An “embarrassing” vote by the Boston City Council has led to movement on Beacon Hill, where a bill that would strip the body of its authority to approve public safety grants was referred to a legislative committee for review.
State Sen. Nick Collins, a Democrat from South Boston, introduced the bill at an informal Senate session Monday, saying that he filed for a change in state law, after the Boston City Council voted, 6-6, last week to block a $13.3 million counter-terrorism grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The vote was slammed by outgoing City Councilor Michael Flaherty, who described the Council’s action as “nonsensical and embarrassing.”
Funding in the grant would go to not only Boston, but surrounding communities including Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere, Somerville and Winthrop, which are all part of what’s known as the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region, according to the feds.
The legislation was co-sponsored by state Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Republican from Sutton. It has garnered early support from the respective presidents of the Boston City Council and the city’s largest police union, but was criticized by Sen. Lydia Edwards, who used to sit on the Council.
“The bill in front of us that we would like to move swiftly would no longer allow for such delay or blocking,” Collins said on the Senate floor. “This Legislature has had to reauthorize funds time and again for the City Council in Boston, (which) has thwarted resources for those purposes.”
The Senate referred the bill to the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, which Collins chairs, for further review.
A Wu spokesperson said the mayor intends to refile the grant, which represents the region’s annual funding source in the new year after a new City Council is sworn. Seven votes are needed to pass it.
“Many communities across this region over the weekend had to shut down synagogues because of bomb threats, the rise of antisemitism,” Collins said. “We were a launching pad for 9/11 and we remember all too well the pain of the marathon bombings in 2013.”
While the bill was filed in direct response to the Boston City Council’s vote to block the counter-terrorism grant, the potential change in state law would impact all cities and towns.
It would allow all public health and safety 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.”
“My initial thought is it’s way too broad,” said Edwards, an East Boston Democrat who departed the City Council in April 2022. “I think it may be like taking a hatchet to a scalpel job.
“If the concern is about how federal funds are not given out to other cities and towns because of one city like Boston being fiduciary, then I think that there’s a way in which we could talk about that and think about different ways in which fiduciaries work locally,” Edwards added. “Maybe in general we shouldn’t have certain funds for regional purposes be allocated to only one city to hold.”
Edwards said she would be happy to discuss potential changes along those lines, “but I’m not ready, nor do I think it’s fair to just automatically say certain topics are off local limits.”
Before being elected to the state Senate, representing Revere, Winthrop and parts of Boston, Edwards spent four years on the Boston City Council. She said she was among the council members who voted down grant funding for the police department’s Boston Regional Intelligence Center, money earmarked by the state to improve technology to fight crime, gangs and terrorism.
Her ‘no’ vote at the time was driven by a lack of information on what that particular grant funding would be used for, Edwards said. Those questions have since been answered, she said, pointing to the Council’s vote to approve four years’ worth of BRIC funding in October.
“I think it’s overreach for anyone to take that authority away from local authorities,” Edwards said, saying that part of the Boston City Council’s function is “to hold these departments accountable.”
Collins said he is “always open to discussion and debate, and there will be ample opportunity for that, but we can’t afford any further delay.” He would be open, for example, to paring down the language to make the change applicable only to the Boston City Council.
“We all have to answer to our districts and I am more concerned about the families, children and elderly who could not attend their houses of worship this weekend due to terrorist threats amidst the rising tide of antisemitism, rather than protecting the perpetual political posturing taking place that serves only to put the public’s health and safety at risk,” Collins told the Herald.
David B. Starr, a rabbi at Brookline’s Congregation Mishkan Tefila, said the rise in antisemitism, including this past weekend’s bomb threats, has been “pretty shocking” and “pretty scary” for Jewish people who have “felt very safe in America” since the end of World War II.
“Psychologically, it’s hard,” Starr told the Herald. “Communally, it’s hard in terms of trying to figure out what to do.”
While the proposed bill would take away local approval authority, it has the support of Council President Ed Flynn, who said that holding a formal vote on the counter-terrorism grant would be his “highest priority.”
“We can no longer play politics with public safety issues and the lives of residents of Boston and Massachusetts,” Flynn told the Herald. “We can’t fail the residents once again.”
It is also favored by the city’s largest police union, the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, headed by Larry Calderone, who said it was “irresponsible” for the Council to vote down $13 million in anti-terrorism funding for the region.
“These monies are a necessity and a priority to keep the general public safe,” Calderone told the Herald. “And if it’s money coming from a grant through the federal government, then we should be accepting it.”
