A commerce affiliation for Massachusetts landlords is in a authorized battle with the Metropolis of Boston over public information it says town withheld to cover illegal lobbying from housing advocates that influenced the mayor’s stalled lease management plan.
Douglas Quattrochi, government director of MassLandlords, Inc., which filed a lawsuit towards the Metropolis of Boston in Suffolk Superior Court docket final yr, alleges in an Aug. 7 affidavit that town failed to provide 10 paperwork he believes to exist across the formation of town’s Hire Stabilization Advisory Committee.
“I found the combined response to be primarily off-topic, missing documents I believe to exist, missing another document I know to exist, in bad faith designed to hide unlawful lobbying activities, developer interests, and donor influence,” Quattrochi, whose group opposes lease management, wrote within the affidavit.
“I believe Boston’s delayed and incomplete responses are consistent with a desire to shield from scrutiny certain public officials, the mayor in particular, and the unregistered lobbyists who unlawfully advance their private interests at public expense,” he added.
A primary listening to within the case on MassLandlords’ movement for the court docket to examine the Metropolis of Boston’s e-mail techniques for the document Quattrochi stated he is aware of to exist, because it pertains to an e-mail on lease management he despatched to Mayor Michelle Wu, is about for subsequent Friday in Suffolk Superior Court docket.
If that doc turns up, MassLandlords’ movement seeks subsequent motion from town to facilitate the commerce group’s supervised entry to examine metropolis data techniques for different paperwork associated to the information request.
The mayor’s workplace on Friday deferred remark to town’s newest court docket submitting on Oct. 4, “particularly where it states in the first paragraph that the city produced all the responsive records and the case is moot.”
The Hire Stabilization Advisory Committee’s proposal “formed the basis for a home rule bill that would establish a form of rent control in Boston,” which on Feb. 13, 2023, the mayor submitted to the Metropolis Council for submitting with the Legislature, Quattrochi wrote.
The committee contains mayoral-appointed illustration from tenant advocacy teams targeted on rental aid and eviction protections, politically-connected builders, and unions and other people with out “obviously relevant expertise,” his affidavit states.
“The policy advanced by the RSAC was crafted without the input of landlord organizations,” Quattrochi wrote. “It strongly reflects developer interests. It favors the well-connected over the well-informed. It favors donors over non-donors. It rewards those who have conducted lobbying activities even where those activities have not been lawfully reported.
“The mayor has benefited politically from this corruption. The city’s response sustains the mayor’s corrupt purpose,” his court docket submitting states.
Quattrochi’s affidavit cites information from the state Workplace of Marketing campaign and Political Finance that “suggest the reason for appointment is undue influence.” Seventeen of the committee appointees had been beforehand private donors in Boston political races, with a median donation of $10,462 per appointee previous to Feb. 17, 2023, he wrote.
“In my professional opinion and with personal experience in Massachusetts, this is not representative of the average person affected by or involved with the housing crisis, who donates little or nothing,” Quattrochi wrote.
His affidavit additionally houses in on “unlawful” lobbying that he says was finished by three housing teams with illustration on the committee, Metropolis Life Vida Urbana, the Hyams Basis, and the Boston Tenants Coalition — which Quattrochi asserts ought to have been revealed by the scope of his information request, main him to imagine town’s incomplete response was “designed to hide unlawful activities.”
Beneath state legislation, the people appointed to the Hire Stabilization Advisory Committee can be “legislative or executive agents if as part of their normal activities as a compensated employee or contractor for any organization, they had contacted the city about rent control, which requires a state enabling act,” he wrote.
Quattrochi’s submitting cites the organizations’ and their particular person committee representatives’ failure to register as lobbyists with the Secretary of the Commonwealth, with attachments exhibiting his clean search requests on the state web site.
Actually, he wrote, “City Life/Vida Urbana was a vocal grassroots lobbyist in state and Boston politics during the record request period. For example, a Sept. 1, 2021 Facebook post shows a group of City Life organized advocates standing outside the State House demanding eviction protections, a key component of the RSAC rent control proposal.”
Quattrochi and MassLandlords are registered lobbyists.
In an e-mail to the Herald, Quattrochi said, “If all the nonprofits who lobbied Boston and the state had to disclose their lobbying, they would either become ineligible for grants or would have to stop lobbying. The state would look very different.”
Metropolis Life, Hyams and Boston Tenants didn’t reply to a request for remark.
MassLandlords views lease management, as proposed by the committee and mayor, as a coverage that might have “numerous harmful unintended consequences for residents of Boston and the Commonwealth more broadly,” Quattrochi wrote.
The mayor’s lease management laws has stalled on Beacon Hill, and a marketing campaign to position a lease management query on this yr’s statewide poll failed.
