Healy Delays Choice For Rent Board Spot

Eighteen years after a citywide battle created it, the Cambridge rent control board remains steeped in conflict after four months without a full complement of tenant representatives.

City Manager Robert W. Healy, who has the sole power to appoint new members, has yet to replace tenant representative Michael Raabe, who stepped down in August, 1988. Despite pressure from the Cambridge Tenants Union (CTU), Healy has yet to interview any candidate for the panel.

Assembled by City Council order in 1971, the board normally has five members: two landlord representatives, two tenant representatives and a neutral chairperson who falls into neither category.

Healy's delay in choosing a new tenant representative has caused "some real damage to the concerns and interest of tenants," said Michael H. Turk, co-chair of the CTU.

But Healy said he has not yet made a decision due to "an out-of-state assignment" that made one of two applicants the CTU recommended unavailable. Since then, he said, he has not interviewed any candidates because he has "a policy of having a double number of names" for each position available.

The CTU, a local advocacy group which historically has recommended candidates for the tenant representative slot, last fall gave Healy the names of two tenants to fill the vacancy.

According to Timothy Connor, the board's only current tenant representative, Healy is also considering another candidate who is not sponsored by the CTU. According to Turk, Healy once before appointed a tenant representative the CTU had not endorsed, causing a "fracas."

Healy said he hoped to resolve the matter within three weeks, but could not do so until the CTU gave him a fresh recommendation, which he requested three weeks ago.

Turk said he is "murky about what [Healy] is or isn't doing." He added that the CTU has not given Healy any new candidates, but that he had the "expectation that we will soon."

Healy "doesn't need more names," Turk said. "There has been a delay that could have been avoided." He also complained that one of the CTU's candidates dropped out because Healy "waited so long" to look into the matter. "So, obviously, that's extended the amount of time" taken to fill the board, Turk added.

Healy said the absence of a second tenant representative did not really affect the rent control board because the members do not neccesarily vote according to their constituencies. Ellen Semonoff, the board's chair, is neither a tenant nor a landlord and thus has no constituency, Healy said. "She will protect the interests of the right side of the issues."

"There have been no major cases or decisions made," Healy said, and most results have "not neccesarily been a three-two vote."

But Connor said the vacancy "severely compromises tenant interests on the board."

"Even if I can persuade Ellen Semonoff to vote my way," Connor said, "the best the tenants can ever do is a tie vote." In order to resolve most cases, he added, Semonoff "must make deals with the landlord representatives."

'Speedy' Selection

Semonoff said it is her role "to try and get a consensus in favor of the legal position correct in each case." She said she hopes Healy's selection of a fifth representative is "speedy" because the process "operates much better" with a full board.

Cohn, one of the landlord representatives, said Healy governs the choice of a new board member. "The rest of us," he said, "have very little to do with it."

Asked why a new member has not been picked after a four-month vacancy, the other landlord representative, Ackerman, said she assumes Healy has "been very, very busy" with other issues. She said some of the applicants had introduced themselves to the board and met with its executive director, but the final decision is "at Healy's discretion."

Asked why the City Council has not moved in to speed up the process, Connor said the Council "can't step on the City Manager's toes too much."

"Bob Healy runs the show," explained Ackerman. Until he makes his decision, she added, "we just wait for him."