The Wu administration is reviewing the legality of the cuts the Boston City Council made to a fund used to settle city lawsuits in a chaotic nine-hour budget debate with tears and f-bombs that resulted in the body overriding nearly half of the mayor’s vetoes.
Discussion around whether, and how, to override the mayor’s decision to reject the majority of the City Council’s amended $4.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2025 began around 2 p.m. Wednesday and stretched until past 11, with many attempts at straight and partial overrides failing, resulting in frustration, tension and even tears.
“This whole performance this evening is making me sick to my gut,” City Councilor Liz Breadon, who voted in favor of all override attempts, said at one point late into the night while also dropping an F-bomb. “This is an absolute disgrace that we have to crawl around here and fight for every single vote to do the right thing in this City Council.”
Seven of the 14 override votes were ultimately approved, but the majority passed after the City Council began to take up the mayor’s veto in smaller pieces, last-minute changes that were created throughout the meeting, seemingly during private recesses, after more substantial override proposals with cuts to basic city services were defeated.
All told, the Council approved roughly $6 million in changes to Mayor Michelle Wu’s budget, on top of the roughly $2 million in new spending the mayor accepted when vetoing the majority of the $15 million in budget amendments the body approved on June 5, according to a spokesperson for Council Vice President Brian Worrell, who oversaw this year’s budget process.
The mayor’s office said the $6 million figure is not entirely accurate, however, and that it was reviewing the legality of a $3 million cut the City Council made to the “execution of courts” fund, which is budgeted at $5 million annually and used to settle city lawsuits and court cases. It also pointed to roughly $2.5 million in transfers made within departments that the administration does not have to make.
The body chose to deplete the execution of courts fund to allow for further investment in workforce development, youth jobs, housing, the Finance Commission, and support for families of murder victims, the latter of which was strongly lobbied for by several councilors who teared up and described any vote against that issue as heartless.
Last year, the mayor nullified the Council’s only override, citing a violation of local and state law around collective bargaining, and a city spokesperson indicated Thursday morning that a similar outcome could occur for three overrides that resulted in cuts to the execution of courts budget, if deemed to be illegal.
“With regards to the amendments cutting funding from execution of courts, it’s necessary to note that budgetary line items for contingencies such as guaranteed overtime and legal settlements ordered by the courts are critically important for sound fiscal management,” a Wu spokesperson said in a statement.
“Pulling from this non-discretionary line item in order to take on new programming, however well-intentioned and impactful, cuts against responsible municipal budgeting and financing. We will carefully review with Corporation Counsel’s office and the Finance team to understand how best to address these votes and to plan for future financial sustainability,” the spokesperson added.
Worrell’s office pushed back, saying that, in consultation with the City Council’s legal and budgetary staff, “we are of the opinion that execution of courts is fair game.”
The Council’s new budgetary powers allow for modification of an appropriation order or an item within, which is how the fund appeared in the mayor’s budget, Worrell’s office said.
The mayor’s office also noted that it was under no obligation to adhere to other overrides approved by the City Council, which, rather than transferring funds from one department to another, moved funds within the same departments. The Boston City Charter empowers the administration to make those changes, not the Council, a city spokesperson said.
The Council approved a $1 million transfer from other parts of the police budget to the Boston Police Crime Lab, which is dealing with a backlog of sexual assault kit testing due to understaffing; and roughly $500,000 within the Inspectional Services Department to beef up pest control operations, among other non-binding changes within departments.
Of the roughly $6 million in Council overrides, the mayor’s office said that it was definitely bound to $814,000 in spending changes, since those funds were transferred between departments, rather than within, and aren’t subject to a review over their legality.
While pushing back on much of the changes, the mayor did praise the Council for passing a budget that preserved funding for public safety and city services.
“I’m grateful to councilors for passing our budget after due diligence and debate,” Wu said in a Thursday statement. “The $4.6 billion total FY25 budget sustains the shared priorities and investments made by the administration and Council over the last two budget cycles, with a targeted focus on improving city services.”
The amended budget passed by the Council on June 5 via a 10-3 vote included a roughly $3 million cut to the mayor’s recommended spending for police.
Those amendments would have also reduced Wu’s proposed budgets for the public works, fire and transportation departments and the Boston Center for Youth and Families by $800,000, $734,999, $600,000 and $570,000, respectively.
Councilor Julia Mejia’s push for a straight override of the mayor’s veto, to revert back to the June 5 amended budget, was defeated via a 7-6 vote, with Wu allies and former employees Sharon Durkan, Enrique Pepén and Henry Santana flipping their prior ‘yes’ votes to reject the override.
The measure needed a two-thirds majority, or nine votes, to pass. John FitzGerald, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy voted ‘no’ on June 5 and again on Wednesday.
“I was hoping when I ran this process that the data would beat out the politics,” said Worrell, who has pointed to reductions the Council made by looking at departments where the city has historically underspent what was allocated.
Santana became emotional while explaining his decision to switch his vote, which came after weeks of negotiations with the mayor, who needed to flip at least two of the councilors to sustain her veto. He apologized to those he might have let down.
“I believe in the investments proposed by the City Council,” Santana said. “However, these investments should not come at the expense of other critical city departments that provide essential services.”
Not everyone was impressed with the Council’s efforts.
Gregory Maynard, executive director of the Boston Policy Institute, described the debate as “political theater, complete with one councilor crying over how he planned to vote.”
The Council spent hours debating “just 0.33%” of the mayor’s $4.6 billion budget, he said, while the same Council majority passed other mayoral policies this year “without substantive changes,” including “a huge tax increase on office buildings and the largest change in decades to the city’s planning bureaucracy.”
“It was disappointing to see the lack of professionalism last night from some of my City Council colleagues,” Flynn said. “Since the ballot question gave us this power in 2021, this process has lacked transparency with councilors receiving partial override proposals on the spot, and now devolved into much of the debate taking place during extended recesses, behind closed doors, and out of view from the public and the media.”
