State ethics officers are persevering with to press the previous Methuen police chief who resigned in 2021 after a scathing report from the inspector basic questioned his dealing with of contracts that might have despatched rating officers’ pay hovering.
The state Ethics Commission on Thursday issued an order to point out trigger alleging Joseph Solomon violated the battle of curiosity legislation by altering a draft collective bargaining settlement to extend his wage and offering unwarranted advantages to 5 intermittent officers.
The fee’s Enforcement Division says Solomon had a possibility to resolve the matter by a disposition settlement earlier than it filed the order because it discovered “reasonable cause” concerning a battle of curiosity.
A listening to on the allegations towards Solomon shall be scheduled inside 90 days.
A bulk of the grievance accuses Solomon of by no means informing the mayor or another Methuen official that he consulted with the chief of the superior officers’ union so as to add a contract provision that might have elevated salaries between 35% and 183%.
That caught the eye of former Inspector General Glenn Cunha who printed a report in late 2020 that his workplace “found a failure of leadership at all levels” concerning the contracts authorized in 2017 for Solomon and the superior officers; sergeants, lieutenants and captains.
The inspector basic report led to Solomon and a captain being positioned on paid administrative go away.
The language would have set already well-paid Solomon as much as be one of many highest-paid police chiefs within the nation, boosting his wage by round $90,000 to over $375,000 in Fiscal Year 2019.
“Solomon, with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, understood the financial impact of the changes, but did not inform other members of the negotiating team of the changes,” the order alleges.
Solomon is alleged to have employed three staff of his personal safety agency and a Methuen metropolis councilor as non-civil service intermittent cops, one other conflict-of-interest violation, the order states.
The former chief additionally advisable hiring 5 intermittent officers for full-time work, at the very least 4 of which didn’t have proof of finishing required coaching, the order alleges.
These actions got here to gentle in a report launched in March and commissioned by the town of Methuen. In that report, Solomon was described as a “‘Don’ of an organized crime family” and a co-conspirator to get former metropolis council president Sean Fountain a police detective job that defrauded the town out of $400,000.
Thursday’s order emphasizes these factors, together with how Solomon supplied the town’s human assets director a fabricated coaching certificates to get Fountain the job which supplied him advantages exceeding $1,000 in a 12-month interval.
Fountain is alleged to have solid a certificates that claimed he graduated from Northeast Regional Police Institute in 1995. But the certificates was really an altered copy of a retired police lieutenant’s precise certificates, experiences allege.
“Solomon repeatedly violated the conflict of interest law’s prohibition against public employees using their official positions to obtain valuable, unwarranted privileges or benefits for themselves or others,” the order alleges.
The Ethics Commission is allowed to impose a civil penalty of as much as $10,000 for every violation of the battle of curiosity legislation.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”