Sullivans' Principles Debated in Council

Sullivan Chamber in City Hall earned its name last night.

The Cambridge City Council, including Councillors David E. and Walter J. Sullivan, heard testimony on a rent control dispute involving current City Councillor William H. Walsh and the family of former Council candidate David J. Sullivan.

Last night's hearing came in response to a previous hearing held on December 7, when Jill Sullivan, the brother of the former candidate, said the Rent Control Board treated her unfairly by refusing to let her evict a tenant.

David J. Sullivan, an opponent of the rent control laws as they affect small landlords, attacked the record of incumbent David E. Sullivan in his November campaign for the City Council. David E. is a member of the pro-rent control Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) The two men are not related.

At an earlier hearing when Jill Sullivan appealed to the Council for help in resolving her dispute, several CCA Councilors linked her to her brother's City Council campaign, accusing her of political maneuvering. At the time she complained that she was "being penalized for having a brother named David."

According to testimony by family members last night, landlord Patrick J. Sullivan tried to sell several apartments in 1985. His attorney, Walsh, who began his freshman term on the City Council that year, told him that one of the apartments' tenants, Cynthia A. Cox, and her brother wanted to buy two of the units. But according to a letter from Walsh to Cox, these plans deteriorated to a point where a deal could not be made.

Patrick J. Sullivan is the father of David P. Sullivan and the grand father of Jill and David J. Sullivan.

Later, Jill Sullivan attempted to purchase the apartment where Cox was living. Cox refused to leave the apartment, so Jill Sullivan sought an eviction order from the Rent Control Board, members of her family said last night.

Witnesses against Walsh and the Sullivans, representing the Cambridge Tenants' Union (CTU), said they hoped to "correct [Jane Sullivan's] inaccuracies" by testifying and to expose "certain actions of Councillor Walsh we felt were questionable," according to Geoffrey Gardner of the CTU.

"The story Jill Sullivan told was incomplete and innacurate," he said.

"Condo conversion has distorted the real estate market in the city," said tenant lobbyist Michael Turk. "The pressure to sell the units came from the fact that the prior owner wanted to obtain market value for a building in a highly inflative speculative housing market."

Gardner said last night that Sullivan accused the Rent Control Board of denying her the eviction notice because it considered her too young to need her own apartment.

In the course of their testimony, the witnesses said the dispute over the apartment was typical of those that arise around the problem of condominium conversion.

Turk submitted as evidence a letter from Walsh, which he said showed that the Coxes had planned to use two common ways of evading the rent control laws: separately buying units in order to rent them to each other, and buying property through a trust fund. According to the letter, Cynthia Cox had planned to live in the apartment that her brother bought, while her brother moved into hers. Each would then have paid rent to the other.

The witnesses presented letters from Walsh to Patrick J. Sullivan, the owner of the building with the disputed apartments, and from Walsh to the tenant Jill Sullivan was trying to evict.

Walsh lashed out at the liberal faction of city politics before the testimony. "An organized political union is trying to ruin me," he said, calling his term of office "26 months of a reign of terror." This "reign of terror," according to Walsh, included prank phone calls in the middle of the night, protesters surrounding his office and threats of having his house set on fire. "I'm going to sue the Cambridge Tenants' Union," he said.

"I feel you smeared us," Turk said to Walsh. And Councillor David E. Sullivan said, "I can't remember a time when witnesses, before they opened their mouths, were threatened with a lawsuit."

Councillor Alice K. Wolf, a member of the CCA, defended the Tenants' Union witnesses, saying Walsh was imposing "guilt by association."

"These gentlemen were not involved in that," she said, referring to Walsh's complaints of harrassment.

And CCA Councillor Saundra M. Graham said the City Council had no power to do anything with regard to the dispute. "This is what happens when one side feels the other side is getting the facts out."

"They only put forward what they want the Rent Control Board to hear," she said. "We do not have the power to do anything about it."

After the testimony of the tenant activists, David P. Sullivan and his wife, Aline M. Sullivan, testified. Mr. Sullivan said that Councillor Walsh was his father's lawyer, but not the "family lawyer."

"We're the victims of a smear campaign," Mrs. Sullivan said. "It's unfair that my daughter has become the recipient of a slanderous and unfair campaign at the hands of Councillor David Sullivan."

Councillor David E. Sullivan said that although he believed the Council had accomplished little with the hearings, that the city was continuing a tradition of allowing anyone in the city with a grievance to be heard by the City Council.

Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci suggested that the Rent Control Board give the Sullivan family a fresh hearing, but the Council tabled this motion.