Filling ZBA’s open $eats
Nominees ponied up contributions to Walsh campaign
The two people up for open seats on the troubled Zoning Board of Appeal both have given money to Mayor Martin Walsh’s campaigns.
Konstantinos Ligris, a South Boston real estate attorney at his Ligris & Associates, has given Walsh $1,000, the statutory maximum for local donations, in each of the past two years. He also gave $500 in 2015, meaning he gave Walsh a total of $2,500.
Dorchester resident Eric Robinson, a principal at Rode Architects, has given Walsh $1,100.
A Walsh spokeswoman noted that these appointees were put forward by their respective professional organizations — Ligris by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, Robinson by the Boston Society of Architects — and not hand-selected by the mayor, adding that “campaign donations have nothing to do with business at City Hall.”
Neither Ligris nor Robinson responded to requests for comment.
Walsh, a second-term mayor who’s up for re-election in 2021, had more than $4.4 million in his campaign coffers at the end of December.
Walsh sent both nominations to the City Council for approval, and also submitted Building Trades Association nominee Kerry Walsh Logue — no relation to the mayor — to be reappointed as an alternate member of the ZBA; she doesn’t appear to have given the mayor any cash.
These nominations come as the board’s dealings remain in the spotlight. Former city real estate official John Lynch last week was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for taking $50,000 in cash bribes in 2018 to get a floundering project passed by the ZBA.
Shortly after Lynch pleaded guilty in August, ZBA member Craig Galvin abruptly resigned and then clammed up as the feds probed his dealings. William “Buddy” Christopher, the mayor’s special adviser who’d formerly run the city’s Inspectional Services Division, also took a leave of absence, as his son James was involved with the Southie project the bribes concerned.
Walsh’s office says that the law firm of Sullivan & Worcester, which the city hired to investigate ZBA operations after the board ran into trouble, is about to drop its report, which will contain recommendations to overhaul the board’s operations. Walsh said he’s readying immediate changes to follow the report and longer-term changes that would require the City Council’s approval.
A separate investigation last fall by a former federal corruption prosecutor found that none of the current ZBA members were implicated in the Lynch scandal.