GINA FIANDACA abruptly stepped down as Gov. Maura Healey’s secretary of transportation in September 2023, but was kept on for an additional four months and paid $55,915 to “provide assistance, advice, and counsel” during the transition to her successor.
There’s no evidence, however, that Fiandaca did anything to earn the money.
Officials at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation have been very tight-lipped about Fiandaca’s departure. They resisted for months providing their “letter agreement” with Fiandaca, initially claiming that it did not even exist. The agreement was released after the state supervisor of public records, in response to a public records request, asked to review the document privately.
In response to two additional public records requests, MassDOT officials said they could find no emails, memos, letters, text messages, faxes, or other documents sent by Fiandaca to MassDOT officials during the transition period.
The only communications that were turned over were emails sent to Fiandaca by others. They included an email from the state retirement board inviting her to attend a webinar, a communication from the State Ethics Commission regarding a change in Fiandaca’s profile, invitations to attend various events and programs, rundowns of articles in the news, and summaries of reporter inquires to MassDOT.
None of the emails evoked a response from Fiandaca.
A MassDOT spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on whether Fiandaca provided verbal assistance to MassDOT colleagues during the transition period.
Healey, in an interview, did not quibble with the claim that Fiandaca did no work for the state during the four-month period. Instead, she said transition arrangements are typical in such cases.
“For the purposes of a smooth transition, it’s important that when there’s a departure of someone so senior that we be able to call upon that person,” she said. “So it’s normal. You see that in a lot of departures.”
In addition to spelling out Fiandaca’s responsibilities during the four-month transition period, the agreement with her also says she will not sue the state. Healey said the agreement was not structured to avoid litigation and said she was not displeased with Fiandaca’s job performance, despite widespread speculation to the contrary.
“No, no, no,” she said. “It was a decision she made, you know. It happens in administrations sometimes.”
Mary Connaughton, director of government transparency at the Pioneer Institute in Boston, said she was troubled by the MassDOT agreement with Fiandaca.
“A no-show deal is an insult to the public that operates under the basic premise that to get paid, you first must work,” she said. “Arrangements like this one not only erode the public trust, they crater it.”