KENNEDY FOR CONGRESS issued the following announcement on July 6.
A city councilor on Monday proposed that the City Council should get more control over the budget — and share equal power with the mayor — but questions remain about whether the budget process would turn “dysfunctional,” a watchdog tells the Herald.
City Councilor Lydia Edwards’ proposed amendment to the city charter comes in the wake of calls for systemic change and a reallocation of resources away from the police department following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minneapolis Police officer.
During the recent budget process in the city, many residents had reached out to councilors about taking money away from the Boston Police Department as momentum continued to build for the “defund the police” movement.
“A lot of people were asking us to do things that we can’t do because the City Council doesn’t have the same powers as councils in other cities,” Edwards told the Herald on Monday. “The City Council cannot move money from one budget to another. The City Council can’t have a line item vote. The City Council can’t take certain monies away from police.
“People were getting frustrated with the process, and the fact that we don’t have that power here,” she added.
Edwards’ proposal on Monday was filed under a provision in state law that allows local elected officials to propose amendments to city charters. If the City Council approves the amendment, the attorney general must OK the question’s constitutionality and then it would be put on the 2021 city election ballot.
“The question we would be asking folks in Boston — ‘Do you want the City Council to be able to allocate and push money in ways we can’t now?’ ” Edwards said. “We’d be asking for the opportunity to let voters decide who is managing their money.”
“It’s time to break the wheel of Boston’s budget making process,” she said.
If voters end up approving the change, the City Council would be able to create proposals for the city’s capital and operating budgets, change line items within the proposals, allocate parts of the budget for a participatory budget process, and amend the budget for Boston Public Schools.
But a city watchdog said she’d like to better understand the process — and the sharing of powers between the mayor and City Council — under such a system.
“I’d like to learn about its implications a bit more thoroughly, and the possibilities and challenges with her proposal,” said Boston Municipal Research Bureau President Pam Kocher. “If there’s a lot of back and forth, I’m not sure if it’d be productive or if it could be dysfunctional.”
Edwards responded to those who might criticize her proposal, “If you don’t believe the City Council should have this power, then vote that way.”
Last month, Edwards was one of eight councilors who passed Mayor Marty Walsh’s annual budget. Walsh included in his budget proposal a reallocation of $12 million from the $60 million police overtime budget to other social programs after calls to “defund the police.” Many councilors had pushed for cutting the BPD budget deeper.
Edwards at the time insisted that neither a yes nor no vote would create the type of structural change she and her fellow councilors of color — who largely voted no — seek, and she promised to continue to work on answering the calls for systemic change.
Original source here.
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