WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WPRI) — Former Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt appears to have "knowingly violated" the law when she had the city pay $1.1 million to her former boss for five acres of vacant land last year, according to a newly released investigation.

The 141-page report by former Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Aaron Weisman, who's now in private practice, indicates that Baldelli-Hunt wanted the Mendon Road land so badly that she kept the deal secret from her staff as well as other elected officials.

She also negotiated the price tag with the former boss, Raymond Bourque, without any outside assessments, according to the report. City Hall staffers told Weisman they feared losing their jobs if they told anyone about the deal.

Badelli-Hunt and Bourque refused to cooperate with Weisman, who interviewed about 30 current and former city workers as part of his probe. Weisman said the "age and infirmities" of Bourque, 91, may have played a role in his refusal to participate.

Baldelli-Hunt's attorney Richard Ratcliffe told Weisman, "I don't see any reason why [Baldelli-Hunt] should cooperate with this investigation," according to the report.

The former mayor didn't respond to a Target 12 request for comment Friday, and she hasn't answered any questions about the land-deal scandal since a Target 12 investigation first revealed its existence in November. She resigned as mayor two weeks later, citing health reasons.

When reporters recently pressed Baldelli-Hunt about the land deal, she replied, "That’s an issue that I will be addressing at another time."

As Target 12 first reported, Bourque and Baldelli-Hunt were longtime business associates and the former mayor once listed Bourque as her boss on state ethics forms. The city has since reversed the deal and the City Council subsequently hired Weisman for $15,000 to investigate what happened.

"[There is] legitimate basis to believe the city's purchase of the Mendon Road property ... was not an arm's length/'fair-market-value transaction,'" Weisman wrote in his report, adding that the evidence raises the prospect that the deal was done "for reasons undisclosed by the mayor to her constituents."

'Keep their mouths shut'

Weisman said he concluded that Baldelli-Hunt and city planning director Michael Debroisse "appear to have knowingly violated Woonsocket legal provisions that were specifically put in place to ensure that all large dollar amount transactions are, truly, in the best interests of the citizens of Woonsocket."

Current Woonsocket Mayor Christopher Beauchamp told Target 12 Debroisse took a personal day on Friday. The mayor has scheduled a meeting with the director to talk about his future employment on Monday morning, he added. Beauchamp said he wouldn't make any decisions until after they talk.

"We're all human beings, we all have families," he said. "I'm a compassionate guy, but if you screwed up, it is what it is."

Target 12 initially reported that the former mayor pushed the deal through without first getting City Council approval, which is required by law on all purchases over $100,000. Weisman described her approach as a strategy of "as-little-disclosure-as-possible."

"The purchase of the Mendon Road Property was to be and ultimately was consummated with as little disclosure to anyone as possible, per the implicit and/or explicit directive of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt," Weisman wrote.

Weisman interviewed several employees who said they knew the mayor needed council approval, but they chose not to flag it to anybody because they feared for their jobs.

Based on an interview with Debroisse, Weisman said, "It was clear to him that only the mayor was to reach out to other city department heads, the City Council, and others; had he done so, his position with the city could have been jeopardized."

Other employees said the mayor personally instructed them to "keep their mouths shut," according to the report.

Weisman said it was likely Baldelli-Hunt knew she needed City Council approval for the deal, but chose instead to keep them in the dark. As evidence, he pointed to other instances when the mayor used city and federal funds for big purchases and communicated to her staff the need to receive council approval.

"The mayor was not at all ignorant of the law," Weisman wrote. "It is reasonable to conclude that the mayor quite consciously -- and in violation of a provision of the Woonsocket City Charter -- kept the $1.13 million property purchase from the members of the Woonsocket City Council."

In the middle of 2023, Debroisse's team even approached then-council president Christopher Beauchamp, who owns a paving and construction business, and asked for an estimate on a paving job, according to the report. Weisman said Debroisse's team didn't tell Beauchamp it was for the Mendon Road property.

Beauchamp told Target 12 on Friday the request for a cost estimate came through an email, which he shared with Weisman. He provided some estimates based on dimensions, but he reiterated he never knew it was for the Mendon Road property.

"The email didn't have any more information about it," he said.

And it wasn't just the council who wasn't aware of the deal.

Weisman said city solicitor Michael Leppizzera wasn't made aware of the deal, and public works director Steven D'Agostino -- whom he described as "a longtime friend and confidant of the mayor" -- was "left totally in the dark."

'This project was [Baldelli-Hunt's] baby'

Baldelli-Hunt didn't seek any type of independent land assessment before agreeing to the $1.1 million price tag through direct negotiations with Bourque, according to the report.

The price was agreed upon despite the city assessor's office last year valuing the vacant land at just $197,900. Baldelli-Hunt said she wanted to build affordable housing there.

"There seems to be no substantiation at all to justify the city of Woonsocket paying Mr. Bourque $1.13 million for the Mendon Road Property," Weisman wrote.

Initially, Debroisse had said the $1.1 million was based on comparable property sales his staff pulled from the city's assessor's database. But Weisman interviewed Debroisse's staff, who told him they had "no insight or knowledge into how the $1.1 million sales price came to be."

At best, Weisman said, a new hire did some Google searches "at her own initiative," which proved inconclusive.

Weisman said he also discovered Baldelli-Hunt and Bourque had been negotiating over the land for years before the deal went through last year. According to the report, the city's former planning director Stephen Lima said he attended a meeting in the summer of 2019 where there was a "heated discussion" between the former mayor and Bourque over how the land would be used.

"Mr. Bourque wanted to use the property for the development of duplex properties, while the mayor strongly and very loudly pushed back, stating that such duplex development was not what they -- meaning she and Mr. Bourque -- had agreed upon," Weisman wrote.

In a later instance, the city's federal regulatory compliance officer Brian Hull said he heard the mayor say the $1.1 million price "was what Mr. Bourque wanted for the property," and that the mayor deemed the cost "fair."

"It was clear that this project was [Baldelli-Hunt's] baby," Hull said in the report. "It was her project."

Even Bourque's own land attorney, Lloyd Gariepy, said he thought the price seemed "rather high," given the low density of the vacant land. When he raised the question to his client, "Mr. Bourque replied something to the effect of, 'Well, that's what the city is offering to pay for it,'" according to the report.

Weisman acknowledged it wasn't possible to "definitively explain" why Baldelli-Hunt decided to steer the $1.1 million in city-controlled U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HOME funds to Bourque for the land, citing their refusal to cooperate.

But based on everything he gathered, Weisman expressed confidence that Baldelli-Hunt blatantly and intentionally violated the law.

"It is reasonable to conclude that the mayor, in the purchase of the Mendon Road Property, may have been motivated by reasons other than the best interests of the citizens of Woonsocket," he wrote.

The report was submitted to the city this week and made public as part of an agenda for a City Council meeting slated for Monday.

City Council President John Ward said the council plans to refer the findings to state and federal law enforcement, along with Gov. Dan McKee and the General Assembly.

“It’s a bit astounding to me how it was so well hidden," Ward said Friday, adding that Weisman's findings "speak to how she views her own importance over that of the people she's supposed to be working with."

Ward is currently challenging Beauchamp in this fall's contest for mayor. They also face a third candidate, Keith Harrison.

Alexandra Leslie contributed to this report.