How Everett mayor's campaign aide got hired as a $550-an-hour city spokesman

Boston Globe

4 days ago

Public relations consultant Dot Joyce — one of three communications professionals city officials said they contacted — said the request from Everett City Hall landed in her inbox the morning it was due. She did not bother to bid.
'A thorough response to a request of this nature would have taken us longer than eight hours to produce,' she said.
The city did contact her again a few weeks later, she acknowledged, but she again declined to submit a quote.
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In the end, the lone bidder was Regan Communications Group, which was already working for the mayor's campaign
and
submitted a detailed, 11-page proposal right on time.
The flaws in the procurement
process are detailed in public records sought by the Globe amid broader scrutiny of DeMaria's use of taxpayer money.
A state investigator reported in February that DeMaria had improperly received $180,000 in bonuses, with the largest payments hidden in an unrelated section of the city's budget. DeMaria, a Democrat first elected mayor in 2007, has refused to return the bonuses and insisted he did nothing wrong. He used city-paid lawyers to push back against the report until city councilors balked at paying his legal fees.
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as any city's communications director would,
or specifically
that of the mayor,
who faces reelection this year. Regan confused matters further
Regan declined to answer questions for this story or even to say whether he is currently doing work for the city. His firm provided a statement that said: 'Regan Communications Group, as a matter of policy, does not publicly discuss contracts, privileged communications, or work process related to clients.'
Regan is working for the mayor's November reelection campaign, which has paid his firm $17,000 since March, state campaign finance records show.
DeMaria declined to comment for this story.
His chief of staff, Erin Deveney, said that for the 2023 contract, the city initially reached out only to Regan, who had done communications work for the city in the past. (That year marked the first time he was also working for the mayor's campaign, according to campaign finance records.) When Regan's quote exceeded $10,000, she said, the city had to seek other vendors.
Under state law, government agencies must seek competitive quotes
from at least three vendors for contracts expected to cost between $10,000 and $50,000; more expensive work requires competitive sealed bids or proposals. The intent is to prevent favoritism and to promote competition. The procurement officer, also under the law, must keep on file the names, dates, and proposed cost of every quotation sought.
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In 2022, the city had
lost its communications director, who
resigned under pressure after a
leaked meeting video showed her
To dispel the potential 'appearance of conflict of interest' when he hired Regan, DeMaria filed a public disclosure in March 2023 that suggested the appointment was temporary, until a new full-time communications director could be hired.
DeMaria
also
wrote that the city had solicited quotes for the work in accordance with state procurement law.
'The only vendor who responded to the solicitation was Regan Communication Group,' DeMaria wrote. 'Regan Communication Group is not being awarded the contract with the City because of my involvement with them.'
In response to a question from the Globe, Deveney said three additional
firms had been notified of the job: Dot Joyce Consulting; Seven Letter Communications; and Grant Communications Consulting Group.
However,
Grant Communications told the Globe it could not find any record of a request for quotes from Everett. Seven Letter Consulting received an inquiry around the time Joyce received her second email from the city and days before DeMaria disclosed he was hiring Regan.
None of the three firms responded.
The city also never provided the Globe its initial request for quotes, which offered the one-day turnaround deadline, and which the Globe obtained independently.
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The vice president of the Massachusetts Association of Public Purchasing Officials said the process sounded flawed.
In soliciting services, he said, municipalities should give vendors about three weeks to digest requirements and develop a proposal.
'One day? That's totally inappropriate,' said the official, Michael Richards.
But if only one company bid, then technically, the lone respondent was the lowest quote. 'In a roundabout way, I don't think it's illegal,' said Richards. 'It's not how I would do it.'
The work that Regan billed the city for in 2023 included meetings with the attorney representing DeMaria in his personal defamation suit against a local newspaper and 'continuous research and strategy in an effort to change the image of the City of Everett after all of the negative publicity.'
At the time, the Everett School Committee had just voted not to renew the contract of the school
filed suit against the city and mayor, alleging racism, sexism, and retaliation. Two years earlier, at his request, DeMaria had become a voting member of that school committee.
Regan bills the city of Everett $550 an hour for his work on his firm's behalf, records show. His work for the city did not end after the city hired a full-time communications director in August
2024. That director, who left last month, was being paid $115,000 a year.
The city offered Regan a new $40,000 contract in 2024 — apparently avoiding competition entirely this time.
The city could not provide the Globe with any proof that it sought quotes from other vendors. Regan got another $10,000 purchase order from the city for work later that year, public records show.
Regan's 2024 duties included promoting DeMaria's victory in a defamation lawsuit against a local newspaper, which gave the mayor a $1.1 million settlement and forced the Everett Leader Herald to shut down.
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At a budget meeting last week, a city official acknowledged that one
recent
$10,000-plus payment to Regan came from a line item in the mayor's office budget described only as 'other expenses.' The city's proposed
budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in July, calls for 'other expenses' to triple — causing Everett officials to fret that the mayor's campaign spokesman could be paid by the city during an election year.
'It's a conflict of interest to use the public money to pay a communications company that is serving him as a candidate,' said Council President Stephanie Martins.
All told, the city has paid Regan Communications $225,675 since 2020, public records show.
The Globe first filed a public records request in December seeking documents related to Regan's past work for the city. The newspaper did not receive any records until after filing a second request in March and making successful appeals to the state's Supervisor of Public Records.
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at