Lawrence Council Votes No Confidence in Mayor DePeña as Recall Drive Begins

The Lawrence City Council voted no confidence in Mayor Brian DePeña on Tuesday, Oct. 20, as organizers prepared to start collecting signatures to remove him through a recall election. DePeña faces state wiretapping and witness intimidation charges and federal fraud and money laundering charges, and has said he will not resign.

Six councilors voted for the measure, three voted present and one voted against it, NBC10 Boston reported. The vote is symbolic; the only way to remove the mayor is by recall.

"We as a city believe that the integrity of the government must be protected," Council President Jeovanny Rodriguez told WBUR. "I believe that the mayor should reconsider his position as mayor due to the fact that the interference of those cases with his local job and responsibilities is going to be a detriment to the residents." Rodriguez emphasized that the council is the only body that can vote no confidence and that its vote is the official opinion of the city, according to NBC10.

The lone no vote came from Councilor Marc Laplante, who said beforehand that the voters, not the council, should decide. "I firmly believe the ultimate question of confidence in our mayor should be decided by the people of Lawrence," he said, according to NBC10.

DePeña declined to comment on the vote and the recall effort, WBUR reported. In a September Facebook post, he wrote: "I understand that residents, employees, and members of the community may have questions and concerns. I ask everyone to allow the judicial process to take its course and to recognize that allegations are not convictions."

The recall effort has cleared its first step. City Clerk Eileen Bernal confirmed that her office certified 170 signatures on the affidavit requesting a recall, well above the 100 required under the city charter, WBUR reported. Once organizers receive the recall petition, expected this week, they will have 30 days to gather signatures from more than 7,000 registered voters.

If they succeed, DePeña would have five days to resign, Bernal told WBUR. If he does not, the question goes to voters in a special election. The ballot would ask whether DePeña should be recalled and would also list candidates who file to replace him if voters remove him.

Sarah Perez, one of the organizers, said she is aiming high. "We're looking for about 10,000 signatures. That's my goal. I want to get a better representation of who we are," she told WBUR. "When you have a mayor that has so many cases involved with the federal, with the state, and he's a person that is managing $400 million a year in the city, people don't trust him," Perez said. "So at this point, most of the people in the city don't trust him, and now the city council says the same."

The state case was brought by the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. DePeña was arraigned this month in Essex Superior Court on 14 counts of wiretapping and one count of witness intimidation, pleaded not guilty and was released on personal recognizance, NBC10 reported. That night, a council subcommittee voted to recommend the no-confidence measure to the full council.

According to the attorney general's office, DePeña had a security system installed in his office in 2023, separate from City Hall's surveillance cameras, which do not record sound, and the public was not told that the system recorded audio, NBC10 reported. The charges stem from a conversation between two city employees in March that the private cameras recorded "unbeknownst to at least one of the conversation participants," the office said. DePeña is accused of distributing copies of the recording to 14 people. Prosecutors allege he violated the witness intimidation statute in August in connection with the case.

DePeña's defense attorney, Neil Faigel, disputed the allegations outside court last week. "In no way shape or form did the mayor have any knowledge as to how the videos worked. He did not have passcodes to the videos and he could not access them," Faigel said, according to NBC10. A status hearing is scheduled for Dec. 9.

Separately, the FBI arrested DePeña at his home in August on federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering, NBC10 reported. Later that month, federal prosecutors also charged him in connection with a pandemic loan that he allegedly used to fund his election campaign and pay off high-interest mortgages and personal taxes. He has not been convicted of any charge.