Rhode Island

Eight Months on Paid Leave: Providence Still Writing $128K Checks to a DPW Deputy It Won’t Explain

Virtue Forge briefing · Based on WPRI Target 12 reporting by Alexandra Leslie and Eli Sherman (Sept. 15, 2026)

What happened

WPRI’s Target 12 reported Sept. 15 that Maureen McManus, deputy director of Providence’s Department of Public Works, has continued collecting her $128,153 annual salary while on paid leave since Jan. 10, 2026—about eight months with no public explanation from City Hall.

McManus has held the deputy-director post since May 2021 and ranks second to DPW Director Patricia Coyne-Fague (appointed 2023). She did not respond to WPRI’s requests for comment. Mayor Brett Smiley’s spokesperson, Austin Grondin, said the city does not comment on personnel matters.

The City Council’s Committee on Claims and Pending Suits has met four times since June on a “personnel matter” involving McManus and taken no action; the issue has not been raised in full Council meetings. The committee was expected to meet a fifth time the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 16, potentially to discuss and vote on her employment. Committee Chairman John Goncalves told WPRI the panel has been in a “holding pattern” as “more questions arise.”

McManus was placed on leave shortly before two major snowstorms; Smiley and Coyne-Fague later faced criticism over cleanup after a late-January foot-plus storm and the Blizzard of ’26’s historic 26 inches. As deputy director, McManus helps with day-to-day management, budget preparation, and financial reporting—work that, per WPRI, proceeded without her assistance through the spring. State Rep. David Morales, who defeated Smiley in the Democratic mayoral primary, previously told 12 News that if elected in November he planned to hire a new DPW director.

Fact check: WPRI does not report why McManus was placed on leave and does not allege a specific investigation. Separate the documented payroll facts (salary, leave start date, committee meetings) from any speculation about misconduct. Timing near snowstorms is chronological context, not proof she was “kept off plows.”

Virtue Forge commentary

Eight months of six-figure pay with no public accounting is not personnel privacy—it is opacity bought with other people’s money.

Bias check: Target 12 is doing basic accountability journalism; the Smiley administration’s “no comment on personnel” line is standard and incomplete when the taxpayer is the one writing the checks. Goncalves’s “holding pattern” quote is on the record; treat campaign plans from Morales as politics, not a finding about McManus.

Competent, humble government can protect legitimate privacy without treating a deputy’s eight-month paid absence as a black box. If Claims Committee members cannot explain the bill to residents, they should not keep paying it.

Original reporting

Read the underlying coverage:

WPRI Target 12 — Providence official has collected $128K salary while on leave for 8 months (Alexandra Leslie & Eli Sherman, Sept. 15, 2026)