Reeves Under Fir

Despite suffering twin political blows this week--the visit of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to his City Hall office, and the start of a state inquiry into whether he paid his 1992 income taxes--Cambridge officials say the political future of Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72 is secure.

"He will undoubtedly be re-elected" in 1995, veteran Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55 predicted in an interview yesterday.

City leaders and civic officials say the political fallout from the controversies surrounding the Cambridge's energetic mayor will be, at worst, mild. They say his popularity--especially among the city's minorities and elderly--is sufficient to override criticism from both the media and the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), the city's liberal political group.

But even by his supporters' accounts, the troubles of Reeves, Cambridge's first Black and first gay mayor, are far from over.

FBI Probe

Reeves surprised nearly 200 Cantabrigians Monday night by announcing that he had received two FBI agents in his office. The mayor later revealed that the agents were inquiring about more than $30,000 in extra payments he received from the school committee over a period of nearly two years.

Reeves was paid an annual stipend of $13,000 for his work on the school committee from the time he took office in January 1992 until September 1994. But the mayor's salary--now nearly $44,000 a year--had been adjusted in 1988 to include the school committee stipend. Under the arrangement, Reeves was effectively being paid twice for doing the same job.

When the Cambridge Chronicle reported on the overpayments earlier this fall, they stopped.

Reeves' explanation for the over-payments has changed in the past week. Earlier this month, the mayor claimed that his paychecks had been directly deposited into his personal bank account. He said he was unaware of the overpayments until the Chronicle reported on them.

A school committee official contested his account yesterday.

"Mayor Reeves was paid biweekly with a check," James R. Ball, the school department's public information director, said yesterday.

"It was not directly deposited," Ball said. "It was delivered to his office."

Asked to explain yesterday, Reeves conceded the school committee check had indeed been manually delivered. But he said the checks were signed by his administrative assistant, Kathleen Toppi, and that Toppi had deposited them to his credit union.

It is the city council checks, Reeves said, that are directly deposited to Shawmut Bank.

FBI agents questioned the mayor, City Manager Robert W. Healy and James P. Maloney, assistant! city manager for fiscal operations, while also conducting a federal investigation into corruption in the Cambridge police department.

The FBI refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inquiry earlier this week. Reeves has declined to discuss the issue further.

"My lawyer says I really can't talk about it," he said yesterday.

Mayor's MasterCard

The week also saw a heated struggle between the mayor and the Chronicle, which reported last Thursday that Reeves had declined to account for more than 275 expenses he charged on his city-issued MasterCard during a 13-month period.

In a rebuttal issued Tuesday night, Reeves gave an account of his expenses in November 1993, which had been detailed in a Chronicle graphic, "Out on the town with Mayor Ken Reeves."

More than 140 of Reeves' supporters--most of them African-Americans--rallied outside City Hall Monday, charging the Chronicle with racially biased reporting.

Although a phone number listed on a rally flyer is the same as that of the mayor's re-election campaign, Reeves denies any involvement in the organization of the rally.

Meanwhile, city officials have called for greater accountability.

"I think the city is at fault for failing to establish proper procedures for the filing of expense accounts," Duehay said. "There has been a very loose way of handling these matters."

The councillor said supervision of city-issued credit cards--which are granted to the mayor, city manager and school department superintendent--has never been strict.

"We must not subject him, the first African-American mayor in the state of Massachusetts, to requirements that are different from requirements that have been forced on everybody else," Duehay said.

CCA leaders called earlier this week for a full investigation into the charges.

"It has not been clear enough, at least not to us, what rules the city officials thought they were following, whether there were regulations, whether a credit card could be used, what were the spending limits," Priscilla J. McMillan, CCA vice president, said last night.

Tax Inquiry

Adding to the spate of controversies, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) announced Tuesday that it has no record of the mayor's 1992 state income tax returns.

Catherine S. Bromberg, DOR communications director, said a department inquiry is automatically triggered when a missing return is brought to the department's attention.

Reeves has refused to produce copies of his 1992 returns, saying that the Freedom of Information Act does not require him to do so.

"If all elected officials in the state of Massachusetts want to provide their income taxes, then I will," he said yesterday.

While no officials have openly charged Reeves with wrongdoing, several faulted him for not paying greater attention to his personal finances.

"I think he's careless," Duehay said. "He should have checked this thing out and realized [the ordinances] had changed."

The mayor's supporters said the tax stories are just another example of unfair media coverage. "The question is, What inspired that investigation?" said Robert Winters, a Cambridge resident and math preceptor at Harvard. "And why is Reeves being singled out for inquiries with taxes?"

The Impact

Reeves is nearly halfway through his second two-year term. In Cambridge, the mayor's post is largely ceremonial. He is elected biennially by the nine-member city council.

The day-to-day administration of city services is performed by City Manager Robert W. Healy, whose contract was extended by the council on Monday through mid-1997.

"I think Mayor Reeves will be able to solidify his own base and draw on that, based on his accomplishments," Councillor Michael A. Sullivan said yesterday.

"Ken Reeves is elected by his constituents, which are the minority people in Cambridge," said Councillor William H. Walsh, who was convicted in April on 41 counts of bank fraud and conspiracy.

Reeves has noticeably distanced himself from the CCA, which endorsed his first candidacy for mayor in 1991. In the 1993 election he ran against the CCA-affiliated Duehay, and he has since been estranged from the group.

Political observers note that despite the financial controversies, what matters is council votes. And Reeves is virtually guaranteed the votes in 1995 of the five independent council members; himself, Vice Mayor Sheila T. Russell, and Councillors Timothy J. Toomey Jr., Sullivan and Walsh, if the councillor is not in jail by then.

"He doesn't need the CCA, because the CCA didn't elect him," said Edward N. Cyr, who served on the city council from 1990 to 1994.

"He doesn't need them in the least," Winters agreed. "Especially in the current situation, the overwhelming majority of Black voters will solidly support him, and there are many others standing along with him."

But even his supporters said his dealings with the press are problematic. "He has not done very well in talking with the press," Duehay said. "He must talk with reporters about what he's doing and answer their questions and give time to them."

This week, the mayor's explanation of the salary overpayment changed. Earlier, he had said the money from the school committee was deposited directly into his account. Now he says the checks went to his secretary, but she deposited them without telling him.

Although Reeves says he had no connection with Monday's protest, a phone number on a rally flyer was the same as that of the mayor's re-election campaign.