Walsh denies project favoritism toward former aide
Mayor Martin J. Walsh said there is nothing untoward about development deals on which his former top adviser and close friend works, and brushed off any perception of favoritism at the city’s development agency as an “opinion of the press.”
“I don’t give any special treatment or favoritism toward anybody,” Walsh said yesterday on the heels of a Herald report focusing on Joe Rull, Walsh’s former chief of operations who has re-emerged as a consultant for developers seeking approval from City Hall.
“I probably know almost every single person that represents any company now in Boston, and I encourage them all to go sit down with leadership of the Boston Planning and Development Agency and start there,” Walsh said. “In the past, it might have started in the mayor’s office. Now I encourage them to go up there (to the BPDA). There’s no point in starting with me.”
Rull, who left the Walsh administration last year to helm the city’s failed Olympic bid, has ties to as many as nine projects through his firm MJR Consulting, a Herald review found. But developers on at least two proposals did not disclose his work in documents made available by the city online, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the public to know his ties. The Herald discovered them through emails obtained through a public records request.
Walsh said “of course” he has discussed projects with Rull, but noted not all have been approved. The Herald found one project on which Rull was a consultant that was outright denied: A proposal to develop the Winthrop Square garage site. It was one of six submitted.
But Walsh fiercely denied that his contact with Rull should feed into the insiders-only reputation he’s tried to scuttle at the former Boston Redevelopment Authority.
“That’s the opinion of the press and how you write it,” Walsh told a Herald reporter. “And if you write it like that, people are going to believe that. And if you write the way that it’s actually happening, then people won’t believe that.”