Legal skirmishing around Las Vegas impresario Steve Wynn’s $1.6 billion casino plan for Everett cranked up two notches Tuesday.
After being all but threatened with a personal defamation lawsuit by lawyers for Wynn, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said he has no intention of backing off a 158-page multi-count lawsuit Boston has filed contending the Wynn casino process was shot through with favoritism and shenanigans.
Meanwhile, the leader of last year’s Repeal the Casino Deal ballot question joined 29 other citizen-taxpayers in a new lawsuit challenging the $6 million sale of MBTA land in Everett Wynn is trying to buy to create an all-in-Everett access to the casino and evade regulatory scrutiny by Boston.
Months after the Boston lawsuit was first filed, Wynn attorneys late Monday launched a toughly worded counterattack against the city, contending their suit was full of claims that represented “reckless disregard for the truth” and “a campaign of falsehoods” and pointedly noting examples of public officials who’d been sued for defamation.
Tuesday, Walsh sounded a conciliatory note – but insisted that “the facts are the facts” and he’s not backing off any of the claims in his suit.
“I met Mr. Wynn once, and he seems like a very nice guy. The fact that his lawyers want to do a lawsuit against me, that's fine. Whatever they want to do, they can,’’ Walsh told reporters in Dorchester. “My job as the mayor of the city of Boston is to protect the voters of Boston, protect the voters of Charlestown and the people of Charlestown, and that's what I'm going to do, and if that means getting sued, then so be it.’’
Ribeiro’s group’s lawsuit echoes claims in the Boston lawsuit that the MBTA improperly handled the bidding and sale of about 2 acres of land around its 80 Broadway bus repair shop in Everett – land Wynn sought to buy for $6 million to keep the whole casino and all its access roads in Everett and out of Boston. That deal has been put in escrow pending the conclusion of a months-delayed Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office review of the Wynn casino plan.
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“We've been told from the beginning that Massachusetts had the best law in the country to handle casinos, and what we're seeing here is yet another backroom deal, that the MBTA had with Wynn,’’ Ribeiro said. While the anti-casino Question 3 lost 60-40, Ribeiro said, “We didn't stop being citizens after the ballot question lost in November.’’
Wynn senior vice president Michael Weaver said in a statement emailed by an aide: “We received a copy of the complaint from the media and have not had an opportunity to review it. However, the claims made appear to be a desperate PR effort to distract from the real facts of the MBTA/Wynn land transaction. The MBTA land transaction followed a clear and open public bid process. The parcel was available to be bid upon by any interested party through multiple public advertisements placed in September 2014 in local newspapers and on the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Central Register. Wynn paid a premium price for the MBTA parcel: the Wynn parcel was appraised at $50 per square foot and it was sold to Wynn for $78.35 per square foot. It has been misrepresented that the land was worth $30 million, however that was for a significantly larger parcel and project than the 76,578 square feet (less than two acres) that Wynn eventually purchased for $6 million. The distortions contained in the complaint do not appear to be supported by the facts. ‘’
Walsh, however, said he thinks there are still numerous concerns and unanswered questions about possible irregularities in how the bid was handled. “Certainly, we had concerns around that, and we still have concerns around that.’’
