The Boston Water and Sewer Commission is “withholding information” related to any investigations that have been conducted into its suspended HR director, but elaborated on why it fired general counsel and ex-city councilor Michael Flaherty.

Flaherty was terminated from his $224,999 job at the quasi-public agency on Jan. 10 due to a “breakdown” in his “working relationship” with the Commission’s top executive, Henry Vitale, a BWSC spokesperson said in response to a series of Herald public records requests.

“Mr. Flaherty’s employment as general counsel with the Commission ended following a breakdown in the working relationship between the Commission’s executive director, Henry Vitale, and Mr. Flaherty,” BWSC spokesperson Dolores Randolph wrote in the agency’s records response.

Randolph said Flaherty was an “at-will employee” and that the Commission entered into a separation agreement under which it paid Mr. Flaherty $253,630.07 in exchange for a release of all claims.”

Of that severance payment, roughly $46,880 was for accrued, unused vacation and personal time, which was required to be paid to Flaherty under Massachusetts law.

“Additionally, the Commission pays some severance to employees whose roles are terminated,” Randolph wrote. “The remaining compensation represents a settlement payment to resolve a wage dispute between the Commission and Michael Flaherty.

“While the Commission does not believe that Mr. Flaherty’s claims had merit, the Commission decided to settle these claims to avoid the substantial cost and distraction of litigation as well as potential treble damages under the Massachusetts Wage Act,” the agency spokesperson added.

Flaherty was dismissed from the Commission after about a year on the job. He signed a severance agreement with Vitale a day after the Herald reported on his termination.

The agreement pays Flaherty $253,670 on conditions that he won’t sue or disparage the agency.

A Boston Globe columnist reported Flaherty’s dismissal followed an internal investigation by former federal prosecutor Brian T. Kelly.

The Herald has requested confirmation of the existence of an alleged commissioned investigation that led to Flaherty’s termination, and the related report for January 2025, but was told the Commission “does not possess any such document.”

The Commission provided the same answer in its latest records response last week. The Herald had requested a report written by Kelly or his firm Nixon Peabody LLP in 2024 or 2025, “including any report concerning any investigation relating to the Commission’s former general counsel, Michael Flaherty.”

The City of Boston, in a records response, said it possessed no such report.

“The records you seek are not in the possession of the City of Boston,” a city records officer wrote in an email. “You may consider contacting the Boston Water & Sewer Commission (BWSC), which is not a department of the City of Boston.”

Flaherty did not respond to a request for comment on the Commission’s reason for his termination. He was generally seen as an ally of Mayor Michelle Wu after she came into office, after having served for a time together on the City Council.

Wu has sought to distance herself from the matter, saying last month that she was “not involved” in the severance agreement.

While the Commission chose to provide, for the first time, its grounds for Flaherty’s termination in its records response last week, it opted not to divulge any information about its embattled chief human resource officer, Marie Theodat, who, per BWSC records, is suspended on paid administrative leave.

Theodat was paid $202,873 last year, and has received a 61% pay hike via a series of raises since 2019. She was also promoted from HR director to chief human resource officer last September, while embroiled in multiple civil lawsuits that include allegations of fraud, according to court and BWSC records.

Theodat is accused in a Suffolk Superior Court lawsuit filed last August 2024 of working with relatives to swindle her elderly and dementia-ridden uncle out of his $1.1 million Dorchester home. She has denied the allegations.

Upon the lawsuit becoming public via a Herald report last October, a trio of unions representing BWSC employees, while citing concerns with the allegations in the civil litigation, pressed in a letter to Vitale for Theodat to be suspended, pending the results of an internal investigation.

The Commission cited a “personnel file exemption” for “withholding information” related to the Herald’s request for information on how many times Theodat has been investigated during her tenure at the quasi-public agency, when those investigations occurred, by whom were they conducted, and the “total bill for investigations including the current one.”

“Any documents related to investigations concerning Commission employees are subject to the ‘personnel file exemption’ to the Massachusetts public records law, which protects from disclosure personnel … files or information and any other materials or data relating to a specifically named individual, the disclosure of which may constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” Randolph wrote.

“Accordingly, the Commission is withholding information responsive to this request under this exemption,” Randolph said.

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The Herald also requested information related to family members and relatives of Executive Director Henry Vitale who are on the BWSC payroll.

The Commission said there are three: Muna Vitale, who is married to Henry Vitale’s brother; Cynthia Woolcock, Vitale’s sister-in-law; and Dante Shire, his nephew.

The agency’s records response notes Muna Vitale, who was paid $159,884 last year as director of IT support and communications systems, was hired in May of 1997, “which was four years before her marriage to Henry Vitale’s brother.”

The Commission said that with respect to Woolcock and Shire, the executive director “filed all necessary ethics disclosures with the Board of Commissioners.”

Woolcock, the agency’s manager of communications, was paid $128,750 last year, and Shire was the Commission’s lowest paid employee last year as a facilities representative who was paid $52,000.

Marie Theodat, chief human resource officer at BWSC. (Matt Stone/Boston Herald)