Tenant Group May Sue Walsh

With a backhand return in a harsh game of political ping-pong, members of the Cambridge Tenants Union (CTU) have said they may sue City Councillor William H. Walsh while he threatens to sue them.

The CTU would sue Walsh for his conduct at last Monday's City Council hearing and his relationship to a rent-control case discussed in the hearing. At that meeting, CTU member Michael H. Turk produced letters written by Walsh, which he said were part of Rent Control Board records. In the letters, Walsh apparently advised clients of his law firm on ways of evading the rent control laws.

Before they testified, however, Walsh tried to defuse their arguments with what Turk called "McCarthyite smear tactics." Walsh accused them of making illegal political contributions and threatened them with a lawsuit for "trying to ruin me."

`Reign of Terror'

The Councillor also claimed at the meeting that the CTU had carried on a "reign of terror" against him for two years. He accused the tenant group of picketing his law firm, threatening damage to his house, and making prank telephone calls.

"He was lying, and he knew it," CTU representative Geoffrey Gardner countered yesterday.

Gardner said the picketers were actually members of the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), a radical Maoist organization. INCAR members could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Walsh said yesterday, "I have seen the picketers together with the CTU," and that he believed CTU members were among those carrying signs.

But Gardner denied the charges, saying that Walsh, as a lawyer, should not try to impose "guilt by association."

Walsh also said yesterday that the CTU--"God knows who they are"--should have registered as a political action committee (PAC) before they donated "laundered money" to City Council candidates. Gardner said the group reported its endorsement expenditures to the State Ethics Commission, and was found to have acted legally.

Beyond Walsh's attack at the hearing, Gardner also said the Councillor had used parliamentary tactics to delay the group's public testimony. Although a hearing is customarily granted within about a month and after one formal request, the CTU testimony was tabled for two-and-one-half months, and a hearing was not set until the group had sent three letters requesting one.

A Walsh ally also used a parliamentary tactic often employed as a last resort against the CTU. The "charter right," exercised by a Walsh ally on the Council, pushed back the hearing to another week.

And Gardner said Walsh took the unusual step of requesting that CTU members testify under oath at the hearing.

The tenants' group has often criticized Walsh, but denies having engaged in "character assassination." Gardner said Walsh "is blabbing accusations to cover up his own impropriety."

The tenant group's claims are based on a series of letters from Walsh to clients, in which he advises a landlord on converting a rent-controlled apartment to condominiums and urges a tenant facing eviction proceedings to leave.

Walsh's private efforts in 1985 to help Patrick Sullivan convert and sell two condominiums to a brother and a sister while avoiding a Rent Control Board regulation were "at best improper," said Gardner.

That happened before Walsh was elected, CTU members acknowledge, but some subsequent legal action surrounding the sister's unit did not. Cynthia Cox, the sister, refused to buy the condominium; subsequently, the landlord increased her rent.

When she would not pay the increased rent because the landlord had violated certain physical code requirements Walsh sent her a letter which CTU members interpreted as a warning notice.

Gardner argued that the tenant, Cox, should not have received "threatening letters" from a city official. Although Walsh said his letter "had nothing to do with the city of Cambridge," Gardner said his public aura made it a case of "official harrassment."