Personnel committee advances appointments but is dominated by union concerns over leaked Maverick report and police chief search

The Lawrence City Personnel Committee on Jan. 29 moved nominations for Daniel McCarthy as planning director and Sadie Camilo Perdomo to the zoning board to the full City Council with favorable recommendations, while members spent substantial time addressing union concerns about the police chief search and a leaked investigative report.

Daniel McCarthy, a 21-year city planning employee, described his background in planning and said he would rely on department staff and an updated organizational structure if confirmed. The committee voted to send his confirmation to the full council with a favorable recommendation.

The committee also heard from Sadie Camilo Perdomo, who said she was a Lawrence realtor and former general-contractor employee and would serve the remainder of a zoning board term ending Jan. 1, 2026. Members moved her confirmation to the full council with a favorable recommendation.

Union statement and leaked report concerns: A large portion of the meeting was devoted to a prepared statement read by James (Jim) Razzo, the police department's accreditation officer and a union executive-board representative. Razzo said he was "exercising all my rights under the Mass. Gen. Laws, Chapter 149, Section 158, the whistleblower law" and alleged an attempt to restrict union members' participation in committee proceedings. He called for a transparent review of how an investigative report prepared by a private consultant (the "Maverick" report) was disseminated to the public and urged the council to investigate.

Razzo said the council had been told the consultant would redact the report before distribution but that an unredacted or partially redacted document appeared publicly within hours after a meeting. "It is concerning to me that this confidential ... was at least negligently released by the city, at the worst intentionally," he said. He asked the committee to examine whether the city attorney or other officials had improperly withheld witnesses from appearing before the committee and to consider subpoenas if necessary.

Councilors and staff response: Committee members said they shared concerns about access and transparency. Committee members asked the acting human-resources director, Attorney Carol Garcia, to provide a status report on outstanding hostile-work-environment complaints and to identify which matters had been assigned to external investigators. Garcia said she had identified at least one matter in the police department that would be referred to an outside vendor for investigation and agreed to provide a nonconfidential summary listing numbers of complaints and their procedural status.

Search-committee composition and process: Committee members discussed whether department representatives had been included on the police chief search committee and whether the mayor's office had interfered with consultant communications. The acting HR director said the mayor planned to release the names of search-committee members and that those members had accepted; she said she would reach out to begin scheduling meetings with the consultant. Union speakers and some councilors pressed for representatives with operational knowledge of the department to be on the committee.

Next steps: The committee re-tabled a previous agenda item on the police chief search so that the full council could discuss outstanding questions; the committee requested a timeline and records of consultant communications and expects the administration to provide the consultant's timeline, the status of redaction/waivers and answers about how and when the report was shared publicly.