A court-appointed receiver of a financially-strapped Boston nursing home defended his hire of disgraced ex-senator Dianne Wilkerson, after “allegations of nepotism and self-dealing” were lodged against her in Superior Court last month.
In a post-hearing order, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Belezos, who is overseeing hearings regarding the receivership of Roxbury’s Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center, raised “significant concerns” about the considerable pay Wilkerson testified that she was making at a facility on the brink of bankruptcy.
“On April 16, the court heard testimony from several witnesses regarding allegations of nepotism and self-dealing by a member of the receivership’s team,” Belezos wrote in the April 22 order. “The subject of such allegations, Ms. Wilkerson offered, under pains of penalties of perjury, testimony that she is an employee of the EPBHC, receiving full benefits, being paid at a rate of $82 per hour, working an average of 90 hours per week.
“If such testimony is accurate, it raises significant concerns as to the rate of remuneration being paid to Ms. Wilkerson by an institution in receivership with a projected 2025 loss in the area of $4.4 million,” the judge added.
Wilkerson, an ex-state senator whose political career ended after she was busted by the feds for taking a bribe, is executive assistant to Joseph Feaster, the court-appointed receiver of the troubled nursing home.
She was present for a hearing held Thursday in Superior Court, but didn’t take part in the day’s proceedings, and deferred comment to Feaster.
Speaking with reporters after a roughly half-hour hearing, Feaster defended his decision to hire Wilkerson and her compensation, in the wake of last month’s mismanagement allegations. He described Wilkerson as “talented” and said she was thoroughly vetted before being added to the facility’s receivership team.
“Donald Trump has a past, and he’s president of the United States,” Feaster said when asked about Wilkerson’s checkered past. “She served her time. She doesn’t have a CORI. She has nothing which would preclude her from working, and so that has to be the determinant.
“So that was looked at, because I certainly am not going to have any situation which would be problematic for the organization or for me,” he said. “She’s employable and she’s talented.”
Wilkerson resigned from the state Senate in 2008 and spent more than two years in jail after agreeing to plead guilty to charges tied to a federal corruption bust. She was infamously shown stuffing $1,000 in cash bribes into her bra in a photo that was released by the feds.
Feaster said Wilkerson didn’t perjure herself on the stand last month, when she testified about her compensation. He said there was a “misinterpretation” about his assistant’s testimony, when she said she works 90 hours a week, when in fact, she gets paid on a bi-weekly basis for a total of 80 hours.
“I think that she was saying I work more hours than what I get paid for, and what we wanted to confirm is that … she only gets paid for bi-weekly, 80 hours,” Feaster said.
Wilkerson told the Herald last month that it’s true that she makes $82 an hour and works 90 hours a week, but “no one asked me a third question.”
“How many hours do I actually get paid for? And the answer to that question is 40. That’s all,” she said at the time.
Feaster also said he saw Wilkerson’s hourly rate as reasonable, given that he makes $450 an hour as the facility’s receiver.
Benjamin Healthcare, which has roughly 80 patients, was placed into receivership last April to avoid the facility’s closure and allow it to begin a financial turnaround. Wilkerson was hired as Feaster’s executive assistant upon his appointment as receiver at that time.
This week’s hearing centered around the facility’s finances, whether receivership should be continued and what the court-appointed team’s contingency plan was if a buyer doesn’t materialize from the bid process.
In a May 14 court filing from Feaster, the “receiver informed the court” at the April 16 hearing “that the most viable path forward for the facility to continue operating would be through soliciting proposals for third party owner/operator.”
Belezos, the judge, pressed for a breakdown of the facility’s financial information from the receivership team, and set a deadline for May 29.
A lawyer for Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, which represents state agencies like the Department of Health, said the state wants to keep the Roxbury facility open, rather than move forward with a closure and transfer of patients.
To try to recover funds, Feaster is pursuing a civil lawsuit that has been filed against the facility’s former administrator, Tony Francis, who ran the Benjamin before he was appointed as receiver, Commonwealth Beacon reported.
The lawsuit alleges that Francis “siphoned” more than $3 million in funds from the facility, per a prior court filing from Feaster.
The matter returns to court on June 28.
