FY27 BUDGET SEASON: Previews of 3 hearings on 4/22 & 4/23 spending a combined $21.3M or 0.43% of the FY27 Operatin…
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FY27 BUDGET SEASON: Previews of 3 hearings on 4/22 & 4/23 spending a combined $21.3M or 0.43% of the FY27 Operating BudgetMajor Transpo Hearing TODAY; Again no Historic Preservation budget hearing; Lack of legal experience & major spending changes at Law Dept; Participatory Budget sees lowest budget in 5 yr history
TODAY AT 2 PM: THE COUNCIL HOLDS BOSTON’S MOST IMPORTANT TRANSPORTATION POLICY HEARING IN YEARS Before previewing this week’s budget hearings, here is a quick preview of another important hearing. Today at 2 PM the Council’s Planning Committee is holding a long-awaited hearing on a number of transportation policy dockets - read more in the public notice & read MassStreetsBlogs preview of today’s hearing:
This hearing comes amid a much different situation then when the original hearing order about the 30 Day Report was filed last April: the 2025 city elections are over, and former Streets Chief Jascha Franklin-Hodge - who oversaw Boston’s controversial expansion of bike and bus lans - along with several of his top aides have resigned from City Hall. The big thing to watch at this hearing? Whether senior City Hall officials attend, including:
BPI will have more on this hearing in Friday’s Weekly Transcript Round-Up, or follow along on social - TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. This week there are 3 budget hearings, each for relatively small chunks of the budgets:
The most interesting things in this week’s budget hearings is the 3 things that aren’t in them:
There is more on the Law Department and the Office of Participatory Budgeting in their preview sections below. Before getting to those, here is more on the Office of Historic Preservation’s years-long absence from budget hearings. The Environment, Energy & Open Space Cabinet is made up of 4 offices: Parks & Rec, Environment, Food Justice, & Historic Preservation. That means that Historic Preservation is the only non-Parks office that isn’t on the agenda for Tuesday morning hearing. It also is the only 1 of those 3 offices that isn’t seeing a budget cut. This isn’t new: the Office of Historic Preservation, along with the other entities it oversees - the Landmark Commission and 11 architectural, landmark, and historic districts - didn’t go before the Council for a budget hearings in 2024 or 2025 either. The Wu administration has had a fraught relationship with the Landmark Commission: in 2023 and 2024 senior members of the administration butted heads with the body, resulting in this Globe article in August 2023, then in April 2024 a letter from the body laying out political interference from administration officials became public and the Mayor firing the body’s executive director. Since April 2024, the Office of Historic Preservation has seen a leadership change, with the inaugural director of the office leaving and a new chief - Kathy Kottaridis - getting hired on September 2024, and a new deputy chief - Elizabeth Sherva - hired in March 2025 for a position that included serving as the Landmark Commission’s Executive Director. In this FY27 budget hearing preview, BPI will include:
ENVIRONMENT, OFFICE OF FOOD JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENT REVOLVING FUNDS - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 10 AM, IANNELLA CHAMBER According to the Legislative Budget Review website, there are 5 topics for this hearing, 2 offices, and 3 revolving funds:
WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK? The 3 revolving funds can be found:
Environment Department:
Office of Food Justice:
FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS Here are the 3 revolving funds:
Here is the operating budget for the 2 offices:
At the Environment Department, a $315k cut in contracted services in the Environment office, where Environment Commissioner & Green New Deal Director Oliver Sellers-Garcia is the manager, paid for increases in the personnel spending in the other 2 offices in this department:
External Funding has been a major source of funds for both offices, and it is way down this year:
The cut in Environmental Department external funds can be seen in 2 places:
Only the Environment Department has a Capital Budget:
Out of the $3.8M that the FY26 budget said would be spent, just $1.8M actually was. FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER Neither office is mentioned in the Mayor’s letter. WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR Where is the “Distributed Energy Revolving Fund” in the FY27 Budget Book? Why did the City not spend the budgeted amount from either the Conservation Commission or BERDO Revolving Funds? What are the “Contracted Services” that are seeing a $315k cut in the Environment Department’s Operating Budget and another $1.6M cut in that department’s External Funds budget? Last week Boston announced that the BERDO deadline reporting deadline had been extended to August: can you walk through where the “free one-on-one technical support” and “flexibility measures” described in the press release can be seen in the budget? It appears that there are a lot of moving pieces as BERDO moves into its next phase: how do these cuts affect the Department’s ability to implement BERDO? 2 questions about the 8 jobs listed on the “Join the Work to become a Green New Deal City” website, all of whom appear to be working either in whole or in part in the Environment Department:
OFFICE OF LABOR COMPLIANCE AND WORKER PROTECTIONS, LAW DEPARTMENT, PROPERTY DAMAGE REVOLVING FUND - APRIL 23, 10 AM, IANNELLA CHAMBER According to the Legislative Budget Review website, there are 2 offices and a revolving fund being heard at this hearing:
WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK? Operating Budget:
“Third Party Property Damages” is the only instance of anything with “property damage” in the name, and can be found on p. 212 & p. 220. FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS Operating Budget:
The 1% decrease in the Law Department is misleading: there are a lot of changes to the budget:
All of these changes are happening while the number of FTE positions in the Law Department remain flat. “Third Party Property Damages” has the same appropriate in FY27 as in FY26 - $300k - but reviewing the past spending from this fund, the City often receives less than this:
FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER Neither office is mentioned in the Mayor’s letter. WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR Why did the City budget $300k from the Third Party Property Damages Revolving Fund, but then spend $0 in FY23 and FY24 and $274k in FY25? There is an old adage “personnel is policy” and that is especially true in City Hall, where new Corporation Counsel Michael Firestone’s lack of legal experience stands out compared to the 3 other people who held that job over the last 20 years. Has his lack of experience changed how the Law Department is organized and run? The new corporation counsel Michael Firestone has far less legal experience than the last 3 people to hold the job: Adam Cederbaum, who was Mayor Wu’s first Corporation Counsel; Eugene O’Flaherty, who served as Corporation Counsel for Mayor Walsh’s entire tenure; or William Sinnott, Mayor Menino’s final Corporation Counsel. Here are their resumes:
Can the Law Department walk through what the major changes in personnel spending actually mean for staff? There are $651k worth of cuts in personnel spending in the Operations and Litigation Department, while Government Services is seeing a $757k increase in personnel spending. OFFICE OF PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING - APRIL 23, 2 PM, IANNELLA CHAMBER There is just one office in this hearing: the Office of Participatory Budgeting (PB). PB is in just its 5th year of existence: it was first featured in the FY23 budget. It is also being budgeted for the lowest amount of its existence, having been cut down to just $1.89M. This is the only part of the Finance Department that gets its own budget hearing, which is strange given that both its funding and larger role in the City budget is so small. The Budget Book describes what other offices are in the Finance Cabinet - p. 28:
That means offices like Assessing - which has an $8.2M budget and plays a huge role in property taxes - and Auditing - which has a $3.9M budget and plays a big role in overseeing the City’s spending of ~$560M in COVID-era federal aid - don’t have hearings WHERE DO I FIND IT IN THE FY27 BUDGET BOOK? PB has just an operating budget, found on p. 518-522 FY27 vs FY26 BY THE NUMBERS There is just an operating budget for PB:
That decrease comes from 2 places - p. 520:
The summary at the start of the budget book explains the decrease - p. 56:
Some of those savings are being used to increase spending - p. 520:
FROM THE MAYOR’S LETTER This office is not mentioned in the Mayor’s letter. WHAT BPI IS WATCHING FOR What reserves are being drawn on fund $2M worth of projects in FY27? What “Contracted Services” is PB spending $221k more on in FY27 vs FY26? 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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