from in or about March 2023 to May 2023,” per the federal indictment.

The feds said Fernandes Anderson was facing financial difficulties at the time of the alleged kickback scheme, from early to mid-2023, including missing monthly rent and car payments, the impending $5,000 fine, and bank overdraft fees.

Notably, around the same time, in April 2023, Fernandes Anderson had been pushing for raises for Council staff. She introduced an ordinance, that if passed, would have hiked the office budget staff from $315,000 to $390,000 for each councilor, and $385,000 to $460,000 for the council president.

Fernandes Anderson said at the time that the salary hikes are necessary to keep up with inflation and the high cost of living in Boston. She had been seeking a minimum pay rate of $72,000 for low-level staffers, and suggested that chiefs of staff make as much as $103,000, or about what their bosses made at the time.

“We know that increasing our budget for our pay is contentious or it’s controversial,” Fernandes Anderson said at the time. “People will come out — all the trolls on Twitter might start saying that city councilors are politicians and greedy, and therefore want to pay themselves a lot of money.”

City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy speak at Mayor Michelle Wu’s Enchanted Trolley Tour as it makes a stop in South Boston. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)