Weekly Transcript Round-Up for 4/04/25
Dueling Budget Letters from Wu & Worrell outline next week's FY26 budget reveal; Chrispin files lawsuit against BPD; City Hall review of Bike & Bus Lane installation finds "inadequate" engagement
ICYMI: A growing body of evidence shows that Boston - and every other government that collects property taxes - does not accurately assess the highest-priced homes in their jurisdiction. That’s the focus of BPI’s latest report “Boston’s Mansion Markdown?” which examines vertical inequality, evidence for it in Boston’s assessments, and how Massachusetts public sector leaders can start tackling the issue. READ IT NOW:
The Boston City Council saw major updates on two important issues this week, one expected, and one unexpected:
The expected update was on Tuesday, when back-and-forth letters from the Council’s Ways & Means Chairman Brian Worrell and Mayor Michelle Wu gave the public a preview of the FY26 budget, which by law must be presented next week on April 9;
On unexpected update came on Thursday, when Boston Police Sergeant Eddy Chrispin, whose appointment last summer to the state’s police oversight board led to his demotion from his position on BPD’s command staff, filed suit against BPD Commissioner Michael Cox. Another unexpected part of the lawsuit: Lawyers for Civil Rights are on Chrispin’s legal team, putting Mayor Wu and her hand-picked BPD Commissioner Michael Cox, on the wrong side of legal advocates with a record of beating City Hall.
Before getting into those two issues, a very important City Hall memo was released: Mayor Wu’s 30-day review of bus & bike lanes, released 35 days after it was ordered.
The review concludes that the consistent complaints heard throughout Mayor Wu’s first term that City Hall was installing bus & bike lanes with no regard for community input are true:
“During the 30-day review meetings, we heard consistent feedback that project communications and community engagement were inadequate, that decisions seemed predetermined, and that processes too often did not achieve consensus, contributing to a loss of community trust.”
The whole review is worth reading, as is the analysis from StreetsBlog Mass. One of their big takeaways from the memo is that it continues this administration’s habit of behind-closed-doors decision-making:
Now that the review is apparently complete, the city remains secretive about whose opinions mattered enough for its consultation in this process.
While StreetsBlog has a clear point of view, the team there has done a better job than any of the mainstream press outlets at following and providing analysis on Mayor Wu’s about-face on bike lanes. StreetsBlog Mass has analysis of the report, and the response from pro-bike advocates.
LETTERS FROM WORRELL & WU PREVIEW FY26 BUDGET
On Tuesday, April 1 the Council’s Ways & Means Committee Chair Brian Worrell, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu exchanged letters about the FY26 budget.
Before getting into what each letter says about what will be included in the upcoming budget process, each letter seems to make clear what won’t be included: talk about how falling office vales are impacting the City’s budget. Both letters misplace blame for Boston’s fiscal troubles: Wu and Worrell each point to uncertainty in Washington, not the fall in office and lab values that predates President Trump’s re-election, as the reason to reign in spending.
Chair Worrell’s letter outlined eight areas where the Council wanted to see “key investments to be included before the budget is released on April 9.” There was one major thing missing from Worrell’s budget-focused letter: actual dollar amounts. The closest the letter gets is this line in the second paragraph:
Last fiscal year, the city saved tens of millions of dollars in salaries, and in order to achieve the City Council’s limited requests, we suggest leveraging payroll savings from the nearly 2,000 vacant jobs in the city.
This letter shows that the Council is still suffering from the lack of budget expertise that plagued the body throughout the last year’s budget process. In an op-ed published after the budget passed in 2024, BPI’s ED wrote:
The Councillors and their staff dress their parts, write speeches, and produce Excels with numbers in them, but citizens shouldn’t mistake all the activity for progress. City Councillors play virtually no role in any important decision the City of Boston makes, budgets included.
The Council’s lack of expertise has become more clear since a voter-approved reform in 2021 ostensibly gave the body more control over the City’s spending. Under the new rules, the Council must make any budget changes on its own, and its record in doing so is awful: more than 99% of Mayor Wu’s FY25 and FY24 budget passed, far more than under previous mayoral administrations. The Council’s ability to make an impact on the budget process depends on expertise, and in that department it is mightly overmatched: while the Mayor’s budget and finance offices have more than 100 employees, the Council’s central staff has just 1 staffer focused on the budget.
Mayor Wu’s response has one dollar amount in it: “over $300 million.” That is the amount of federal money that the Mayor tells the Council the City gets to support “critical city services each year.” In the letter Mayor Wu claims that the FY26 budget will “reflect fiscal discipline” by taking three actions:
City departmental budgets for FY26 will reflect eliminating long-term vacancies to constrain growth, with no new City positions; targeted reductions in non-personnel items; and limited new resources to support critical services.
The letter provides no further details. With Mayor Wu scheduled to unveil her budget in a speech on April 9, the legal deadline for the Mayor of Boston to produce the budget is the 2nd Wednesday in April, this list provides a preview of what to look for.
In the Council’s budget hearings that follow that budget release, it is up to Councilor Worrell and his colleagues to get a more detailed understanding.
CHRISPIN FILES SUIT, PITS MAYOR WU AGAINST COUNCIL ALLIES, ATTORNEY GENERAL ANDREA CAMPBELL, & LAWYERS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
Last summer long-time Boston Police Department (BPD) officer Eddy Chrispin was demoted from BPD’s Command Staff by Commissioner Michael Cox after Chrispin was appointed to the state’s police oversight board. Chrispin was nominated to the , the Peace Officers Standards & Training (POST) Commission by the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (MAMLEO) and appointed by Attorney General Andrea Campbell. The demotion sparked an immediate fight between Mayor Wu and AG Campbell, with each appearing on Boston Public Radio within days of each other. GBH produced a supercut of their appearances:
AG Campbell, along with a number of other Boston elected officials, including City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, called for Chrispin to be re-instated to the Command Staff. The fight has stayed at a simmer since, with a resolution in support of Chrispin’s reinstatement gaining the Council’s approval in a 9-2-1 vote - read about the debate.
This week, that long-simmering fight escalated, with Chrispin filing a lawsuit against Commissioner Cox for violating his First Amendment rights - read more about the lawsuit from the Boston Globe & the Boston Herald. Filing a lawsuit alone is a major escalation, but the team that Chrispin assembled jumped out, because it included the Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) - check out LCR’s press release about the case.
LCR has a record of producing policy changes in the City of Boston: the group played a major role in Boston Public Schools’ to make far-reaching changes to its exam schools’ admissions policies. Now that legal and political firepower is being turned against Mayor Wu’s handpicked BPD Commissioner Michael Cox.
READ MORE FROM BPI ABOUT THE CHRISPIN DEMOTION:
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