Convicted Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson prays to avoid time in jail

Convicted Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson says she’s praying God keeps her out of jail and at home, while some of her constituents are accusing Mayor Michelle Wu of not supporting them.

The disgraced councilor is making her last rounds with her District 7 constituents before she resigns from the post on Friday, as her sentencing on federal corruption charges awaits next month.

“Wrong is wrong,” Fernandes Anderson said. “I’m just praying for my God to protect me and keep me home. I don’t think it’s about jail and that experience.”

“I think it’s about my sons suffering in my absence,” she added. “I am praying, and I ask you all to pray for me to stay at home with my babies and my new grandbaby that’s coming soon.”

Constituents tuning into Fernandes Anderson’s final Town Hall meeting on Saturday would have had a hard time knowing the driver behind the councilor’s resignation if they weren’t already aware of her conviction.

The councilor’s candid comments about jail came after community activist and mayoral candidate Domingos DaRosa told Fernandes Anderson that residents have her back and will stand by her no matter what is to come.

“I know you’ve got nice penmanship, I’ll take a couple of postcards,” DaRosa said, “and when you get back, we’ll make sure that we’re here.”

Fernandes Anderson responded, “Well, hopefully I’m not going to jail. Y’all stop saying ‘When you get back.’”

DaRosa then compared Fernandes Anderson’s situation to how President Trump has not gone to jail.

“If the guy in the White House can do all that dumb stuff and walk away unscathed, we hope the same to you,” he said. “I hope you come out on top.”

The ‘workbook’ and the mayor

Ferndandes Anderson and her staff presented a comprehensive workbook, spanning some 380 pages, that the councilor has said will serve as a blueprint for the Roxbury-centric district as part of her transition plan.

Constituents praised Fernandes Anderson and her staff for putting together the workbook for the district, which includes Roxbury, Dorchester, Fenway and part of the South End. Some suggested that the blueprint be copyrighted, while others said it should be used to vet candidates seeking to take over the post.

A performance review included in the workbook shows Fernandes Anderson is the councilor most out of alignment with Mayor Michelle Wu’s priorities, opposing the White Stadium project, challenging a redevelopment of Shattuck Hospital, and voting in favor of an elected School Committee, among other actions.

“I didn’t see that coming,” Fernandes Anderson said, “because I honestly vote according to whether I like Mayor Wu’s policies.”

That prompted some constituents to sound off on Mayor Wu, including Dianne Wilkerson, an ex-state senator whose political career ended after the feds busted her for taking a bribe.

“Looks like the Mayor did not support the District on ANY of the critical key issues impacting the D7 residents,” Wilkerson wrote in a comment during the virtual Town Hall. “Imagine that!”

Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association and vocal critic of the White Stadium renovation project, which carries a $172 million cost to city taxpayers, echoed Wilkerson.

“Tell me you are surprised,” he wrote, “given that all of the city agencies that are charged with protecting the rights of the public capitulated their authority and responsibility and APPROVED a plan for more than $100 MILLION without a plan of any kind for the destruction of White Stadium.”

The Town Hall came days after Fernandes Anderson participated in her final council meeting. While some colleagues showered her with praise, others sent a message that her time calling the shots in her district was over by voting against supporting the workbook.

Criminal case

Fernandes Anderson, 46, was federally indicted and arrested last December. Wu and five of her council colleagues, including the council president, called for her immediate resignation at the time — requests that she defied for months.

She pleaded guilty in early May to two of the six corruption charges — one count of wire fraud and one count of theft concerning a federal program. Four other wire fraud charges were dropped as part of a plea deal she entered into with federal prosecutors this past April.

The charges are tied to a kickback scheme Fernandes Anderson, 46, carried out at City Hall two years ago. The second-term councilor doled out a $13,000 bonus to one of her Council staffers, a relative but not an immediate family member, on the condition that $7,000 be kicked back to her.

The handoff was allegedly coordinated by text and took place in a City Hall bathroom in June 2023.

Fernandes Anderson highlighted Saturday that her office’s staffers will remain on the job, with Council President Ruthzee Louijeune supervising them administratively. District 7 will be without representation until after the next councilor is elected in November.

U.S. Attorney Leah Foley has recommended that Fernandes Anderson be sentenced to a year and a day in prison and ordered to pay $13,000 in restitution.

The councilor’s first not-so-subtle reference to her pending jail sentence during Saturday’s Town Hall came near the end of the nearly three-hour-long meeting.

“I’m going to be very happy staying home cooking every day, and God willing, I’ll stay home,” Fernandes Anderson said. “No one wants to go to college, not that college.”

“Anyway, c’mon, you’re supposed to smile with me,” she told the roughly 45 constituents in attendance. “It’s a dark joke.”

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