Lynch has agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But the specter of corruption in City Hall — just weeks after the conviction of two staffers on conspiracy charges — is a nightmare for Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

That anonymity was shattered last week when the former official of the Boston Planning & Development Agency was accused by federal prosecutors of taking a $50,000 bribe to influence a decision by the city’s Zoning Board of Appeal.

For decades as a city official, John M. Lynch was a household name only in his own household.

Lynch apparently was paid off by a developer seeking an extension of a variance for a project. Developer Steven Turner needed the extension for a garden-variety condo project in South Boston that was delayed, and he got it with the intervention of Lynch, who was paid handsomely for his efforts.

There’s a lot that isn’t clear about this case. One of the most obvious questions is why anyone would pay a bribe to get an extension, which are usually handed out like candy by the ZBA. Maybe Turner didn’t want to take any chances. Or maybe he’s a dupe.


But it is never good news for an administration when its employees start pleading guilty to taking cash under the table, and this is no exception.

Some will argue that this case is not connected in any way to the recent, and much disputed, conspiracy convictions of Kenneth Brissette and Tim Sullivan, and that the two situations aren’t even comparable.

I happen to agree. This case is much worse. This is blatant, old-school corruption. This is a throwback to the bad old days of Boston city government, when greasing the skids was just the cost of doing business.


While some people — including most of the Boston City Council — have gone overboard with the Sullivan/Brissette pity party, it is a fact that they received no personal benefit from their efforts to demand that union members get weekend jobs at the Boston Calling music festival. In threatening to deny organizers a permit unless their conditions were met, one or both of them may have run afoul of federal law, but they weren’t guilty of self-dealing. They were stupid, not venal.

Straight-up bribery is different. It can’t be defended as standing up for working people, or the legitimate use of political power to advance a noble cause. This is just graft.

Presumably, the prosecution of Lynch is part of a deeper federal probe. That must be the single greatest worry of Team Walsh. If one person in the administration is taking money, could there be others? If Lynch could do this undetected, who is to say no one else has done the same thing?

Of course, Walsh has not been remotely implicated in any of this, and there is no reason to think he had any knowledge of it. It isn’t as though the mayor would know anything about a routine zoning decision, and Lynch was far from a major player in City Hall. Still, this is occurring on Walsh’s watch. His predecessor, Thomas M. Menino, never had a subordinate indicted on corruption charges in 20 years, and Walsh is now looking at the third conviction of one of his aides for misconduct. That isn’t a flattering comparison for Walsh.


Walsh said in a statement over the weekend that he is seeking guidance from the US attorney’s office to “determine if any action needs to be taken as a result.” Pro tip: If your aides are pocketing $50,000 bribes to fix votes at the ZBA, there’s probably some action that needs to be taken.

This is a perfect storm of corruption: the combination of a red-hot real estate industry and a city agency making important decisions that only a handful of people closely follow. Maybe it all begins and ends with John Lynch. But it’s just as plausible that it doesn’t.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. E-mail him at adrian.walker@globe.com. Or follow him on Twitter @adrian_walker.