Liquor licenses a specialty for firm

Law practice won 65% of 2006 permits

Dennis Quilty (left) and Stephen Miller have been quite successful in winning liquor licenses for their clients. (Janet Knott/ Globe Staff/ File 2001)

When the Legislature granted 20 new, highly coveted liquor licenses to Boston in late 2006 to meet pent-up demand, the city's Licensing Board did not hesitate to dole them out. In less than three months, it awarded licenses to five bars in South Boston and five more in the South End, two in the North End, two in Chinatown, and a handful of others from Roxbury to Beacon Hill.

But although the new licenses were scattered across different parts of the city, one element remained remarkably constant: the same set of politically connected lawyers.

The majority of the license recipients hired the same firm, McDermott, Quilty & Miller. The firm's clients won 13 of the 20 new licenses, or 65 percent.

It was a boost in business for the firm and for the restaurant and tavern owners who would have had to pay up to $300,000 for a license if they bought one on the open market from an existing establishment.

The success of the firm's lawyers, including Stephen V. Miller and Dennis A. Quilty, underscores how it has come to be known as the go-to firm for licensing applications in Boston.

"They kind of have that as a monopoly," said Felino Samson, chef and owner of Pops Restaurant in the South End, which hired the firm because of its track record and won one of the new liquor licenses.

The firm's work has come under scrutiny by FBI investigators as part of the bribery investigation of former state senator Dianne Wilkerson and Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, who have been accused of accepting bribes to help a Roxbury nightclub owner obtain a liquor license. None of the firm's lawyers have been charged with any wrongdoing, nor have any of their numerous tavern and restaurant clients.

Terence P. McDermott - a partner at McDermott, Quilty & Miller - said the firm is one of the most experienced in the field and succeeds not because of favoritism but because the applications it submits to the Licensing Board are worthy. He said the firm turns down bad cases.

"A case isn't presented to the board unless it is fully vetted in the community and with the appointed and elected officials," McDermott said.

And it is not always successful. As the firm was racking up victories in early 2007, it also suffered some failures. During the same three months the city awarded the 20 new licenses, it denied applications for 10 others. Four of the rejected applicants were represented by McDermott, Quilty & Miller.

Most of the applicants did not return repeated telephone messages or declined to comment.

Three restaurant owners who did speak with the Globe said they paid the firm in the range of $7,500 to handle their applications. If that fee were paid by all 17 applicants who hired McDermott, Quilty & Miller, the total payments to the firm would have been $127,500.

One of the key relationships mentioned in the FBI's bribery investigation was between Miller and the chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, Daniel F. Pokaski. In an FBI affidavit filed in Wilkerson's case, Miller is quoted by the FBI as boasting that Pokaski had assured him that a license would be forthcoming for a Roxbury businessman allegedly paying bribes to Wilkerson.

Miller, on an FBI tape, quotes Pokaski as saying: "I have one for them. I promised it to them, and I have one for them," the affidavit says.

Wilkerson suggested that such backroom deals were commonplace, according to the affidavit, and said the Licensing Board's public proceedings were all "smoke and mirrors."

The FBI has subpoenaed a variety of records from the Licensing Board, including correspondence between Miller and the board, according to two sources briefed on the subpoena's contents who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A lawyer representing Pokaski said the board chairman has been "a dedicated public servant for over 30 years" and has done nothing wrong.

"As chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, he has at all times acted in a professional manner," the lawyer, David E. Meier, said. "Any speculation to the contrary is unfair both to him and to the public. Mr. Pokaski respectfully will not comment on the specifics of any of this speculation."

Still, the alleged back-room deal between the firm and the chairman portrayed in the affidavit, along with the firm's singular success rate, have triggered an independent observer to call for elimination of the board, which is a state panel appointed by the governor that operates with little outside scrutiny.

The Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded city watchdog, says liquor licenses should be handed out by the city with more oversight.

"Why not give the city the authority to manage it?" bureau president Samuel R. Tyler said.

The push for the new batch of licenses started in 2005, when the city ran out of its allotment of 650 at the same time that scores of new businesses and developments were planned, particularly on the South Boston Waterfront, where the new convention center brought with it several new hotels and restaurants.

The number of licenses in the city is strictly capped, and the city needed legislation passed at the State House to increase that limit. By December 2006, after nearly two years of legislative wrangling, demand for the licenses had driven up prices for existing licenses as high as $300,000, more than double what it had been two years earlier. That month, lawmakers finally passed legislation granting the city 20 new licenses for bars and restaurants.

Between Jan. 3 and March 29, 2007, some 30 establishments applied for them, and 20 received them.

"There was people left and right trying to get different licenses," said Joseph Garufi, co-owner of Sophia's Grotto in Roslindale, who in 2004 hired McDermott, Quilty & Miller to get a beer and wine license and received a full license in February 2007 without using a lawyer. "I thought the board did a very good job at giving the licenses out to the people they thought did the right thing and were beneficial to the neighborhoods."

But some rejected applicants felt differently. One, Joseph Youshaei, said he didn't have money to hire a lawyer to help him get a license for a tavern in downtown Boston. The board rejected his application March 15, 2007. "They said there is no other liquor license left," he said.

That same day, however, records show the board granted licenses to six other establishments, five of whom were represented by McDermott, Quilty & Miller. And in the next two weeks, four other clients of the law firm received licenses.

Also among those left without a license was Roxbury businessman Ronald Wilburn, whose proposed nightclub, Dejavu, applied for one of the licenses but was denied. Wilburn, who said he believed the licensing process was rigged, became the key cooperating witness in the FBI sting that resulted in the arrests of Wilkerson and Turner.

According to the FBI affidavit, after accepting alleged cash bribes from Wilburn, Wilkerson sent Wilburn to Miller at McDermott, Quilty & Miller. Within weeks, Wilburn had a beer and wine license for his proposed nightclub, and, within three months, the Boston Licensing Board gave him a full liquor license, even though he didn't have a lease for Dejavu.

Pokaski has been a member of the Boston Licensing Board since 1995 and chairman of the three-member panel since 1999.

Miller's firm has been representing bar and restaurant owners before the board for nearly 10 years. All the while, the firm has been a prodigious contributor to political campaigns, a common practice among lawyers and lobbyists with government business.

In the past five years alone, lawyers at the firm donated a total of $112,075 to politicians. Among the top recipients were Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who received $5,150, and Councilor John R. Connolly, who received $4,150. Connolly's father, Michael, is a member of the Boston Licensing Board.

A spokeswoman for Menino, whom federal authorities have cleared of any wrongdoing in the probe, said he regularly receives donations from supporters throughout the city but none receives special treatment. "From neighbors to business owners, he treats everyone the same," said spokeswoman Dorothy Joyce.

John Connolly declined to comment. Michael Connolly did not return a message seeking comment.

Some restaurant owners who have gone through the licensing application process said it needs an overhaul. Nancy Cushman - who hired McDermott, Quilty & Miller and received one of the new licenses last year - said the process should be streamlined and the cap on licenses removed.

"It was an extremely prohibitive process to opening a thriving business," said Cushman, who with her husband owns O-Ya, an upscale sushi and sashimi restaurant in Chinatown.

At Pop's Restaurant, Samson agreed. "I think that system is pretty much out of date," he said.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.