Office of Inspector General reveals Everett’s mayor Carlo DeMaria getting paid $180,000 during 2016-2022

By Andriani Maria Lamprinou

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that Mayor Carlo DeMaria was paid $180,000 along with other audit payments through the years of 2016-2022, and is now pressuring Everett’s city council to recover these sums of money.

In a public letter, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro explains how a misapplication of the city’s mayoral longevity ordinance between 2016-2022 allowed DeMaria to get $180,000, when the first time he was mayor was back in 2008. 

In February 2022, Shapiro and his office received a complaint about the said payments, according to an article by WCVB, prompting the investigation to start. In a statement, he also pointed out how DeMaria and his administration kept the payments hidden both from the public and the city council. 

Even though the longevity ordinance would pay the mayor $10,000 after every full term he served, that did not happen. DeMaria ended up with payments reaching up to $40,000 annually from 2018 to 2021, according to WCVB. Shapiro said that DeMaria’s economic decision to move the payments to a human resources line item, after already receiving $30,000 as a retroactive payment, made the payments less clear, according to WCVB.

Once the city council found out how much the mayor was collecting in payments, they decided to change the amount of ordinance to $1,700 annually. 

Shapiro urged the council to stop giving longevity payments for elected officials, and train public officials on “fiduciary obligations”, according to WCVB. He also talked about how the city council should inform the State Ethics Commission about longevity payments.

The DeMaria administration dnies the accusations, while the Everett City Council is working with the OIG and receiving legal advice on how they should recover the funds.