Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's financial chief warns City Council off further budget changes that would lead to layoffs

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on Jun 9, 2026

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BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s financial chief urged the City Council to stick to an $8-9 million budget amendment package proposed by the Council’s Ways and Means chair, warning that further changes would lead to city layoffs.

Chief Financial Officer Ashley Groffenberger said amendments proposed by councilors other than Ways and Means Chair Ben Weber over the last week would harm the city’s ability to deliver services effectively to residents, and impact its ability to collect revenue through fines, fees and other payments.

The Council held a final working session on Monday and is set to vote on the $4.9 billiion budget on Wednesday.

“We urge you to keep these consequences at the forefront of your deliberations,” Groffenberger wrote Monday in a letter to councilors.

Groffenberger went on to lay out how additional Council amendments would affect a series of key departments, by restricting hiring and leading to layoffs, including 21 layoffs in the assessing department, which sets the city’s tax rate.

The Council can approve, reject or amend the mayor’s proposed budget, which means that it can transfer money between or within city departments, but cannot increase the total amount of Wu’s spending plan.

Weber put forward an $8.2 million amendment package on Monday, and left the door open for his colleagues to add an additional $1.2 million amendment to his proposal for the Office of Immigrant Advancement. He plans to recuse himself from the MOIA amendment vote, due to guidance from the state Ethics Commission over his wife’s nonprofit receiving grant funding from that office.

Groffenberger said the Council should stick to the package proposed by Weber, a Wu ally who said Monday that he consulted the Wu administration about his proposed amendments to the mayor’s budget.

“Reducing departmental budgets beyond the levels already proposed by the chair of ways and means will have immediate and tangible consequences for high-quality service delivery and the city’s ability to meet its core responsibilities to residents,” Groffenberger wrote.

“I urge the City Council to reconsider any proposed reductions at a scale that would negatively affect city services and our residents’ quality of life,” she added.

The warning did not go over well with some councilors, who received the letter shortly before a Council budget working session on Monday.

Councilor Julia Mejia, who voted last month to reject the mayor’s budget, slammed what she called the Wu administration’s “scare tactics” and inappropriate involvement throughout the Council’s budget amendment process.

“I still think that the process needs to be reevaluated, because we’re coming into this session already with, here’s what we have on the table, and here’s what we’re going to work with,” Mejia said in reference to Weber’s amendment package.

“The administration is weighing in a lot more than I believe is appropriate, considering that we are supposed to be the legislative body and we’re the ones that are supposed to be determining where we pull money from and what we do,” Mejia added. “This is just a whole sham.”

Mejia joined five other councilors in voting to reject the mayor’s budget last month to seek additional funding to restore grant funding cuts, which Wu has dismissed as “fiscally irresponsible.”

The Council deadlocked, 6-6, on that vote, delayed a vote on the budget last week due to concerns with the amendment process, and appeared to still be divided on Monday, with little consensus reached by the end of the five-hour working session.

Mejia, who has been pushing for more funding for youth jobs, said she didn’t buy the Wu administration’s position around fiscal constraints. She said it’s not like the city would “bust the budget” by dipping into its $1.7 billion reserve fund, which it did this fiscal year to plug a $70 million deficit.

She was among several councilors who indicated they would be putting forward amendments, in addition to what Weber is proposing, along with Councilors Miniard Culpepper, John FitzGerald, and Ed Flynn.

Culpepper is pushing for restoration of the human rights commission, FitzGerald is proposing $200,000 to address the Mass and Cass drug market, and Flynn is seeking health and wellness funding for firefighters and other first responders.

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