A greedy DC official who earned a six-figure taxpayer-funded salary was forced to resign after an investigation found she also earned six figures at Freddie Mac.
Carolina Lian announced Wednesday that she would resign from her position as deputy director of the District’s Buildings Department following an investigation by the city’s Ethics and Accountability Board, which found she violated the code of conduct in four different ways while working in both jobs. WUSA reports.
The fine was $25,000 for the violations.
The next day, Lian also announced he was resigning from his elected position as a Northern Virginia city councilman.
But she he insisted to the Falls Church News-Press She simply made an “administrative error” and called the investigation “very petty.”
Caroline Lian was forced to resign from her position as deputy director of the DC Department of Buildings following an ethics investigation.
The DC government investigation found that Lian began working at the Department of Buildings in October 2022 as its director of operations, a position that paid $149,750 each year.
A year later, she was promoted to deputy director, the second-highest-ranking official in the Buildings Department, which brought her a pay increase of $175,000 a year.
In your position, you would work in the office on Mondays and Fridays, and from home from Tuesday to Thursday.
But unbeknownst to the government, she had already been working at Freddie Mac, also known as Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., since 2015.
Lian was a third-party risk management director at a private sector company and worked from home Monday to Friday and in the office Tuesday to Thursday.
In a third position known to the administration, she was elected to serve a four-year term on the Falls Church City Council from 2022 to 2025, a position that paid $9,200 a year.
The DC Ethics and Accountability Board found that she failed to disclose that she was earning another six-figure salary from Freddie Mac.
But on her required 2022 and 2023 public financial disclosures, in which city employees must disclose any outside activities or employment in which they earn more than $200, Lian failed to report her Freddie Mac earnings, investigators found.
She disclosed her work on the City Council, but recorded her time incorrectly on at least 10 occasions when she said she was working in person on D.C. government work but was actually attending City Council meetings.
These included budget meetings he attended in person, as seen in the video, on Friday mornings when he was supposed to be at the Buildings Department. NBC Washington report.
The investigation further found that in 2022, Lian underreported his earnings to the city council, claiming he earned less than $1,000.
He later filed an amendment saying he had mistakenly chosen the wrong income category.
The Ethics Board fined him $25,000 for the violations, with the full amount to come from his final paycheck from the district government or compensation for unused annual leave, according to WUSA.
“I’ve corrected the form, paid the fine and now I’m moving on,” Lian told the News-Press.
In a third position that DC government was aware of, Lian (second from left) was elected to serve a four-year term on the Falls Church City Council from 2022 to 2025, a position paying $9,200 a year.
But after the incident, Falls Church city officials said they conducted their own investigation and found that Lian only listed Freddie Mac as his employee and “did not disclose his employment relationship with the District of Columbia,” a city spokeswoman said.
City officials later referred the matter to the state prosecutor for investigation, and Lian also resigned from his position there.
Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi said Saturday she “values Caroline’s service to the community and will miss working with her.”
“As an agency, we will continue to focus on the priorities we have heard from the community,” the mayor said. He told the News-Press, He added that he would soon make an announcement regarding Lian’s vacant seat on the city council.
In the meantime, however, he called for compassion.
‘Our city is special because of the people who have dedicated their time and energy here.
“Let’s be kind to each other and lead from a place of positive intentions; we’re too small a city to be any other way.”
Meanwhile, the Arlington County District Attorney told NBC Washington that her office is working with local police to investigate whether Lian committed fraud on her city paperwork.
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