Hub traffic deputy quits after losing his license

It seemed rather strange behavior a few weeks ago when the city's deputy commissioner in charge of field operations for the Boston Transportation Department refused to drive anywhere.

His job, after all, is all about driving, according to his job description: planning, guiding, and enforcing traffic flow in Boston.

So city officials began investigating Daniel R. Hofmann and soon discovered that the deputy, a 49-year-old Hyde Park resident, didn't possess one of the most basic requirements of the job: a valid Massachusetts driver's license.

As it turns out, state officials ordered that Hofmann's license be suspended Dec. 18 after they discovered a litany of outstanding fines and license suspensions in New York State, including two convictions for driving while impaired that date to 1999, records show.

Hofmann, who began working at the Transportation Department in 1997 and became deputy commissioner in April 2000, never reported the convictions and suspensions to Boston officials and failed to tell them about the recent suspension in Massachusetts, according to three city officials briefed on the case who declined to be named because they did not have permission to speak publicly about it.

Hofmann resigned Friday after city officials confronted him about his record, the officials said.

City transportation officials declined to comment about the specific reasons for Hofmann's departure, saying it was a private personnel matter.

"Dan was a stellar public servant," Transportation Commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin said. "For the good of the department, he decided to resign, and we wish him and his family well."

Hofmann did not return several messages left at a phone number listed for his address in public records.

When he began working for the city in 1997, he had only a few outstanding fines on his driving record from his home state of New York, including one in 1991 and another in 1992 for unspecified violations, records show.

In February 1998, he applied for and received a Massachusetts driver's license. On Feb. 14 of that year and on April 25, he was charged with driving while impaired in New York, offenses for which he was convicted the following year, according to officials at the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.

On May 26, 1998, his license was suspended for letting his auto insurance lapse, and on June 3, 1998, Hofmann's New York license was revoked for refusing to take a chemical substance test, his New York driving record shows. It is unclear whether the test was related to the "driving while impaired" charges or another incident, the New York officials said. He license was not reinstated, they said.

Hofmann continued to drive city-owned trucks in Boston, and his Massachusetts driver's license was not suspended; in fact it was renewed without incident in December 2001, his record shows. But when it came time to renew the license last year, state officials say they discovered the outstanding fines and suspensions listed for the first time on the National Driver Register.

Amie Bratton, spokeswoman for the Registry of Motor Vehicles, said earlier checks of the register in 1998 and 2001 came up clean. The Registry sent Hofmann a letter on Dec. 18, notifying him that his license would be suspended for one year, beginning Jan. 17.

Hofmann's wife, Ann Palermo-Hofmann, an administrative assistant with the city's Department of Arts and Cultural Development, then began driving him to his transportation office on Frontage Road before driving to work at City Hall, the officials said. She drove him to meetings, they said, and he refused to drive anywhere.

City officials had Hofmann's city-assigned sport utility vehicle towed from his Hyde Park driveway to a city lot Friday night.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.