City Council - Regular Meeting

City Councillor and I'm the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations. Today is October 8th, 2026 and the exact time is 10.01. In accordance with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, modifying certain requirements of the Open Meeting Law and relieving public bodies of certain requirements, including the requirement that public bodies conduct its meeting in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public, the City Council will be conducting this hearing virtually via Zoom. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov forwar

THANK YOU, CHAIR. I'M OKAY WITH EVERYONE GOING ALL AT ONCE. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR BEING HERE, THE PANELISTS FROM THE ADMINISTRATION AND THEN the experts around looking at cities' revenues and expenditures. And currently, the city charter calls for this council to receive quarterly expenditure reports. When I was Ways and Means Chair, we were asked for also quarterly revenue reports, and that's a practice that I would like to see codified. That's why I filed this ordinance, which is a basic effort to require transparency and provide the council and the public with information around reve

Thank you, Councilor Worrell. Oh, I had to sneeze, sorry. Councillor Louis-Jean, you have the floor.

Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with all of you. Thank you, Councillor Rao, for the filing. Looking forward to hearing from the administration and from everyone and how we can move forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do want to acknowledge Councillor Well, Councillor Culpepper, Councillor Mejia for bringing this forward. I believe this is a common sense exceptional recommendation on how we can better be prepared for upcoming budget process, but also be prepared for changes in revenue that will impact basic city services in the budget process as well. This shows residents that we're focused on the fiscal stability of Boston. It also ensures that we're providing financial oversight that we're providing transparency, accountability, and the positive leadership to Boston residents. So

Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing, and I thank Councilor Worrell for filing this ordinance amendment. I think it's critical. During this past budget cycle, one of the questions everyone kept asking was, what does the revenue outlook look like? What are we gonna have in terms of revenue? While we were trying to prepare a budget, I think it's just common sense to be able to know what the revenue outlook looks like, what the revenue coming in looks like as we try and prepare a budget for next year. So hopefully we can get this codified quickly so that when the next bu

Thank you, Council Culpepper. Just double checking to make sure I didn't miss anybody. Okay, we can go to our panelists. We'll go to our budget director first, Jim Williamson, for any opening remarks you have, and then we'll go to Steve, and then we've been joined by, who we all know, and then we've also been joined by David, and I apologize, I'm going to say your last name wrong. If you'd like to correct me, please do, Coulier from the Breschner Freedom of Information Project Director out of Florida. So if you want to just reiterate your affiliation when it's your turn, please do. But for now

Thank you, Jim. Next, we'll go to Steve Poftak, who's the chief executive officer of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. Go ahead, Steve.

Thank you, Steve. David, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Dave. I'll now pass it to my colleagues for their questions. Councillor Orrell, and then I'll start with the lead sponsors and then go to Councillor Culpepper and just acknowledging we've been joined by Councillor Ben Weber. Councillor Orrell, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. And are we asking questions to the whole panel? The whole panel? Okay. Awesome. Yeah, definitely want to thank Director Williamson and the whole team over there. with their work on creating a more transparent process and then just making sure that they give us all the information as a counselor as we ask. And again, this is just more so just formalizing these efforts inside of law, knowing that administrations can change. My question, Jim, is, Currently, and I think I've heard this a couple times already, are you reviewing projections on a monthly basis, revenue?

And then in terms of turning that data over to the council, Would there be any additional burden or anything that you can see on your side that can you know, slow or make it harder for you to turn on information.

Yeah. All right. And then the ideal cadence. I know that the ordinance calls for quarterly. We heard from Mr. Poftak that majority of our peer cities, they do it monthly. What would be a cadence that you would feel comfortable with?

And then, Steve, my question to you is how we're making this information more easily accessible, help you in the work that the Boston Municipal Research Bureau does to help inform city and policymakers?

Right. No, and I completely agree with both what you and Jim are saying around the seasonality, but I think as we collect more years, we can start to understand those trends and those seasonality trends so that we're not overreacting to the seasonality cycle of revenue coming in. David, my question to you is, you spoke about the city could be doing more than just doing this quarterly, reporting revenue quarterly. Do you have any other examples that you could share on other cities, other peer cities, on how they're being more transparent around revenue or what they're doing?

Thank you. Chair, I have no further questions.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Culpepper, I just want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councillor Fitzgerald and Councillor Mejia.

Go ahead, Councillor Culpepper. Thank you. I had a couple of questions for David. David, you talked about the record request and how we were at the bottom, I think you said 32nd, in terms of the country with regard to transparency. What recommendations do you have to help us be better at retrieving and receiving record requests. And I'm assuming you're talking about FOIA.

Hey, David, can you, at some point, when you get a chance, give us some of that information? We're going to look at Connecticut's commission, the independent commission that mediates. I think that's a great approach to have an independent commission mediating those requests. because when the conversation becomes real tough with regard to those four years, many times they end up in court and you don't get too far once they get to the court. So yeah, we could look at that a little closer. It would be really helpful.

And so does the independent commission that you're talking about now, they get it before it goes to court. And then if they can't resolve it, then the parties end up litigating.

And you mentioned that it reduces corruption, services improve and increase, and the trust of government increases. Is that in the material that you submitted?

Thank you. Steve, good seeing you again. Good hearing from you.

Good. Hey, Steve, as we move forward, how can you be more helpful in terms of moving this forward? This ordinance forward?

Did you look at the Independent Commission in Connecticut?

Okay, great. Thank you, Steve. And I had a final question for Jim. Jim, good to see you again. Good to see you, Counselor. Hey, Jim, you mentioned that the council gets this month to month report that all department gets.

But we don't get a report. We don't get the other reports. We only get the council report.

How difficult would it be, Jim, for the council to get the reports that all the other departments get?

Can you check with them and get back to us? Sure, sure. And on the report that Councilor Worrell is seeking on a quarterly basis, how challenging or how difficult is that going to be to provide to the council on a quarterly basis? And he's talking about revenue.

And so if we haven't been requesting it, then you haven't been providing it. Correct, but I think you've been pretty consistently requesting it, yeah. On a quarterly basis or on a month-to-month basis?

Okay, and so this is just really instituting this institutionally and legally so that we don't have to request it, that it comes automatically?

Okay, and since you... since you're doing it anyway, really shouldn't be any extra work if you're doing it as we requested, other than this will be on a scheduled basis. Right. Okay. Okay. Jim, thank you so much. Good seeing you.

Thank you, Councillor Culpepper. We'll go to Councillor Flynn.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to David and to Jim and to Steve for informative testimony. So let me start with Jim. Jim, the reports that could be given to the City Council on a quarterly basis, would that include purchasing issues, contracts that were signed or went out or paid, general information such as that?

Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud, Jim, when we saw that Inspector General report from the state on $900,000 misappropriation funds at the public school department, could that have been caught on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis, knowing that there's some financial misappropriation of money. But could any report have caught that if someone looked at it on a monthly basis and said, hmm, this doesn't look all that right, this doesn't look good, on a quarterly basis, there's something wrong here, instead of having it increase over an extended period of time?

All right, let me ask Steve basically that same question. Could that type of information, if city council has known about it or the mayor's office knew about it on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis, not just someone at the public school department, but could that have prevented misappropriation of money?

Yeah, okay. My main point to Jim and to Steve is how could we have prevented this, you know, almost immediately when we saw something initially that didn't look right. That's my main point. Let me go on to David. David, freedom of information from residents is a critical part of transparency. We have something on the city council called It's similar to that. It's basically called a 17F. It's a request for information from the city council to the mayor's office or the city administration to request certain information. Oftentimes, it's just ignored. But do other cities have the ability? We have

regardless if it's controversial or regardless if it supports the administration or opposes the administration, the data shouldn't matter. Is that accurate, David?

We take the position that if it's going to put the administration in a bad light, that the city council should not get that information or should not request it even. Hmm.

Well, we're talking about annual revenue reports or sorry, quarterly revenue reports, by the way.

Okay. That's a subject matter at hand right now.

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair, for highlighting that. But do you want me to stop my questioning, Madam Chair? Is that what you're asking me?

Oh, no. I mean, we're on to where we're talking about an ordinance ensuring quarterly revenue reports. And so it's separate from a 17F.

Madam Chair, I understand that. Okay. I'm just somewhat surprised that I was cut off, but I'm going to, I'll stop asking questions if that's what you want, Madam Chair.

You are more than happy to ask one or two more questions. Everyone's been getting at least eight minutes. And so you're almost at that time. So if you'd like another question, to ask another question, please go ahead.

No, Madam Chair, I was the only one that was cut off. So I'm just going to stop there.

Okay, that is your prerogative. Thank you so much. We'll be going to Councillor Webber next.

Great. Okay, so I guess for Jim, Again, so how long after the end of the quarter would it take to generate the report? You may have said this. I missed your opening comments. I apologize.

Okay. And then, I guess, what's your opinion on just posting the report in a public Like that, you know, instead of just sending it over to the city council, I don't know if that's. What's contemplated, but, um. You know, what are your thoughts on. Producing a report or just posting it.

Okay. And then I'm just in the suggestive language says, reports detailing all revenue collected, okay, by to date by item, it is that do you need any more direction than that? Or I think you understand what we want, do you think? Yes. Can you just explain what that would be?

Yeah, Joe, I think my question is a little more basic than that. It's just in terms of, so if you're listing them by item, like what is your reading of the word item? And is that, I want to make sure we're going to get what we're hoping for.

We'll cover it. Your directions are clear, you feel?

Okay. And then I guess, Steve, and this is going to come back to you, Jim, but Steve and I were talking this morning about revenue projections, and I think other municipalities have longer, you know, they have more data in terms of where the people are provided with longer revenue projections or Steve, do you want to say anything about that and something that can improve going forward?

Yeah, no, I guess, Jim, like, can we get longer-term projections? Why don't we do, do you have them internally? Why, you know, why aren't we provided with that? Or, you know, and there may be good reasons for this, and I'm just interested in your thoughts.

Jim, so I think the issue from the rating agencies is also partially we only project two years, whereas in other places they project longer. I just don't know if those projections are just not reliable. Have you had a conversation about doing longer projections?

Okay. And just last question, I guess, is this issue of, the revenue, so the quarterly reports, you know, so like, let's say we're in, it's May, 2026, and we've gotten quarterly report, you know, maybe three quarterly reports or two for FY 26. And we're sort of using those projections to see where we're going to end up at the end of fiscal year 26, but we don't have the full picture. Like, so, I mean, in your experience, like how much does that last quarterly report, you know, like sort of to follow, is this a straight, you know, we're seeing like a straight line or does it look like, you know

And then just I guess the follow up is so but the cadences are similar each year. It will be predictable on some of these like licensing. They'll say, yeah, well, usually even though we're only 75% of the way through the year, we're we're probably only seeing 25% of the revenue from this. And then we check that from year to year like on how and even it's going to get.

And then do you have that, like, could you actually go through and, I mean, do you have a sense of what that is? Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councillor Webber. Councillor Mejia?

Sorry, I was on mute. Good morning. I thought it was gonna be Councilor Fitzgerald, but I'm happy to be here. And I wanna thank everyone who has shown up to talk about all things that we need to do differently so that we can hold ourselves more accountable to those that we serve. So thank you, Councilor Laurel for your leadership in the space and the chair for facilitating. Just a few questions for me, Jim, and I'm sure you know, and Steve, Dave, I'm not sure if we've met, but I know that Steve and Jim, for those who have been following Boston politics, knows that I worked on establishing, at

I get it. Even if you manage our expectations and say, hey, this is just a, you know, don't hold us accountable to every single cent that's here, but this is kind of what the projections are looking like, just kind of just more for communications purposes. But I'm gonna move on to some very specific questions now. The adopted FY26 budget included 4.7983 billion in reoccurring, I don't even know how to say that number, that's how far I grew up. 40, I think it's four, it's a lot, it's a billion, okay, in reoccurring revenue, divided into 13 categories. What was the actual total amount of reoccur

You know what, Jim, I feel, I don't know. This is what happens when I guess when we're, and I don't know, Chair, how much time I have left, but this is where I feel like I don't think that you understand, I don't know. It seems like if they say that you can get the quarterly reports, then I just, I'm trying to understand why you say you can't get the data from last year that you're waiting for the auditing department. Just kind of like, I'm just trying to, there seems to be a disconnect with what I'm hearing and what you are saying. If we're able to do these quarterly reports, then why don't y

And David, I know that Councilor Culpepper is gonna probably want to reach out to you and get some information regarding the Connecticut commission that was established. We'd love to partner with Culpepper if he does decide to go that route and get some more insight. I am always on the side of being as transparent as possible when it comes to city dollars in particular, because these are the taxes and anything that we can do to create pathways and that allow for that is something that I'm always gonna raise my hand up and say, I wanna be a part of. So I'm looking forward to connecting with you

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Jim, Steve, David, for being on with us today. I don't have any questions. I support this going to quarterly reports. I think it will help. I think all of us know that the last budget cycle was a rough one for us, and we anticipate upcoming next spring to be equally if not more difficult. with some of the decisions we have to make. So I think the transparency on the revenue coming in will be helpful in terms of explaining to our constituents where their money's going and why things are being cut, what money has not been coming in or is coming in or not coming i

Thank you, Councillor Fitzgerald. I apologize, everybody. My internet is spotty, so I keep going in and out. But I will pass it over to Councillor Pepin. And apologies if you don't hear from me. I'm trying to get onto my phone. So just flagging to central staff and I'm going to get on. I'm probably going to be iPhone.

Hey, everyone. Can you hear me well? Perfect. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for having this hearing, Madam Chair. This is a topic that is of great interest to me, but also my residents. I'm very grateful to the makers as well. I am very supportive of this just because I think that if we are able to review the revenues coming into the city, it's going to help us understand where we are fiscally, how are we doing in terms of budget-wise for the next fiscal year, I think that personally speaking, even just being able to look at where the money is coming from, and setting expectations

I appreciate that because I always I mean, we could always look at it from our personal perspective. If I try to look at my own personal bank statements every month and if trying to stay in, where are those recurrent payments happening? What subscriptions do I have that are consistently taking money that I may not be aware of as a person? If you're not doing that on a. even on like monthly basis or even on a two week on a bi-weekly basis you're gonna probably be spending money on things you're not even aware of and that's the way i look at it from a bigger picture with the city's budget which

Thank you counsel. All right, I'll go into my questions. And I apologize if there's an echo, because of my phone. Speak loudly, so the language in this is pretty straightforward. It just says the supervisor budget shall be required to provide quarterly revenue reports, detailing all revenue collected by. Collected to date by item no later than 30 days. I have been a public service server my entire life. Coming from a world of finance, I, um, is not something that I have experience in. So, my, my questions are more about operationally how this would work in practice and how we can shore up the

Okay, that's a point well taken. I think you're right. If we get prescriptive, we may miss something and it doesn't lend itself for future iterations of whoever the executive is or the city council. So, okay, that makes sense. And then I guess the latter part of my question, it seems like there's a little bit of confusion what your operational relationship is with the auditing department. Can you just get into... WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE, I MEAN, ON A QUARTERLY BASIS MAYBE FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS DISCUSSION, LIKE WHY WE CANNOT HAVE THESE OR DESCRIBE THESE NUMBERS BECAUSE IT HAS TO GO THROUGH AUDI

Yeah, and that makes sense to me. And if we're talking about government accountability, transparency, when there's different pieces of information, it's hard for us to have a baseline as to compare. So that makes sense to me. I have three questions that I think a little bit more straightforward, and then we can go to additional round if folks want. But and again, getting maybe into the language, but does it matter where it's submitted? Like, where do you submit the expenditure reports now? Do you submit it to the city clerk? And then a copy there I've transmitted to the City Council. I know it

I think I'm just looking at the chair. I think it may make sense to just have a copy submitted to the city clerk's office. That way it's on the agenda. And then a copy submitted to the chair of Ways and Means. I mean, if it just goes to the city clerk and we see it, that's fine. And then I also think it should be published online as well. Just thoughts on that? Comments, concerns?

Okay. Well, I think at the very least it could, and we can talk through this a little bit more, but it should be submitted to the city clerk's office. What is the, so revenue collected and shared and internally has already been asked. Oh, something was brought up about, is there any information that needs to be protected? Like legally? That's been talked about that we need to just be concerned with.

But that's not something that would be usually included.

Okay, just following up on that, Jim, there's no, like, one entity that, or is there? That would be just an interesting case, but.

we can't put this because it's a privacy issue so okay yeah just again something to consider as we move forward i know it would be um an anomaly but um would there and my last question is this is supposed to take effect upon immediately upon passage are you prepared to comply immediately or is a transition period necessary

Okay. All right. Um, that's it for my question. Thank you again, um, to the, to the lead sponsors for pushing this forward. And thank you all so much for your, uh, contributions. Just looking at the chair, we have Council Worrell, I'm sorry, excuse me, the co-sponsor, Councillor Weber, still on. Do you folks have additional questions?

Yes. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Jim, and I guess this question is also for David too, is are we able to, I guess what, David, what you've seen around the country what is included in some of these revenue reports and then Jim is What what else could we include in these revenue reports? I'm thinking around Uncollected what we build delinquency rates Any other information that can be useful? To the council and to the public that could be included. I

And what about neighborhood breakdown. Director Williamson, is it possible for, I know some of these revenue streams could be, you know, whether it's taxes, maybe property taxes, the mail tax, is it possible for us to see neighborhood breakdown on some of these revenue streams?

And then I guess my other thinking is, and maybe we could put this in the language, even though it's quarterly reporting, hopefully we can break it out by month, right? So we still see each month breakdown of the revenue, but it's quarterly. that we see those months. So still disaggregating the month within that quarter so we can see the revenue for each month. That is something that I probably want to work into the language.

And I guess my- It's really quick, Councilor Worrell. I guess, Jim, can we do that?

But Jim, you are reporting it monthly. You're looking at the revenue monthly already.

Right. I know what you're saying, but we're talking about revenue, payrolls, and expenditures.

And I'm still saying reported quarterly, right? Still submit the report quarterly. Yep.

David, what are your thoughts on best practices across the country around how the reporting is done monthly versus quarterly?

And David, in your research, is there any correlation between revenue reporting in, I guess, identifying areas where government has now identified like as a collection issue opposed to like a forecasting problem. So we might have, you know, an area where we need to focus on collecting that has been kind of solved through, you know, the more transparency around revenue reporting.

All right. All right. Yeah. And just wanted to also chime in. I do believe that it should be filed. with the city clerk chair. I think the, to my understanding, the expenditure one is filed with the auditor and the city clerk based off what I believe says in the charter. So I would want the same thing to happen with the revenue reports. And hopefully, I know like with BRJP we do, We don't have to add this into the ordinance, but with BRJP, we're having these conversations. By law, we're supposed to have two hearings a year on the BRJP numbers. I don't know if that's something that the council

Okay, great. And thank you for... For clarifying that it does say in the charter, right? Because I don't have it in front of me. I'm sorry, but it does say that it has to go to the city clerk and the auditor already. So we wouldn't have to add that in. It's already there.

So maybe we put something in there that just says where it goes. And then for, this is maybe a question for the Megs. if we want to put in something like the BRJP, is that something that is necessary to go into the city charter or can it be done by ordinance? I don't know. I think it should be fine, but I'm open to all of it. I think this is great. You folks do it already. And I think it's just the finer point of, okay, we know it's going to be quarterly, but can we please include the monthly like I'm sorry that I'm blanking on the word here, sleep deprived with a five-month-old, but just the

Yeah, I'm just going to highlight for Council O'Reilly and the Chair, yeah, I thought the language is provide, the supervisor required to provide quarterly Revenue reports, maybe to clarify to who or to where, but leave that up for the filer. I think it's to the City Council and maybe it's just clear from the rest of the ordinance. But I think getting to your point, you could add some more detail, maybe.

Yeah, definitely. I think that that's something that that should be in there. And then I was even saying getting more prescriptive about what the items are, but it sounds like it's all-encompassing, and that way we're not missing anything, which I agree with.

Yeah, maybe something, I mean, yeah, I guess like different administrations might feel differently.

Is there a national standard, maybe for David, like that we can refer to? for revenue reports? I don't know. I just want to make sure that it's consistent.

Yeah, okay. Thank you, Chair. It's good for me.

Thank you. I think we are, if seeing and hearing No other questions, comments or concerns? We can go to public testimony. I want to thank David and Jim as well for your work and Steve as always for his great insights and nonpartisan feedback. We do have one person signed up for a public testimony at this point. We're going to transition to that section of the hearing. We have George Lee that has signed up for public testimony. Central staff, if you want to go ahead and elevate him to panelists. George, we all know you, but please feel free to introduce yourself and your affiliation. You have t

Thank you, George. Next up, we have Greg. Hello.

Okay. Um, Centre staff, do we have any more folks? All set. Okay, I want to thank everybody for their contributions to this great conversation. I think we have small details to figure out. I don't know if that warrants a working session, but I'll work with the chair on that. But just really, it's going to stay in committee for now, but pretty straightforward. So I think, yeah, before I say anything else, I'll just say thank you. And this hearing on docket 1099 is adjourned. Thanks, everybody.