A state senator is seeking a change in Massachusetts law that would strip the Boston City Council of its authority to approve public health and safety grants, after the body’s latest “embarrassing” vote to reject $13.3 million in federal counter-terrorism funding.
Nick Collins, a South Boston Democrat, filed a bill Friday that would allow that funding to be allocated to the intended cities and towns, upon approval of the state Legislature and governor, thereby bypassing local bodies like the Boston City Council, as “no approval from the intended grant recipient shall be necessary.”
“The bill would ensure access to federal and state funds designated to assist our federal partners in providing the highest level of public health and safety services in a dangerous world,” Collins told the Herald. “We can no longer allow politics to come before public health and safety.”
If the bill is approved, the changes would apply statewide, but it was filed in direct response to this week’s 6-6 vote from the Boston City Council to block a $13.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Collins said.
Seven votes were needed to release the federal funds to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, for training and operational needs to “help prevent, respond to and recover from threats of terrorism, including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive incidents,” according to a communication from Mayor Michelle Wu, who put the grant forward for City Council approval.
“We haven’t seen this intentional blocking of funds for public health and safety anywhere else in the state,” Collins said of the Boston City Council.
Shumeane Benford, Boston’s emergency management director, told the Herald the rejected grant represented this year’s annual funding source for the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region, which includes Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere, Somerville and Winthrop.
As the lead city, Boston is tasked with acting as the approval authority for the grant, which is earmarked each year, at approximately the same amount, for the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region, Benford said. A lack of annual funding could create operational challenges and theoretically lead to layoffs, he said.
“Specifically speaking for this grant and the resources that are made available, the city of Boston and the region has ample capacity, no doubt about it,” Benford said. “However, anytime we delay taking money, it just increases the workload to make sure that we maintain our capacity and readiness in all those areas.”
A Wu spokesperson said the mayor intends to refile the grant sometime in the new year, after the new members of the City Council are sworn in next month.
The body’s latest vote follows a weeks-long battle this fall that ultimately led to the City Council narrowly passing four years worth of funding for the Boston Regional Intelligence Center in October.
The $3.4 million in grant funding had been earmarked by the state, as four separate $850,000 grants, since fiscal year 2020, but had been repeatedly held up by the Council in prior years over concerns with the BRIC’s controversial gang database, which critics say disproportionately tracks people of color.
Council President Ed Flynn and Councilor Michael Flaherty, who both voted in favor of the latest counter-terrorism grant, slammed their colleagues for rejecting the funding, saying that their actions hurt not only Boston, but eight other cities.
“The Council term ended the way it started,” Flaherty told the Herald. “Nonsensical and embarrassing, where several councilors did not support the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management.”
“Not only did they fail the residents of Boston, they failed eight other cities and towns that were depending on this funding to protect themselves against acts of terrorism,” Flaherty added. “What an embarrassment.”
Flynn said the body’s decision to “not accept $13 million from the federal government to deal with terrorism-related issues is a significant loss for Boston residents.”
“Boston is not immune from these issues, unfortunately,” Flynn said, a point that Collins made as well, saying that the city’s Logan International Airport served as a “launching pad” for the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Voting ‘yes’ on the grant were Councilors Frank Baker, Gabriela Coletta, Sharon Durkan, Flaherty, Flynn and Erin Murphy. Voting in opposition were Councilors Ricardo Arroyo, Liz Breadon, Kendra Lara, Ruthzee Louijeune, Julia Mejia and Brian Worrell. Tania Fernandes Anderson was absent.
Louijeune, who was absent from a Monday hearing on the public safety grants, was the only councilor to speak in opposition to the Department of Homeland Security grant.
She mentioned concerns with funding being determined not completely by the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, but rather by Jurisdictional Points of Contacts representatives “from each of the nine cities and towns that constitute the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region.”
Louijeune said more community conversations are needed for the grant, but did not respond to a Herald phone call and text on Friday seeking clarity on her remarks.
Breadon, who voted in favor of the other three public safety grants on Wednesday, opted to vote against the counter-terrorism grant, but said that she was not influenced by any remarks that were made on the Council floor.
She had been planning to vote ‘no’ on the grant before the meeting, Breadon said, because she wanted more clarity on how the funds would be used to respond to natural disasters.
Breadon said she generally supports the counter-terrorism piece, having voted for the grant during her prior years on the Council, but did not realize the funding would be used for natural disasters until Flaherty’s committee chair report.
“Given the recent history with what happened this summer in New York and then in Leominster, natural disasters, inundation of the waterfront in a big storm or all of those things,” Breadon told the Herald. “It’s really just, I need some more information. And that’s all that was about. There’s no nefarious motive there.”
