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Crash landing: Proposed Boston apartment project heads to the auction block amid plunge in new housing development
Houston, we have a problem.
After decades of little being built, development of new housing in Boston lifted off during the Menino years.
It then rocketed into the stratosphere under Marty Walsh in the 2010s as thousands of new apartments, condos and homes were built.
Now, under Mayor Michelle Wu, construction of new housing in the city has come crashing back down to earth. In the latest setback, a Readville lot where a major apartment project was to have been built is set to be auctioned off.
After years of flying high, Boston’s housing development boom has come crashing back to earth (By Joel Kowsky)
A 2.7-acre lot that currently includes an old industrial building will hit the auction block on Aug. 16, Banker & Tradesman’s Steve Adams reports.
Ad Meloria, a Boston-based developer, won City Hall approval in 2021 to build a six-story, 273-unit apartment complex on the site, but was unable to nail down the financing needed to start construction.
Building permits for new housing units are down 50 percent so far this year in Boston compared to the same period in 2022, amid a big increase in interest rates and construction costs.
Wu has also come under fire for ramping up affordable housing requirements and extensive new green building rules, which developers contend will further increase costs and make project financing more difficult.
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Here are some of the stories a subscription would unlock:
Finally: After years of talks, a deal comes together for high-profile Somerville site
Globe looks to hire a media reporter. What it really needs is an ombudsman.
Spinning the housing numbers: Wu administration downplays dramatic drop in residential construction
From compelling to hum drum: Washington Post continues slide into irrelevance under new editor
Head scratcher: Amid housing crisis, thousands of acres at Devens sit idle and undeveloped
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Lawyers: Expected High Court Ruling in Drug Lab Fiasco Could Recast Legal Practice in Massachusetts
By Maggie Mulvihill
Attorneys across the state are bracing for an expected ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court in the Massachusetts drug lab crisis, which some say could radically recast how lawyers do their jobs.
“The decision here will have ramifications for not just prosecutors, but all lawyers practicing in group settings, like firms or partnerships where you are relying on colleagues,” said Boston attorney Allen N. David, who represents a former assistant attorney general charged with misconduct in the Amherst state lab scandal.
David said if the high court accepts the claim that his client, Kris C. Foster, behaved unethically by trusting information her superiors at the Attorney General’s office provided to her in the 2013 investigation into former state chemist Sonja Farak, “it comes very close to a rule that lawyers can’t rely on colleagues or superiors ever.” In 2014, Farak pled guilty to multiple charges of evidence tampering and larceny of drugs from the lab.
David and lawyers representing former Assistant Attorneys’ General John C. Verner and Anne K. Kaczmarek urged the high court in an April hearing to consider the ramifications of its impending decision. In 2013, Kaczmarek was the lead prosecutor in the Farak case, and had also handled the investigation into disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan. Verner, as head of the Attorney General’s Criminal Bureau, was Kaczmarek’s supervisor. Foster was a lawyer in the agency’s appellate division.
Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to tampering with evidence at the William A. Hinton State Drug Laboratory Institute in Boston. Her misconduct led to the dismissal of over 21,000 drug charges. The crisis has become the biggest crime lab scandal in U.S. history.
The lawyers for the prosecutors’ arguments came in a disciplinary case brought by the state Bar Counsel, which along with the Board of Bar Overseers regulates Massachusetts attorneys.
A 12-member BBO board last year claimed the trio helped cover up the true extent of Farak’s drug addiction and misconduct, furthering the public harm wreaked by the drug lab scandal. Verner and Foster have argued they reasonably relied on their colleague Kaczmarek’s assurances all exculpatory information sought by drug defendants seeking information about the Farak investigation had been disclosed. Prosecutors are required to disclose any evidence that could assist a criminal defendant in his or her defense. Foster also argued that she properly relied on the instructions of her supervisors in the appellate division of the attorney general’s office in handling the requests by the defendants.
But the BBO board found those arguments inadequate in deciding the three prosecutors should have disclosed information they learned soon after Farak’s arrest that revealed she may have been engaged in stealing or tampering with drugs from the lab since at least 2005, BBO records show. Former Attorney General Martha M. Coakley publicly proclaimed in January 2013, shortly after Farak’s arrest, her misconduct was limited in scope. Then Gov. Deval Patrick publicly stated Farak’s wrongdoing did not compromise individual due process rights. But by 2018, the SJC had dismissed over 24,000 drug charges due to concerns about drug samples tested at the Amherst lab, including by Farak.
In describing the lawyers’ misconduct in its 50-page 2022 decision, the board described the “staggering consequences” of Farak’s misdeeds, and the role the three prosecutors played in covering it up.
“The Farak case caused unprecedented pain to many, not only the defendants who were wrongfully convicted, many of whom are from communities of color. Thousands of defendants lost time with families and friends while wrongfully incarcerated,” the BBO board wrote. “Their lives were forever altered. Many of the defendants in the Farak cases were immigrants. Due to their convictions, they likely were deported before the misconduct came to light.”
The BBO board wants Kaczmarek disbarred, Foster suspended for one year and one day and Verner suspended for three months. Sole board member Rita B. Allen dissented in the board’s decision, arguing that Verner should get at least a sanction equal to Foster’s, given his years of experience as a prosecutor and supervisory role at the Attorney General’s office.
The Farak evidence came from a search of her car, which revealed bags of pills, capsules, white powder and “lab paperwork,” court records show. Verner and Kaczmarek also learned Farak was suspected of tampering with cocaine in a 2005 case and 2012 Oxycodone case Shortly after her arrest, she failed a drug test. State Police also found manilla envelopes they shared with Kaczmarek and Verner containing materials indicating Farak was struggling to resist using drugs at the lab, among other things, the records show.
In October 2014, attorney Luke Ryan, who represented some of the drug defendants, discovered the existence of the undisclosed exculpatory evidence while reviewing some materials in the Farak investigation. Verner then arranged for the undisclosed materials to be shared with defendants.
The matter involving the prosecutors began six years ago when a Superior Court judge found Kaczmarek and Foster engaged in “intentional, prolonged, and deceptive withholding of evidence from the defendants, the court, and local prosecutors.” The judge was considering appeals of a lower court ruling denying the requests from drug defendants.
The Bar Counsel filed a petition for discipline against both women and Verner in 2019. Four other top attorneys in the Attorney General’s office who supervised the trio’s work in what was a closely scrutinized and high-priority case for the office, have not been recommended for discipline.
Kaczmarek was found by the BBO board to have violated dozens of rules of professional conduct for her role in the Farak matter.
Verner was found to have failed to properly supervise Kaczmarek.
Kaczmarek’s lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
But in a brief to the SJC, he argued she is being made a “scapegoat” for the “colossal failures” of the state in its handling of the drug lab crisis. Kaczmarek was adhering to orders from superiors to get a “swift indictment” against Farak for the evidence discovered during her January 2013 arrest and confine the scope of the investigation into that misconduct, Kiley argued.
“As a State Police forensic scientist stated in an email about discovery to Kaczmarek at the time, “no one is on the same page and there is no one steering the ship.” Kiley wrote in his brief to the SJC. “There were also miscommunications between the AGO, CPCS, and the Governor. “
The state’s response to the drug lab crisis was a “high-pressure, time-sensitive situation for which there was no rulebook,” he argued. The state badly bungled its handling of the investigations and prosecutions, leaving Kaczmarek to take the most blame, Kiley argued.
Holding Kaczmarek, who has not practiced law in years, responsible with disbarment for “colossal mismanagement by the AGO, the Governor and the Legislature,” is wrong, Kiley argued.
Similarly, in written arguments to the SJC, David claimed it is unfair to sanction a lawyer for following the instructions of a supervisor. To do so will upend current legal practice.
Foster currently is general counsel for the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, payroll records show.
The BBO board found Foster was engaged in “reckless lawyering” and was “incompetent” in her handling of requests from defendants for information about the Farak investigation. Foster failed to review the Attorney General’s evidence before key court hearings, and failing to properly prepare for court hearings in which a judge considered the defendants’ requests.’
Foster began working at the Attorney General’s office just a few months before a judge held a Sept. 9, 2013, hearing to determine how to handle requests from defense attorneys seeking information on Farak. She was the third employee in the Attorney General’s office that her supervisor, Randall Ravitz, asked to handle the hearing, as he declined to do it himself, court records show. At the time, Ravitz was the chief of the Appeals Division for the Attorney General.
“The Court’s decision in this case has the potential to affect the way law is practiced in government agencies, law firms, and corporate law departments. Unless professional colleagues can rely on each other, legal services will be more expensive, less efficient, and ultimately, less effective.,” David wrote” If she is punished at all, it should be a public reprimand, David argued.
Verner is currently a homicide prosecutor for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. Patrick Hanley, his attorney, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
But in his brief to the SJC, Hanley argued that at the Attorney General’s office, Verner earned praise for his diligence and ethics. Verner supervised over 100 people, including experienced colleagues like Kaczmarek. He ensured systems were in place for the disclosure of exculpatory evidence, Hanley wrote. As soon as Verner learned the Farak materials had not been disclosed, he immediately ordered they be turned over and expressed remorse for the agency’s failure to do so, the BBO noted in its 2022 decision.
Hanley argued Verner should get no more than a public reprimand.
“Verner has an exceptional record as an ethical prosecutor for the entirety of his career,” Hanley wrote.
The BBO matter illustrates the continuing fallout from the drug lab scandals, now more than a decade old.
The cost to taxpayers to redress the harms is over $46 million, with charges accruing due to continuing state and federal court challenges. Taxpayers had been funding the defense of the three prosecutors up to $1 million, WBUR reported in 2021. A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office did not respond to comment on whether the agency was still covering those costs.
Contrarian Boston reported last week that the attorney general’s office is turning over referrals for criminal prosecution it received from the Inspector General’s office between 2013 and 2015 for employees at the Hinton lab. Defense lawyers want to know what happened with the referrals revealing that at least two supervisors and multiple chemists other than Dookhan may have committed crimes at Hinton.
The referrals were kept secret for years, even as the Inspector General publicly maintained that Dookhan was the “sole bad actor” at Hinton.
Farak and Dookhan are the only two lab employees who have been prosecuted in the drug lab crisis and served collectively less than five years behind bars for their crimes.
It is unclear when the SJC will rule. Several other cases argued before the high court the same day in April have already been decided. But the decision promises to be unique given the unprecedented scope of the drug lab crisis. Prosecutors are rarely disciplined in Massachusetts. Since the late 1990’s, the BBO has taken action against over 3,000 members of the bar, BBO disciplinary data shows. Since 2018, there have been two prosecutors in Massachusetts punished for withholding exculpatory evidence and neither was disbarred, BBO and court records show.
The full bench of the SJC is the final arbiter of attorney discipline in Massachusetts and there is no right of appeal.
Maggie Mulvihill is an Associate Professor of the Practice in Computational Journalism at Boston University. She can be reached at mmulvih@bu.edu.