The finance chief of Concord, Massachusetts, has been terminated from his job weeks after being placed on leave and filing a whistleblower notice with the town.
Anthony Ansaldi, on Monday, was officially given a “notice of termination,” local news outlet The Concord Bridge reported this week. Reasons for his termination were not immediately clear as of Wednesday; city representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
But, in an August letter to Town Manager Kerry Lafleur prior to termination, Ansaldi said he was being blamed for unauthorized execution of contracts, deficiencies in budget preparation and accuracy, problems with conversion to a new payroll system and other management failures. He described the town’s current payroll system as “a complete disaster and embarrassment prior to my arrival.”
Ansaldi went on to say the town’s problems with him are not due to “a performance issue” but instead stem from a “political issue.”
“There are many factors that contribute to inefficiencies, poor execution and failed implementations, but any remedies cannot be successful without support from the leader at the top, nor can that series of faulty decisions be blamed on a single person who does not have the authority to make the critical decisions necessary,” Ansaldi wrote in the letter obtained by CFO.com.
Ansaldi has been on paid leave since June. Then, in July, he filed a whistleblower notice with the town, alleging he had uncovered “many deficiencies and improprieties” in Lafleur’s handling of municipal finances.
He alleged the town was attempting to push him out of his job after he declined to engage in what he described as “unethical and potentially illegal conduct.”
“As a result of raising his legitimate concerns about these ethical and legal issues, Mr. Ansaldi has been retaliated against for his objections to and refusals to engage in conduct, which he reasonably believed to be illegal, a threat to public welfare and safety and/or in violation of the Massachusetts State Ethics laws as well as Town of Concord’s financial policies and procedures,” an attorney for Ansaldi wrote in the July 1 whistleblower notice. “The retaliation includes, but is not limited to, the Town actions taken to eliminate Mr. Ansaldi’s employment as CFO with an involuntary separation agreement.”
Ansaldi had also requested the University of Massachusetts Collins Center conduct a review of the town’s finances, but Lafleur “resisted” the idea and said there was no money in the budget for it, according to the notice.
The notice added that “the Town of Concord and its agents have now concocted a [fictitious] basis to retaliate against Mr. Ansaldi in an effort to conceal their own failures and silence his knowledge of these events.”
Lafleur told the Concord Bridge that the town could “easily refute or explain” Ansaldi’s allegations.
The termination comes as Concord was exploring new “payment in lieu of taxes” programs for local nonprofits.
Ansaldi’s whistleblower claim is one of several lodged by finance chiefs within recent years. For instance, the former CFO of Siena Heights University, which is slated to close at the end of the 2025-2026 school year, had been put on unpaid leave after filing a whistleblower suit. The former CFO of animal welfare organization ASPCA also filed a whistleblower suit against the organization after he was fired.
