Following weeks of press conferences, legal memos and debates, the Springfield City Council rejected a “no confidence” resolution targeting its president, Councilor Tracye Whitfield – but not before some confrontations in the council chambers.
Voting before a packed council gallery, a majority of councilors affirmed their confidence in Whitfield Monday night.
Seven of eleven voting members rejected a “no confidence” resolution put before them.
Getting to the vote took some time, as councilors and members of the public spoke out.
“If you agree that we were deceived and that … we reproach the council president's self-interested behavior, I ask you to support this resolution,” said Ward 6 Councilor Victor Davila amid jeers from the gallery. “If you are calculating, my beloved colleagues, that the elections are two years away and that the voters are going to forget, I caution you to be careful. People: do not forget this … deceive-ness…”
Whitfield and JETS Property Development, LLC - a company she co-managed up until early February - have been the subject of two city legal memorandums.
The first was partially initiated at Whitfield’s request, after she sought legal guidance over a Feb. 2 council vote.
The vote involved business concerning JETS, and while Whitfield did recuse herself, the timing became an issue.
Also an issue: an apparent lack of disclosure to her colleagues that she co-managed JETS at the time, and that the individual presenting on the item that night was her son.
The Feb. 5 review’s findings depicted repeated failures by Whitfield to disclose conflicts of interest with the city. Whitfield reportedly represented the company on several different occasions while serving as a councilor, according to City Solicitor Stephen Buoniconti.
The findings suggested various Mass. General Laws had been violated in different ways. Whitfield went on to admit mistakes were made, while also resigning from JETS in the days that followed.
But, as the council moved forward with rescinding the Feb. 2 vote, Davila requested a broader review of all city interactions with JETS. The result: a larger list of incidents, with some dating back to 2021.
For @WAMCRadio: In Springfield City Council Chambers, following an intense back-and-forth, a "no confidence" resolution re: Council President Tracye Whitfield has failed pic.twitter.com/dUB3PtAvub
— James Paleologopoulos (@WAMC_J_Paleo) March 3, 2026
Ward 2 Councilor Mike Fenton said the initial offense could be understood as a mistake – a mistimed recusal on a discontinuance vote, which would have seen city-owned property off of Wallace Street be turned over to its abutters, one of them being JETS.
However, he says, Whitfield taking part in a city auction soon after the Feb. 2 incident, and other acts, was troubling.
“We’re all human and mistakes happen. I take Councilor Whitfield at her word when she says that she made a mistake by failing to disclose her interest in the Wallace Street property deal - I do,” he said. “If that were all that happened, I would not support a vote of ‘no confidence’ tonight. However, the results of the solicitor's second report are what led me to support this vote of no confidence today. In that 100+ page report, it was revealed that Councilor Whitfield has violated ethics rules with what I would describe … as reckless abandon.”
The second report, issued on Feb. 12, featured emails showing Whitfield not just advocating for JETS among city departments, but in another case, confronting an Old Hill Neighborhood Council official.
The December correspondence involved Whitfield stating she would seek the city auditor’s services if the organization did not pay $2,000 it allegedly owed to a local worker.
Whitfield has previously said her intention was to advocate for that individual, while critics of the review have questioned why the Old Hill incident was included in the first place.
On Monday night, Councilor at Large Justin Hurst went a step further, calling Buoniconti into question.
“I will tell you that our current solicitor has no moral standing to author such a memo that Councilor Davila swears by,” the former council president said. “He has no ethical standing to author such a memo. In fact, he shouldn't even be bar’d to practice law, never mind serve as your solicitor.”
Referencing coverage by The Metro Record, Hurst appeared to allude to to a 2016 reprimand of Buoniconti by the state’s Board of Bar Overseers – an incident involving him allegedly forging the signature of a spouse.
The coverage also referenced Buoniconti stepping down from a local retirement board in 2021, after a state audit scrutinized his part-time, legal counsel role and its salary and benefits – an illegal arrangement and what Buoniconti considered “an honest mistake,” according to the Springfield Republican newspaper.
Hurst also accused Fenton of improperly disclosing a conflict of interest in 2021 over a separate discontinuance matter, something Fenton fiercely disputed.
Fenton claimed the situation differed dramatically from the Feb. 2 vote and did not involve an LLC and profiteering, but a neighborhood council bringing forward a petition to split a parcel up four-ways – Fenton being one of the abutters.
That discontinuance never happened, either, he said.
Other councilors in the chamber, such as Ward 8’s Zaida Govan, found the resolution to be overkill, especially given that the State Ethics Commission received the city’s legal review for its own analysis.
She noted Whitfield, who has already admitted to making mistakes and looking to make fixes, is also trying to lead a body as its first Black woman president - no easy feat given historic systems that have worked against officials like herself, she added.
“I'm urging us to have grace and to allow the process to play out. Every year, I think of a new topic to think about throughout the year... and this year, the first thing I thought about was the ‘Good Ole Boy’ system, and I looked it up because I wasn't sure if it was something we made up or they made up,” Govan told the council. “What it was is, in the late 1800s, right after slavery ended … straight white men, decided that they needed to have a system to make sure that they were in control and that they maintain control. That system still plays out today…”
Govan joined Hurst, Delgado and Councilors Malo Brown, Brian Santaniello, Kateri Walsh and Lavar Click-Bruce in voting down the resolution.
Fenton, Davila and Councilors Maria Perez and Melvin Edwards voted “yes.”
Ward 7 Councilor Gerry Martin was absent, while Whitfield recused herself from the item's deliberations.
In the wake of last month’s controversy, the council president previously vowed to install safeguards and familiarize herself with the state’s conflict-of-interest laws.
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Some audio used in this story was provided by Focus Springfield
