Boston City Council sets budget amendment rules ahead of FY2024 hearing season

BOSTON — April 10, 2023 — Boston City Council's Ways and Means Committee mapped out its FY2024 budget process, flagging an unresolved structural flaw in the amendment framework. Councilor Tanya Fernandes Anderson, chair of Ways and Means, led the April 10 working session, walking colleagues through charter-based amendment powers that she says permit intra-departmental personnel-to-personnel transfers — a point the administration has disputed without providing written legal justification. Councilor Ricardo Arroyo raised the more urgent procedural concern: under the current construct, the council's amended budget passes unanimously to the mayor, returns with vetoes, and can be finalized with as few as five votes even if seven or eight councilors oppose the vetoed version — a dynamic Arroyo called a potential "bad precedent." Fernandes Anderson agreed to work toward an ordinance fix before June. Public commenter George Lee of Youth Justice and Power Union urged a $40 million participatory budgeting allocation and asked the council to consider rejecting the mayor's first budget without prejudice to reset the clock and access revised appropriation figures. The council's first FY2024 budget hearing is scheduled for April 24.