Ethics Complaint Filed Against State Rep Jarrett Barrios

Misuse of ‘Power and Influence’ To Crush Bill?

By Curt Lovelace
February 2002

The Small Property Owners Association believes Rep. Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge) has an unfair advantage in his battle against rent escrowing.

The group, which represents small owners of rental properties in the state, has filed a Letter of Complaint against Barrios with the State Ethics Commission.

Specifically, they claim that the Rep should not be debating the issue of rent-escrowing inasmuch as he is a Director of Greater Boston Legal Services which represents tenants in many actions against landlords.

A spokesman for Barrios told MassNews that he is confident no conflict of interest exists. In fact, he said that the entire issue could have been cleared up before the letter was sent to the Commission, if they had simply called his office.

According to an aide, “Before joining the board, Rep. Barrios called the Ethics Commission to see if a conflict of interest would exist. In fact they sent him a letter stating that there would be no conflict.” He added that Rep. Barrios feels the property owners have every right to pursue the issue.

The Ethics Commission will neither confirm nor deny that a letter of complaint has been received.

Legal Services Making Money

According to Lenore Monello Schloming, President of SPOA, “One Legal Services attorney admitted openly that a rent escrow law in Massachusetts would affect 90 percent of her cases.” The owners document ten cases in which Legal Services represented tenants against landlords – and collected $53,537 in legal fees. The bottom line, Schloming told Massachusetts News, is, “Barrios is simply not supposed to be taking part in debates and votes that affect a group he’s a member or director of.”

The proposed rent escrow laws are intended to put tenants and landlords on an equal footing when disputes arise. Under current law, any time a tenant wishes to withhold rent, he or she can claim he is doing so because of the landlord’s failure to correct violations of the State Sanitary Code.

Schloming says there’s no way to distinguish between non-payment of rent without reason and legal withholding of rent for good cause. Withheld rent, under the proposed law, would require that the rent be paid into an escrow account until settlement of disputes.

In a separate letter sent to each member of the legislature, the property owners also asked it to investigate the conduct of Barrios colleague. They included a quote from the Ethics Commission’s “Fall 2001 Bulletin.”

It states that it is does not matter whether the director is working for a non-profit organization. It says that a public official, “paid or unpaid, appointed or elected, full-time or part-time,” who is an “officer, partner, director, trustee, or employee of an organization … in general, may not participate in matters affecting the financial interest of that organization. It does not matter if [it] … is a non-profit organization. Participation includes not only voting on a matter but also formal and informal lobbying of colleagues, reviewing and discussing, giving advice and/or making recommendations on particular matters.”

Volatile Issue

This is a volatile issue. When a public hearing was held on the matter last year, it lasted hours and tensions boiled over into the courtyard outside the meeting room. When the House debated the issue in June 2001, the discussion lasted four hours and the result was a compromise. Several different versions of rent escrow bills were debated, including one from Gov. Jane Swift.

The House and Senate approved different versions. Now the matter is in the hands of a joint House and Senate conference committee.

The property owners assert that there is no way Barrios doesn’t know that his involvement in this debate is a conflict of interest. As both an attorney and a state rep, he has taken oaths to uphold the laws of the Commonwealth.

It claims that Barrios “has knowingly violated the state ethics law in his official capacity as a State Representative in the Massachusetts Legislature and in his official capacity as a Director of Greater Boston Legal Services, by acting in numerous ways to oppose and defeat legislation for mandatory rent escrowing, which legislation, if enacted, would affect both the financial interests and the general operations of Greater Boston Legal Services.”

It further states, “It is my understanding that, pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 268A, Sections 6, 19 and 23 in particular, a State Representative would have an unethical and illegal conflict of interest if he were on the Board of Directors of an organization that would be affected financially by the passage of legislation in which he took any substantial role in his capacity as a State Represent-

ative. I understand further that, in the case of a State Representative, this financial conflict of interest cannot be removed by any form of disclosure or similar act, short of recusing and withdrawing himself entirely from all matters pertaining to the financial conflict of interest.”

Schloming told Massachusetts News that a representative of the House Ethics committee told SPOA that this complaint would only be taken up if the State Ethics Commission found it to be substantive.