Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was nearly $20,000 in debt in 2023, the same year that she pocketed a $7,000 kickback in a City Hall bathroom that recently resulted in her federal corruption conviction, public records show.
Fernandes Anderson owed $19,000 of a $35,000 loan from what appeared to be a student loan provider at the time, according to a financial disclosure statement she filed with the city clerk last year and which covered the year of 2023.
Her “debt, loan or liability” is seemingly listed as being to Naviance, which describes itself as an American college and career readiness software, although the handwritten name of that debt provider was misspelled by the councilor.
How much, if any, of the debt Fernandes Anderson still owes is unclear, as financial disclosure forms covering last year are not due until May 30, according to City Clerk Alex Geourntas.
On her 2023 calendar year form, Fernandes Anderson wrote that she was under a “deferring” payment plan for the loan. Her form lists no assets.
The loan doesn’t appear on her financial disclosure statement for the 2022 calendar year, which would have been filed in late May 2023. She checked off the “not applicable” box under the debt, loan or liability section.
Fernandes Anderson graduated from the John D. O’Bryant High School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, and attended Springfield College.
At her May 5 plea hearing in Boston federal court, where she pleaded guilty to two federal corruption charges, Fernandes Anderson said her education level was “some college,” in response to a series of questions from the judge.
In her Council biography, she also describes herself as the “proud mother of a U.S. Marine and a young emerging artist.”
Fernandes Anderson was the first Muslim, African immigrant, and formerly undocumented person to be elected as a city councilor.
She became a naturalized citizen in 2019, was first elected to the City Council in November 2021, and took office in January 2022.
Fernandes Anderson was federally indicted and arrested last December on six charges, four of which were dropped as part of a plea deal she accepted with the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The indictment states that Fernandes Anderson carried out a kickback scheme in the spring of 2023. The councilor doled out a $13,000 bonus to one of her staff members, a relative but not immediate family member, on the condition that $7,000 be kicked back to her.
The cash handoff was coordinated by text message and took place in a City Hall bathroom in June 2023, the indictment states.
Upon her arrest and indictment, prosecutors said the kickback scheme may have been motivated, in part, by the “personal financial difficulty” Fernandes Anderson is believed to have been facing in early- to mid-2023.
That included missing monthly rent and car payments, an impending $5,000 fine from the state Ethics Commission connected to the councilor hiring two immediate family members and giving them raises, and incurring bank overdraft fees from maintaining low daily bank balances, court records show.
Fernandes Anderson, who represents Roxbury-centric District 7, was being paid a $103,500 salary in the 2023 kickback year. She is now paid $120,000, after councilors saw their pay hiked for a second straight year this past January.
The councilor has said she plans to officially resign after the City Council budget process, which typically wraps up in late June with a vote. She told reporters outside the federal courthouse after her conviction that she opted to stay on until that time because the residents of District 7 should have a budget vote.
Fernandes Anderson has been absent from the last two weeks’ City Council meetings. She cited a family-related medical emergency in two absence letters that were filed with the city clerk and read into the record at the end of each meeting.
Her sentencing has been scheduled for July 29. As part of the plea deal, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley recommended that Fernandes Anderson be sentenced to a year and a day in prison, and ordered to pay $13,000 in restitution.
A federal judge, at Fernandes Anderson’s plea hearing, warned the councilor that she was not obligated to heed the prosecution’s recommended sentencing, and could choose to impose a harsher punishment.