Weekly Transcript Round-up for 06/19/26
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Weekly Transcript Round-up for 06/19/26FY27 budget process will end on June 24; Long-delayed reparations in Globe; Boston on track for least new housing starts since 2010; April 2027 summary judgement hearing set for “Add Back Policy” Laws
There were were a few important moments of action this week, plus several important stories and updates. Here are the 5 things BPI was paying attention to this week:
1. THE END OF FY27 BUDGET SEASON IS IN SIGHT: On Wednesday, June 17, Mayor Wu issued a very narrow veto of the Council’s ~$11M - or 0.2% - worth of changes to the Mayor’s $4.9B FY27 Operating Budget, proposing to cut $1.4M from the Boston Transportation Department’s contracted services line-item instead of its personnel services line item. While this move has been hailed by transit advocates as preventing layoffs in BTD, they appear to be ignoring the role that contracted service spending plays in their policy priorities. The Council assigned the veto to the Ways & Means Committee at an extremely short “Special Meeting” of the City Council on Wednesday morning at 10 AM. That allowed the Committee to schedule a working session on the docket for Tuesday, June 23, at 10 AM - read the public notice.
BPI will have a liveblog of Tuesday’s working session, so look out for that, and then the Council will vote on the Mayor’s veto at their regular meeting on June 24. Despite the official end of the FY27 budget, there are still 3 major questions that remain unanswered:
Building Permit Fees: Budgeted vs Collected In FY25 Boston's building permit fees dropped to a 10 year low and missed forecast for 2nd straight year 
2. SUMMARY JUDGEMENT HEARING FOR “ADD BACK POLICY” LAWSUIT SET FOR FY28 BUDGET SEASON: Last week on June 8 there was another hearing in this very important lawsuit, and it produced a Joint Rule 16 Conference Statement and a new timeline for this case: Read the Joint Rule 16 Statement Here is the timeline for this case - the judge’s hand-written note is typed out by the court below the image:
If that timeline holds, it means that an extremely important pre-trial motion will be heard a little more than 2 weeks after Mayor Wu is required to offer her FY28 budget, in the middle of the Council’s budget hearings. As a reminder: the plaintiff alleges the City retaliated against dozens of commercial landlords who were disputing their assessments by increasing their assessed values - read more from Pioneer Institute. 3. CITY’S CIVILIAN POLICE OVERSIGHT AGENCY WANTS BODYCAM FOOTAGE: How to handle police body cam footage has become a major issue in Boston since a dispute over who could view footage of a fatal officer-involved shooting in March created a clear break between community leaders and Boston Police Department leaders. Now Boston’s Office of Police Accountability & Transparency is getting involved in the dispute, sending a memo to BPD Commission Cox with “recommendations on the following topics: (A) body worn cameras and (B) decoupling BPD from the federal policing infrastructure” - read the memo & coverage from the Globe. This memo comes after clashes on this same issue between the Council and BPD: on March 25 the Council voted 9-3-1 for a resolution urging BPD to update their bodycam policies, and on April 7 a BPD attorney told the Council the department would not release the tape and blamed District Attorney Kevin Hayden - read more on the resolution from BPI & on the BPD attorney’s testimony from the Boston Herald. 4. YEARS OVERDUE REPARATIONS REPORTS DUE OUT THIS FALL: This week the Boston Globe reported that a years-overdue set of reports on reparations from a Task Force appointed by Mayor Wu was due out this fall. That is much sooner than the City planned to deliver the report just a month ago. At the Equity & Inclusion Cabinet’s budget hearing on May 12, Cabinet chief Mariangely Solis Cervera told the Council she didn’t expect to see the report until next year, saying - she starts at the 7:06 mark - “our hope for FY27 is that we deliver on the task, which ends after phase three with a set of recommendations . . . by the end of FY27.” This new activity might be tied to recent appointments to the Reparations Task Force: BPI noted in GREEN SHEETS for the Council’s regular meeting on April 29 noted that Mayor Wu had appointed 2 new members to the body, Mac Hudson and Darien Johnson. 5. GLOBE EDITORIAL BOARD URGES ACTION ON STALLED DEVELOPMENT, POINTS TO “ANEMIC” HOUSING STARTS: This week the Boston Globe’s editorial board urged City Hall to allow developments at the Poor Clare’s site in JP and the Crane Ledge Woods in Hyde Park, and used those projects to criticize Mayor Wu’s development policy. The Globe’s Ed Board made that larger critique by citing a number first used by Jon Chesto in May: Boston permitted just 432 housing units for construction in Q1 2026 - 266 of which are in a development made possible by a $50M investment from City Hall - which puts the City on target to its slowest year since 2010. Boston Policy Institute, Inc is working to improve the public conversation - help us by following BPI on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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