Galluccio Hopes to Be Objective

Newly-named city councillor Anthony D. Galluccio says the best thing about entering politics at the age of 27 is "not having a lot of money."

"The only people I owe money to are Discover Card and Visa," he jokes.

The youngest member of the nine-member city council, Galluccio says he is tied to no special interests and hopes to be an objective voice in the politically polarized group.

The legislative aide was last month named the successor to William H. Walsh on the Cambridge City Council, following Walsh's removal in November following federal sentencing on charges of bank fraud and conspiracy.

Galluccio, who lives with his mother in a Buckingham St. condominium, is a native Cantabridgian and a night student at Suffolk University Law School.

Although he is a Democrat, many of Galluccio's ideas are socially conservative.

His fervent opposition to rent control makes him very ideologically similar to Walsh.

Rent control--which has existed in Cambridge since 1970--was abolished by a statewide referendum on Election Day. The state legislature this week passed an emergency act that would preserve rent control for certain low-income tenants in Cambridge, Boston and Brookline for a maximum of two years.

The councillor says the city must emphasize home ownership as rent control ends in the city.

"Everywhere in the country the focus has shifted from rental assistance to home ownership, except here," Galluccio says.

"Politicians have benefited far too long from a system which places the burden for subsidizing [tenants] on property owners," the councillor adds. "Rent control hasn't afforded people the opportunity to own their homes."

Galluccio says he feels that rent control resulted in "gentrification" and has "artificially inflated" market values for housing in Cambridge.

He believes Harvard and M.I.T. have gotten off easy under rent control, despite the large pool of their students in need of affordable housing.

"Rather than putting pressure on the universities to supply an adequate supply of housing for [their] students," Galluccio says, "Cambridge has footed the bill for a large part of the student population."

Under the legislature's act, which Gov. William F. Weld '66 signed Wednesday, no student older than 18 years of age can continue living under rent control.

A Focus on Education

A Little League coach active in city youth organizations, Galluccio says he is also concerned with the state of education in Cambridge.

Galluccio, who graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, says he empathizes with Cantabrigians and their concerns about the high school, where one in three students fail at least one course a year, according to a recent report.

He opposed the December decision of the Cambridge School Committee to make the Pill and other long-term birth control devices available at Rindge and Latin, the city's only public high school.

"There's access already for students [to] contraceptives, throughout the city," Galluccio says. "This is more of a political move than anything else."

Galluccio says Cambridge schools should focus on learning, not birth control.

"The school system has been used for social-political indoctrination," he says. "You can't start trying to force the views of a small group of political activists into the school system."

The councillor says he fears the Pill may give teenagers "a false sense of security" and even threaten the city's AIDS-prevention efforts.

He also says the seven-member school committee did not heed the viewpoints of working-class parents.

"It's once again an example of a group of political activists who are leading the charge," Galluccio says. "[For] a lot of parents in these neighborhoods, the one thing they need to keep intact is their relationship with their children, and when they feel that relationships is being superseded, it's being intrusive."

But that doesn't stop Galluccio from saying sex education programs need to become tougher.

"It's time to get down to some sort of shock therapy," Galluccio says.

Teenagers who have actually been pregnant should speak on the issue in Rindge and Latin, he says.

"When we want to teach young men to stay out of trouble so they don't go to jail, we bring students from the teen centers to the Billerica House of Corrections," Galluccio says. "Why don't we have girls that have become pregnant come into the high school and explain how it's changed their lives, how they can't come to college because they have to take care of their baby, where the man in their life is who said he'd be around?"

The councillor also says he believes in strong discipline for public school students. He suggests removing disobedient students from Rindge and Latin and possibly setting up an alternative school to address their needs.

The high school should track down students with previous criminal records and students "who are intimidating other students, making kids not want to go to school" and expel them, the councillor suggests. "Rather than focus our entire school year around these kids, let's get them out."

Working-Class Concerns

Galluccio says he was strongly influenced by his family upbringing. His mother, Nancy Galluccio, raised him and his two sisters after their father's death when Anthony was 12.

His mother ran a grocery store on Sherman St. His father, Anthony Galluccio '39, immigrated from Italy in 1921, coming directly to Cambridge.

The elder Galluccio was one of a handful of Italian-Americans at Harvard and later Harvard Law School, from which he matriculated in 1948.

After serving in World War II, Anthony Galluccio ran two Congressional campaigns for former President John F. Kennedy '40, for a House seat in 1946 and for the Senate in 1952.

"He really always stressed that friendship and the working-class communities in Cambridge were such an important facet in Cambridge life," the councillor recalls. "I want very much for working-class people to be more involved with the city's government."

Galluccio's older sister, Laurie Galluccio '86, also attended Harvard.

After attending the Peabody Grammar School and Rindge and Latin, Galluccio went to Providence College in Rhode Island, where he majored in political science. He then spent two years as a paralegal in Boston before becoming an aide to state Sen. Robert D. Wet-more (D-Barre).

Galluccio ran for the council in November 1993 but lost, coming in 12th.

Council Politicking

Galluccio says he hopes the "political theater" that characterizes council meetings will end. He is critical of the council's decision last summer to prevent the Stop and Shop supermarket chain from building an expansive store in the Cambridgeport neighborhood.

The chain left the city after being denied the permit and some Cambridgeport residents must walk three miles to the nearest market. The city is currently considering plans to invite other companies to invest in building a new market.

"Stop and Shop is a perfect example of hypocrisy in the city council," Galluccio says. He says the council majority had ignored the needs of working-class residents who need access to affordable food.

The Crimson endorsed Galluccio in his first run for the council in November 1993.

Galluccio, like Walsh, is an independent. He will maintain the council's balance of power between independent councillors and those supported by the liberal Cambridge Civic Association (CCA).

"They've always said their concern was to maintain economic diversity," Galluccio says of the left-wing group. "Well, Cambridge has been becoming two separate cities for a long time. If the CCA is truly progressive, they're not going to have any problems with my policies."

Walsh says he agrees with Galluccio on most political issues and is pleased that Galluccio won the vote recount to replace him.

"I hope he will continue what I was trying to do," Walsh says. "He's got a damn good foundation."

CCA President R. Philip Dowds says he had not met Galluccio but had read his campaign literature.

"He ran a campaign which is basically saying that he wanted to be Bill Walsh's replacement," Dowds says. "It will be interesting to see what rent control foes do for a political career now that they don't have rent control to kick around anymore."