Boston Council Panel to Advance Pension Petition for Firefighter's Widow

BOSTON — November 1, 2024 — Boston City Council committee signals support for home rule pension petition on behalf of firefighter's widow. Chair Gabriela Coletta Zapata announced she will recommend passage of Docket 1202 out of committee at the next full council meeting, following an emotional hearing Friday in which Rachel Lucier-Troy described the two-year ordeal of caring for her husband, Matthew Troy, a Boston firefighter who died of stage four cholangiocarcinoma on June 12, 2024, at age 32. The petition, sponsored by Councilors Edward M. Flynn and Erin J. Murphy, seeks to extend accidental death benefits — a yearly allowance equal to 72 percent of Troy's compensation rate — that Lucier-Troy would have received automatically under state law had her husband's cancer diagnosis arrived five months later, clearing the five-year occupational cancer presumptive threshold under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 32. Boston Firefighters Local 718 President Sam Dylan told the committee the petition "does not seek to modify any established city ordinance or state law" but simply asks that Lucier-Troy receive "the same benefits no less and no more afforded to other surviving spouses."