FILE PHOTO
Andrew Bisignani.
By GAYLA CAWLEY
SALEM — Andrew Bisignani, 70, pleaded guilty to multiple crimes committed during his tenure as town manager of Saugus and Nahant, including procurement fraud, destroying public records, and municipal bid rigging, in Salem Superior Court on Thursday.
Salem Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley sentenced Bisignani to two years of probation, including six months of home confinement, to begin after the federal home confinement sentence he is currently serving — which stems from tax evasion charges — is completed in January.
While under house arrest, Bisignani will only be able to leave his home for work, community service, medical and court appointments and religious services. He was also ordered to pay a $60,000 fine, or $5,000 for each of the 12 charges.
Bisignani served as town manager of Saugus from Jan. 1, 2009 to Jan. 12, 2012, and as town administrator of Nahant from Feb. 1, 2012 to June 30, 2014.
“Throughout my 37 years of public service, including, specifically, my tenure as town manager of Saugus and as town administrator of Nahant, my concerns and priorities were always the health, safety, and wellbeing of the community I served, never my own self-interest,” Bisignani said in a statement.
“I was not charged with, nor did I plead guilty to, any act of personal gain,” he continued. “My objective now is to move forward in my life, unencumbered by this legal matter. My hope is that the citizens of the communities I have served know that I always acted in what I believed to be in their best interests, and that they will judge me on the totality of my public service and on my accomplishments attendant thereto.”
In court, Bisignani apologized, saying that he regretted the decisions he has made, and added that he realizes they were not always in the best interest of the public.
Bisignani admitted to improperly funneling public contracts to favored contractors while serving as Nahant town administrator and as Saugus town manager, which violated procurement laws pertaining to the expenditure of municipal funds. Such laws dictate the process by which public funds may be spent, and how vendors who will provide services to the town are selected, prosecutors said.
He was indicted on Dec. 30, 2014 after a two-year investigation by the Essex County District Attorney’s office, which began after improper spending was discovered by forensic auditors, who examined the town of Saugus finances after Bisignani left his position as town manager in January 2012.
Bisignani admitted to attempting to conceal his scheme by altering and destroying documents that an Essex County Grand Jury had subpoenaed from the town of Nahant. Prosecutors said that Bisignani met with one of the Nahant selectmen during the grand jury investigation to discuss his continued employment as town administrator. During the meeting, Bisignani secretly recorded the conversation without the selectman’s knowledge.
Prosecutors said the scheme orchestrated by Bisignani during his stints as town manager in both towns included hiring choice contractors to complete town services, bypassing a public procurement, or bidding process. He directed the town of Saugus to pay invoices for projects that weren’t ever advertised, not subject to any public bidding, and were identified as “emergency” procurements that weren’t approved by the Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, prosecutors said.
Those invoices approved by Bisignani only disclosed a portion of a project’s cost, designated projects as emergency work, and did not include payment of prevailing wages. Payments for split invoices were also spread out, concealing the actual cost of projects, and hiding the need for those projects to have gone through a public bidding and advertising process, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said his failure to comply with procurement laws caused the town of Saugus to hire a contractor that had been banned from providing services to municipalities by the Department of Industrial Accidents during that time period. Bisignani also gave approval for multiple payments by the town of Saugus to contractors for the same services, prosecutors said.
Assistant District Attorney Karen Hopwood recommended a state prison sentence of 1½ to 2 years, followed by three years of probation, arguing that it was impossible to calculate the financial impact of Bisignani’s crimes on the towns of Saugus and Nahant, and that it couldn’t be verified that work was done properly or at all.
Hopwood said there’s a sentiment that Bisignani carried out his crimes for the benefit of the town, but that it appears the benefit was only to the vendors or the defendant. She said Bisignani came from Revere and had worked in city government prior to coming to Saugus — this was not a situation where he did not understand his responsibilities or obligations to the town. She said the proof that what he did in Saugus was intentional is shown by him carrying out the same crimes during his tenure in Nahant, and then trying to cover it up.
She said Bisignani had people and companies that did work for Saugus perform work at his house and gave Nahant jobs to people who had never worked for Nahant, but who had done work for the defendant.
Bisignani’s attorney, Tracy Miner, argued during her sentencing recommendation for probation that her client was accepting responsibility and that there wasn’t any evidence that he had benefited personally. She said what he did was out of expediency and that much of the work was emergency work, and that it benefited the towns. She said he chose favored contractors, people he had worked with previously, because people tend to call the people they know and who will do a good job.
Feeley said that the fact he was imposing probation, rather than prison time, is not a reflection on any feeling he had that Bisignani’s conduct was not criminal, but speaks much more to the mitigating factors. He said there was no proof that the actions were for personal gain, there was any loss from the vendor contracts, and that the work wasn’t needed or completed properly.
“This scheme charged in this case did not just create an unfair playing field, but an almost entirely secret playing field where hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds were spent without any procurement process or transparency,” District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in a statement. “The effective administration of government depends upon a basic trust that persons with authority over public funds comply with the law.
“Mr. Bisignani not only betrayed that trust (of) the taxpayers of Saugus and Nahant, who entrusted him to manage their communities’ resources effectively and according (to) the law, but he also thwarted investigators, secretly recorded one of the elected officials to whom he answered, and destroyed town records in order to conceal his crimes,” Blodgett continued.
Bisignani is currently serving a six-month home confinement sentence after he pleaded guilty last December to tax evasion in U.S. District Court. He admitted to four counts of filing false tax returns and failing to report more than $375,000 of his income on his federal tax returns over four years. He had already served four months in the Coolidge House, prosecutors said.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.
